Prioleau Alexander: How Dare DOGE Keep Government Agencies Accountable?

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I wrote not too long ago about the Left’s newfound hatred for Elon Musk, for no other reason than the fact he’s rooting out corruption in the government. Imagine the level of Trump Derangement Syndrome one must suffer from to publicly state to the world: 

• “Rooting out corruption is corrupt.”  
• “I don’t want to know how my tax dollars are spent.” 
• “I prefer that Congress and the federal bureaucrats spend money in secret.”
• “I like the idea of my money being spent to employ bureaucrats who aren’t needed.”

It’s ponderous.

So what has Team DOGE been up to? It’s not hard to discover… it’s listed line by line at DOGE.gov, and they provide a screen shot of the line showing what the payment was for. 

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Here are a few of my favorites:

Canceled a VA contract paying $380,000 per month for “website modifications.” The job has been assumed by one VA employee, who is handling the entire workload in 10-hours per week. I’m betting big that employee didn’t get a raise of $380k per month.

Canceled $2.1 million annual State Department contract for a “senior advisor in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Isn’t that what we have an embassy and staff for? Or was the guy providing advice to the Congolese team of aerospace engineers, hard at work building a balsa wood glider?

Put the axe to $10 million in annual spending for “gender equity in the Mexican workplace,” and $12.2 million for “worker empowerment in South America.” That’s a shame—I’ll bet the people getting that money established measurable, laser-focused benchmarks, followed up monthly, and can account for every penny.

Slam dunked a $145,000 consulting contract for “Peru climate change activities.” How can they possibly end a contract for something so specific? 

In 2020-2021, the Small Business administration provided $333 million in loans to borrowers over 115 years old, all of which were marked as alive by the Social Security database. I’m not that worried about this one—people who reach 115 are generally honest, and will no doubt have the means to make good on their debts.

Discovered FEMA wired $80 million to pay for luxury hotel rooms in NYC after they were ordered by the President not to. Liberals who lost everything in Western North Carolina are reportedly happy, knowing their slice of the FEMA pie was served to criminals. 

Canceled a $1.03 million contract with the National Science Foundation’s “fitness center services.” Seems to me that’s a lot of jack to wipe up sweat and launder towels.

Happened onto a governmental entity called the Federal Consulting Group, that charges other government entities to “broker” consulting services. With all that expertise, the FCG “brokered” a $75 million contract to… fly to the moon? Solve world hunger? House homeless vets? Nah, to “design website customer satisfaction surveys.” Going forward, they’re going ask the 8th grade class at Fredrick Johnson Middle school for volunteers to stay after school one day and reward the kid who does the best version with a Snickers. 

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Canceled a $3.1 million contract earmarked for “healthy relationships social media presence.” It would probably be better spending that money on federal employees, to help them develop a healthy relationship with reality.

Axed a $3.1 million contract for “transparency and accountability in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry.” Okay, this one I disagree with—who among us doesn’t want to be a FOIA letter away from doing a deep dive into Uzbekistan’s cotton industry?

March 13th found “Big Balls” on a roll. That’s the day they put the hammer down on: 

• $620K for “an LGB+ inclusive teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys” 
• $699K for studying “cannabis use” among “sexual minority gender diverse individuals” 
• $740K for examining “social networks” among “black and Latino sexual minority men in New Jersey” If they had a Department of Understanding How Deviant Behavior Impacts Mental Illness, this would be in their mission statement.

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The USDA was funding a $397,000 grant in San Francisco “to educate queer, trans, and urban farmers and consumers about food justice and value-aligned markets,” because of course they were. I can only assume this is because resident of San Fran deposit piles of human fertilizer on sidewalks, and the city is hoping urban farmers will scoop it up and use it.

Here’s a gem: DOGE ended a $600,000 grant to study “menstrual cycles in transgender men.” I think I could’ve saved some money if they’d asked me to do the study.  

Me: Were you born with female sexual organs?

Yes.

Me: Did you ever have your period?

Yes. 

Me: Have you been administering testosterone to yourself? 

Yes.

Me: Did that testosterone lower your serum estradiol levels, raise your serum testosterone levels, and result in the development of typical male secondary sex characteristics. 

Yes.

Me: From now on, your menstrual cycle is going to be more screwed up than a hobo’s checkbook. It might make less sense than the decision to study this issue.

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RELATED | DOGE SC BLASTS LAWYER-LEGISLATOR FOR OPPOSING LAWSUIT REFORM

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The VA was discovered to have signed an 8-year contract with an outside company to water eight plants in one of its offices. The cost was $1,400 per plant per year. I assume they’ll save money by… hiring an illegal alien to do it?

The ongoing audit of HUD discovered tax dollars paying for software subscriptions as follows:

• 35,855 ServiceNow licenses on three products; Total number of users: 84 
• 11,020 Acrobat licenses. Total number of users: 0
• 10,000 Java licenses.  Total number of users: 400

In the same area, the GSA was also providing great value for the money. With 13,000 employees, it was paying for:

• 37,000 WinZip licenses.
• 19,000 software training subscriptions
• 7,500 project management licenses for a division with 5,500 employees.

The Inter-American Foundation was found to have the following grants on their books. In keeping with “farming” theme, DOGE grabbed them by the neck, dragged them behind the barn, and chopped their heads off.

• $903,811 for alpaca farming in Peru
• $364,500 to reduce social discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia
• $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador 
• $323,633 to promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil
• $731,105 to improve marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala
• $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras
• $483,345 to improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador

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Here’s a winning use of money that DOGE just crushed out of existence: A $10 million a year contract for outsourced research on “eating habits of food stamp recipients.” Another $17 million was paid in the past 17 months for an army of researchers to… wait, what? It was total of TWO researchers? I’ve done research on this myself, and the top purchases are Coke, chips, candy, and fresh seafood, which can be sold for cash to restaurants through the back door.

The Office of Personnel Management, which employs 2500 bureaucrats, budgeted $370 million for IT spending in FY2025. That’s $148,000 per employee. After crunching the numbers, DOGE crunched out 80% of the waste, including $364,000 for 1,000 unused cybersecurity software licenses, and $121,000 in unused Zoom licenses. Wait, they paid for Zoom? 

In keeping with the Federal government’s commitment to ensure every penny is laser-targeted towards a specific cause or goal, here are a few of them. It is because of this specificity that it would be impossible to re-direct funds to anything other than their stated purpose:

• $60 million for “Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment.” 
• $74 million for “inclusive justice” in Colombia. 
• $79 million for “primary literacy” in Kenya.
• $37 million for “female empowerment” in Colombia. 
• $8 million to “Reduce stigma, discrimination, and violence against LGBTQI+ communities” in Lesotho. 
• $3.3 million for “being LGBTQI in the Caribbean.” 

I defy anyone to find a loophole in those descriptions.

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I feel like I should end on a high note… either because our debt is so high, or the people who caused the debt are high. Get a load of these expenses:

• $69 million for the Eurasia Foundation to do “digital transformation activity” in Europe. Europe? 
• $32 million to Internews for programs including “media enabling democracy, inclusion, and accountability in Moldova” and the promotion of “sustainable media outlets.” Moldova? Where in the hell is Moldova?
• $7 million for the American Bar Association to promote the “resilience” of the “Eurasian legal sector and civic society.” This a joke, right? 
• $520 million for a consultant to do ESG investments in Africa and “mobilize private sector resources and expertise.” More balsa wood gliders?
• $25 million to “promote biodiversity conservation and promote licit livelihoods” by developing “socially responsible” behaviors in Colombia. Soda City? 
• $40 million to “improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants.” Sedentary? As in they’re too lazy to work?
• $42 million for Johns Hopkins to research and drive “social and behavior change” in Uganda. You mean, modify behaviors? Like they’re circus animals?  
• $45 million to “address the needs, opportunities, and challenges identified by activists and other civic actors engaged in nonviolent collective action.” That ain’t hard to figure. They need: Bricks. Molotov cocktails. Guns. Skateboards. Weed. And police who cower in fear and do nothing.

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Deserving of a Special Award in the “Efficiency” part of DOGE, 2021 saw the Biden Administration pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $42.5 billion to connect under-served and rural areas to fiber-optic internet access. To date, it has connected a total of Zero homes. (That’s a Z, with an ero) In other news, Elon Musk’s Starlink costs $349, and $50 a month—and takes about 30 minutes to install. 

If you aren’t depressed enough already, pondering how many decades this has been going on… and now knowing that everyone in Congress is a criminal for approving these expenditures… and that you and I are idiots for not stealing our share of the booty… remember this:

Forty percent of Americans are actively attempting to shut down DOGE.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Prioleau Alexander is a freelance writer, focusing mostly on politics and non-fiction humor. He is the author of four books: ‘You Want Fries With That?,’ ‘Dispatches Along the Way,’ ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?‘ and ‘They Don’t Call It The Submission Process For Nothing.’ 

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