Throughout the lives of virtually every living American, no matter how old, the federal bureaucracy/administrative state/Deep State/ <your euphemism goes here> has inexorably grown since being unleashed by a Democrat president over 100 years ago. Over the years, Americans have blithely come to accept the inefficiencies that are embedded in seemingly all government agencies as “just the way it has always been.” Cost-benefit is never a consideration. A trip to the DMV to get a driver’s license is a periodic reminder that “government efficiency” is one of the oldest lies told to mankind.
On 20 January 2025, up jumped an orange-haired devil (as characterized by the Left) who has finally begun peeling the mask off the federal bureaucracy for all the world to see – to the shock of the Democrat-media complex and their RINO helpers. The new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began its work immediately after President Trump was inaugurated, and the disclosures subsequently made by Elon Musk and his DOGE kids have been as glorious as they have been shocking.
Almost every day there is a new disclosure of waste, fraud, and abuse that grabs headlines. A couple of the most recent include the following:
On 17 February, DOGE determined that there are over 25 million Americans registered aged 100 and older in the Social Security database, all of whom have been drawing benefits in some cases for decades.
On 17 February, DOGE determined that the Treasury Dept has made at least $4.7 TRILLION in payments that cannot be traced.
On 11 February, over $164 million of approved USAID grants to radical organizations were uncovered, with at least $122 million going to groups aligned with designated terrorists and their supporters.
On 10 February, DOGE terminated a multi-million dollar virtual reality project for the US Air Force and Space Force that taught soldiers how to have difficult DEI-related conversations.
On 10 February, several grossly fraudulent USAID expenditures uncovered by DOGE were disclosed, including:
- $2 million into Asociación Lambda, a Guatemalan LGBTQ+ activist organization, to “strengthen trans-led” activism and provide “gender-affirming health care”
- $1.5 million toward promoting job opportunities for LGBTQ-identifying individuals in Serbia
- $16,500 for fostering a “united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society”
- $47,000-plus on a “transgender opera” in Colombia
- $32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru
- $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become “climate leaders”
- $1.5 million aimed at “empowering women to adapt to climate change in northern Kenya”
- $45 million to provide emergency food assistance and economic support for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia through the United Nations World Food Programme
- $60.8 million on contraception and condoms abroad
- $1.1 million a 10-year period as part of a “sub-agreement” with the Wuhan Institute of Virology “for the purpose of advancing research on critical viruses that could pose harm to human and animal health”
- Millions of dollars in aid to terrorist-affiliated organizations throughout the Middle East over the past decade
And then there were these revelations from the official DOGE account on X (formerly Twitter) on 15 February:
- $10M for “Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision”
- $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills”
- $2.3M for “strengthening independent voices in Cambodia”
- $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre
- $40M for a “gender equality and women empowerment hub”
- $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for “inclusive and participatory political process” in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India
- $29M to “strengthening political landscape in Bangladesh”
- $20M for “fiscal federalism” in Nepal
- $19M for “biodiversity conversation” in Nepal
- $1.5M for “voter confidence” in Liberia – $14M for “social cohesion” in Mali
- $2.5M for “inclusive democracies in Southern Africa”
- $47M for “improving learning outcomes in Asia”
- $2M to develop “sustainable recycling models” to “increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt”
Outrageous, stunning, shocking, mind-boggling. The adjectives just roll off the tongue. And so do the questions:
- Who authorized all this crap?
- Who specifically authorized each project and expenditure? How were the decisions made, i.e., what parameters and criteria were used? Who determined those?
- Who set up the daisy-chain of non-profits and other entities that laundered all this money to the “end-users”?
- What was the “administrative processing fee” raked off whenever money changed hands through that daisy-chain?
- Who benefited, especially anyone in the administrative state and/or political class via kickbacks?
We can only hope that most if not all of these questions (and more!) will be answered before the DOGE saga is completed.
WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN?
Fingers can be pointed directly at Woodrow Wilson, America’s 28th president who served two terms in office (1913-1920). Wilson was a progressive idealist who had a profound impact on US domestic policy and the explosive growth of the federal bureaucracy. Progressivism was a reform movement in the US that started as a popular effort to eliminate waste, corruption and inefficiencies in American society, and was an early expression of today’s progressive “social justice” movement. Amazingly, what Wilson accomplished was to transfer from of society’s waste, fraud, and corruption to the federal government, as he opened the door for the gargantuan bureaucracy that now exists in 2025.
The early Progressives’ goals were oriented toward better worker compensation, improved child labor laws, minimum wage legislation, a cap on maximum hours worked, and women’s suffrage. Seems fairly reasonable, right? Except that they were also influenced by Marxist theory because they were also in favor of a graduated income tax and the notion that a “positive government” could fix all of the problems in society. They, like all proto-socialists and later Communists, failed to take human nature into account in that “good government” was just as easily corrupted and heavy-handed as any other facet of human endeavor.
The DOGE kids have certainly exposed that corruption and fraud, haven’t they?
The Progressives of Wilson’s era unwittingly were pushing for the pervasive government that we have today – with the results being over-taxed people, over-regulated business and individuals, and an opaque and unresponsive bureaucracy that writes its own rules (and maintains double standards!) Ironically, the first progressives were very concerned about illegal voting corrupting the political system. Today’s progressives (the social justice warriors that infest the Democrat Party and the Left) have conveniently forgotten their progressive roots on that subject, with the 2020 election being proof positive of the existence of massive election fraud in America’s elections.
Wilson’s first major act as president was to lower tariffs in favor of a federal income tax. The income tax was needed to fund “good government.” This act alone set the table for all of the growth of the federal government over the last 100 years. It made it possible to fund FDR’s New Deal and all of the other cockamamie failed federal government programs over the years, including Truman’s “Fair Deal,” LBJ’s “Great Society” and “War on Poverty,” and Obamacare.
He also advocated for the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. As such, he was one of the first globalists. One might even say that the UN’s Agenda 21 for “sustainable development” (the latest Marxist claptrap dressed up by progressives and globalists) is a direct descendant of Wilson’s globalist notions.
He was also a proponent of the Federal Reserve, signing the Federal Reserve Act on December 1913, which culminated three years of discussion and debate over the development of a US central bank. And the US dollar and monetary policy has been manipulated ever since. The book “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve,” by G. Edward Griffin, should be required reading for those who wish to understand the corrupting influence of the Federal Reserve since it was founded. The entire manuscript may be read here.
Wilson’s progressive idealism manifested in the belief that the federal government could solve all of the nation’s problems. His progressive political philosophy and actions directly led to the growth of the administrative state and federal control of fiscal and monetary policies that we’ve come to know and hate over the decades. He made the actions of the FDR, Clinton and Obama presidencies that expanded the government possible – and virtually inevitable – as the federal government has grown without ceasing for 100+ years as funded by the federal income tax. He made the Democrats’ mainstay political tactic of “tax and spend” possible, which led to near-total Democrat control of Congress for over forty years from 1954- 1994.
The federal leviathan that exists today was birthed by Woodrow Wilson.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The Republican Party has stood for fiscal discipline, balanced budgets, and limited government since its inception before the Civil War. However, taxpayer dollars have corrupted many Republicans over the years, too, but the Republican base has periodically flexed its muscle in various movements aimed at cutting the deficit and reducing federal spending.
Ronald Reagan’s Grace Commission exposed a ton of government waste and fraud in the 1980s. Unfortunately, Congress failed to act on most of the recommendations made.
The Tea Party movement arose to fight Barack Obama’s profligate deficit spending. The movement was thwarted by RINOs like Mitch McConnell and others who had a stake in continuing the gravy train of wasteful government spending.
Trump’s America First movement rolled up Tea Party types, libertarian small government people, and others concerned about runaway federal spending and the potential looming bankruptcy of the United States of America that cuts across class and ideological boundaries.
DOGE is the manifestation of America Firsters and their leader in the Oval Office. Perhaps Americans have learned that it took a businessman outside of the US political class to expose the corruption and begin to make the real changes in federal spending that have been needed for decades. DOGE is the first real effort to expose the rotting corpse of federal waste, fraud, and abuse since Woodrow Wilson unleashed the administrative state in 1912.
It will require constant pressure on the US Congress to turn the DOGE disclosures into real policies that finally reign in government spending and get rid of useless agencies and programs. DOGE has opened the door to real change; now we need to promote the political will needed to drive through that door.
The end.
