Marble Falls      In the ongoing meltdown and public relations catastrophe that has characterized President Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, nothing seems more absurd than credit card limits of only one dollar without specific approval for purchase.  This is when we are all forced to come to grip with reality and remind ourselves that Musk’s Nerd Nirvana is its own version of hell in a hand wagon for the government and the American people.  When you live your life behind a laptop screen and have never been responsible for making anything work outside of a high school science project and your only contact with public service and government might have been taking a bus every blue moon and doing your income taxes, you are spectacularly unqualified to direct government functions.

Admittedly, the point of DOGE seems to be shutdown government operations.  Maybe that’s what Trump intended? Maybe not? Trump seems pretty cavalier about the whole deal of running the government.  His latest comments on the economy, for example, are boiled down to “Recession?  What me worry?”  Of course, he’s not oblivious to the fact that there is now grassroots pushback across the country over cutbacks, governmental chaos, and concerns about Social Security and Medicaid cuts, among other things.  The rank-and-file complaints are not slowing either Trump or Musk down, but the backlash from their own elite troops recruited to run departments and agencies was impossible for them to ignore, when it erupts even at cabinet meetings.  Musk’s response is pouty and defensive.  He tries to remind people that he has built several billion-dollar businesses, even as some of them are literally crashing and burning, like his SpaceX rockets and the stock price and market appeal of Tesla automobiles.

We all know the pain and turmoil when we hit the limit on our credit cards.  It’s not just a matter of delaying buying a plane ticket or a relative’s birthday present, it’s a matter of essentials from the gas station to the grocery store.  Well, scale that up to vast governmental enterprises like the national park system or the military, and, “Houston, we have a problem.”  The DOGErs now claim to have frozen more than 140,000 credit cards.  Musk, without any pretense of providing evidence, claims there are some shady purchases.  Who knows? There are now no purchases.

A Washington Post article detailed some of the mayhem:

• A Defense Department “employee estimated the freeze would impact roughly 100 purchases made weekly for raw materials and other things that scientists and engineers need access to for everything from helmet impact experiments to ballistics testing on body armor.”
• A Park Service “employee reported immediate disruption… as the limit radically altered daily operations, grinding shipping to a halt and preventing the delivery of entry passes scheduled to arrive at various parks ahead of the summer season. Staffers could not buy medicine and supplies needed to care for visitors and the horses ridden by some park rangers, the employee said, adding that the pause was poised to imperil monthly subscriptions and services vital to park operations.”
• “At the Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, the card reduction means workers cannot place orders for lab supplies, including personal protective equipment and ethanol used to disinfect surfaces, according to several employees.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg, obviously, since the government, like it or not, touches every aspect of our daily lives.  A suit filed by a Social Security top executive, now gone, believes that DOGE’s messing around in the secure data system, where they are clueless and were unwilling to learn about procedures and protocol, could mean data exposure and delayed payments.  Delay payments to Social Security recipients across the country, and the White House will be shaking from the level of outrage and despair.

What Musk and Trump seem to have either forgotten or never understood is how important the government is in the daily life of all Americans.  It’s one thing to talk of government as something distant and unknown, but when you turn the whole thing upside down, dismiss workers, and block spending, everyone ends up feeling the pain, not from their computer screen, like the DOGErs, but in their personal lives.