We have so often discussed the reality that the country and the Federal government that operates it is quickly heading towards a fiscal cliff that, unless something drastic is done, will crash our economy, our savings, and our freedoms. The Federal government debt is quickly ascending to a whopping $37,000,000,000,000 ($37 TRILLION for those that do not want to count the zeroes). In fact, the case could probably be made that we as a nation have already gone over that fiscal cliff but have just not hit the valley floor below and gone splat.
Despite the raging epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome among liberals and Democrats, Trump, Elon Musk, and the members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have done a great job in a very short time identifying stupid, nonsensical, corrupt, and unneeded Federal government costs and expenses.
No matter what you think of Trump as a person (and by the way, I have never voted for the man), his attacking of excess costs had to be done if we have any chance of getting outlandish and wasteful government spending under control. Otherwise, the dire results listed above and the hyperinflation that would come with it would not be at all pleasant.
Our first discussion on the outlandish costs he identified were listed in a series of posts earlier this year beginning with the following:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html
Over this series of posts we will continue that discussion and identify the corruption, waste, and stupidity that the Federal government is guilty of when it comes to wasting taxpayer wealth.
1)DOGE is not just looking for and finding incompetence and criminal fraud within the confines of Washington but also everywhere in the country:
Musk and DOGE have uncovered possibly $382 million in unemployment fraud in states across the country.
The majority of the fraud was found in just three states: New York, California, and Massachusetts.
Many of the fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits were submitted by people who submitted their birth dates that have not occurred yet, i.e. 9,700 of the claims were made by folks whose birth dates were set at least 15 years in the future with one claimant saying he was born in 2154.
Also, $59 million was claimed by 24,5000 people who were allegedly over 115 years old (i.e. they claimed to be over 115 years old and STILL working since they were claiming unemployment benefits) and $254 million were filed under workers’ names of 28,000 kids age between one and five years old.
Of the $382 million in fraudulent claims, $305 million worth of claims were in just the three states listed above.
In California, some claims and payments were connected to folks on terrorist watch lists or who were identified as criminals by the border patrol
Such incompetence, no checks and no balances, no simple sanity/reasonability checks on very, very old people getting unemployment unemployment, very young people getting unemployment benefits, and people not yet born getting unemployment benefits.
2)Speaking of old folks that people do not exist any more or who never existed, DOGE has found that over 10 million Social Security records had people listed on the Social Security data systems as being over the age 120. Now this does not mean that taxpayer dollars are being paid to millions and millions of people over the age of 120.
However, with so many dead or fictitious names in the Social Security computers it does provide a lucrative field for criminal fraud and just plain bureaucratic incompetence to waste taxpayer wealth.
3)We have previously reported that Yosemite National Park had a full time locksmith on the staff at the park even though it is very hard to imagine that a full time locksmith was needed for such an outdoor focused vacation and park spot.
But apparently the park is not the only Federal government entity vastly overpaying for service, as uncovered by DOGE:
Apparently the Department of Veterans Affairs was paying a whopping $380,000 a MONTH for minor website maintenance.
Not website development, no website overhaul, just minor website tweaks.
Fortunately, this massive wasting spending process has been replaced by a single in house software person working about 10 hours a week on website maintenance.
Thus, the cost savings went from about $4.6 million a year down to one government employee working 10 hours a week: if we assume for simplicity that the employee was making $100,000 a year and 25% of his time was spent on this job assignment, then the cost was reduced by about 99.5%.
You wonder who in the Federal government got the kickbacks on the $4.6 million contract because surely someone must have known how ridiculous this expense was unless there was a money laundering aspect to the whole affair.
4)We have previously discussed how the USAID organization in the Federal government had wasted billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth on absolutely stupid stuff in countries around the world: $20 million on a Sesame Street play in Iraq, $6 million to support tourism in Egypt, millions of dollars for sex change operations in Guatemala, etc. The long list of insults to the American taxpayer can be accessed at the following link:
https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html
But it was not just USAID that was wasting taxpayer wealth around the world. DOGE found that other government entities were doing a pretty good job of wasting taxpayer dollars on stupid project around the world:
113 Federal government contracts worth $4.7 billion were in place to support Peru's climate change policy before they were cancelled by DOGE.
The Department of Labor had many stupid contracts and efforts in place, none of which helped Americans, including $10 million for “gender equity in the Mexican workplace,” $12.2 million or “worker empowerment in South America,” and $6.25 million to “improve respect for workers rights” in Central American agricultural supply chains.
Some quick, theoretical math: the $33.15 million from just these four inane projects could have provided about 15 nutritious meals to every one of the 770,000 homeless Americans in the country today. At least in my value system that would have been a much better option than worrying about workers’ rights around the world.
5)As of April, 2, 2025, DOGE has claimed it has already identified and saved taxpayers $140 billion in total, about $870 for every American taxpayer. I do not know if this is a valid number but given what we have discussed over the past three posts I would not think it is too far off. And some of the big hitters from a wasting of money perspective have not even been hit yet such as the defense budget, so there is no doubt hundreds of billions more of bad Federal government spending can be found.
Enough taxpayer savings for today: Department of Labor idiocy, bad priorities from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security data systems incompetence, and ridiculous unemployment benefits fraud from New York to California and in between.
**********************
If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:
https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom
**********************
