The DOGE Bureaucracy

[babylonsister]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/03/23/the-doge-bureaucracy/

The DOGE Bureaucracy
Published by digby on March 23, 2025

Elon Musk the visionary genius is tasked with making the government more efficient with a much leaner workforce full of brainy Trumpers who love America. How’s that going so far?

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post:

Taxpayer dollars are being abused, too, as the “Department of Government Efficiency” makes the federal government almost comically inefficient.

At the IRS, employees spend Mondays queued up at shared computers to submit their DOGE-mandated “five things I did last week” emails. Meanwhile, taxpayer customer service calls go unanswered.

At the Bureau of Land Management, federal surveyors are no longer permitted to buy replacement equipment. So, when a shovel breaks at a field site, they can’t just drive to the nearest town or hardware store. Instead, work stops as employees track down one of the few managers nationwide authorized to file an official procurement form and order new parts.

At the Food and Drug Administration, leadership canceled the agency’s subscription to LexisNexis, an online reference tool that employees need to conduct regulatory research. Some workers might not have noticed this loss yet, however, because the agency’s incompetently planned return-to-office order this week left them too busy hunting for insufficient parking and toilet paper. (Multiple bathrooms have run out of bath tissue, employees report.)

I’ve spent the past few weeks interviewing frustrated civil servants, whose remarks typically rotate through panic, rage and black humor. Almost none are willing to speak on the record because of concerns about purges by the U.S. DOGE Service. But their themes are easy to corroborate: Routine tasks take longer to complete, grinding down worker productivity. DOGE is also bogging down employees with meaningless busywork, which sets them up to be punished for neglecting their actual duties.

snip//

“They’re like a kid in a nuclear power plant running around hitting buttons,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service (which actually focuses on government efficiency), when asked about DOGE’s measures. “They have no sense of the cascade of consequences they’re causing.”

snip//

If you haven’t seen this undercover video of Vought before the election explaining what he planned to do, you should watch it. it’s not long and it’s really well done. His plan is being perfectly executed:

[magicarpet]

1. Christo-Fascist Nationalists zealots gleefully trashing American Democracy.