Voodoo 2.0

And, why does Trump hate Franklin Graham?

Let me begin with the whole DOGE thing. Elon Musk and his Little Rascals, called their gang of merry pranksters the Department of Government Efficiency, to form an acronym the same as one of those phony baloney crypto coins, the Doge. If you are wondering what arcane and mysterious entity was the inspiration for the name, well, here it is.

Yep, it's a dog. Yeah, wow indeed. And it has all the intrinsic value of a Chuck E Cheese token.

Now my fellow outlaw Chris Newlin beat me to the punch in outlining the sacking and pillaging being done by Elon and the bowery boys, and you really need to read it. But have you seen this team of experts? Here is the Daily Mail's rundown...

Cole Killian and Ethan Shaotran handpicked by Musk to help trim the fat on public spending

Akash Bobba and  Luke Farritor are also part of the 'nerd squadron'

The youngest of Musk's elite squad Edward Coristin is just 19 and a student at Northeastern University in Boston. He is working with Berkley graduate Gavin Kliger.

These guys' faces haven't even cleared up yet.

By the way, Coristin is the one who calls himself "Big Balls" on the internet. And, it turns out Mr. Big Balls was fired from another Silicon Valley firm for playing fast and loose with private information.

In a statement in a response to a query from Reuters on Coristine's employment, Arizona-based network monitoring company Path Network said it could confirm that Coristine's "brief contract" had been "terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information.

Another member of the gang, 25-year-old Marko Elez...

...was also temporarily fired from his DOGE club for tweeting this...

• “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.”
• “Normalize Indian hate.”
• “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”

I say temporarily because Musk wanted to hire him back, supported by Vice President McDreamy, whose wife is, hold on (checks notes) oh yes, Indian-American. No matter, the kid is back in the band.

The redoubtable Andy Borowitz wonders if they are going to get extra high school credit for this work. And obviously, these guys can be trusted with your Social Security number, bank account number and private medical information, right? OK, the records may be covered in Mountain Dew stains.

MAGA Barbie Karoline Leavitt was asked by a reporter about Musk's obvious conflicts of interest...

“ Elon Musk is currently a quote, ‘special government employee’ who also owns companies that have billions of dollars in federal contracts. You said earlier this week that he has abided by all applicable federal laws, but what steps is the Trump administration taking to address that conflict of interest?” he asked.

“The president was already asked and answered this question this week, and he said if Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts,” answered Leavitt. “And he has again abided by all applicable laws.

By the by, two department's Inspector Generals were investigating Musk. From the New Republic...

In December, more than a month before Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, The New York Times reported a blockbuster scoop: Elon Musk and his SpaceX company had repeatedly failed to meet federal reporting requirements designed to safeguard national security despite being deeply entangled with the military and intelligence bureaucracy. These included a failure to provide details to the government of Musk’s meetings with foreign leaders, the Times reported.

Those lapses had triggered a number of internal federal reviews, according to the Times. Perhaps most interestingly, the Defense Department’s inspector general had opened a probe of the matter sometime during 2024. The Air Force and the Pentagon Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security also launched reviews in November.

One of the other ongoing probes was by, surprise, USAID. Of course, all Inspector Generals have been fired. I'm waiting for Musk's self-report on those.

And of course, those Treasury records he wants to go over would tell him everything he needs to know about his possible rivals' relationships with the government.

But thankfully, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan issued an order barring the DOGE gang from accessing Treasury Department payment information after a coalition of Democratic attorneys general from 19 U.S. states filed a lawsuit late Friday arguing Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has no legal power to access the U.S. Department of Treasury systems. The ruling also applied to other political appointees of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The doe-eyed Vice-President of these United States said this on social media today in response...

"If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power."

Journalist Terry Moran responded..

"Well, unless the military operation was unlawful, exceeding the authorities granted to the military by the Constitution and laws of our country. Or, unless the prosecution was unlawful. Judges “say what the law is.” Not generals or prosecutors."

So the question naturally arises. Is J.D. Vance advocating ignoring judicial decisions the administration simply doesn't like? Oh, and of course, Elon Musk tweeted the judge should be impeached. He also called for the reporter who revealed the racist postings of one of his DOGE punks to be fired. Ain't free speech grand, though?

And what about the radical reshaping of the entire American system outlined in the Heritage Foundation's manifesto called Project 2025? During the campaign, Trump said this...

“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said in the opening moments of his September debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it.”

Well, he just appointed the guy who edited it, Russell Thurlow Vought, to head up the Office of Management and Budget. One of his first moves is to end the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed after the big Bush recession. So, OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the Prez lied about never having heard of it.

Now, to my subhead at the top of the column. The United States Agency for International Development will no doubt soon cease to exist. Now, one of the least popular parts of the budget is foreign aid. We spend about $40 billion on it and frankly, most people overestimate the figure but hate it anyway.

We have been the world's largest donor of food, medicine and financial help to hard-hit parts of the world since the 1950's. The top recipients of aid last year were Ukraine, followed by Ethiopia, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

It isn't just food. as far as medicine and other health aid, we do great work around the world. Total funding for bilateral global health in 2023 was $8.5 billion.

But of course, Elon Musk says USAID is , and really he said this, a "criminal organization."

Much of the aid work, including infrastructure for clean drinking water, providing substitute crops instead of cocaine in South America, education and more is carried out by non-governmental organizations, many of them religious.

Catholic Charities, you know, Vance's denomination, will see its budget for charity around the world cut in half.

And what about the favorite MAGA charity, Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse?

Samaritan's Purse (SP) has received funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). SP is a Christian ministry and non-governmental organization (NGO) that has worked with USAID on projects in countries such as Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Niger. Examples of USAID funding for SP:

• Colombia Health ClusterSP has been a partner in the Colombia Health Cluster since 2019. 
• Emergency Food Security Program in DRCSP received funding from USAID's Food for Peace initiative to provide food rations and agricultural inputs to vulnerable households in the DRC. 
• FEAD project in NigerSP received funding from USAID's Food for Peace initiative to provide food distributions, supplementary feeding, and nutrition education in Niger. 
• Samoa Tsunami ProjectSP received funding from the US Government to distribute relief and recovery goods to communities affected by the 2009 tsunami. 
• SP is a tax-exempt corporation that has received federal contracts and grants. 

But, Karoline Leavitt said to reporters...

 “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces, $70,000 for production of a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.”

Turns out, all of that is misleading, if not flat-out wrong. But those are the things floating out there in the ether now, so no doubt USAID is toast. There's 2% of your $2 trillion budget deficit. All thanks to Peter Pan's gang of Lost Boys.

Of course, We do have to reign in spending or raise taxes or some combination of the two. But, on Thursday, the Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that extending the 2017 tax cuts — in addition to the other Trump initiatives, such as his vow to cut taxes on tips — would cost somewhere between $5 trillion and $11 trillion over the next decade, compared to $400 billion for aid.

I know, they think that increased growth will make up for it, just like it hasn't all the other times it was tried. Just ask Reagan's former Budget Director David Stockman.

After pitching the Reaganomics "trickle-down" plan for the first few years in the 80's, Stockman met with the cabinet to outline for all and sundry why deficits kept going up. He pointed out that, no, tax cuts have never paid for themselves, and tax increases, which did come, will be needed to get deficits under control.

At that meeting, Treasury Secretary Don Regan exclaimed, "You mean it really is voodoo?"

Yes, and it still is. And as for those hungry or sick people around the world?

I think Marie Antoinette summed it up.