🗞 Chronicles of Misrule Dispatch 🗞
Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive—and DOGE
Where Efficiency Means Eviction, and Savings Come at a Human Cost
Field Office Closures and Layoffs
DOGE's cost-cutting crusade led to the closure of 47 SSA field offices, primarily in the South and Southeast, and the layoff of over 10% of SSA's workforce. These actions have disrupted services for countless beneficiaries, especially in rural and underserved areas .
Phone Service Cuts and Public Outcry
In an attempt to combat alleged fraud, DOGE proposed ending phone services for retirement and disability claims. However, after backlash from older claimants, advocates, and lawmakers, the plan was abandoned .
Dubious Fraud Claims
DOGE's justification for these cuts hinged on claims of rampant fraud. Yet, after implementing new anti-fraud checks for phone claims, only two cases of potential fraud were found out of over 110,000 .
Data Access and Privacy Concerns
DOGE's data collection efforts have raised alarms. The agency's push to access sensitive personal data, including Social Security and bank account numbers, has led to concerns about privacy and potential misuse .
Savings or Smoke and Mirrors?
While DOGE boasts of $170 billion in savings, analysts argue that the actual savings are substantially lower. Critics contend that the reported figures are inflated and that DOGE's actions have caused more harm than good .
In summary, DOGE's aggressive measures have disrupted essential services, sparked public outcry, and raised serious questions about the true cost of their so-called efficiencies.
Efficiency is the Excuse. Death is the Dividend.
DOGE gutted global health aid, slashing vaccine programs, HIV clinics, and malaria prevention in sub-Saharan Africa. Food aid was halved, clean water initiatives shelved, and maternal health support tossed into a catch-all spreadsheet cell labeled “non-essential.”
The result? Death, not metaphorical or bureaucratic, but actual. Measurable. Predictable. And, according to Bill Gates, avoidable.
“They’re killing poor children,” Gates said bluntly—a line as damning as any obituary.
And he’s right. The programs being dismantled aren’t symbolic or bloated—they’re the reason 2 million children didn’t die in 2019 of preventable disease. They are why infants born with HIV lived long enough to go to school. Why villages had nets. Why mothers delivered safely.
DOGE offered no rebuttal beyond a bar chart and a slogan. Elon Musk, from whom all things DOGE flow, shrugged it off as “globalist bloat” and returned to tweeting about Martian architecture. While he sketches domes on dust, children’s graves are being dug in silence.
In a sane nation, this would be scandal. Here, it’s a line item.
USAID is not perfect—but it is real. And now, in the name of “efficiency,” we have replaced medicine with math. We have decided that saving lives doesn’t scale.
And so the spreadsheet wins. The ledger balances. And the graveyard grows.
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