The chaos deepens, and the panic spreads

 

"El Gato Malo", writing at Bad Cattitude, has a masterful essay on what we're seeing in Washington D.C at present, and why there's so much panic, anger and desperation on the part of the progressive left.  Here's an extended excerpt.  (Note that he/she does not use capital letters to begin sentences, so this may seem odd to more grammatically correct eyes, but that doesn't detract from the quality or accuracy of the message.)

DC is finally starting to see how much trouble it is in and people are freaking out. the moves are coming too fast for the news cycle to even keep up with. and DC has mostly already lost. all the high ground has been taken and now it’s just going to be about squeezing.

DOGE grabbed the OMB and the treasury payments system.

that’s it. lights out, game over.

the simple fact is this: half the permanent state is a massive grifter-plex of special interests running amok and waging war on we the people for their own benefit. it’s 1000’s of unelected anointed running groups like [the Acacia Center for Justice]:

they got $769 million back in 2022. their sole aim is to encourage illegal immigration and to make expelling such illegal aliens more difficult. it’s taxpayer money spent to create outcomes that most taxpayers would happily pay to avoid. it’s a jobs program for cronies and extra-governmental activism to subvert the basic sovereignty of the state and it’s ability to serve the demos.

there are innumerable groups like this. back in SF we called it “the homeless industrial complex.” they got huge budgets based on how many homeless people they “served.” but if they ever actually got them off the streets, they got less money. it was literally capitated. so they fed them, gave them money for drugs, and made it impossible to arrest them no matter what they did. they donated to politicians who favored that. the incentive were entirely perverse.

the circle of malfunction is like a plasmid for anti-social outcomes. it takes taxpayer money and uses it to fund agencies that create outcomes (like homelessness or illegal immigration) which taxpayers hate. these agencies then donate some of that taxpayer money to politicians who then force taxpayers to pay more money to solve the now larger problem.

lather. rinse. repeat.

and this is not even the awful part.

from ukraine to climate science to NIH to 100 different agencies like USAID, money is being funneled everywhere and stolen in wholesale quantities.

USAID and who knows who else were all out meddling for decades in foreign elections. they have probably been meddling in ours.

suddenly, these agencies are losing their minds about “declassification efforts.”

it certainly does make on wonder: why were they classifying anything at all? wasn’t this supposed to be aid?

. . .

and DC is finally realizing how much trouble they are in and leviathan is shrilling in terror and rage, but it’s already way too late.

threads are exposed, they will be pulled, and this is going to, for the first time in generations, tear the covers off these boxes and let us see what’s inside. and it’s not gonna be pretty friends. i’m telling you point blank: however bad you fear this was - it’s worse.

the middle of the american overton is about to see that government is 80% money laundering and unaccountable tyranny and theft by weight.

. . .

they are in absolute trauma that DOGE has access to the treasury payment systems.

i told you they’d find just the right place to put the lever and pry.

that’s it. OMB and payments. it’s the whole game, the commanding heights.

let me esplain, because what’s going on is brilliant:

OMB is the government’s HR department. the payments system is how the treasury actually sends out money, the pipes of payola.

these two systems touch everything in government. everything. all the jobs, all the money. every program and person passes through this at some point.

it’s the universal chokepoint.

so, everyone has to come into work now. let’s get your faces seen and learn what you do here. all the people who have had no-show sinecures for decades are going to get bounced out.

hey, where does the money go?

time to find out.

there is no way, even with AI to ferret out all these groups, their cutouts, their subterfuge and skullduggery. it’s too deep, too vast, too well hidden and camouflaged.

you cannot find them.

so you make them find you.

you shut the money off and see who squawks.

There's more at the link, and it's all worth reading.

There are relatively few Substack authors who I recommend, and even fewer worth (IMHO) the cost of a paid subscription.  El Gato Malo is very rapidly climbing up that list.  I may have to send some money his/her way as a "Thank You" for some outstanding writing and extremely important information.

While we're on the subject of misused and misdirected funds, consider the wider implications of shutting off the cash spigot.  CNN was quick to complain.

The Trump administration’s freeze of foreign aid and dismantling of the agency that oversees it is putting at risk thousands of jobs in the US and abroad, industry sources told CNN.

The fallout is already being felt at kitchen tables around the country with hundreds, if not thousands, of aid workers dealing with the reality that they could be out of work because of the aid freeze and potential downsizing of the workforce at USAID, which has been de-facto subsumed by the State Department.

. . .

“People are losing their jobs, left and right,” a humanitarian official said. “There’s going to be a ripple effect.”

Federal contractors that are members of one Washington, DC-area trade association have racked up about $350 million in unpaid bills, forcing them to furlough some 2,000 staff in the area, a source familiar with the trade association told CNN.

Again, more at the link.

What CNN didn't say, and nobody on the left is prepared to admit, is that none of those jobs would have existed in the first place if it were not for the wholesale diversion of billions, even trillions of taxpayer dollars to third-party, non-governmental organizations.  In other words, all those jobs, and all those expenditures, have been paid for out of our pockets, without so much as a "by your leave".

Therefore, all those complaining about the "loss of US jobs" are really saying that we should go on allowing the progressive left to steal taxpayers' money to subsidize all those unelected, unapproved, unconstitutional NGO's - because their employees will have to find legitimate, honest work if we don't!

My answer to that is short, not sweet, and unfortunately unprintable.  I daresay many of my readers can come up with responses of their own.  (Not in writing in Comments, please.  This is - or tries to be - a family-friendly blog!)

Finally, let's remember that to many on the progressive left of American politics, what's going on right now is seen as truly a disaster, a calamity, a tragedy that's left them almost bereft of options.  They are in despair, and some are describing the situation in dystopian terms.  Here, for example, is a post on Reddit (since deleted, but saved for posterity by fellow author and friend Michael Z. Williamson, who posted a copy on social media).  Click the image for a larger, readable view.

No matter how insane the author may sound to us, there are at least thousands, and probably tens or hundreds of thousands, who believe as she does at this moment.  They are so unhinged they're unpredictable.  I think we should expect assassination attempts against President Trump, Elon Musk, and other leading lights of the new administration.  They're far from unimaginable.

Prayers for our nation would not be amiss, either.  We need to clean out the Augean stables that Washington D.C. has become, but we need to do so without pulling down the country around our ears in the process.

Peter