Elon Musk's 'Proof' of Government Waste Is in the Pudding

Is the fraud in the room with us right now? Yes.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk appeared at the Oval Office with President Donald Trump; Musk's son, X Æ A-Xii, even made an appearance. Citing a desire for "maximum transparency," the tech billionaire discussed the efforts of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government.

Here was how The New York Times described the press conference: "In Oval Office, Musk Says Without Proof That Bureaucracy Is Rife With Fraud."

The New York Times says "Musk Asserts Without Proof That Bureaucracy Is Rife With Fraud." Seriously? The GAO — under Biden — estimated last year that we are losing $233-$521 billion *per year* to fraud. Guys, it's right there. Why do you continue with this… fraud? SMH pic.twitter.com/p2ceZhNLuQ

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 12, 2025

Later, the newspaper tweaked the headline to read: "At Oval Office, Musk Makes Broad Claims of Federal Fraud Without Proof."

To be maximally charitable to the Times, they did not actually state that claims of federal fraud are baseless, just that Musk failed to proffer examples. Musk did cite examples of government processes clearly in need of updating, including the infamous, inefficient limestone mine where government employee papers are kept—something that sounds completely ridiculous but actually exists.

When they are digging too deep and too greedily in the limestone mine where the federal employees' paperwork is kept… pic.twitter.com/GDcHIS2klS

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) February 12, 2025

Even so, the Times is clearly treating the claim that the bureaucracy is rife with fraud as extraordinary. And extraordinary claims do require evidence to back them up. It's not an extraordinary claim, however. It is already well established and documented. While the beneficiaries of the fraud are not typically the bureaucrats themselves—though this does happen—the opaque, inefficient, and duplicative processes of our massive federal government allow scammers to misappropriate public funds.

The government itself is aware that fraud exists at a massive scale. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that the federal government loses hundreds of billions of dollars each year due to fraud. Medicare-related fraud has permitted health care insurers to pocket $50 billion in reimbursements for diseases that doctors never treated. Fraudsters collected an estimated $135 billion in fraudulent COVID-19 unemployment payments, and unless Congress acts to extend the statute of limitations, this money will never be recouped by the government.

National security funds are routinely misspent or disappeared. The Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row and often can't account for missing money; last year, the Defense Department admitted that it lost $8.2 billion in Ukraine. The federal government spent $61 billion rebuilding Iraq: 15 percent of the funds were misspent, and another 10 percent simply disappeared, according to government auditors. In Afghanistan, it's much the same: The Taliban-controlled central bank is a recipient of U.S. funds.

To the mainstream media's credit, many of these frauds have been expertly and exhaustively covered by journalistic institutions. The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and yes, The New York Times, have done terrific work exposing financial impropriety within the federal government. That's why it's odd to see the Times glaring suspiciously at Musk, as if this is the claim that makes him some kind of wide-eyed conspiracy theorist. The fraud is real, and they know it!

This Week on Free Media

I am joined by Amber Duke to discuss CNN's "constitutional crisis," Joy Reid's war on Musk, the gerontocracy, and Joe Rogan's latest advice for Democrats.

 

Worth Watching

I am finally catching up on the final season of HBO's Search Party, which was released back in 2022. It's a black comedy satire of millennial eccentricities, starring Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development. The first season premiered in 2016, and I started watching it after briefly meeting Shawkat at a White House Correspondents' Dinner party. Shawkat portrays Dory Sief, who is investigating the disappearance of a college acquaintance. The initial premise is something along the lines of a whodunit, but later seasons involve much more outlandish plot lines: a murder trial, a kidnapping, and, finally, zombies. I have two more episodes to go, so I won't render a verdict yet.

Comments

[Eeyore]

I think Robby might have skipped a hair cut appointment. Is inflation finally impacting Libertarian journalists?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

It's rumored that Koch has made all Reason cocktail parties BYOB going forward.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

I’m still waiting on that Epstein list
Not that he’d ever do something like that.

[sarcasmic]

Only leftists reference the Times.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I don't know about leftists, but proggy Democrats like you usually just troll here citation free.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Good thing he isn’t spending much time here..

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Sarcasmic? Never heard of him. He's obviously not a regular.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.

[Don’t get eliminated (all the sudden I have no idea where I am on the list)]

Poor sarc. So stupid.

[Longtobefree]

" . . . and another 10 percent simply disappeared"

UM, did anyone check with the big guy?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

It's an overhead expense. They just take the write off.

[Ajsloss]

Jerry: “Do you even know what a write off is?”
Kramer: “Do you?”
Jerry: “No.”
Kramer: “Well, they do. And they’re the ones writing it off.”

[Don’t get eliminated (all the sudden I have no idea where I am on the list)]

It’s just the bar tab.

[Vernon Depner]

I'm glad he didn't use the cliché "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." That's a logical fallacy. Extraordinary claims require the same level of evidence as any other claims. Labeling a claim as "extraordinary" does not change the rules of rational investigation.

[mad.casual]

Also, "a bureaucracy is rife with fraud" is not an extraordinary claim. Informally, the term bureaucracy rather specifically gets invoked as the point where the bureaucratic organization becomes self-indulgent and bureaucrats' demands and intrusiveness have exceeded their purported benefits even without explicitly identified fraud.

The claim is akin to "Musk asserts without proof that a brood of chickens sitting on eggs has feathers."

[MWAocdoc]

I think the idea here is that extraordinary claims shift the burden of proof to the person making the claim, while generally accepted assertions (which aren't assertions at all but simply a reminder of the "facts") do not require additional evidence in normal use.

[Doug Heffernan]

Musk knows that DOGE’s efforts to find waste and fraud have come up empty. If he had anything real to talk about, he would.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

What the hell are you babbling about? Do you live on MSNBC? There's been nothing but constant announcements.

They've found hundreds of billions in waste and in some cases, outright theft, and it's all documented on the DOGE website.

What kind of ideological rock do you have to live under not to know that USAID gave Chelsea Clinton $83 million, or that the Biden administration laundered $20 billion through the EPA in the final days of the administration?

[mad.casual]

Musk knows that DOGE’s efforts to find waste and fraud have come up empty.

I never have and never will understand the type of personality that loves to come on the internet and advertise in earnest how many tide pods they can eat.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

And they haven't gone after the big targets like Medicare/aid yet.

[Doug Heffernan]

Is there hard evidence provided by DOGE about the $83 million payment to the Clinton Foundation, rather than just a claim (a box labeled “Bill Hillary & Chelsea Clinton” with “gross receipts” totaling $83,624,489)?

https://gvwire.com/2025/02/11/fact-check-no-evidence-chelsea-clinton-took-84-million-from-usaid/

[soldiermedic76]

Splitting hairs now to say it didn't happen, but it did happen. You're not even a good troll.

[Marshal]

Clintonian parsing. It seems like we've been here before.

[Don’t get eliminated (all the sudden I have no idea where I am on the list)]

Lol.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Your guy is going to snap his spine doing those kind of gymnastics to avoid the evidence that is already released and freely available.
That's a fact check in the same way a colonoscopy is a dental check. The only possible people he is tricking are lazy boomers who want to be spoonfed instead of looking at the information themselves.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Those claims are directly from Clinton foundation reports dumdum.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

They've found hundreds of billions in waste and in some cases, outright theft, and it's all documented on the DOGE website.

https://doge.gov/savings

Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's day

[soldiermedic76]

That's why you and the other proggie minions are screaming so loud, because he ain't found nothing. Yeah right pull the other one, it has bells.

[DesigNate]

Put the crack pipe down and step away from the keyboard.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"Musk knows that DOGE’s efforts to find waste and fraud have come up empty..."

Doug.
Heffernan.
Is.
Full.
Of.
Shit.
Fuck off and die, lying pile of TDS-addled shit.

[MWAocdoc]

Meanwhile Trump's efforts to find voter fraud came up empty but it made no difference to his claims of stolen elections.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

YOU NEED SeCuRiTy ClEaRaNcE TO SEE THE EVIDENCE!

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Conveniently, I have one. I volunteer to join the crew and help out.

[MWAocdoc]

Anyone who actually knows what a security clearance is also knows that one must also have "a need to know" before perusing classified documents. But somehow that never seems to get mentioned.

[Yuno Hoo]

Musk's son, X Æ A-Xii, even made an appearance.

"But ya doesn't has to call me Muskson!"

[MWAocdoc]

You can call me X ... and you can call me AE ... and you can call me A-Xii ... but ...

[TJJ2000]

"It's not fraud because [WE] legalized fraud!!!!", leftards.

[Marshal]

To the mainstream media's credit, many of these frauds have been expertly and exhaustively covered by journalistic institutions. The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and yes, The New York Times, have done terrific work exposing financial impropriety within the federal government. That's why it's odd to see the Times glaring suspiciously at Musk, as if this is the claim that makes him some kind of wide-eyed conspiracy theorist. The fraud is real, and they know it!

Shouting into the void isn't doing much good Robbie, have you figured out why they're doing this yet? I suppose many people will presume they're just reflexively opposing Trump, and at a high level I suppose that's true. But the decision making is more complicated, and understanding their process help us understand them. Most importantly it completely rebuts those who try to protect the NYT which deserves to be exposed as an open propaganda operation.

First understand the NYT tries to satisfy many goals one of which is at least moderately informing the government professional class. To achieve this they covered the original fraud items Robbie mentions fairly straight. The plebes don't read these articles so there's no reason to worry about how these articles will impact them.

But then Trump and Musk begin publicizing information that will effect elections. Now the NYT creates a substantially overlapping report but which is (a) targeted to a new audience and (b) includes additional editorializing. We can understand how the NYT propagandizes by noting how the target audience (a) drives changes to the article (b). This should not happen at all, that it does is a huge failure in security. What we see is that the NYT completely changes their conclusion from fraud existing to not existing which also means their goal changed from informing to misinforming. They also use unwarranted language to overstate reality so their audience will refuse to even entertain the facts.
What they are doing is providing the people who read the NYT the talking points, i.e. the propaganda, they think is their best attack on the Musk information.

There are a number of conclusions we can draw from this:

1. Their political messaging is their highest priority. They would not contradict themselves, damaging their credibility, for a lesser priority.

2. This is not an accidental oversight or language error. This level of fraud has always been a base part of journalistic knowledge and is routinely cited. Ignoring it takes people choosing to exclude it

3. The NYT is undeniably propagandizing. They omit relevant facts and mis-frame others and in every single case the impact is pushing the political opinion a neutral reader will adopt beyond the truth. They are choosing the political message "no evidence" knowing it is false, but they treat this new audience as incapable of evaluating anything other than all or nothing cases. They literally change their conclusion based on their target audience which changes their goal.

This is a very important mistake by the NYT. They absolutely showed us their reporting is solely driven by the political outcome.

[MWAocdoc]

Although I do not deny that the NYT is a dedicated propaganda organ of progressive socialism, there is another potentially important factor involved. The NYT frequently publishes articles and opinions that contradict the narrative that informs their propaganda. The motivation may be an actual sense of fairness or a cynical attempt to appear fair and impartial while selecting "on the other hand" points of view that subtly undermine the counter narrative (some of these op-eds are obviously more irritating and counter-productive than others, for example).

[Don’t get eliminated (all the sudden I have no idea where I am on the list)]

You’re almost there Robby.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Almost where? The loony bin?

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I think we're at an inflection point for Reason, and in the next year or two the writers will have to admit they aren't libertarian if they want to continue to orangemanbad.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

It’s all about the money.

[JasonT20]

I think we're at an inflection point for Reason, and in the next year or two the writers will have to admit they aren't libertarian if they want to continue to orangemanbad.

I expect that to happen around the same time that the regular commenters here admit that they aren't libertarian either.

[Truthfulness]

Prepare to eat your words.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

That's some high grade copium, son.

Before the year is over you will end up arguing for Ingsoc, because orangemanbad.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

^ This slimy pile of lefty shit prefers murder of the unarmed for no particular reason:

JasonT20
February.6.2022 at 6:02 pm
“How many officers were there to stop Ashlee Babbitt and the dozens of people behind her from getting into the legislative chamber to do who knows what?...”

Fuck off and die, shitgbag.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

So you’re going to finally admit you’re not actually libertarian, JasonT20? That’ll be a relief.

[JasonT20]

Finally? When have I ever given any of you the impression that I was libertarian? I've never pretended to be libertarian, Republican, or anything right of center.

I did register Republican for over 20 years prior to 2018, and I voted for Republican candidates for President more than I did for Democrats prior to Trump, but I never considered my party registration as an identifier of any kind, nor as a symbol of general support for the Republican Party.

The rise of the silver-spoon-fed, reality TV host with obvious ignorance of nearly everything related to government to the highest levels of support from the GOP was definitely the breaking point for me as to any respect for the party that I might have had left. Call it TDS if that makes you happy, but unlike the "Bush Derangment Syndrome" and "Obama Derangement Syndrome" that long predate "Trump Derangement Syndrome" as a thing, Trump really is far below of any minimum level of competence, empathy, or integrity I had ever seen people express that a President should have.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Then why are you on the comment section of a libertarian periodical?

[Tony]

You're defining libertarianism as being unpaid pool boys for an authoritarian human cancer, correct?

[Sal Paradise]

Haven't been libertarian for quite some time

[jagjr]

"While the beneficiaries of the fraud are not typically the bureaucrats themselves—though this does happen—the opaque, inefficient, and duplicative processes of our massive federal government allow scammers to misappropriate public funds."

probably important to note that fraud waste and abuse do not require a beneficiary to exist. losses to the taxpayers can be to the benefit of absolutely no one. simply frittering away substantial percentages of appropriated funds due to excessive administrative costs are a prominent example.

[See.More]

probably important to note that fraud waste and abuse do not require a beneficiary to exist. losses to the taxpayers can be to the benefit of absolutely no one. simply frittering away substantial percentages of appropriated funds due to excessive administrative costs are a prominent example.

You are correctly only so far as you're describing "waste." Fraud and abuse absolutely benefit someone (ie a beneficiary).

[JasonT20]

To the mainstream media's credit, many of these frauds have been expertly and exhaustively covered by journalistic institutions. The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and yes, The New York Times, have done terrific work exposing financial impropriety within the federal government. That's why it's odd to see the Times glaring suspiciously at Musk, as if this is the claim that makes him some kind of wide-eyed conspiracy theorist. The fraud is real, and they know it!

Robby, you had already admitted that the NY Times was likely not expressing any skepticism that there is fraud and waste in government, but that Musk and Trump's claims are real examples of the fraud and waste that exists.

To be maximally charitable to the Times, they did not actually state that claims of federal fraud are baseless, just that Musk failed to proffer examples. Musk did cite examples of government processes clearly in need of updating, including the infamous, inefficient limestone mine where government employee papers are kept—something that sounds completely ridiculous but actually exists.

Also, that isn't being "maximally charitable" to the NY Times. Their original headline goes too far, as headlines often do (including here at Reason), but the edited headline seems accurate to me. And there are false claims in your article, by the way. You had said that the DoD had "lost $8.2 billion in Ukraine", but the link you included is to an article that clearly states that the figures are off due to how the accounting was done, as in what dollar value was assigned to things sent, not that anything was actually missing.

This is all really hard to take at face value when you look at the track record of the WH making claims about USAID. How about you mention the "DEI musical" in Ireland that was actually a music event that took place at the U.S. Embassy Dublin, featuring Irish and American musical artists. That was funded by the State Departement, and not USAID. Same with the "Transgender Comic Book" which had a gay protagonist, not a trans one. And the comic was to promote education and exchange programs for Peruvian students in a country sees a great deal of anti-gay rhetoric. (The title of the series is "The Power of Education".) Funded by - the State Department, not USAID.

If Trump's WH, Musk, and DOGE can't be bothered to get even basic facts correct in these claims, then everyone should be very skeptical of any claims they make about anything.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

"If Trump's WH, Musk, and DOGE can't be bothered to get even basic facts correct in these claims, then everyone should be very skeptical of any claims they make about anything.

All you have to do is stop swallowing MSDNC talking-points, get off your ass and start looking at all the stuff being posted and published, and realize what a pile of hot garbage you were fed.

Seriously. Why are you so desperate to misrepresent what's happening? Why do you feel the need to cover for the criminals parasitizing your nation?

[JasonT20]

All you have to do is stop swallowing MSDNC talking-points, get off your ass and start looking at all the stuff being posted and published, and realize what a pile of hot garbage you were fed.

You mean that I have to ignore the stuff that I am finding that is well sourced and that contradicts Trump and just accept whatever the loyal "true Americans" are posting on social media...

Seriously. Why are you so desperate to misrepresent what's happening?

You said that without doing a single thing to show that I was misrepresenting "what's happening." Did you bother to look up anything I claimed or are you just assuming that I'm wrong?

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

^ This asholish pile of lefty shit prefers murder of the unarmed for no particular reason:

JasonT20
February.6.2022 at 6:02 pm
“How many officers were there to stop Ashlee Babbitt and the dozens of people behind her from getting into the legislative chamber to do who knows what?...”

Fuck off and die, shitgbag.

[MWAocdoc]

"Everyone should be very skeptical of any claims they make about anything."

Of course everyone should be very skeptical about any claims made by any politician or official. Fortunately, the accuracy of all of these claims is irrelevant to the goal here, which is to roll back government activities on almost all progressive socialist fronts. Although fraud, waste and abuse are bad, they may be unavoidable in even worthwhile endeavors. What libertarians should be cheering on here is eliminating the eighty to ninety percent of government activities that are not only NOT worthwhile but also unconstitutional on their faces.

[JasonT20]

...the accuracy of all of these claims is irrelevant to the goal here, which is to roll back government activities on almost all progressive socialist fronts.

The truth doesn't matter, then, (to you) just whether you get the policies you want. Sounds great for the portion of voters that picked Trump for that reason and not because they wanted inflation better controlled, housing costs lowered, or any of the other "it's the economy stupid" reasons that voters in the middle tend to rely on when they make their choices. The GOP won't be able to deliver anything those voters wanted without relying on accurate information, rational analysis, and generally careful thought.

But Trump and the Trump GOP have shown themselves to be entirely reactionary and driven by whatever outrage they are feeling at the moment. And they are betting that those non-ideological and mostly non-partisan or mildly partisan voters won't remember the promises that Trump and the rest of the GOP were making to them.

[DesigNate]

For some reason, the people like Jason trying to the pump the breaks and demanding skepticism, exhibited none of that, even in the face of Biden’s jobs claims being revised downward nearly every month for two years.

Weird.

[JasonT20]

For some reason, the people like Jason trying to the pump the breaks and demanding skepticism, exhibited none of that, even in the face of Biden’s jobs claims being revised downward nearly every month for two years.

I don't remember ever talking about job numbers during Biden's term, so that would be why you never saw me expressing skepticism about them. None of us have the time to investigate every claim being made by every branch of government every day. We all pick and choose what to read about and what to talk about. If you have a specific instance where I expressed confidence in something some Democrat put forth as true when skepticism was the better stance, I'd be interested in seeing that. I'm sure at least one exists in the many comments I've made here over the years, because I'm hardly perfect.

Now that I've given your red herring a response it didn't earn, how about you address the claims being made here by Trusk (Or is Mump better?), which is the actual subject of this article.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Well, at least Soave isn't Sullum.

[AT]

$10 says he's looking at Sullum's articles and is like, "Jeez, I'm at least going to have to be a little bit honest if I hope to retain any credibility."

On the plus side, ever since Trump, we haven't had a single Jakey Fakey article about fat bald not-journalists who may or may not be trading sexual favors in return for publicity.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Pffff. No bet. It doesn't take that much sanity to realize Sullum has gone Full Retard.

[Tony]

Did it never occur to you extra-needs special-ed kids that the most corrupt human being ever to exist and the unelected biggest recipient of government handouts in history might should not be the “corruption and waste” point men?

Fix the Trump and Kushner corruption and clean up the remaining peanut crumbs later.

Waste is in the eyes of the beholder. Books and hard science probably seem like waste to most of you people, for example.

Let’s have Congress cut programs Congress created. You know what’s really wasteful and abusive? The world’s most talkative vagina deciding by fiat to reshape the most powerful government based on which Nazi has his ear that day or which burrito is sitting in his colon.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Yeah, Congress. The guys who caused the problem are gonna fix it.

[Tony]

So is dictatorship the official libertarian position, or?

[Brandybuck]

Modern "libertarians" are more interested in cheap symbols over actual substance. Something Rush Limbaugh used to blame liberals for. But conservatives and libertarians are no longer conservative or libertarian.

All this church over USAID and laying off Federal employees and even naming the fucking Gulf of Mexico may sound good on paper, but they do NOTHING to actually reduce the power of government. Doing all this via executive orders merely concentrates even more power in the hands of a single individual human being. That is what is not libertarian.

It's symbols over substance.

p.s. Okay, in time the Federal employee layoffs may make minor spending cuts feasible in the future. But I see that the post office is losing employees at the same time it holds a legal monopoly on the delivery of first class mail. This isn't shrinking government, it's making a crappy post office even crappier at the same time we are still being forced to use it. ELIMINATE THE FIRST CLASS MAIL MONOPOLY then you can gut the department. But is anyone in the Trump administration talking about that? Fuck no! It's all symbols over substance to them.

[Think It Through]

Intrigued by how you used the word "church". Is that a local saying? I've never heard it used to essentially mean "commotion" or "discussion" or "noise".

[See.More]

Doing all this via executive orders merely concentrates even more power...

How is using the existing mechanism for managing the Executive Branch to manage the Executive Branch concentrating power?

[DesigNate]

You wouldn’t know a libertarian if it smacked you on the ass.

[JasonT20]

So is dictatorship the official libertarian position, or?

I think "or" is the answer. Some libertarians undoubtedly voted for Trump because they figure that they'll like the things Trump will do that align with their goals more than they dislike the things that don't.

But Trump fans are not libertarian. They are Trump fans, period. Ideology doesn't seem to even be the point to them anymore.

[Tony]

Correct. Fascism is a pure ideology of anti-ideology. The goal is power, and the point of holding power is to hold power. That's why it's always inflicted on societies by amphetamine addicts.

But surely their obsessive-compulsive need to rid society of whichever minority group the Protocols of the Elders of Facebook told them to eliminate is an ideology?

The fascist elites have Jewish friends, gay friends, and are often Jewish gays themselves. That's mostly about activating the bigoted amygdalae of the masses for the power thing.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

You are a delusional postmodernist fuck, Tony. Go back to packing up your desk from your phony baloney NGO job, dipshit.

[Tony]

Define postmodernism and don't look it up.

Fucking Jordan Peterson fans are almost as cringe as Elon Musk's hairdo.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Waste is in the eyes of the beholder.

Exactly. This is their gameplan. Identify a lot of spending that they simply don't like, label it as "waste", and then declare "if you oppose cutting this spending then you are opposed to cutting waste". It is a dirty trick but that is what they do.

[DesigNate]

This has got to be one of the worst ways to not show people your sympathies lie with the left and the state.

Goddamn bro. Just wow.

[Miss Ann Thrope (She/It)]

"That's why it's odd to see the Times glaring suspiciously at Musk...'

No, it isn't.

[Brandybuck]

Meanwhile the billionaire in charge of draining the swamp gets a Federal promise to purchase armored versions of his overpriced crappy truck.

Payoffs. Boaf sides get payoffs. And conservatives just don't care.

[MWAocdoc]

Nice misdirection and whataboutism you got there. Be a shame if someone called bullshit on it. Meanwhile back here in the real world I no longer care who makes deep cuts in the Federal government at this point in history or how they do it. For the record, I do not prefer the dictatorship of the proletariat that has held control for most of the last century over the dictatorship of The Donald and Musk show. Cut government now and worry about "payoffs" later.

[JasonT20]

Nice misdirection and whataboutism you got there.

That's actually neither misdirection, nor whataboutism. Musk is now holding a position of power within the government, even if only because of executive order rather than federal law. Whether he has conflicts of interest is completely relevant to any analysis of the claims he makes or actions Trump orders or authorizes DOGE to take. Fundamental to representative government is that government officials represent the people and not themselves.

[Think It Through]

This article describes fraud ON the government.

What people (on the right) think DOGE is finding, is fraud BY the government.

Receipts needed.

[TJJ2000]

"fraud BY the government"
Every productive citizen in the US has that receipt.
They pretend renaming it just-a 'tax' excuses the fraud.

Even though what they're doing doesn't fit at-all within the definition of Taxing within the Supreme Law of the Land.
Precisely why... What it really is... is FRAUD.

[MWAocdoc]

Um

[Daddyhill]

I'm 75, and I wouldn't be so foolish that I would seek elected office. My head would probably explode with the exponential increase in political noise I'd have to endure (if possible). But my memory is excellent, and I've learned a lot about life, living, and society. Thus I'm able to figure out where things are coming from to see if they're new or retreads.

All (underlined) the media, from left to right, don't seem to be able or willing to do that job anymore. They can't or won't even do the simplest proofreading of their documents, let alone explain what's happening, why it's happening, and the results of it's previous iteration(s). I've offered numerous times to proofread, as a volunteer, various stuff for news organizations and websites, but never to any avail. So it still makes my jaw clench when I see typos and middle-school grammatical errors on people's home pages and documents.

But that's my problem after all. I sometimes tolerate my own mistakes too, of course, but not on the updated will I'm drafting, mind you. Some documents require a finer-toothed comb than others. However, it's not just my problem that my 40-year-old daughter had never heard of the so-called "line-item veto" until I told her about it last week. She was born while Reagan was president, but she admits to knowing little about him. So I showed her the video clip of Reagan asking that he be given a power exercised by "forty-three governors", and went on to explain that it didn't happen for him. I explained also that the the 104th Congress (aka Newt's Dream Team) voted to give Bill Clinton the line-item veto, but the law was held as unconstitutional shortly afterwards.

Advocates of the partial veto always claim that it's primary purpose is to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, e.g. pork barrel spending. In addition to being unconstitutional at the federal level, it's unlikely to serve the advertised purpose to any great extent. During Tommy Thompson's two terms as Wisconsin governor he used the veto approx. 1,500 times--to cut a grand total of approx. $150 million over his 4 years. A batting average of .100 in one state probably translates to about the same at the federal level.

The reality is that presidents want this power so they can push their agendas more or less by fiat; as they do with executive orders. They would use it to increase their power relative to the Congress. To me it kinda seems like the "move fast and break things" mentality is part of what Trump and Musk are up to. VSG wants to do everything he wants to do without having to hassle with Congress, even now when both Houses are GOP-majority. So the line-item veto rises from the dead once again.

I can see I've diverged from the point I started with. It was that people like me, who have no interest in running for office but do have a lot of institutional memory, are available in large numbers for volunteer work in the media and elsewhere. All they need do is ask.