Well, Phase One of the Musk Plutocracy is apparently at an end. Musk has put down the chainsaw, although I have no confidence that the damage that was wrought by it will be easily, or ever, undone. He claims to have 'saved' the Government $160 billion, far short of the ridiculously ambitious goal of saving two trillion dollars. And even that figure has to be adjusted for the immense costs of rectifying stupid DOGE decisions made by 20-something Tesla interns combing through protected data. Musk, meanwhile, is facing the fact that Tesla might be on a death spiral, excacerbated by his association with the politics that Tesla buyers hate, the immense flop of the Cybertruck, and the huge threat of Chinese manufacturing.

The net result has been the disbanding, disabling and destruction of many valuable agencies, services, careers, and departments, across many sectors of Government, affecting science, climate, education, human rights, foreign aid... the list goes on.

Here's a partial list of DOGE/MAGA stuffups, courtesy Motherjones.com:

• “Accidentally cancelled,” in Musk’s words, funding for “Ebola prevention.”
• Sent Harvard an “unauthorized” list of demands, which led the nation’s wealthiest university to stop negotiating with the administration and fight back in the courts.
• Rescinded job offers for the Veterans Crisis Line, “due to an administrative error.”
• Fired Health and Human Services employees that, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “should not have been cut.”
• Accidentally fired, and tried to rehire, employees at the National Animal Health Laboratory Network who were working on the administration’s response to bird flu.
• Fired, and scrambled to rehire, people responsible for maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
• Fired, and then un-fired, workers at the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Fired, and then rehired, people responsible for ensuring the safety of medical devices.
• Fired workers at the Small Business Administration, then un-fired them, and then fired them again.
• Accidentally fired people who had already taken a buyout offer.
• Tried to fire 22 US attorneys, but sent the termination emails to the wrong addresses.
• “Mistakenly” gave the “normalize Indian hate” guy the power to rewrite Treasury payment systems.
• Accidentally published classified information about the National Reconnaissance Office.
• Shared an unclassified list of new CIA employees via email.
• Tried to sell a government complex that includes a secret CIA facility.
• Inadvertently put both the Justice Department and the FBI headquarters up for sale.
• Accidentally made Brian Driscoll (aka “Drizz”) acting director of the FBI and then just went with it rather than acknowledge the mixup.
• Accidentally revealed living peoples’ Social Security numbers as part of their big dump of JFK assassination files, after Trump ordered the documents released with 24 hours notice.
• Accidentally cut off the ability of people in Maine to get Social Security numbers for their newborns because, according to the acting Social Security administrator, “it looked like a strange contract.”
• Accidentally made it possible for anyone to update the Doge.gov homepage, which resulted in the words “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN” staying up on the site for 12 hours.
• Claimed $8 billion in savings on an $8 million contract.
• Completely invented a non-existent $50 million program to supply condoms to Gaza.
• Hired a new IRS chief—on Tax Day—without telling the Treasury Secretary, leading to the new IRS chief being replaced with yet another new IRS chief three days later.
• Paid $2 billion because the acting solicitor general appealed the wrong court ruling.
• Submitted an internal legal brief saying that their congestion pricing case against New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is bad, as an unsealed filing in their congestion pricing case.
• Added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to an emoji-riddled group chat about war plans in Yemen.
• “Accidentally” terminated and then reinstated environmental grants in Michigan.
• Cut off funding to food programs “that were not meant to be cut.”
• Announced an investigation into a non-existent medical school.
• “Mistakenly” removed Jackie Robinson and Japanese-American soldiers from the Department of Defense website.
• Imposed tariffs on an island of penguins.
• Made tariffs 4 times too high because of an incorrect math equation.
• Broke, for 10 hours, the mechanism for actually collecting tariffs.
• Accidentally told an immigration attorney from Massachusetts, who is a US citizen, she had to leave the country.
• Accidentally told Ukrainian refugees they had to leave the country.
• Accidentally detained US citizens in immigration sweeps.
• Deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
• Accidentally pronounced 82-year-old Ned Johnson of Seattle dead.

So I was just listening to Fareed Zakaria declare DOGE ‘an abject failure’. Of the $165b savings it claims to have made, media analysis indicates a figure nearer to $65b. (I don’t know if that takes into account repairing the damage accidentally inflicted by the chainsaw.) Musk has practically dropped from view in Washington, presumably to rescue Tesla from its death dive, and DOGE programs have been taken over by Dept of Finance.

Also, Bill Gates has come out with blistering criticisms of DOGE, saying that the richest man in the world has destroyed programs (which Gates as head of Gates Foundation knows backwards) which could lead to literally millions of lives lost. Musk has maintained a sullen silence, although some of the MAGA minions have been trying to find insalubrious rumours to spread about Gates, who has said he plans to sink his entire vast wealth into global health and economic initiatives. The contrast between the two could not be clearer, though. Bill Gates may not be a saint, but he’s at least a good guy.

What did they accomplish anyway?

New Social Security Data Reveals Musk, DOGE Lied in Claims of Social Security Fraud
^{— Natalie Alms (Elizabeth Warren) · US Senate · May 15, 2025}
DOGE’s Fraud Tracker at Social Security Turns Into a Massive Self-Own
^{— Josh Fiallo · The Daily Beast · May 16, 2025}

Shouldn't they hit the White House next?

Big CNN analysis of Musk and DOGE now that Musk has stepped back. It points out that absent Musk, DOGE has well and truly embedded itself all across Government agencies, where it acts with almost zero consultation, and often without any explanation or apology. Many tens of thousands of employees have been terminated abruptly, frozen out of their systems and escorted out of buildings with little or no explanation. 'Cutting waste and fraud' is a pretext, or a cudgel. DOGE also has over-ridden many checks and balances on data secrecy and personal privacy and aggregated vast amounts of data. (You can bet, for instance, it would be a cinch for them to trawl social media for remarks and posts hostile to Trump/Musk and use that in profiling and targetting.)

The problem is, so much of what DOGE is doing is blatantly ideological and blatantly in service of Trump and Musk's political views, hatreds and perceptions. If DOGE really was committed to equity or efficiency or improvement it might not be so utterly egregrious. As it is, it is doing irreversible damage to many programs and agencies.

'Cutting waste and fraud' is a pretext, or a cudgel. — Wayfarer

Well, working and functioning institutions are an obstacle for Trump: they are indeed bad for the White House.

Hence if Musk's DOGE went on this crazy rampage through the corridors of US power, that itself was a good thing for Trump.

Musk is officially out of Government. By any objective account the entire episode was an abject failure. But spare a thought for the many careers ruined, services eviscerated and aid programs destroyed by DOGE.

A fitting epilogue for this blackest of episodes in official malfeasance.

he’s at least a good guy. — Wayfarer

LOL. oh yep.

So now the Elon/Donald breakup has gone to the point where Elon is saying that he will create a new political party, the America party.

(Reuters) A day after asking his followers on his X platform whether a new U.S. political party should be created, Musk declared in a post on Saturday that "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."

Yet what's the credibility after the failure of DOGE to make any true impact (other than canceling USAID)? Quite laughable. At least the guy is as distracted as ever from actually running his companies, so I guess Tesla will continue to plummet.

As a coda to this story, a report has now been released showing that the DOGE program ended up costing tens of billions of dollars, rather than slashing the promised $1 trillion of 'waste and fraud'.

Billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump tried to take a chainsaw to federal government spending, but it turns out they actually wasted tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The Department of Government Efficiency generated some $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government in the first six months of the year, according to a new report from the minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).

The report, spearheaded by Democratic Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal, comes after a months-long investigation into the tech billionaire and his team’s DOGE efforts after the president tapped the tech billionaire to lead the short-lived initiative to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” and find some $2 trillion in government savings by July 2026.
However, Musk, once “first buddy,” departed his role as a Trump adviser in May, far short of the DOGE’s goal before having a colossal public breakup with the president, as congressional Republicans backed by Trump passed legislation that is projected to further expand the deficit and add trillions to the national debt.

The massive sum of DOGE-generated waste found in the report also happens to be more than twice the $9 billion in DOGE cuts Congress codified earlier this month in the rescissions package sent over by the White House to claw back federal funds, which took an ax to public broadcasting and foreign aid.

The report found that one of the biggest examples where DOGE burned taxpayer dollars was with its Deferred Resignation Program, which was announced in late January by the Office of Personnel Management. In total, the chaotic program wasted some $14.8 billion by paying some 200,000 federal employees not to work for up to eight months.

The 55-page report also found more than $6 billion in waste from the more than 100,000 federal employees who were involuntarily separated from their government jobs but faced long periods of administrative leave. Many were paid not to work for weeks or months.

There was also some $263 million in lost interest and fees to the federal government after the Department of Energy implemented dozens of loan freezes for utility projects.

Another $155 million was wasted in time costs for employees because of Musk’s demand that they send a weekly accomplishments email to OMB highlighting five accomplishments. The move announced in February caused widespread confusion at agencies across the federal government when it was announced in February along with the threat from the world’s richest person that it would be taken as a resignation for those who didn’t respond.

DOGE also wasted $110 million in food and medical supply aid that was left to spoil in warehouses and set to be destroyed.

Nearly $42 million was spent to relocate staff members from one agency closer to a physical office, $38 million in investments were blown on four projects at the National Institutes of Health and the IRS, and some $66 million was spent on professional staff to be underutilized for entry-level work.

“This report is a searing indictment of DOGE’s false claims,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “As my PSI investigation has shown, DOGE was clearly never about efficiency or saving the American taxpayer money.”

The total waste found also included an estimated $50 million in DOGE operational costs. However, it did not include other potential ways money was spent or wasted, such as being used for legal and administrative expenses or undermining public safety.

The Connecticut senator has urged the inspectors general of some 27 government agencies to take up the investigation and conduct reviews of how DOGE’s actions cost taxpayers. — Daily Beast (may be paywalled)

I am skeptical. I don’t doubt that the way they went about making the cuts was inefficient and clumsy. I don’t doubt that the billions of dollars pointed out in this article represent poor planning and implementation. What I don’t know - what I have not seen described anywhere - is how much money will be saved over the upcoming years by the reductions in the number of federal employees and programs. Maybe none will be saved. Maybe costs will increase rather than decrease. I just haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other.

Radical changes like that are bound to cost a lot in the short term. Which is not to say I think the DOGE was a good idea.

, for a while, I was waiting for DOGE to raise cases of fraud and crimes, like they advertised, with much cheering from the Trumpists, but I gave up waiting. Do you know what (if anything) has materialized?

Recall at the time the reports of how haphazard and chaotic the DOGE program was - greenhorn computer geeks barging into offices managed by seasoned bureaucrat and firing swathes of people using lists from Human Resources. And ALSO don't forget that Trump had already purged all the departmental Inspectors General, who are exactly the people who are supposed to root out fraud and waste. So, no, I don't expect anything positive came from the DOGE exercise. It was all political grandstanding.

, "Leave no one behind" has taken a new meaning under Trump: fire specialists, hire loyalists.

Musk later turned less loyal, it seems. :grin:

He'll never live those photos down.

Radical changes like that are bound to cost a lot in the short term. Which is not to say I think the DOGE was a good idea. — Janus

Yes, I agree on both points.

David Pakman was doing a good commentary on this when it was happening.

I don't really know enough about economics and specifically American economics to know how accurate what he was saying was but it sounded impressive and Pakman is a stand up guy generally isn't he?

I don't really know enough about economics and specifically American economics to know how accurate what he was saying was but it sounded impressive and Pakman is a stand up guy generally isn't he? — unimportant

Thanks, I’ll see if I can find the commentary you’re talking about.

Just go on his website/channel and scroll to the timeframe it was happening and there were loads of videos.

I don't usually take an interest in current affairs much but I do like his sardonic style and find his innocent delivery of the sarcastic remarks he makes amusing of these guys he discusses.

@Wayfarer @Janus @jorndoe

I wasn’t able to find the David Pakman commentary you discussed, but I did find this essay from the Brookings Institution that I thought was interesting. It’s an overview of DOGE written in June. It seems fairly evenhanded, although clearly skeptical of DOGE’s immediate and long-term effectiveness.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-will-we-know-if-doge-is-succeeding/

------> https://davidpakman.com/shows/?_sf_s=elon <------

Elon turns on Trump, Republicans nuking Medicaid
2-year-old citizen deported, Musk turns on Trump’s tax bill
Trump “doesn’t know” about defending Constitution, Tesla sales collapse
Trump kicks out Elon, influencers turn on MAGA — The David Pakman Show

Many pages of results, those are just a few example titles.

I wasn’t able to find the David Pakman commentary — T Clark

He has a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@thedavidpakmanshow . I much prefer Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirshner, although it should be acknowledged that the anti-MAGA media is feeling extremely discouraged at this time. The bad guys really are winning, or so it seems.