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“ ‘Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. ‘They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.’” - AP

Discussion

Fri, 09/26/25

Will not be surprised if the GAO finds that DOGE saved very little if any money. Not too surprising, given the lack of skill and capability within the administration. A focus on idealogues leaves little in the way of true capability in making cuts the right way.

Mon, 09/29/25

One of the many ways what we have now is not conservatism. One of the strongest traits of conservatism is restraint. An often used analogy is GK Chesterton’s fence/gate: before you tear it down, understand why it was put there and what it does.

DOGE was more in the spirit of revolution. Which has kind of been the flavor of all of MAGA this time around. Granted, it’s revolution ostensibly to return to an older “greater” order, but “ostensibly” is the operative word—because lots that was old from our modern mindset (going back decades) has been dismantled or just flouted to supposedly bring back something even older, but which those leading the effort don’t seem to really understand very well. “Great again” is little more than a glittering generality to energize a conservative-sounding movement that only overlaps a little with a few conservative features.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Mon, 09/29/25

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Really, if you want to reduce overall spending, you need to look at functions that really shouldn't exist at all, or which can be replaced by something less intrusive and costly. But that takes a level of thinking that cannot be done with AI, IMO.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.