The legacy of DOGE

Remember DOGE? Remember the Hitler-saluting Musk who led the arrogant non-professional loos cannons that worked for DOGE? Remember the arrogant jackass, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine? We were told in no uncertain terms that that DOGE was going to save taxpayers a trillion a make government more efficient. So, what did it accomplish?

Nah, that's not a Hitler salute,

not even close

The bottom line is that 1) DOGE didn't reduce government spending, 2) it helped make government far less effective in protecting consumers, workers and the environment, and 3) it is still secretly working to create a unified database on all US citizens and residents that an authoritarian MAGA government will use to find and punish or kill political opposition. 

As far as secret work to build a deep surveillance state goes, DOGE is still at it. A Dec. 2025 Wired article, DOGE Isn’t Dead. Here’s What Its Operatives Are Doing Now, discusses current operations. Contrary to popular reports, DOGE has burrowed into the agencies like ticks. It has not gone away. Wired commented:

The DOGE ethos—characterized by cutting contracts and government workers, consolidating data across agencies, and importing private sector practices—remains fully in force. While several media reports have suggested that DOGE has all but fizzled out, DOGE affiliates are scattered across the federal government working as developers, designers, and even leading agencies in powerful roles.

A WBR interview with a couple of experts gives us an overview of the dictator fun 'n games that DOGE is still engaged in. Specifically, DOGA is still working to combine federal data on people into a single database that is scattered across and siloed in federal agencies. That has never been done before. The interview transcript includes these comments:

FAHRENTHOLD: Yes. I'm really interested in the questions of how these databases coming together. I do think that could, in many ways, be the most important long-term legacy of DOGE.

If we start to see that the government is able to marshal all this data and the service of immigration enforcement, for instance, or if the IRS comes and ask you about your immigration status. If the government's priorities are suddenly able to be acted on by all these independent agencies. And that bureaucratic firewalls don't stop them anymore. That interaction with the federal government could be so different in a couple of years that we see that as DOGE's actual biggest impact.

Yes indeed, stitching all the federal data on all of us together into a single database. With a database like that, any person who stands in opposition to Trump and MAGA elite dictatorship, kleptocracy and their bigotry can be easily found and targeted for harassment, jail or murder. DOGE is working diligently to neuter our civil liberties, including privacy. 

The interview makes a couple of points worth keeping in mind. First, something that might be run very efficiently, could still give very poor results, sometimes lethal results. The best services are not the necessarily the cheapest or the most efficient. The best services are ones that take care of people or protect people with reasonable efficiently and efficacy. Right now, DOGE is working to provide services to special interests at the expense of people and the public interest.  

That's one heck of a legacy. Good job Big Balls!  /s