#USAID Welfare Queens

[msclaritea]

https://x.com/RedpillDrifter/status/1895591490384248995?t=5rDERB286LndWIsREBm8lw&s=19

So, I meant what I said to your little Freemason lackey. He is now on the list. Thanks for also giving me an excuse to post the Edible Schoolyard thread, due to the Pedo Symbol. You had some real, fucking nerve, Adam Ackland, having your plant compare Benedict to Andrew Tate.

I love his gig; pretend to be on the currently-in-power side, dispensing reasonable advice, all while getting to bash the Black community; pointing out they're many, many problems, while also throwing in Esoteric-laced Hip Hop.

The clinchers, for SURE, are Aquarius being signed to Apple, and your ratchet BBC Sherlock troll, immediately liking an old dig at Benedict's character, RIGHT after I confronted your little slave. What's the matter, you mangy, red-headed piece of shite? Money problems after being so determined to put Ben in that schlock, setting him up to be compared to Cillian Murphy, for whom, conveniently most people would never actually SEE his performance. What does that matter, as long as Ben is doing a piece he already did, also conveniently forgetting that that's what Eddie Redmayne did. Bonus points for laundering money to your Trafficking network.

All of you, but especially you, Adam 'I'm Shit' Ackland, really need to get a fucking life. Your problems are of your own, damn making.

COPE, motherfucker.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Pamela Herd for Can We Still Govern?:

Fraud, waste, and abuse has become the rallying cry for Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government. During a recent Oval Office briefing about DOGE, Trump and Musk used the terms “fraud” and “fraudsters” a dozen times, claiming that their elimination of fraud could save up to $1 trillion dollars. Musk’s social media is similarly laden with tales of fraud and abuse that his DOGE team has supposedly uncovered. Millions of dead people receiving fraudulent Social Security! “Illegals” living in high end hotel rooms paid for by FEMA! Corrupt USAID bureaucrats ripping off the government and enriching themselves! None of it is true. Musk and Trump’s focus on fraud is nothing new. Fraud has always served as a powerful political trope, one that provides a rationale for cutting government. Accusations of fraud were used to discredit Black elected officials during Reconstruction. Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen was an especially effective trope directed against poverty-based policies. A recent poll suggests that 70% of Americans believe government expenditures are filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency.

Trump and Musk’s fraud trope is distinct in three ways

First, Musk’s fake fraud claims are different from the past because he has built, and now is able to leverage, a propaganda machine to feed the fraud narrative. Ronald Reagan was an extraordinarily effective communicator, but Musk makes him look like an amateur. Musk can use DOGE to generate false claims about fraud, and how much money DOGE can save by tackling it. He then pushes those claims on his social media platform. The President and right-wing media obligingly repeat the claims. It is an integrated production function that converts conspiracy theories into government policy, and then conventional wisdom in MAGAland. Second, as we describe below, the scale and scope of the programs they’re targeting are fundamentally different from the past. It’s not just to gut programs that benefit marginalized populations. They’re targeting a broad swath of government programs, including popular policies that benefit most Americans, and using the fraud trope to justify extreme and illegal actions, like shutting down entire agencies. This fits with a worldview that government is fundamentally corrupt, and must be captured and radically refashioned. Third, the motivation is not really about shrinking government, rather it’s about state capture. The strategy is simple. Claim there’s fraud, dismantle the institutions that prevent fraud, and then capture public dollars for yourself. As Musk himself recently noted: “it's like, really easy to take advantage of the federal government. Very easy.” He should know. His companies have received at least $38 billion from government subsidies, loans and contracts. Their value, and his personal net worth, have ballooned since the election.

[...]

Purpose 1: Targeting core programs in unprecedented ways

Part of what’s unusual about about these fraud claims is the breadth of programs they’ve targeted and the dramatic actions justified by claims of fraud. Lets take two examples. With USAID, they’re targeting a program that does not have broad support but proposing an unprecedented action: shutting down an agency that has existed since 1961. With Social Security, they’re focusing on a nearly universal and immensely popular public program. (To keep this post to a reasonable length, we will embed fact checks, but not explain them all. As Brandolini’s law notes: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it).

[...]

Target #2: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

DOGE and the Trump Administration have also gone aggressively after agencies that are tasked with rooting out fraud and abuse in the private sector. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was the first agency in Musk’s crosshairs. [...]

Target #3: The IRS

The agency that can be most effective at reducing fraud, waste, and abuse is the IRS. Every year, we lose $600 billion to tax fraud—or what the IRS politely calls “the tax gap.” About 80% of this is concentrated among the wealthiest taxpayers. When accounting for corporate tax cheats this amounts to $1 trillion dollars annually. Cryptocurrency and large and wealthy corporations account for much of this. A ProPublica investigation of tax records estimated that Musk paid no income tax and just 3.27% of his wealth growth. Much of the shielding of wealth may be legal, but some is in a grey area. Fewer IRS enforcement agents expands that grey area.

Musk’s so-called DOGE was built on a fraudulent foundation.

See Also:

Thinking About... (Timothy Snyder): The "Fraud" Fraud