The Fleecing of America

The fleecing of America has begun. The convicted felon and his puppet master Elon Musk are slashing — illegally slashing! — every federal agency in order to line the pockets of Musk and the convicted felon — and all the other tech billionaire bros that sat behind the orange convicted felon at the inauguration.

On Thursday, February 13, members of the U.S. Senate House of Representatives, led by Senator Blumenthal, Representative Takano, with their Labor partners and U.S. military veterans held a protest against the policies of the convicted felon president and his puppet master Musk who were slashing personnel and benefits for veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

This is from  their press release that was distributed last week:

The Administration’s harmful policies for VA employees include:

1. President Trump’s recently announced“‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” which requires allowing only one employee to be hired for every four that departs, signaling the intent to reduce the workforce by 75%.

2. The Administration’s continued VA hiring freeze on employees critical to delivering health care and benefits to veterans including housekeepers, benefit claims processors, food service workers, and peer support for veterans experiencing homelessness or mental health crises.

3. Elon Musk’s “Fork in the Road” ‘buy out’ offers forcing VA employees to choose between giving up their devotion to serving veterans or blind allegiance to the President. Veterans make up more than 25% of VA’s workforce, which is comprised of more than 450,000 VA employees nationwide.

VA’s hiring freeze impacts positions already facing shortages, including those that deliver veterans’ health care and benefits, and that work at VA cemeteries. The hiring freeze includes all positions at the Veterans Benefits Administration who continue to process historically high numbers of claims for benefits thanks to the PACT Act, employees at the National Cemetery Administration working to memorialize our veterans, and critical hospital support staff necessary for the function of VA hospitals

Towards the end of February, Black History Month, I was at the VAMC La Jolla, otherwise known as the Jennifer R. Moreno Medical Center, having a test done on my legs by a very nice young technician. When we were done I asked her, “Can I ask you a question?”

She must have been embarrassed because there was a blush above her mask. The tech must have thought I was going to ask some crazy, dirty old man question, but she said yes. To her relief I asked, “Did you get the ‘retire or die’ letter?”

The tech told me every employee at the VAMC got the letter, but all department heads sent out emails telling everyone not to respond. Then they got emails telling them they should respond, and then letters saying only very specific departments needed to reply and then another email telling them everyone should reply and of course the letter email telling them to list five things they did successfully in the past week.. Then the tech said she didn’t know of any employees that responded to the letter. My reply was, that had I received that five accomplishments letter I would have listed only one: “I’m telling you and all your DOGE a-hole colleagues to fuck off!”

She laughed. At the VAMC we patients, most of whom have been trained to kill (to misquote Jack Reacher) and regularly used all types of course and obscene language in our daily repartee whilst wearing the uniform — enlisted and officers alike — can get away with dropping the occasional F-bomb in the appropriate places. It’s what we [expletive deleted] do. Plus, many of the hospital employees are former military, or in some cases, serving in the reserves, so they may have a penchant for nitty gritty [expletive deleted] street vernacular.

At one of the other clinics I frequent I posed the same questions to the nurse practitioner I see and she laughed as well. She mocked the idea of doing that every week now.

Suffice it to say, I stand with my fellow vets and other employees at the VAMC who have been completely insulted by the convicted felon and his puppet master in that illegal DOGE gang.

Most of this was written during Black History Month, but we can reliably report, on March 3, that the destruction of our government and democracy continues. On February 28, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was invited to the White House by the convicted felon to sign an agreement for sharing Ukraine’s raw minerals. Instead of speaking like seasoned and effective diplomats, the felon and his fellow grifter JD Vance ambushed the embattled Ukrainian leader for not showing any respect for Russian dictator and war crimes suspect Vladimir Putin.

It was Putin who started the war in Ukraine and committed all the atrocities in Ukraine ordering his generals to target hospitals and schools – primarily civilians.

It was Putin that encouraged his soldiers to rape and pillage the Ukrainian civilians and to destroy everything that was in their path. Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.

We have now split with our European allies — Putin has achieved his ultimate success: With his chosen puppet Donald J. Trump, the convicted felon, in the presidency once again, the United States has now been, symbolically at least, separated from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — NATO.

There is no “Deep State” that can or will save us from these treasonous criminals, there’s just us, the vast majority of Americans that think Putin is bad news at best, the vast majority of people that believe we should be feeding the poorest among us, the most disadvantaged, instead of the wealthiest 10%. The majority that believes we should be fighting dictators, not other democracies. That we should be taking care of our service members and veterans, not taking away their benefits

We should be helping starving children here and around the world, preventing Russia and our other adversaries from spreading their corrosive pro-dictatorship and fascist ideologies.

The big question is: Where are the congressional Democrats? Why aren’t the raising holy Hell every day? The Dems don’t have the numbers in Congress to make or stop policies, they don’t control any of the committees — but they know how to get in front of cameras and microphones. The Dems need to learn how to message this — they need to follow the leads of the rank and file voters who are out in the streets holding rallies and protests.

The Independents that voted for the convicted felon and his bearded ass licker and are feeling lied to, cheated — screwed — are ready for a different direction. Most Americans are disgusted and betrayed by the felon’s suck up to Putin and his abandonment of our democratically elected ally, Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine. The rest of NATO is firmly on the side of Ukraine, but the felon and his side kick don’t seem to care and members of the cabinet and Republican members Congress who were formerly strong supporters of Zelenskyy have done a complete flip and now side with the felon’s and V.P.’s pro-Putin and anti-democracy views. The entire GOP in Congress has gone completely full MAGA. They don’t even pretend to be pro-democracy and pro-NATO. They are nothing but MAGA.

The Republicans in Congress won’t do their constitutional duties to hold the administration accountable with hearings that put Musk and his little minkies in those hot seats answering questions about their illegal “agency” and illegal jobs; their slash and burn destruction of the American government that is putting thousands of good people out of work for no good reason. Plus, surprise, surprise, Musk and his chumps are lying about how much they are saving.

This isn’t a joke. It’s corruption and crime out in the open for everyone to see and hear and a political party wrapping themselves in every act of corruption and all the lies — and how the heck can anyone in the U.S. Senate vote to confirm an anti-vaxxer to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a guy who claims a worm ate his brain?

Now take that kind of sweeping, unlawful destruction across all the various federal agencies, and I follow the philosophy of the  great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther  King, I have decided I’m no going to let the convicted felon drag me into hatefulness; I can’t say I have any love for him or his fellow grifters like Musk and Hegseth, But I’m not going to hate them. As the great Rev. Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr. once said, “I have decided to stick to love … Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

I may not be sticking to love for them, but I’m not lingering on hate.