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2:00PM Water Cooler 2/12/2025: DOGEbags to Infest Entire Federal Government with Bolshevik-Style Parallel Party Structure

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Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Sippo Lake–Exploration Gateway, Stark, Ohio, United States.

* * *

By Lambert Strether

There’s a quotation from John D. MacDonald’s Pale Grey for Guilt that I can’t find; of the villain, mild-mannered economist sidekick Meyer remarked (as my memory has it): “I seem to have taken a dislike to the fellow.” This Musk dude. It’s really too much. He’s ruined my timeline, and looks to ruin more than that. So I thought I would devote most of today’s Water Cooler Elon and his doings, especially DOGE (the so-called Department of Government Efficiency), which has just ballooned in size, if not in stature, owing to a new Executive Order From Co-President Trump.

Readers will also notice that after decrying snark — and with much success, avoiding it — I have returned to my roots c. 2003, by inventing a term of abuse for a political opponent: DOGEbag. Nobody seems to know quite what to call the Elon’s callow lackeys at DOGE, so I thought I would step in. “Young, inexperienced engineers,” as Wired has it, is obviously far too polite. “DOGE kids” (LeMonde and “Kids of DOGE” (The Hill, aren’t nearly judgmental enough, leaving out the tantrums, testosterone-fueled nicknames, the casual law-breaking, and their angiogenic pathways to Thiel and his neoreactionary network. Sadly, “greasy beavises” is just too esoteric.

So, DOGEbag with the soft “g” (I mean, obviously), that being the dominant pronunciation, from the world of coins, but also with the hard: That is, a brownish bag in which one takes the leftovers home, there to be devoured by small animals (or left rotting in the fridge). Do feel free to propagate! (“But we’re rooting out fraud!” Oh? Where are the audit reports?)

And with that prolix introduction, on to the Executive Order, and as much demolition of Elon’s absurd and insulting meme-age as I can get to, because there’s a lot. I won’t be doing Covid today, and probably no other Water Cooler feature but the Birdsong and the (very lovely) Plant.

* * *

Trump’s Newest Executive Order

“Implementing The President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative” [Whitehouse.gov]. Let’s start with Section 3:

Sec. 3. Reforming the Federal Workforce to Maximize Efficiency and Productivity. (a) Hiring Ratio. Pursuant to the Presidential Memorandum of January 20, 2025 (Hiring Freeze), the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition (Plan). .

Swell, except it makes no sense to take hire one employee for every four that depart for all agencies, because that penalizes lean agencies (say, Social Security) and allows bloated agencies (say, the Pentagon) to remain bloated. More:

. Each Agency Head shall develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas.

(i) This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law.

(ii) The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled.

(iii) Each DOGE Team Lead shall provide the United States DOGE Service (USDS) Administrator with a monthly hiring report for the agency.

In other words, as far as hiring goes, the DOGE “Team Lead” is functionally the agency head. A stronger way of saying this is that the DOGE, essentially a party faction (despite its dubious status as a “temporary organization” in the Executive Office of the President) is both parallel and superior to the Executive Branch as provided for in Article II. Interestingly — and this speaks well of whatever the organizing entities behind DOGE have been — this is just what the Bolsheviks did, when they consolidated power in the Soviet Union, c. 1936:

Along with the state administrative hierarchy, , which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. , and appointments of all party and state officials required approval of the central organs of the party.

History doesn’t repeat…[1].

NOTE

“The Policy and Regime of Extraordinary Measures in Russia under Lenin and Stalin” Europe-Asia Studies (1995). The term chrezvychaishchina is also suggestitive:

Elon Musk’s Many Careless Memes

The man is a posting machine:

Despite being controlling six companies and sharing the Presidency with Trump, Elon seems never to sleep! Perhaps some shareholder could ask him about that. Be that as it may, the trade-off between quantity and quality is pretty clear in the following examples…

DOGE’s Website>

Elon’s website:

That was February 11. The Department of Government Efficiency — replete as it is with Silicon Valley brain geniuses — can’t throw together a site overnight? Here is is, you try it:

The DOGE website is so transparent it’s like there’s nothing there! But wait, it gets better. I have helpfully highlighted the tagline: “An official website of the United States government” Here’s how a real government department does it:

Three parts: (1) The flag, (2) the tagline, and (3) the “Here’s how you know” link. That’s how the State Department, The Health and Human Services Department>, and the Defense Department all do it. The DOGEbags copied only the text, part 2 (or maybe their AI did, I don’t know), and not the flag (they must hate our country) or “Here’s how you know” (of course, with DOGE, you never do know, so maybe that’s fair). Cf. Luke 16:10. NOTE Both the IRS and USA.gov also have use all three parts. The White House does not. So what is DOGE? Part of the White House, or not?

Stanning for Malcolm Tucker

I can almost forgive Elon for using his official position to pump (and, I assume, dump)….

…. because the man knows his classics (NSFW):

Rather the flip side of the West Wing, both “In the Loop” and “The Thick of It” are.

XXXXXXX

How Social Security Numbers Work

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

* * *

Spook Country

So, CIA next on the menu?

* * *

“US agency sends Trump plan to release documents on JFK assassination” [Reuters]. “Trump signed an order during his first week in office related to the release and also promised to release documents concerning the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were killed in 1968. Trump has allowed more time to come up with a plan for those releases….. [ODNI] sent recommendations last week to President Donald Trump on which classified documents he should release to the public related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.”

“Scoop: FBI finds secret JFK assassination records after Trump order” [Axios]. “The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to a board tasked with reviewing and disclosing the documents, Axios has learned…. The existence of the new documents was disclosed Friday to the White House, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted its plan to disclose the assassination records under Trump’s order. The contents of the newly found records are closely held secrets. The three sources who relayed their existence to Axios said they hadn’t seen the documents…. But the discovery of thousands of records on one of the most scrutinized events in U.S. history is likely to raise questions about the procedures for vetting and releasing information across the entire government.” • Indeed.

* * *

“US cyber agency puts election security staffers who worked with the states on leave” [Associated Press]. “In recent days, 17 employees of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who have worked with election officials to provide assessments and trainings dealing with a range of threats — from cyber and ransomware attacks to physical security of election workers — have been placed on leave pending a review, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Ten of those employees are regional election security specialists hired as part of an effort to expand field staff and election security expertise ahead of the 2024 election. The regional staffers were told the internal review would examine efforts to combat attempts by foreign governments to influence U.S. elections, duties that were assigned to other agency staff, according to the person.” • Hmm. For more on CISA and election security, see NC here.

Trump Administration

So long, DOE?

And CFPB?

Unless the Big Banks want to get eaten alive by Silicon fraudsters using apps, they should be protecting CFPB with everything they’ve got.

* * *

“SEC’s Peirce Says Agency Wants New Approach to Crypto Policy” [Bloomberg]. “‘During the past several years, enforcement cases have been used as a way to make regulatory policy; that is very atypical,’ Peirce said Tuesday during a ‘Bloomberg Crypto’ TV interview. ‘We’re trying to get back to a path where we’re really using our other tools to make policy.’ The SEC on Monday filed a request to pause litigation against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. The regulator sued Binance and co-founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao in 2023, alleging the firm mishandled customer funds, misled investors and regulators and broke securities laws. The SEC asked for a brief stay of 60 days, citing pending development of a regulatory framework for digital assets.” • “Digital assets” my Sweet Aunt Fanny. How do you regulate an asset that does’nt exist, absent fraud?

DOGE

Judge Vargas gets to work on State of New York, et al., v. Donald J. Trump (order; analysis of initial order at NC here):

* * *

2024 Post Mortem

Democrats en déshabillé

I guess we’ll have to wait until the midterms:

Maybe we should take “Minority Leader” and cross out the “Leader” part.

Then again:

No masks, please, we’re liberals:

I grant that Indivisible has a structure. But if it’s just another NGO feeding cash and votes to, well, Hakeem Jeffries, I don’t see the point. Or rather, I do.

* * *

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not tiptoeing toward autocracy” [Normal Ornstein, The Contrarian]. ” If Senate Democrats suddenly had discipline, backbone and a willingness to stay on weekends and often at night, to deny unanimous consent for all or nearly all executive nominations, and to put on blanket holds, it could keep a large number of the second- and third- tier nominees from being confirmed, at least adding to their difficulty hijacking the agencies and departments, and limiting their ability to use the Vacancies Act to fill top posts. Of course, Senate Republicans might well change all the rules, radically reducing the power of the minority. But if we do somehow manage to get through this and maintain our democracy, we will not have to worry about a couple of recalcitrant senators, like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to alter the rules; they will already be in place. And Democrats can decide which ones to use to implement their own agenda. So what to do? It is time for House Democrats, especially, to use their biggest power, their votes in a body that is closely divided and with a Republican majority incapable of uniting on its own to pass budgets and spending bills and to raise the debt ceiling.”

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

* * *

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC February 3 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC February 1 ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 1

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data February 10: National [6] CDC February 7:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens February 10: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 8:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC January 20: Variants[10] CDC January 20

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

* * *

Marketing: “Dr. Bronner’s Is Ditching B Corp Program Because Bar Is Too Low” [Bloomberg]. “Cult soap brand Dr. Bronner’s is quitting a well-known corporate responsibility program because its executives say the standards are too weak, marking a departure from companies watering down their goals to appease conservative activists. The Vista, California-based brand won’t renew its B Corp certification when it expires in September after years of lobbying B Lab, the nonprofit behind the program, for more stringent requirements, according to a statement Tuesday… Dr. Bronner’s main complaint about B Lab is that it doesn’t require corporations to prove through third-party certifications or other tests that their supply chains protect human rights and the environment. Companies can attain the certification in part by focusing on other efforts, such as providing financial security to employees and monitoring its waste output, according to B Lab’s guidelines. That approach, Dr. Bronner’s argues, allows for greenwashing because it fails to capture the impact of large corporations with sprawling supply chains that often involve crops plagued with human rights and environmental concerns, such as palm oil.” • Not wrong!

Tech: “I Dated Multiple AI Partners at Once. It Got Real Weird” [Wired]. “[E]ver since the arrival of Covid-19 people just don’t mingle like they used to. It’s not surprising, then, that some romance seekers are skipping human companions and turning to AI. People falling in love with their AI companions is no longer the stuff of Hollywood tales about futuristic romance. But while it may feel uncanny to some, as a video game reporter the concept doesn’t seem so foreign to me. Dating sims, or games where you can otherwise date party members, are a popular genre. Players grow affection for and attachment to characters; some want to have sex with those characters. After its release, Baldur’s Gate 3 die-hards were even speedrunning sex with the game’s cast.

Still, I’ve wondered what drives average people to fall head over heels for generative AI, so I did what any curious person would: set myself up on dates with a few to feel them out.”

Tech: “BuzzFeed’s New Plan: An AI-Powered Social Media Platform to Help ‘Spread Joy’” [Hollywood Reporter]. A letter from the CEO: “If the early internet was serving beer and wine that brought people together, today’s internet is dealing crack and fentanyl that tears people apart. The consumer isn’t winning when they are addicted to a product that makes them unhappy, and when they are spending hours each day using products they would pay money to make disappear. Any theory of business competition needs to be updated with deeper analysis drawn from addiction psychology and behavioral economics. People haven’t realized it yet, but the AI-powered platforms have already shipped the dystopian AI future many people are worried might come in the future.” • Hmm.

Tech: “At work, a quiet AI revolution is under way” [Financial Times]. “On a recent flight to France, I got talking to the woman next to me and ChatGPT came up. She worked as a bank clerk, and said she now used the chatbot to write the majority of her correspondence with colleagues and customers. She explained that writing had never been her strong point, and the app was able to generate text that captured what she wanted to say better than she could. I joked that she would be using it to write messages to friends and family before she knew it, and she rather sheepishly replied that she already had, asking for help with a recent birthday text. Her unease suggested that she felt what she was doing was in some way wrong. Yet like many others, she is now using generative AI to produce vast swaths of personal and professional communication, unbeknown to those who receive these AI-generated messages.” • Are we sure it’s that unknown? Like, is everything a bulleted list? (Idea: App to rate text for the likelihood it’s AI generated.)

Manufacturing: “Boeing delivered 45 commercial jets last month, a decent start to 2025” [Seattle Times]. “As Boeing tries to recover and increase airplane production, it delivered 45 jets last month, the highest monthly total since December 2023, according to company data released Tuesday. The January delivery total included 40 Renton-built 737 MAXs. Remarks last month by Chief Financial Officer Brian West suggest at least 10 of those were MAXs that came out of long-term storage where they had been awaiting completion of rework.” And: “On the sales front, Airbus did better with 51 net new orders in January, compared to 36 for Boeing. Separately, Boeing orders for seven widebody 787s that had previously been removed from the official backlog as insufficiently firm were restored in January, while at the same time an order for one MAX was removed.”

Manufacturing: “Elon Musk effect? Boeing warns that hundreds of workers involved in NASA’s Artemis Moon rocket project may face layoffs in the coming months” [Economic Times]. “Boeing layoffs in NASA’s Artemis program are making headlines as around 400 jobs may be cut by April 2025. The decision comes as the Artemis Moon mission faces budget constraints and uncertainty. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has been critical of Artemis, is pushing for a shift toward Mars exploration. While NASA insists Artemis is still essential, internal discussions within the White House and NASA suggest possible changes ahead. With President Donald Trump advocating for Mars missions, the future of Artemis remains unclear.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 46 Neutral (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 39 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 11 at 1:35:11 PM ET.

Sports Desk

“Nick Sirianni To Eagles Fans: ‘I Hate All Of You, Fuck You’” [The Onion]. • I thought this was real. Gritty is the way.

Gallery

I don’t understand the context:

Is a Parisian Nannies Promenade like the gatherings of Hong Kong “helpers”?

Class Warfare

I think Blanc is correct:

Compare what the Indivisible types are saying above. Why aren’t union halls as active?

News of the Wired

Metadata has been around for a long time:


* * *

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From SR:

SR writes: “Possibly untouched indigenous landscape outside of Oregon City, Oregon, 12/27/24, near a creek. Ferns, the signature Pacific Northwest forest dweller.” What a lovely, lovely image!

* * *

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