The federal government costs Americans $6.9 trillion in fiscal year 2024, comprising 24% of gross domestic product. This demonstrates the level of efficiency we get for the money:

Welcome back to the early 20th century.

No wonder the Party of Government hates DOGE so much. The light it shines keeps revealing that almost anyone would spend our money better than the Swamp.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

Drain a swamp and you can’t expect the slithering slimy things that have been lurking therein to like it. Even among the many Democrats raging against Elon Musk for exposing the waste, fraud, and abuse at USAID, Jamie Raskin stands out:

Raskin has even announced a class action suit against Trump and Musk to cripple DOGE.

This could be what has Raskin so worked up:

Sarah Bloom-Raskin held powerful roles as deputy Treasury Secretary and a Federal Reserve Governor—both very clear conflicts of interest, considering her husband sat on the Oversight Committee while she held those positions.

Mrs. Raskin’s Treasury activities may include at least $1.5 million worth of graft.

Relax, Ratskin. An Obama-appointed judge has prevented DOGE from exposing what has been going on at Treasury — for now.

Immigrant entrepreneur Magatte Wade responds to Ratskin:

On a tip from 100 Bravo.

Outside the Treasury Building last week, when prominent Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Maxine Waters openly sided with waste, corruption, and unaccountability against taxpayers, the cringe-inducing scene was emblematic of a party entrenched in opposition to the public:

As Gerry Baker puts it:

It was a tableau for the ages, one example of the many strange battle lines the Democratic Party has chosen to defend these past few years: illegal migrants over citizens, teachers unions over parents and children, criminals over victims, men-turned-women over girls.

At least they are consistent. Democrats always side against regular Americans.

Government is supposed to exist for the people, but the DOGE process has laid bare what we have long suspected—that at scale, it exists first and foremost to further the interests of the permanent bureaucracy and their like-minded friends who dominate almost all our major institutions.

What DOGE is doing to the Swamp needs to be extended by the rest of us to the entire liberal establishment:

The accountability DOGE can bring needs to be emulated in other areas of public life where these interests have long dominated, immune from responsibility: radicalized higher education, failing city governments, intellectually corrupt media and entertainment companies.

That would spell doom for Democrats.

Smelling their own extinction, they have succumbed to panic, committing political suicide by defending the indefensible USAID. Ed Morrissey comments:

You know who loves USAID and its unaccountable structure? The progressive Academia elite that run it and other less-than-responsive federal bureaucracies. Why? It appeals to their elitism, and the flow of money without accountability allows for massive manipulations and social engineering. …

You know who hates USAID and other less-than-accountable federal bureaucracies? Everyone else. Almost literally.

They do still have the support of federal bureauweenies. At a rally yesterday outside Capitol Hill,

Hundreds of federal workers gathered for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) “Rally to Save the Civil Service.”

Rep Maxine Dexter (D-OR) was there to present her party’s pitch to the public:

The Trump Administration caught them by surprise when Musk switched on the kitchen light with his USAID revelations. Rather than retreat under the stove by pretending they didn’t know what was happening to our money, the roaches wag their antennae belligerently. The instinctive reaction is to grab a can of Raid.

Democrats still have the entertainment industry to promote their public image. But as the respective responses to Donald Trump and Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl made obvious, that won’t be enough.

On tips from Varla and Justin Truedope.

Critics snigger that to rid us of extraneous departments, Trump is creating another department, which like the rest will be staffed with bureaucrats. But as entrepreneurial genius Elon Musk’s involvement attests, the return on investment will likely be massive — especially when you consider how much of our money the other departments have been spending perniciously. Take for example HHS:

The Department of Health and Human Services — with a budget surpassed only by the Pentagon — employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.

No DEI staffer could fail to make America a better place by going away.

[The $38.7 million] doesn’t even include another $29.4 million in payroll for seven Offices of Minority Health embedded within various HHS agencies!

It also doesn’t include this:

Variations of the term “equity” appear an astonishing 829 times in the department’s 2025 budget request to Congress, impacting hundreds of millions of dollars of spending programs.

In the name of DEI, HHS has been spending vast fortunes to tear the country apart by implementing identity group favoritism.

Let’s hope Pete Hegseth puts a stop to this nonsense at the Department of Defense. With most other departments, it will probably make more sense just to burn down the whole thing.

Stand by for the media to shriek that laying off hordes of useless bureauweenies is racist due to disparate impact. This will be a result of aggressive discrimination against whites in federal hiring, as Biden made explicit with Executive Order 13985.

On a tip from R S.

The Department of Government Efficiency is why Trump’s victory is the best news since the Allies won WWII:

The president-elect said DOGE will deliver “a smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy,” by July 4, 2026. This will be “the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence.”

Trump promises “large scale government reform” headed by entrepreneur Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Nothing less will prevent the hypertrophied federal government from continuing to suffocate the USA.

As FEMA has been reminding us, the federal government is currently worse than useless and hostile to most Americans. Cutting it down to something consistent with the Constitution so that it represents us rather than ruling us is the most important task the incoming administration could undertake.

“[DOGE] will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” added Trump.

The impact could be even greater.

Moonbats were right for once. Trump really is a threat to their bureaucracy.

Reducing the federal leviathan to an appropriate size will halt the economy’s gradual death by overregulation, excessive taxation, inflation, and unsustainable debt. It will also restore liberty:

Trump promised to “clean out all the rogue actors” who had weaponized federal government agencies, so that “faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the Left’s political enemies, which they’re doing now at a level that nobody can believe even possible.”

Musk and Ramaswamy have a big job ahead of them. Maybe fellow countermoonbat Javier Milei can lend them a couple of chainsaws:

On tips from Gringoman, ABC of the ANC, Tlabia Majora, and WDS 2.0.

It’s hard to see how Costco manages to keep prices as low as they do when they have to deal with crap like this:

Costco was forced to recall nearly 80,000 pounds of butter because the label failed to mention that the kitchen staple contains milk…

In case any bureauweenies are reading, I’ll note here that by definition butter is made out of milk.

The FDA sent out an initial recall for 79,200 pounds of Kirkland Signature butter due to the undeclared allergen in October. Packages for both the salted and unsalted Kirkland Signature Sweet Cream Butter list cream as an ingredient, but do not include an allergy warning that the butter “Contains Milk.”

Milk is disfavored by moonbats, possibly because they associate it with motherhood and wholesomeness, both of which conflict with their agenda. Also, they believe milk is racist, presumably because it is white.

Too bad they didn’t take the 80,000 pounds of butter and make a giant statue of brainless Big Government incarnate, Kamala Harris. As the butter rotted it would become ever more appropriate.

On tips from Franco and Wiggins.

Single-party Democrat rule means government hypertrophy. To get an idea of the danger this poses, consider the fate of Peanut the Squirrel, who had the bad luck to live in deep blue New York:

Mark Longo, whose pet P’nut captured the hearts of 3 million social media users, was stunned when a convoy of vehicles carrying officials from the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Health arrived at his Pine City home Wednesday.

While violent crime spirals out of control and the state is swamped with illegal immigrants, government agents could find no better use for their time than to arrive with a warrant to confiscate Longo’s pet squirrel.

Welcome to liberal rule:

“They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer. They ransacked my house for five hours,” Longo told The Post Saturday.

“They asked my wife, who is of German descent, what her immigration status was. They asked if I had cameras in my house. They wouldn’t allow me to go to the bathroom without a police escort, who then checked the back of the toilet to see if I was hiding anything there.”

All this because they didn’t approve of Peanut — whom they killed so as to test for rabies after the squirrel allegedly bit one of them despite their heavy protective gear. They also killed his pet racoon.

Longo, 34, cared for “P’Nut” for more than seven years, rescuing him when his mother was hit by a car.

After a long rehab, Peanut was no longer suited to return to the wild and instead went on to become famous:

P’nut was a star on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Peanut was not only a pet but Longo’s nonprofit business partner:

The Connecticut native moved to upstate New York last April to start “P’Nut’s Freedom Farm,” a nonprofit animal rescue he operates with his wife, Daniela. The sanctuary is home to 300 rescue animals.

No good deed goes unpunished where government is out of control.

On tips from Anonymous, Wiggins, Varla, Gringoman, WDS 2.0, and KirklesWorth.

FEMA under Democrat control isn’t merely useless but worse than useless, because it not only fails to help but prevents private citizens from doing so:

Try to bring in supplies to those abandoned by their expensive government and you might be arrested:

If you do manage to get supplies through, an unmarked military helicopter flown by people wearing masks might blow them all over the place:

If this seems incomprehensible, consider that FEMA falls under the subverted Department of Homeland Security, the secretary of which is hostile to the United States.

On tips from seaoh and Dr. Kufi Tutite.

In the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the Biden/Harris regime has been conspicuously unhelpful:

To say our supposed president has not been engaged would be putting it mildly:

When for once we actually have a use for the federal behemoth that taxes us into a condition of quasi-slavery so that it can bestow the money on foreign countries and illegal aliens, it isn’t enough to ignore us. The government actively prevents us from helping each other. Fabulously gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg forbids us from using drones to find those in need of help. Federal agents are reportedly blocking relief supplies.

Local authorities, possibly acting on orders from above, have not always been helpful either. Here’s what happened when a pilot tried to use his own helicopter to rescue Americans in distress:

Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, whose focus has been on causing the Great Replacement to “blossom” throughout the country via illegitimate immigration, said just 3 months ago that FEMA was “tremendously prepared” for hurricane season. Now he says FEMA doesn’t have enough money to help — after bestowing over $1 billion upon illegal aliens.

The praetorian media was incurious regarding the federal response to Helene during today’s White House press conference. Since we cannot count on the MSM to tell us what has been going on, let’s turn to a North Carolina resident:

On tips from WDS 2.0, Anonymous, Chris Neilson, Dr. Kufi Tutite, Mr. Freemarket, seaoh, David Kight, ABC of the ANC, and Varla.

Hat tip: Liberty Is a Contact Sport.

Reagan was right. The scariest thing you could hear is “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” Here’s how the Big Government liberals running Seattle help delivery drivers:

Delivery drivers for UberEats, DoorDash, and other delivery services in Seattle saw nearly half of their business disappear compared to the same time last year after the city did them a favor and required a $4.99 delivery fee on all orders.

The money was supposed to go to the drivers. But it didn’t go anywhere, because customers didn’t spend it. Fees and tips add up. They opted to cook their own food.

It isn’t just Seattle:

In New York, the same predictable results are happening after the city jumped the minimum wage for delivery drivers to $19.56 per hour (up from an average of $5.39 per hour).

So predictable are these results that it is hard to believe they are not intentional. The purpose of minimum wage is to drive up unemployment so as to benefit the Party of the Welfare State.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

Apparently the FBI/DHS/ETC were too busy painting transsexual flags on their fingernails to keep close tabs on us; the post office has been enlisted to help spy:

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans’ letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order.

Ninety-seven percent of “mail cover” requests are approved.

The IRS, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were among the top requesters. […]

In 1978, a circuit court judge said the mail covers could expose someone’s personal life “in a manner unobtainable even through surveillance of his movements,” rendering “the subject’s life an open book.”

But at least they aren’t actually opening envelopes. I hope.

On tips from WDS 2.0 and MrRightWingDave.

As moonbattery tightens its stranglehold, nothing wholesome and quintessentially America will escape the attention of the authorities — not even selling Girl Scout cookies in Wyoming:

Emma McCarroll, 13, almost didn’t meet her sales goal because the code enforcement officer was an expert on the rules of where a Girl Scout in Pinedale can stand — and where her mom could park their car while selling them.

The spat between the city and the Girl Scout and her mom began when the code enforcement officer asked the mom, Erica Fairbanks McCarroll, if she had the landowner’s permission to sell from the city’s Pine Avenue spot and park a vehicle in a driveway there.

The driveway belongs to the mom’s parents.

The issue became more problematic because Pine Street — the main thoroughfare through this tiny town of 2,000-plus — is essentially controlled by the Wyoming Department of Transportation, which claims ownership of the property, and activity like selling cookies infringed on WYDOT’s right of way of the street.

Looks like Big Government just managed to create another Republican:

“Sometimes I just think that government can be unreasonable,” Emma McCarroll said. “It wasn’t reasonable to be fined $400 for selling cookies in front on my grandparent’s property.”

Theorizes her mom,

“Maybe she (the officer) has something against Girl Scouts.”

The bigger the government, the more vulnerable citizens are to the whims and prejudices of its agents.

In the future, Girl Scouts will sell condoms instead of cookies, so as to encounter no difficulties with the authorities.

On a tip from R F.

The choice is stark: we can drain the Swamp, like Javier Milei is doing in Argentina, or we can succumb to societal collapse, like Canada appears likely to do under Justin Trudeau. Only by purging the legions of pernicious federal bureauweenies who are smothering our liberties and bleeding the country dry can we prevent these parasites from killing their host. Donald Trump may be the man for the job. Democrats are worried enough to take steps to stop him:

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finalized a rule that protects employees in the civil service by preventing the removal of their status and protections involuntarily, according to a press release. Under the new rule, an administration wishing to shift federal employees to a new category making them easier to fire would have to go through an elongated process, a move meant to be more time-consuming for a future president, Politico reported.

Democrats must not have total faith in the ability of the media assisted by election fraud to keep Biden in power. This is all about setting up roadblocks for Trump:

The rule is widely viewed as a response to an executive order signed in 2020 by former President Donald Trump, Politico reported. The executive order targeted federal workers, removing protections from some employees and make it easier for the president to hire and fire them.

Nothing about draining the Swamp is going to be easy. Fortunately, the liberal establishment has gone out of its way to motivate Trump by antagonizing him to the best of its ability.

On tips from Bluto and MrRightWingDave.