Pardon me for publishing a second post in a row with a political subject, but when I see Elon Musk Is a Moron in a title, I simply cannot help myself. After all, I recognized that he was a moron long before most other folks did.

Dean Baker writes:

Remember Elon Musk running around in his DOGE garb with sunglasses and a chainsaw? The Republicans are hoping that you don’t.

 

The ostensible point of Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” was rooting out trillions of dollars of government waste, fraud, and abuse. Musk gathered together a group of “super-high-IQ” MAGA boys who worked 80 hours a week ransacking all the various government agencies and departments in this effort.

 

Musk promised to cut at least $2 trillion from the U.S. budget with his DOGE gang. Musk came up largely empty-handed in this effort. He did manage to save around $20 billion a year by eliminating USAID, a program that provided healthcare and nutrition to millions of people in Africa. While this ended the Bush II AIDS program, PREPAR, which has saved tens of millions of lives, it did not do much to help U.S. taxpayers. The $5 billion cost of the program was roughly 0.08% of federal spending.

 

Mostly, what Musk ended up doing was creating chaos in programs that he seemed to not understand. He took credit for canceling contracts that were already completed, fired people who were subsequently rehired, and did things like end a screwworm monitoring program. This last move has led to a screwworm outbreak threatening the country’s cattle stock.  

Baker goes on to point out that when Republicans holler “fraud!” they are just blowing hot air.

Read the whole article Republican Claims of Massive Fraud Imply Elon Musk Is a Moron.