It is important in this media age of disinformation and alternative facts that we spot the true insidiousness behind what might appear to be reasonable sounding proposals. Never lose sight of the general governing philosophies of each party. In general terms, the Democratic Party can be credibly critiqued as believing government can solve every problem and the Republicans believe it should not solve any problems. Along those lines, the GOP has long had a fevered dream of unraveling the social safety net. They have always been the party of the wealthy interests who have this delusion that they are just hard workers and everyone who finds themselves impoverished just suffer from the self-inflicted wound of laziness. They resent that their tax dollars have to subsidize poor people. Conversely, they do not see things as government subsidies and billion-dollar contracts awarded based on political connections as essentially corporate welfare. They deserve the money they take from the government because they are hardworking, but those lazy poor people are just parasites, as Elon Musk recently reasserted.
This dream they envision is an America that does not have the big three of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as severely crippling the federal government infrastructure. That is what is actually behind the DOGE nonsense. The guise they use is "waste, fraud and abuse" but that is just the vehicle for their desired destruction. The hard wall of reality they always face however is the amount of money that constitutes the federal workforce in government spending is only about 5% of the budget. Now, when Musk was asked during the campaign how much he could cut from the budget through his "efficiency" scam, he said two trillion dollars, which is fiscally insane and not achievable unless they gut the big three, crushing untold numbers of Americans. They are saying the quiet part out loud. So, what is the Ponzi scheme we see being put forth now? The "DOGE dividend." The Muskites have concluded the easiest way to achieve their true goals of the destruction of the social safety net is to bribe the American people. The number being throw around is $5000 for this dividend and who would say no to a free $5000? Except it is not really free, is it? They are using the dividend terminology to advance the sheer stupidity we have seen for many years now that the government should be run as a business, thus giving you money back is framed as a dividend. Except the nation is not a business and cannot be run as one. In order to do so, requires a profit motive instead of governance designed to protect and serve the people. We saw this yesterday when Trump announced a five-million-dollar path to citizenship with his silly "gold card" option instead of a greed card. So, poor immigrants are bad and need to be flown out of our country in shackles but if you have five million bucks, you are deemed a good immigrant and come on in!
Here is how these schemes converge. The amount needed to be cut from the budget in order to give everyone the 5K bribe is the same two trillion number Elon claimed was needed. There is absolutely no way to achieve that amount however unless they seriously cut the safety net and defense, and we all know they will never seriously address the defense contracts that major corporations take as their form of welfare. Remember, if you are Lockheed Martin, the billions you get are national security but the pittance paid out to welfare recipients is just a form of parasitic leeching. So, make no mistake, the plot they are floating to hand you $5000 can only be achieved through destroying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. There may well be plenty of folks who are 50 plus who will rightly object but their plan is to use their vast social media influencer network to capture the hearts and minds of those who are younger, who may not be very worried about how they survive when they get older. If you are thirty plus years away from needing the social safety net and you are offered $5000 to gut it, what do you think most would side with? As the Republicans rolled out their latest grift budget paid for by destroying the safety net, we have heard the same Muskology of waste, fraud and abuse. There is of course, no significant money to be saved from actual waste fraud and abuse. Certainly not that will result in the trillions of dollars they need in order to fulfill their bribe offer. That is how they hope to make their fevered dream a reality. It gives their lackeys a talking point narrative that the destruction of vital programs is just recovering your hard-earned tax dollars for you.
Except even the long-term DOGE dividend plan only calls for returning 20% of what is cut in the form of the bribe. This idea, offered to Musk by a 28-year-old hedge fund manager, would see 60% go back into the budget for their preferred priorities while seeing the remaining 20% go to pay down the debt. Now stay with me. The cost of extending the Trump tax cuts, which we all know goes primarily to uber-wealthy, is 4.5 trillion. So, they are proposing to eradicate the social safety net to potentially cut two trillion, give back 20% of that to the people, spend 60% of it on other budget priorities not in the safety net, while spending 20% of it to "reduce the debt" while blowing another 4.5 trillion-dollar hole in that same debt. Bernie Madoff would be proud. We all would love to get a $5000 check from a guy who takes 38 billion dollars in government contracts while calling anyone who uses federal programs a parasite, but maybe we should reconsider. It is all fun and shell games until grandma stops getting her social security and no longer has health insurance.
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