From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
They call be Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Ed, we are pleased as punch that you are joining us tonight, folks. This is going to be an exploration of memes, an exploration of conspiracies, and the just the ridiculous, surreal situation of something called doge.
That's the stuff they Doze wants you to know.
We're gonna play a bit of doge ball as we're talking off air. Okay, Department of Government Efficiency, we've heard of it.
I love it when you like walk backwards into the acronym, you know.
A backronym that's weird for it?
Is that really true? Yeah? Yeah, If it's not, then you've coined it, and I do I doff my cap to you, sir, oh man.
It's a whole thing. Uh, let's get right into it, guys. Here are the facts. Despite the name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not an official department.
But it has department in the name.
Man, true department in the name. And what do we always say about innocuous names.
Yeah, isn't it of another service that did exist.
Mm hmmm in twenty fourteen. Yeah, this thing technically is an initial from the second Trump administration. Look at it on paper. The idea is DOZE will modernize government. It Doze will reduce harmful spending and financial waste, and it will at the same time cut all those pesky regulations and fraud getting waste and fraud keeps. Yeah, maximize productivity. Right, that doesn't sound too bad. We got to introduce one of our first players here. Doze is the brainchild of
Ellen Musk. This guy was the largest known individual donor to the twenty twenty four US election cycle, more than two hundred and ninety million dollars.
This guy is fine. That seems fine.
I mean, we could have we could have done cool stuff.
It just seems interesting that the guy that you know spent all that money on the election is the one that then gets to single handedly gut the government.
Well, it's going to get to one of the theories they're going to put forward today.
About the.
The real meaning and goals of doge as it was thought about and then implemented.
Yeah, Yeah, nailed it, okay.
Doge is technically the result of an executive order EO one four one five eight, which is really a rebranding of another thing. Also, starting an initiative like this via an executive order means that you're already starting in a pretty sticky place with Congress, because they're super into laws and institutions, in theory, in theory on paper. Yes, come election time, everybody's a good boy. Doge is to our
earlier point there, no. Doge is a purposeful backronym. A backronym is where you take an exisiting word and then turn it into an acronym.
Right an existing word. Also, you can refer to a cute pupper, a doggo, a little doge. It also refers to a cryptocurrency that was I believe named after the shiba enu meme.
Yeah, kabosu kubasu. I don't know how to say the actual name of the cute little doge.
I don't know that I really was in on the original Doge or what you're talking about. Can you describe it?
Very? Wow much dog much dog? Oh, heck right, Doge. It's a it's an adorable sheba eud sometimes doing a very excited face. Oh, sometimes doing a very like side eye face.
Of course I know this guy. Yeah, yeah, it's very You've seen his word too many situations. So it is a bit of a side eye sort of a surprised look. But also depending on the text that you accompany it with, could be the side eye situation.
Yeah, like a knowing look.
The things left unsaid Doge. We also know that the real name for Doge is, to your earlier point, Matt, the US Digital Service. This was created by the Obama administration President Barack Obama on August eleventh, twenty fourteen. So Doge, as it's being sold to you in the media now, is not an original thought. It is a rebranding, or, according to critics, it is a weaponization of an existing thing.
Yes, and interestingly enough, the department or the digital service in this thing that was created in twenty fourteen is a direct result of the botched healthcare dot gov launch.
Right, that was such a nightmare.
Yes, So back then they went, ooh, we should probably get better at websites and you know, digital technology and stuff as a government. So that's what this thing was supposed to do. It's it was designed in twenty fourteen to just do a better job on the internet basically.
And I want to take a moment to that excellent point. I want to take a moment and just congratulate all of us for being able to talk so much valid trash about this government and not get black backed.
Bye for now, for now.
Interestingly enough, it's described on the Obama White House dot archives dot org site as a startup at the White Holes that pairs the country's top technology talent with the best public servants to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country's most important digital services.
And then everybody clapped.
Well, hey, I hear what you're saying, Ben, But I also think that's kind of a great thing. I think maybe we've all over the course of our years, had to do some thing for either a local government, state government, or the federal government online and it was just through some web portal that was clearly developed twenty years.
For geo cities style, you know, construction, add in regulatory capture. Like the entire reason that it is difficult to pay your taxes is do it's because there is a industry of middlemen. Right Look, the private public thing, as you were pointing out there and all the private public thing is always going to come back to bite you in the butt as a civilization right now, Alon Musk his role with Doge is a little murky. We were talking
about this off air. There are numerous clips memes that went viral of the guy holding a chainsaw or standing next to the current President of the United States in the Oval office while they talked about Doge and wearing multiple hats, messing with his spinners, his kid, I think stemming. I wonder if the kid picks his nose anyway?
They all do? We all do? We all did?
What was the thing that the kid mauthed at Trump like you're a horrible person or I hate you, or you don't know anything. It was something very sinister like that.
We talked about it just looking at that picture though, guys, I mean, we've often brought back the WWE imagery of it all, you know, relating to the recent politics in the US and that image that you're referencing Ben. I'm looking at it. It's posted on an MPR finger and oh, it's like an America chainsaw.
It's we got a little idiocracy, to be honest, it's really quickly.
I'm just so excited I had to share. I am going to my first WWE events on Monday. I'm going to see what w w E raw show. I'm pretty pumped.
You should call hop okay.
Get the special treatment.
Speaking of special treatment, right, the White House has had some strangely I don't know, fluid information is not the right word, contradictory statements about the role of ELM. Musk in DOGE or Elon Musk, if you want to say it that way. At various times they have said he is a senior advisor to the president. At other times they have denied that he makes any decisions whatsoever. And then also from the President himself, they have claimed that Musk is in fact the head of DOGE and does
make all the decisions. This is coming from the same place.
Except when they're openly beefing on Twitter.
Except when they're openly beefing on Twitter at least me five. That's when Musk said he was pivoting from this initiative, which again is not a real department, just to be very clear about that.
Oh yeah, it's really strange to see initial reporting and statements from Elon Musk himself in the early stages of this January February twenty twenty five, when he's saying things like, oh, I'm I think I'll probably spend a day, maybe two days a week on government work, and then just imagining being appointed to something that was touted as such an important part of an administration, thinking that the head guy would only be there, and he wasn't the only head guy, right,
there was another dude that was going to there were gonna be co heads or something, Vivik Rebmaswami. Yeah, And then they just splipped it and said, well, we like this other we like Elon's way better.
So per their official website, Doge's official website Doze dot gov, this initiative had already saved the United States hundreds of billions of dollars per them. But if you look at other government agencies gonna they're gonna tell you this has already cost Uncle Sam almost twenty two billion dollars. And then other analysts are gonna say doges actions will eventually cost this country as much as one hundred and thirty five billion bucks.
Well, that seems counter to the spirit of the initiative, doesn't it. Right. It's almost as though there were another reason to do the whole thing.
It's like starting a nonprofit called People for Cheese and our first thing is to eliminate all cheesemongers.
Let just get rid of the middle. Yeah, yeah, go straight.
Straight from the utter.
Guys, I'm looking at the DOGE website.
Exists. Yes, it is.
Just a weird little legs out of different tables, I guess, and you click on a couple of things around here.
It does Twitter speed.
Yeah, that's what it feels like. You can't join it, I guess. But it is weird to me that that exists. But the USDs dot gov also still exists. Note well, and now that we're gonna get to it, and I don't want to spoil too much, but DOGE had a limited time window that it was going to operate under, and we're still in that window. But for some reason, if you go to the USDs dot gov website, it's still You will find DOSEE references in there, but it's mostly back to USDs, which is weird.
Yeah, it might be kind of a grift under the maybe leadership of Musk Vivek Ramaswami and Amy Gleeson at various points, Gleason's the one you're going to hear the most directly attached to policy or action by Doge because Gleason reports to the Chief of Staff for the White House.
Doge got unprecedented access to sensitive information on individuals, on businesses, on government affairs, while also cutting tons and tons of funding, more money than we could ever imagine, cutting tons of funding to various existing government programs, as well as creating what they call deferred resignation.
Remember that one, right, that was the letters that were sick in the road working the road. And I gotta ask, where does big Balls fit into this ORG chart?
Oh?
Yeah, that was one of the kids, right mm hmm. I mean I believe he was kind of running the team that stormed into some government's offices and demanded all of these documents and access to terminals and sorry, terminals, what am I doing? In the fifties, very very raid like behavior. Folks were not giving the heads up. Heads of departments were not told what was going on, and it just felt very much like an invasion.
When many judges stopped specific actions from happening, or at least, you know, put out we're going to get into it. But there are several times there are attempted to be stopped. But then there were also secret actions taking place that we're going to talk about. Even when there was a stoppage, a federal judge said no, and they're like, OK, well.
You also can't stop what has already occurred. You can try to keep it from happening again, happening further. But a lot of these things were just such a swoop in, do the thing, the damage is done. Oh now the judge weighs in. If you don't really you know, pay attention or follow the orders of the judges, then it doesn't really have much effect.
And to be clear, obviously one of the most important things here is that we don't body shame. The guy's street name is big Balls, and it might be a medical condition.
It's more of an attitude.
You know, well, please get yourself checked, folks, is what say? Walk down the street for that one ballsy.
M down by your giant balls.
Oh jeez, tell me about it. I mean, this is divisive stuff. Right. It might surprise a lot of us outside of the United States to know that some people, a not insignificant portion of this country loved the idea of DOGE because it spoke directly to ongoing concerns. Right, the idea of big red tape, of massive bureaucracy, inefficient government. You're taking my money and you're wasting it. Why so if we could save the government and the taxpayer a bit of scratch, a bit of cheddar, why not tighten
the belt? So other people absolutely hate this idea, and they say, look, we're allowing a level of private involvement, influence, and interference into public institutions. This will bite us in the ass later. And now, as we record on February twentieth, twenty twenty six, we are officially at later the Yeah, officially ass bitten. Would Yeah, the leopards have eaten the face. Uh,
the ass has been didten. It's no surprise that a lot of these critics and even a few early supporters of DOGE have concluded it is less a government agency and more a conspiracy.
Oh for sure, let's not forget when this thing was initiated, the public statements were Doge is going to save the government two trillion dollars in spending, and that that goal went almost immediately down to one trillion, and then that got slashed down to one hundred and fifty billion.
Yeah.
Yeah, always start big, you know what I mean.
But it makes you, it makes you call into question what is this thing really for?
Right?
If it's not to save tremendous amounts of money on operating costs, and you know, government budgets, what are they actually doing.
They're trying to project twenty twenty five of five the government like.
Five to five.
That's nice.
Yeah, depending upon whom you ask, Doge is not a warm, fuzzy angel farts and Trumpet's good faith effort to clean up financial waste. There is one criticism we want to point out before we get to the crazy part, which is the following quote. Under the auspices of finding fraud, waste, and abuse, Doge has hurt the middle class, created chaos, and attempted to usurp Congress's power of the purse with illegal impoundments end quote. That quote is not from a
random podcast or person on the internet. That is from the House Committee on the Budget. The government itself does not like what the government itself is doing.
Yeah, or at least the new digital services. This thing is, let's do it.
Yeah. Okay, So what exactly is DOSE done? Why are so many people concerned? Perhaps most importantly, what's it really for? And what's it going to do in the future. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors and hope our bosses don't catch up with us before we
finish this episode. Here's where it gets crazy. Despite being around for a very short amount of time, DOGE has already created a massive amount of controversy tsunamis of controversy, some of which we talked about in earlier episodes, some of which we mentioned in Strange News. I'm thinking of usaid, Yeah.
That thing is weird, I think specifically for the show, because we understand the positives that something like the United States Agency Agency for International Development can do, right, we also know the pitfalls of that kind of money injection to other countries, especially when you are quietly involved in nation building and coups and things like that.
Well, let's also just point out too, that there is a lot of opportunity for waste abuse and fraud within these systems, which makes it such a solid cover story because who doesn't want to eliminate some of that stuff in bureaucracy and you know, to safeguard our tax dollars and make sure they're going to the right things and not being funneled into, you know, things that are a little more untoward.
Yeah, but there's you bring up a great point because there is an interesting disconnect, a little bit of a logical leap that the supporters of DOGE failed to clock when the big cuts happened to fundy. It is not as though you the individual get some kind of money back, right USA funding gets cut. It's not as though everybody in the United States gets a dollar thirty five back, you know.
That is what the DOGE website says. Though it's like this is the amount of money saved per American. So it makes makes you feel as though, oh, I might get that money back.
Wasn't there talk about issuing some kind of that was the tariffs, issuing a dividend?
Cheh.
A lot of talk about you know, getting.
Anything but Epstein, you know.
Did you guys see the news from the Supreme Court this morning on February twentieth, as we record the Supreme Court is basically shutting down his sweeping tariffs.
Oh well, I'm cool.
Yeah, Well, messing with the money and that's always going to be the third rail outside of the theater of culture, wars and politics.
We also mentioned enough of Mike this whole ten billion dollars to the Bureau of Peace or whatever it's called. Lit'll put a pin in that and save that for another time, but very interesting use of our tax dollars.
Yeah, Dylan. Dylan notes that there was a several thousand and five thousand dollars DOGE refund that was like discussed several.
Times, discussed, discussed, Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, oh yeah, we're gonna do this for sure.
I love discussing stuff because it's different. It's just close enough to doing stuff.
Yeah, we have an idea of a concept of a.
Concept of an idea concept.
It's actually it's funny you say that, guys, because I was talking to our pal friend of the show, Josh Clark about a potential collaboration as we're out in the field and broad uh, and he said that sounds cool. What are you thinking. I said, I don't know. I think we should hang out. And he said so you don't have a plan, and I said, we got the concept of a plan, so you need Yeah. But the thing is, we're talking about podcasting and doing fun shows
to entertain and educate. These folks are talking about billions of dollars and they are putting lives on the line. USAID. USAID was always targeted by Musk and the Doge folks at all. For a while, Musk repeatedly stated on his favorite social media platform that too much of the USAID budget was either misappropriated through fraud or they weren't putting the money in the right place. They were misprioritizing stuff.
Up until Doge, USAID had like fourteen thousand full time employees, and now it's looking more like maybe three hundred, depending on all the court stuff works out.
I think the part that really stuck with me too about this was the food aid that was not distributed right, that literally just sat in a warehouse to rhyme. So it just seems like cruelty is at the heart of a lot of that stuff, and not actual savings. Because the money's been spent, why wouldn't I just distribute it to the people who need it as opposed to like throwing it in the fire.
I'm so glad you brought that up, because, like we're saying on Strange News, when we first talked about that food waste, it's it's just unclean. You're right, it's a sunk cost. The food was already purchased, the food on expiration date. The only real cost would have been transportation and logistics, which already had a paid contract. Right, So what are we saving. We're not saving people. We're definitely not helping folks.
Let's send a message too that we that we don't want to help folks, that we're trying to have much more of an isolationist kind of approach.
It's also tremendously I was just gonna say, upsetting when you think about this forty billion dollars being targeted as the thing that's wasteful when everybody in the in that world knows that it's the Department of Defense and the military industrial congressional complex that is the thing that loses.
As we've talked about on this show, palettes of billions of US dollars that loses, you know, who knows how much to black budgets that just goes away, Money that goes away that isn't officially appropriated, that doesn't officially exist. We know this is just a fact, and it's so much more than forty billion dollars.
There was a story recently about a lot of military equipment that was just languishing in a warehouse and never opened, or something along those lines. It might be crossing some wires there, but stuff like that happens. Remember the electric coffee mugs, that whole sugarfuffle, toilet seats, the hammers. How much will Pentagon pay for one? Yeah, the pork barrel spending is true. The stereotypes about high level American financial corruption are true. These are not made up tall tales.
But we have to remember USAID, despite some of their spooky doopy affiliations at times, this was the world's largest foreign aid agency. It fed and clothed children, It funded education, It helped people learn to read, It helped small businesses. It genuinely made the US look a little bit better in the global sphere. And the current administration via doge
as well. Even pre Doge, the current administration, for some unknowable reason, wanted to hamstring USAID, so Doze was an easy way to directly attack this current administration cut eighty three percent of the existing USAID contracts, and then they moved them under the State Department, which is kind of like this sabitat.
That's what they did.
Yeah, they did. I like what you're saying, there been because in my mind, this is one of the only real open hand movements or or appendages that the US government had for a while there the whole like, here's some here's some goodwill right to anybody else outside of the US, we will we will send you our help.
Right like the hospital boats kind of. Yeah, you don't have to take a pledge of allegiance to the United States. You don't have to agree with ideology. We just want to feed your kids.
And install a couple of spies. That's it. That's one.
There's like one. I T guy, Okay, yeah, yeah, and office is you know Steve. Yeah, Steve is a legend. And congrats on the promotion, Steve. Uh yeah, it's it's soft powers. It's a weird thing to cut to your earlier point there, guys. We also know this occurs in step with the federal firings. You can hold them deferred resignations if you like, folks, But they were firing people. They were offering to buy out federal employees. This was in the headlines. This was blamed on Doge, but it
actually came from the Office of Personnel Management the OPM. Still, I think Doge was running point there, especially with things like musks fork in the Road email where he said what he gave people. We had a lot of you folks right into us about this. We have a lot of government employees in the crowd. There was such a limited time window, remember you guys, where they were like, justify your job, do the following things. Do it by
you know, Tuesday or whatever. Because we're cleaning up the house, were dreaming, well.
It's all such a you know, classic Silicon Valley hatchet man kind of behavior. You know, like when Musk, you know, took over Twitter and came into the office holding the what was it, the sink, right, Yeah, it's that kind of stuff. These letters with this kind of fork in the Road language is sort of like ultimatums. It is very Silicon Valley coded.
The weird thing about it, I think in the moment when we were all going through that and reading it, we were doing some reading of the tea leaves. We're you know, trying to understand the message behind the message, and in that moment it did feel like a loyalty test of some sort, especially because of what else was happening in the news at the time, like to all of a sudden, get this, Hey, you can get out now if you want to, cause we're we're doing new things.
That's while the Department of Defense, the Defense Department is turning into the Department of War. That's when there's all kinds of peat exists stuff happening in the news, and it just looks I would say, the optics of the administration where that we're changing things around here, and if you want to get out, here is here's our little rights offering or.
Side a loyalty statement just so we know you're down to clown. This was also coupled with a lot of cryptic stream of consciousness post and statements by Musk himself. There was one on uh, want to say, December seventh, I can't remember exactly which year, but said, we have to make sure that civilization takes the path most likely to pass the Fermi Great filters.
From some sci fi series. Yes, okay, y, yeah, it's the idea that.
Civilization the reason humans have yet to meet extra terrestrial civilizations is because there is a series of predictable nigh inescapable factors, or filters that prevent those civilizations from expanding past a certain threshold. Actually, also, Musk said that Doge had to exist so he could go forward with the Mars colony. This guy was just like spitballing. He's got he must have an amazing writer's room. I don't know.
We also way out to me. Oh by time, he's also done with Mars. Now he's fine.
The Moon guy down, the Moon guy, he's a lunatic. Now that's funny for the etymology mark, Thank you, sir. So. The current administration said about seventy five thousand employees took this offer before it closed down, before that time window collapsed on February twelfth, twenty twenty six. That's roughly four percent of the federal workforce. Doesn't sound that big, right,
four percent? Maybe not that big in the ratio numbers, but it's gonna have a serious impact on the day to day life of people who live in this country.
Let's talk about the day to day life of federal workers. Do you remember the thing that came after the Fork in the Road email. It was the thing about, hey, every week, we need you to send an email to the Department of Personnel Management and you need to put five things you accomplished this week in that email to justify your job. And they said it was because they were trying to identify federal workers that didn't exist but were still on a payroll somewhere.
So much talk of that.
Not only that, but in like social Security checks going to deceased people.
Which has happened, but just not as often as it's used to dog whistles. So yeah, the federal employees did have to write to the Office of Personnel Management OPM and say like, here, my five good boy things.
But doesn't it make you think a little bit about I was just gonna say spies, but people who work in intelligence that aren't officially listed as let's say, a member of the FBI or an agent somewhere in the CIA. But you wanted to have somebody that could function and travel and go places, you could put them I don't know in any governmental department, even those if you wanted to, but just give them a paycheck. They're a part of that thing. But really they're working for you know somebody.
I also my immediate question. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. When you have to list the five things, could you list responding to the email as one of those five things that gets you a four.
We've all had to do employee self evaluations. They're all they're so silly. You have to just it's such a reach. Most of the time you even have to couch it in terms of like things that can be verified or that can be measured, and it can often seem like such a such a chore. You know, I am so on board with you in that one. Uh, maybe I've been a little bit too fast and loose with some of that bureaucracy here in.
Our own corporate empire. Noel Matt Dillon. I started out a self review not too long ago saying this year was a wild vibe for a conspiracy show. I think we are doing good. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely no shortage of topics.
Yeah, but it is a weird thing too, especially when you are kind of tattling on yourself or trying to be honest about how well you have performed or how well the thing you're creating performed. That's a weird Oh, that's a weird thing to do to somebody.
Let's do it this way. Okay, guys, assuming the world doesn't burned down by the next time we have to do those self reviews. Can we in our goals and milestones? Can we all put complete did this self review as one of the things.
I'm not doing it, man, I'm too scared.
We've even been like, you know, kind of counseled by our you know, our direct reports on the kind of ways that you should word these things, you know, in order to make them quote unquote achievable or measurable. So all it's such an odd, bureaucratic little device.
You know, one time I jazzed a little bit too much and I got a text from our top breast that just said, come on, man, you.
Got kicked back.
Anyway, So we know that labor unions are part of the federal workforce here, and they fought tooth and nail, hooked, tentacle and claw to stop these deferred resignation initiatives in the courts, but in the end all they got was a brief pause. Basically, they got a time out. They didn't get the problem solved. And opponents argue that it's not even guaranteed that the federal employees who did take
deferred resignation are actually going to get their payouts. It's strangely similar to during the pandemic lockdown, notable US airlines started offering their employees buyout packages, but they paid immediately once you signed. That doesn't appear to be the case with.
DOGE now, at least according to Gosh. There was a review by NPR that you can find by checking out All Things Considered, and it was dude, this was completed in April twenty eighth of last year, twenty twenty five. Just it's titled what has DOGE done in Trump's First one hundred Days? So that's just way back then. But they were immediately in already finding that people were not actually getting payouts from any of the things that were
happening and the incentives that were being pushed forward. And then you look at reviews and updates from like November of twenty twenty five, and it's still seems like some of that stuff was vaporware.
Definitely, And I think vaporware is a great word for it, because you're running out the clock on the headlines, right on the Zeitgeist on that limited attention span. We don't have official confirmation yet even in twenty twenty six on how many workers have been fired or you know, iced, in total, but the latest figures available are something like two hundred and twenty thousand federal workers. This is pretty nuts. I guess you could say there's another there's another win
for Doge, which gets into our conspiracy theory here. If we're all comfortable eliminating those pesky rats at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, what a bunch of buzzkills, what a bunch of fun police. The CFPB doesn't want you to party, say the billionaires.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau boo. Wait wait wait, I'm a consumer. I consume things are going to protect my financials.
As a bureau, I don't know. I think it's a terrible idea, say the billionaires. This officially comes from a guy who was in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vaught, back in twenty twenty five. Vough, in his professional role, instructed ol CFPB employees to stop performing quote any work task, just a stop doing stuff.
Everybody, stop stop working, but also get back to the office.
Right, stop working.
Get back to the office.
Make sure you look busy when our bosses dropped by. Yeah, but otherwise, you know, f you to the fullest.
We know there aren't enough computers, we know the WiFi has down for at least two weeks. Just get back to the office and stop working.
We have an open door policy, by which we mean the door is open and you should leave. That is how they treated the people here. The bureau does have a weird financial thing. To be fair, It's money comes from the Federal Reserve, not from a specific congressional decision or appropriation. But Vought said, also, we're just not going to fund it. Stop everybody, stop working. We're not going to fund this thing anymore. And critics immediately, I think
this goes to our larger thesis here. Critics immediately said, this is not about government efficiency, right. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an a political good thing for people who live in the United States. Noted that the CFPV had a couple of looming investigations into the businesses of Ela Musk stuff like X, stuff like Tesla, stuff like a third example.
Speaking of a third example, I'm trying to figure out, actually what in the hell they do at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I'm heading over to Consumer Finance dot gov and it says they aim to make consumer financial markets work for consumers, responsible providers, and the overall economy.
Their hound dogs, dude, they they hunt for financial shenanigans. Oh really, that's their job. Yeah, they're supposed to. They're supposed to identify institutions or businesses that have defrauded the average person. So presatory lending practices or RELs fargo maybe.
Yeah, hidden fees, things like that, but also so private corporations also as like how what they do to their customers. I wonder how much they look at contracts and stuff like that that come down from the government. So, okay, it feels like a good thing, feels like a really good thing.
It is a I think it is a good thing. They've been persistently Look, this is a relatively new thing, a relatively new organization I think was twenty eleven maybe, And ever since the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created, it has been persecuted by lobbyists in the financial sector, like, come on, man, why you're stressing me people over get overdraft fees. That's that's not my bad. Why are you
being weird about it fun police. So it is no surprise that the CFPB was targeted, probably at the direction of DOGE. We know that there are some serious issues of conflict of interest of access. This occurred in step with the social media platform X formerly Twitter, announcing plans for a mobile payment service. It's going to be called an X money account, according to MPR. And I think
we all saw this. If this went through and the CFPB was still a thing, then it would have had oversight on how this new digital payment system worked.
Oh my goodness. Yeah, huh so, okay, we see you. We see what you're doing here. I'm looking at a thing on Consumer Finance dot gov from the Council of Economic Advisors, you guys, and it's doing this thing, Ben, it's trying to estimate exactly how much the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to cost Americans and how much
it's already cost since twenty eleven. You know. It puts it up in like the three hundred and fifty billion dollar range, which you can you can understand why you could justify that as a target to go after to reduce spending.
Right, Yes, of course, if your.
Goal is to take away some of those safeguards that the US people have against you know, moves corporations are going to make, or the government itself.
All these regulations. Man, it reminds me of years ago. Some of us in the crowd may be old enough to remember this. Years ago, there were so many weird loopholes in the laws of Georgia and regulations. There was,
in fact, an exception for seat belts. You have to wear a seat belt right if you're in a car and a vehicle, except for a while in Georgia, you did not have to wear a seat belt in a pickup truck because one of the members of our state's political class had a pickup truck and hated wearing seat belts.
I thought it was curious that there are no seat builts on school buses.
But that I thought about that too. Yeah, that's a good point. Oh, let's pause for a word from our sponsor and get to one of the biggest things which informs our conspiracy. Tonight, we're back the Treasury Department, all right, The Treasury Department is a conspiracy in itself. Check out our earlier episodes. Doge gained access to Treasury Department databases
and files. The big question is how individualized that data was, so like, do they, for instance, have Noel Brown's Social Security number and all his W two's or what have you know? All his charitable contributions? Do they know the spending history of Dylan tennessee pal Fagan. They're very strict disclosure rules about this kind of stuff. Really, it's like ken Elon Musk, Now see my tax returns.
This is tough because we we kind of don't know right right, and we've gotten mixed signals from news organizations because a lot of people just weren't talking. There were some whistleblowers though, that came forward to talk about what all they were getting access to. And weirdly enough, even even back in April of last year, the is it
the Oversight Committee? The House Oversight Committee was putting forward and it is partisan, so it's like the Democratic side of that committee was putting forward the concept that Doge had access to way more than we were being told. I guess we'll get into it. Maybe we'll put the seed here. This is where that House Oversite Committee is where you get this concept that there is potentially a secret list and what would you guys call a data
set of all Americans stuff all of our private information. Yes, that sounds creepy, but it also sounds like maybe why this thing was created in the first place.
Right, Yeah, a bit of a false flag, you know, it's the the question is is it the wolf of big data aggregation wearing the sheep's wool of financial conservation convoluted? But we got there another thing. That another thing that folks are accusing Doze of. And to your point, Matt, these accusations are coming from inside the house. These are other members of the government and the political class, Pauli Malarkey.
So one of the big concerns is that Doge may have gained access to something that honestly I had never heard about before. The Integrated Data Retrieval System IDRS. That's your treasure trove, right, that's your Aladdin's cavern with all the goodies and the bobbles. So this place I DRS includes very detailed financial information about every single person who pays taxes in the United States, every single business, every
single nonprofit again a Laddin's cavern. No one thing should have all of this information of what's yep.
And the scariest thing I think about that having access to that is that we know there were certain employees within DOGE that were uploading mass quantities of that data onto services like cloud flare and cloud services that should not have this sensitive materials on though, no matter how secure you think they are, the government has very specific, rigorous security protocols for that kind of sensitive data.
We would like to think at the very least, I mean talk about the ultimate data leak, you know, I mean, this is this would be the big one.
Also again to that wolf Sheep's wool thing, this had the petita of updating information technology, of modernizing tech. But we have to remember, and we've said this before in previous episodes, there is a series of very valid reasons that your government has dumb technology for some things.
It makes so much sense, Ben, can you just tell us a little more about that, like why, I mean, I think I understand, but it would be good to get another understanding.
Right, Okay, So we are let's say the five of us you listening along home. Let's say we're all hanging out and we're in charge of nuclear weapons, and it takes the five of us to agree whenever we are going to fire a puppy hug into Iran, Right, or earlier it's a new missile. We're working on the puppy hug. So okay, So if technology is modernized, we could agree on the cloud. Right. The old school stuff means that you don't touch the Internet in those kind of decisions
you get together in your weird, creepy rooms. You might have a secure A to B conversation platform of some sort, but it doesn't touch the Internet, and then all five of us will say, okay.
Inserting my key.
We got to turn key three two one, go crack the code, read the code to each other, like physically written down on paper, analog style.
So I hope that answers the question those That's one example of why technology is purposely nerved in some parts of government, and it should be. Unfortunately it has.
To be same with voting systems. Right.
It makes so much sense to me when you consider someone could take an action from any terminal, any you know, machine that has access to the Internet and then steal things from a machine that is also like, has access to the Internet. You can't do it. It could happen. In this case. When you're describing ben you have to go to a specific sub basement level four to access the filing the physical file records where the Social Security Administration keeps all this stuff, which is not how they
do it. But if it were that way, right, you could you could put a ton of security on that building and people aren't getting in and they're definitely not getting out with mass quantities of you know, physical paper.
Unless you like uploaded it to cloud flare, right.
Right exactly, unless you bypass that air gap, you know. Uh, that's so that's the issue. And Washing Post had some great reporting on this as well as in PR. They said, this system allows you to access IRS records, which include stuff like your Social Security number, stuff like your bank account information. This was per the administration. This was legally done and with the appropriate security clearances because we have to bring efficiency to the FED, and also we want
all of your info. All of your data are belonged to us. I mean, what me worrying?
Gosh?
Man? Yes, sorry, I got back into Mad magazine pretty hard. Remember that guy.
The term that NPR used back in April to describe it as personal dossiers on every American citizen and non citizen that is within the United State.
Record, your permanent record. Turns out that old grade school conspiracy was true, but not in the way we thought. And but wait, there's more conflicts of interest. Guys, We've got to talk about this one a little bit. How do we respond? I don't want to tip the scale, hero, I want to hear from guys. How do we respond to the accusations or speculation that Elon Musk could have been spearheading Doge for ulterior motives?
No? What, I don't believe it?
Okay, that says no.
Look, just because a guy gives two undred ninety million dollars to some dude to run for president doesn't mean there's going to be a conflict of interest. Who cares if he's got government contracts with two count of two separate private entities that are now all becoming one weird conglomerate thing called X.
I think the Fox has some great ideas about henhouse design and we should listen to them.
Let's remove the doors, no more chicken wire, open door policy.
So I mean, yeah, it's got to be a conflict of interest.
Right.
Logically we're not saying this is definitely happening, But logically it is naive to assume that it is not happening.
It just seems so utterly clear that it is.
I mean, you wanta you wanta cut regulations? U. We see that happening now. It's happening in the automotive industry quite recently, by the way.
Uh.
We see budget cuts, we see targeting of agencies that have previously investigated elon musk business dealings, rollback.
Of environmental regulations that directly impact positively, you know, big energy companies.
Yeah. You ever walk outside in the forest and you think this place?
Yes, I wish I wish about a dozen technogarks would come out here, that's all. And I don't know tech, but did I wish they come out here really beautify this place and make it more efficient?
Plopped some data centers on these redwoods?
And thanks for the beet, Dylan. Sorry, I got a little irritated with this word.
Yeah, you're you're right.
Guys like walk into a forest and then say, what if you had to subscribe to each of these trees?
That's great? But no, I mean, we let's think about it.
Let's go quickly just on data centers and weird stuff going on. I can't remember what episode it was I mentioned that I'm seeing some weird stuff going on with detention centers out where I am. Guys, about thirteen miles from I am, there is another warehouse really close to where I live that has been vacant for about a year and looks like it was at least sold or least to someone. But I went to the assessor's office,
I can't find any information about it. I'm genuinely interested in this, and I'm trying to do the you know, the correct avenues to find stuff. Yeah, it's another one of these million square foot warehouses. I'm serious, million square foot warehouses that is just empty. But they're changing the outside of it right now, and it sure looks like it could be used as either a data center or one.
Of these detention centers.
Okay, it's like right down the road for me.
It's freaking out.
Let's go, let's go visit. I don't know if they can't stop us from like being on a public.
Road, we could just be British. Oh yeah, like a tool.
Like sure, come on in, just end every sentence, within't it. Yeah, they've got a big warehouse, isn't it. So there's a lot of stuff happening. There are a lot of legal actions being taken against dose. So many what. I don't know how far we want to get into this, but there was a class action lawsuit filed in February of last year, twenty twenty five, almost exactly a year ago today.
The lawsuit said, Hey, these Doge boys, big Balls, Musk and so on, they improperly accessed personal data, financial data from federal databases and they didn't have any legal reasoning. They didn't have a green light. There are more privacy and data security lawsuits, constitutional challenges, allegations of violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act FACA. We are drowning in acronyms today. Guys. I hate how the government does this. Why is there an initialism for everything?
Efficiency? Efficiency?
Yeah, but it's also just to make the whole thing seem so complicated. We were looking at that initial order that was put forward by the Trump administration establishing and implementing the President's Department of Government Efficiency, And if you just look through that pretty simple like two pager on this new thing called Doge, but you look at the
way there's so many acronyms in there. There's so many things that are being talked about, and then the way they're being talked about, it just feels confusing, and it's such legal speak, you know. I think so often that occurs, so that it just becomes boring and you tune out. Ben you've said that before on purpose, like it's meant to make you tune out.
Yes, yeah, you are meant to be bored. You are meant to stop doing difficult reading about numbers and acronyms and so on, and go over to your dopamine casino right.
Needle in the haystack. Effect of all of it, like not to mention the Epstein files, I mean so many things that you're just have all this data dumped on you where maybe there's something of interest or of value hidden in there, but unless you are really, really, really diligent, they never gonna find it, and you will likely just get bored and give up.
Some of the Epstein files. Of course, you add a little a couple buckets of trauma and you know horrific details in there, which further makes it you want to look away even more.
Mmmm. Yeah, that's a great point. I've got. I've got a question, uh for us all have you guys been to Fort Knox yet?
I have not.
Oh, it's been on a list before, and I was near there, but I never got to go in.
Ben I didn't. Well, it depends on what we mean by in, but.
I wanted to get in.
Oh, I get in Baby, Let me.
Bond movie A knock.
Well, there's this longstanding conspiracy theory in the United States that you'll find in any number of uh folklore branches right of conspiracy, which is that Fort Knox doesn't actually have any gold in the vault, and that it is just a tall tale that Uncle Sam has told other countries so that it looks more wealthy than it is.
Yeah, so we can hide all the alien bodies there. Duh.
Right.
It's so weird that in step of the birth of Doge, Musk brought up this conspiracy theory. Who was replying to a post from a senator named Mike Lee out of Utah, and Senator Lee said, I was I'm a senator. I was not able to enter Fort Knox. Why are they denying access? Musk loved this, and he said, who's confirming the gold wasn't stolen from Fort Knox? Maybe it's there, Maybe it's not. That gold is owned by the American public. We want to know if it's still there. So on
top of all the other things. This guy just added the Fort Knox conspiracy.
Dude, isn't funny? I think, yes, we'll go check for you, mister Musk. The weirdest thing is this all, this thing, this doge concept is pulling away the facade that presidents and senators used to always talk about. You know, you wouldn't say anything bad about Fort Knox and the gold supply on purpose because we have to pretend. We all have to pretend or this whole thing falls apart. The US is extremely wealthy, and yeah, a ton of it's in Fort Knox and it's great. And also we don't
spend too much money. We make so much money, it's incredible. But then you look at how some of these things, these pillars are just being yanked away. It just makes you wonder why.
It does make one wonder. Also side note, just to be objective, folks, you cannot visit the vaults at Fort Knox. You can go on the base depending on your circumstances. You can walk around depending on your circumstances, but you cannot go it. It's kind of like the It's kind of like that church in Ethiopia that apparently houses the arc of the Covenant. You can walk around it, you could talk to people outside all the livelong day, but
you cannot enter. I don't know. It's strange because we have a billion, perhaps a trillion dollar question here what happens next answer is, we don't know, but we do know. They're very disturbing signals from the halls of power. There is clear internal descent which should not be occurring in the way it's occurring now. It seems like a heist. It seems like Doge is a heist. It seems like it's kind of not very well thought out organized crime,
right like Hamstring. The coppers who are coming to get me also give me leverage for future stuff and swindle the American people think about the consequences later. I don't know.
Zabarra, I agree. There might be something even more insidious here in a connection to the Department of Homeland Security coming out of this NPR article, I'm just gonna read these two sentences. The access Doge had is also being used to further the administration's immigration policies. The Department of Homeland Security announced last week that Doge helped overhaul an immigration database to serve as a quote single reliable source for verifying non citizen status nationwide.
Yeah right, So if.
You get access to all that that information that not one group is supposed to have access to all of it, then you can decide who is okay and who is not okay according to the administration.
Yes.
The other weird thing to me is that DOGE only had until July fourth this year, twenty twenty six to a comp all of its goals, but already in November of last year, twenty twenty five, they've already seemed to have dissolved, as though dose doesn't actually exist anymore, at least according to Reuter's.
Well, let's mission accomplished though, Man, Yeah, you know.
But so that mission was save you know, one hundred and fifty to two hundred billion dollars in operating costs and then make these lists.
That was, well, we were told the mission was, but I do not believe that was in fact the actual mission.
I agree with you, Noel. The part of the mission was to appear to be doing those good faith things right, but the real mission again seems to be on the level of not super well thought out organized crime. The heist doesn't need to continue after you leave the bank, you know what I mean. For instance, if we are bank robbers and we dress in cool costumes, what's a costume? Somebody give me at.
A stripey you burglar outfit and that's that bag man right there.
All right, So we've got we've got our outfits on. We rob the bank, we get away. We're probably not going to wear those costumes for the rest of our lives. The heist is over, you know what I mean. It's on to the next score unless.
You build a back door to the bank and that allows you to continue to heist over the time, right, I don't know.
I mean, Look, there's so much more to explore here, folks. We cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much for tuning in. Tell us what is the stuff they don't want you to know about Doge and what happens next? Please find us on the lines, give us a call on a phone, or shoot us an email in the dark.
If you are on the lines, you can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social media platform of choice. And there's more, Yes, there is.
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