UNSTACKED! #12

“Tesla Chainsaw Massacre!”

“Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”
~ Sam Rayburn, 43rd Speaker,
U.S. House of Representatives

Promising disruption is easy, the test of a cabinet or in this case a made up department, headed by a Billionaire campaign donor, is whether it can deliver the receipts. DOGE made a tremendous amount of noise at first, when they weren’t alternately trying to conceal their activity into sensitive systems in one department after another. Now we’re left wondering about the most impactful consequences of their excessive cuts. With one error after another error after another we’re left scratching our heads as to how any of this is efficient or even makes sense. Information about the cuts has been a constantly shifting target and getting increasingly difficult to verify by DOGE design. Published numbers when you can find them, on these supposed savings, often get quietly retracted without explanation. Musk originally claimed DOGE could cut Two Trillion from the Federal Budget and the latest claim is down to 150 Billion. I think we all instinctively know that if you really wanted to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse and inefficiency, YOU would never go about it like this.

When the short-fingered vulgarian announced the creation of DOGE, he said in a statement that Elon Musk and DOGE would allow his administration to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” AKA dismantling the “Administrative State”. They got the chaotic dismantling part down perfectly, but what about the rest? According to Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a more effective federal government, “Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency…should instead be called a department of “inefficiency or ineptitude. They have caused unbelievable waste, unbelievable distraction from the mission, unbelievable loss of critical talent,” Stier said. “They’ve done nothing to understand the systems they’re trying to change or learn from those around them who know better. Much of the wasted time stems from the White House’s hostile and confusing directives”. Hostile and Confusing seems to be the M.O. for everything they do in this administration. Just look at the TARIFF fiasco as a perfect example of their deal making by retaliation, making trade look more like a hostage negotiation than an actual deal. When 47 said, April 2nd was going to be liberation day, I’ll bet you thought the same thing as I did, “the only thing he’s going to liberate me from is my money.”

It’s going to be a rough three years and nine months.

Note to Musk, if you really want to cut the abuse, start with 47’s golf trips, which have already cost more than $30 million of our tax dollars and rising, for play at resort properties he owns. Clearly when 47 talks about DOGE cutting government waste, he doesn’t mean the increasing amount of money that goes into his own pocket. Luckily, we can offset some of that golf expense. I was scrolling through some protest photos and found some waste, fraud and abuse that I’d like to report to DOGE!

All kidding aside, I don’t know how we will ever offset all the DAMAGE to our country done at the mis-direction of one man in service to his “Billionaire-First Agenda”. Our country’s reputation for stability has basically been tanked by the impulsivity and fascistic tendencies of a man with an attention span so short as to be measured in the negative range. Frankly, I would prefer that he lose complete interest in “presidenting” and just stay on the golf course.

Back to that billionaire-barn-kicking-jackass for a moment. The wrecking ball that is DOGE is dismantling the very agencies — including the CFPB, FAA, SEC, and others — that have investigated or fined Musk’s federally subsidized companies in the past. Musk’s glaring and painfully obvious conflicts of interest, as well as his deep disdain for the rule of law are coming into sharper focus every day. Matt Platkin, New Jersey’s Democratic attorney general, who has joined a few of the state AG lawsuits targeting Musk and DOGE actions, called these actions, “astounding and deeply concerning” and said “the disregard for the rule of law should scare every American.” The destruction Musk is causing throughout the federal government, is disrupting the lives of every American and putting our wallets, our health, and our security at risk.

But wait…there’s more on Musk’s agenda from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: “It’s from ProPublica. And it’s about a Peter Thiel-backed start up called Ramp. It’s a corporate credit card processing outfit. The game here is pretty straight forward. Trump and Musk are looking to hand some or all of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program (SmartPay) over to Ramp…the overall picture is a standard one: Come in, take over the data and financial architecture; discredit it by having your media arms dish out mountains of phony stories about fraud and abuse; fire all the employees and hand a cash- drenched, sweetheart contract to yours and your friends company. Or maybe it’s a start up, which has already raised about $2 billion from the likes of Peter Thiel and the Kushner family.” Gee that’s a familiar sounding name.

Friends, the real Musk / 47 objective of all the chaos is coming into stark focus and it’s not about waste, fraud, abuse or efficiency. Our government is being gutted with the intention of selling it off for parts.

Protest Update

On April 18th, the 250th Anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride, two lanterns were lit in the tower of Old North Church. The commemoration re-enacted the
“prearranged” signal, one if by land and two if by sea, alerting the colonists to the movements of British soldiers stationed in Boston. The soldiers were advancing by water, rowing across the Charles River to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, then heading to Concord to destroy military stockpiles. Revere made his famous midnight ride, alerting the colonists along the way with the words, “the regulars are coming out!” For the full story, link here, https://www.paulreverehouse.org/the-real-story/.

Yesterday was another Nationwide Call to Protest, “No Kings” was held on the anniversary of the The Battles of Lexington and Concord. Fought on April 19, 1775, they were the “first military clashes of the American Revolutionary War”. It seemed like an appropriate date for our Liberation Day from the failed policies of this autocratic administration.Reprinted here is a portion of the call to action from the Youngstown Protest: “We stand here today, not because it’s easy, not because it’s comfortable — but because it is necessary. Because silence is no longer an option. Because when injustice becomes the norm, resistance becomes our duty.

Look around you. This is what courage looks like. This is what hope
sounds like. This is what change feels like. The administration has failed us. Failed to protect the people. Failed to listen. Failed to lead with empathy, integrity, or even basic human decency. While they sit in their offices, shielded by privilege and power, we are the ones bearing the weight of their choices — in our homes, in our streets, in our communities. But today, we say no more. We are not here to beg. We are not here to ask politely. We are here to demand what is ours — justice, dignity, and accountability. And let them hear this loud and clear — we are not afraid.

Projected onto the Old North Church in Boston on the eve of the 250th
Anniversary of the start to the Revolutionary War, were these Words,
”Let the WARNING ride forth Once More: TYRANNY is at OUR DOOR
UNSTACKED Action

If you live in Ohio, a small group of committed faculty members from YoungstownState University has started collecting signatures for a statewide referendum on Ohio’s Senate Bill 1. For more information on signing the petition being circulated to stay SB1, please check here, https://ohsb1petition.com/. We have just 66 days left to get the whole process done from filing the first 1,000 signatures to submitting 250,000+ valid signatures to stop this very bad legislation from going into effect.

With Readiness and Refusal —

           Unstacked!

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