Donald Trump and Elon Musk could be the best thing that ever happened to government. And not in the way they intended.
Trump and Musk are taking an ax to the Federal government without regard for the consequences. Reckless seems like a far too inadequate word. They started by firing probationary workers — without bothering to learn what it was they were actually doing — simply because they could. Those workers did not yet have civil service protection. Now they’re going after workers with that protection by ordering “force reductions” — meaning that they would not just fire the workers but eliminate their positions. Again, they are moving forward with that without any consideration of what that means for the services those workers perform.
And they’re doing all this without any approval or oversight from Congress — which is supposed to control the purse strings. Congressional Republicans have earned their own chapter in my forthcoming book Profiles in Cowardice.
But here’s the thing. Most Americans are, generally speaking, vaguely anti-government. They just assume it’s unproductive and wasteful. Ronald Reagan may have gone to lunch on that sentiment, but it wasn’t new even back then. Long before Reagan, our own Democratic Sen. Bill Proxmire issued monthly “Golden Fleece Awards” in which he highlighted something that always sounded (but only sometimes actually was) silly and wasteful that the government was doing.
The trouble is that much of what the government does is invisible. That becomes more true the more removed the level of government becomes. One reason I loved being mayor was that so much of what the city does is tangible — fix the streets, collect the garbage, build the parks, put out the fires, etc. But at the Federal level most things are pretty abstract — with the exception of mail delivery, which Trump has exempted from his slashing.
So, it will take awhile for some of these cuts to hit home. But when they do it will be with a wallop. Consider:
- You show up at your National Parks this summer and there’s nobody to direct traffic, answer your questions at the camp ground or give a naturalist program to your kids.
- You’re waiting for your tax refund. And waiting. And waiting.
- You like clean air and water. Trump wants to cut the EPA by 65%.
- Your spouse or parent has Alzheimer’s. Trump is all but eliminating research on how to manage or cure it.
- You don’t like finding foreign materials in your food. Trump is slashing enforcement of food inspections.
- When you fly you’d rather that your plane didn’t crash. Trump is messing with the FAA. He’s even allowed Musk to replace communications technology at air traffic control centers with his own unproven Starlink system — without any vetting or competitive bidding. Musk stands to make $2 billion.
- You like safe highways and smooth roads. Better live in a state with high marriage and birth rates. Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said that those things will be priorities in making funding decisions. I kid you not.
And that’s just a random sampling. Some of these impacts will be almost immediate while others will take years to play out. But most will be apparent by November, 2026. If Trump allows those mid-term elections to take place— and I’m serious about raising the question — I predict the GOP is going to get slaughtered. And then, of course, all of a sudden we will hear again about rampant election fraud, which was strangely absent from the 2024 elections.
But that’s just the short-term result. In the long-run, these guys will have reminded average Americans about what their government actually does and why it shouldn’t be taken for granted.
YSDA stands for:
Free speech.
The rule of law.
Reason.
Tolerance.
Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Now they have their sights set on FDIC and want to make crypto currency mainstream. So, nobody’s money will be safe and the grifters and crooks, Trump and Musk chief among them, will be able to continue grifting and stealing from the people that voted for them and the rest of us hapless victims. I doubt we’ll make it to the mid-terms. I sense we are headed for civil war. These guys are crazy.
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Crypto is the perfect Trump scam. It’s just air. It’s a nothing that has value only because some people think it does.
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And even worse, it’s where a lot of criminal activity already happens.
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You should do a post focusing on crypto. Pew Research estimates that 17% of Americans have invested or traded in cryptocurrencies. They have purchased something with absolutely no intrinsic value with the hope that others will too and raise the value of their holdings. A get rich quick – no work scheme.
This is an important and rather sizable part of the Trump/Musk base. They need Trump/Musk to use their governmental power to prop up the value of their holdings. To them, perhaps nothing else matters as much as their non-physical “asset” becoming more valuable. Maybe to them it doesn’t matter how much anything else in our country is trashed so long as they’re cashed out to a rich profit before the scheme fails.
If the federal government starts recognizing crypto (or tulips, or really anything) as legal currency, then it instantly has actual value. This is what this base is banking on.
The same mindset is at play in the stock market, where meme-stocks wildly rise and fall in value because “investors” are betting on hyping more marks into buying in at prices incredibly detached from any market rationality.
I wish these leeches could be content with working for their money…
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Thanks, Rollie. I have been thinking about writing more about crypto. It’s something, like a lot of tech, that I resisted learning about because I found it confusing. But it’s becoming a serious potential problem for the economy to build so much “wealth” on shifting sand.
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Nobody’s fiat money is safe now. Inflation should tell anyone with half a brain that.
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Today’s DOGE update, a reminder about what our government actually does:
US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled: – $60M for “Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment” – $74M for “inclusive justice” in Colombia – $79M for “primary literacy” in Kenya – $37M for “female empowerment” in Colombia – $8M to “Reduce stigma, discrimination, and violence against LGBTQI+ communities” in Lesotho – $3.3M for “being LGBTQI in the Caribbean” – $25k to increase “Vegan Local Climate Action Innovation” in Zambia
Tip of the Iceberg.
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No, I don’t think that’s the tip of the iceberg. I think that’s pretty much the whole berg. I don’t like the stuff you listed either. But to take those examples and then to paint with a broad brush and to say all government is bad is simply wrong. Do you really want to see EPA cut by 65%? Do you really want to let Musk replace the air traffic communications system without vetting or fair bids? Do you really want to see National Parks go understaffed? You’re talking about relative nickels and dimes here. Sure, save the spare change. But don’t assume that you can make drastic cuts in programs that actually impact the lives of average Americans and they just won’t notice.
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No one is saying all government is bad. You are assuming all departments are at an optimal staffing level. I don’t believe that. No way for us to tell how much of an impact to the taxpayers daily lives.
I think they will adjust on things that they find do have an impact. Others will not be missed at all. I’m sure there will be chicken littles everywhere to cry otherwise.
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Remember that Trump/Musk lie A LOT. Believe them if you want….
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IF the Democrats would have had an honest open primary and had nominated someone who was more center-right, ratter than anoint what’s her name from California. may more people would have voted for that person than the more than 2.8 million voters more that voted for the Donald.
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I tend to think that Kamala Harris would have gotten the nomination even after the normal primary process. She was next in line and it would have been very hard for the party not to elevate a Black woman who was in that position. Moreover, it’s likely she would have had to move further to the left to get the nomination. She was hurt badly enough by things she said before she was Vice President. Had she had to run in a competitive primary there would have been fresh things for the Republicans to hit her on. Sure, the Dems had better choices, but I don’t think any of them would have won the nomination.
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