When I was in the business of show, I did a play with Peter Bergman, who was and remains a lovely human. Known for playing Jack Abbott on “The Young and the Restless”, I remember him best — outside our shared theatrical experience — for absurdly declaring, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV!’” in a Vicks44 ad.
Right now, folks, we have an entire batch of absurd, mostly filthy rich, non-doctors and fake-experts running and/or gutting our government’s vital agencies, putting us all in danger. Help!
Government efficiency is a good thing — we can all agree on that, but cutting without considering the consequences or nuances of public need and policy, particularly to poor children, the elderly, farmers and veterans? Defunding cancer research, senior meals, libraries? Absurd, scary and wrong.
Veterans hold 30% of all government jobs, filling almost 50% of the VA’s positions, yet slash-and-burn without a thought to their service is the name of the DOGE game. By the way — and for full disclosure I have relatives who work for the federal government — the vast majority of government jobs pay significantly less than the private sector; some Americans, however, believe public service is worth it.
Eliminating the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Consumer Finance Protection Board? Firing and re-hiring scientists and inspectors general; placing, then pulling tariffs, and then placing them again, creating chaos and uncertainty in the markets here and abroad; threatening the sovereignty of Greenland and Panama as well as our neighbors in Canada? Help!
A boondoggle is work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value; that’s DOGE in a nutshell. Billionaire Elon Musk refers to the majority of his fellow human beings as “NPCs”, non-player characters, a gamer term for the nameless figures populating the background of video games. Having multiple billionaires in cabinet positions — #47’s cabinet is the richest on record — with another drug-addled billionaire who refers to most Americans as “NPCs” in charge of government efficiency? Beware.
Beware, especially when those delivering “efficiency” ignore the law, deny due process and ask “We the People” to trust them — while they disappear programs, policies, regulations and actual human beings. Beware.
During the 13 years the Conservative Party held power in the United Kingdom, they took many steps to “improve government efficiency”, including privatizing numerous public water systems. This would, they promised, lower costs to consumers while providing the kind of innovation that private companies do well.
By the summer of 2024, when the Labour Party finally ousted the Tories, privately run water companies had actually increased costs to middle- and low-income users; they had also rendered all but two rivers in the whole of England unfit for swimming. Innovative efficiency, y’see, included ignoring regulations while eliminating local oversight, the better to save money while dumping raw sewage into Britain’s waterways.
The Conservatives did, however, succeed in increasing shareholder profits in privately held public service companies (what a twisted misnomer that is!), efficiently making the rich richer, while ignoring that many of their fellow citizens in lower income brackets were drinking brown water.
Here’s the thing, government — whether it’s local, state, or federal — is a non-profit customer service business, offering a menu of civic amenities and services prioritized by values; what we value, we spend money on. In Upstate New York, we value roads (we have to!), we therefore budget a large segment of our taxes toward our vital thoroughfares of commerce and travel.
At the federal level, far too much of our income — the collective taxes we pay — is being used to service our collective debt, instead of serving what we value, including helping the neediest and most vulnerable among us. This is government gone awry, yet cutting IRS staff, crippling collection, will only exacerbate the problem, as will another series of planned GOP tax cuts for the uber-rich and corporations who are already swimming in moolah.
If we want to improve services to “We the People”, and get back to funding our values instead of our debts, we must tax the wealthiest among us, including multi-national corporations and tech titans.
When elected, unelected or appointed billionaires slash public services and servants to “save money”, while cutting taxes to boost themselves and their ilk, never thinking through the consequences to other human beings (us lowly NPCs), they put everyone at risk of drinking brown water.
Governments run “like a business” simply do not serve the greater good or greater number of citizens; they’re autocracies, oligarchies or kleptocracies that lack bedrock democratic principles and values, serving only the rich, exploiting labor, and criminalizing those who run afoul of the party line, like the Turkish doctoral student recently disappeared for co-writing an op-ed supporting Palestinians in a campus newspaper.
Is this who we are now, America? Beware.