As we prepare for yet another icy blast this week (c’mon, my bones and joints can’t take much more of this … and as I prepare this for the blog Tuesday afternoon, I hear icy rain hitting the windows … sigh), my mind goes to fact-checking once again. I’d remind that Punxsutawney Phil is not a meteorologist; he’s a pudgy rodent. There will always be six weeks more of winter whether or not he sees his shadow, at least according to the calendar. Winter weather, on the other hand, can be unpredictable, especially lately; I have friends in Louisiana who were not amused by its recent snow. I put far more confidence behind meteorologists than a groundhog.

And why is that? Training and years of study and actual work in the field makes them experts. You wouldn’t ask a plumber for medical advice. You certainly shouldn’t ask tech bros for advice on how to make government more efficient, especially when they’re led by an insecure and immature performative “genius,” since apparently their answer is to slash and burn, get rid of all experts, and spread as much misinformation as possible.

Some people have accused those who have expressed concern, even outrage, at the activities of Elon Musk and his young assistants, or about the thousands of fired federal employees (especially those from the FBI and National Park Service) of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). I’ve seen commentary that says Democrats are painting him as a Bond villain as part of that TDS; I’m not a Democrat, but I’d say he’s much closer to Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies, but with just enough pull/bullying power to actually break something (we saw what he did with Twitter), possibly irreparably.

However, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, reportedly named after the meme dog because I guess Musk thinks it makes him cool, so it’s really a backronym, an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words) does not have the authority or the expertise to perform audits (that’s usually done by actual auditors and inspectors general, many of whom have been fired) or cut spending (that’s Congress’ job; appropriations are their constitutional responsibility, and they thus hold the power of the purse), and indeed, they’re not doing actual audits, which any government agency needs and should welcome. Proper audits take time and specialized knowledge, provide transparency and accountability, and don’t require access to the sort of data (private financial information of taxpayers, among other things) that have been reportedly accessed by Musk’s team.

(And now the White House is claiming, in response to a lawsuit, that Musk doesn’t lead DOGE. Seriously. Maybe that’s to get around ethics complaints, since there are clear conflicts of interest since he’s a government contractor who stands to benefit.)

The Treasury Department office of the inspector general has now launched an actual audit of the security controls of the government’s payment system, according to The Associated Press (which, along with having its own reporters and editors, also distributes news stories from newspapers, radio and television stations across the country; pooh on the idea that it’s a liberal cesspool, as by itself it’s almost dead center on the bias spectrum, but adding all those other media sources all over the map doesn’t move it much one way or the other). “The audit will also review the past two years of the system’s transactions as it relates to Musk’s assertion of ‘alleged fraudulent payments,’ according to a letter from Loren J. Sciurba, Treasury’s deputy inspector general, that was obtained by The Associated Press.”

Such allegations should indeed be checked; let’s hope he doesn’t fire them. Many claims already have been investigated by fact-checkers, who’ve found that many of the allegations removed context, mislaid “blame” for certain programs, and used the term “fraud” rather than “waste” or “abuse” when the words are not interchangeable.

According to the Government Accountability Office (one of those places actually expert in auditing), waste is “using or expending resources carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.” Abuse is “behavior that is deficient or improper.” Fraud “involves obtaining something of value through willful misrepresentation.”

David M. Walker, who serves on the federal government’s Defense Business Board, which advises the Defense Department on business management, told PBS NewsHour, “Fraud is a very high legal standard.” To qualify as fraud, an activity has to be illegal with evidence of intent, which is “the most difficult thing to prove,” he said.

Willful misrepresentation could easily be claimed of Musk and his team’s actions and those excusing it. The AP reported: “The Treasury Department provided conflicting information about DOGE’s access to the payment system. Initially, it claimed the access was read only, only to then acknowledge that a DOGE team member briefly had the ability to edit code, and then to say in an employee-sworn statement that the ability to edit was granted by accident.”

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Jack Reed sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, reported AP, saying, “Your lack of candor about these events is deeply troubling given the threats to the economy and the public from DOGE’s meddling, and you need to provide a clear, complete, and public accounting of who accessed the systems, what they were doing, and why they were doing it.” 

It’s not just Democrats who are up in arms, but independents, moderates and some Republicans are unhappy with what he’s been up to on Capitol Hill (I’m not seeing a lot of major Republicans on the national stage admitting that other than anonymously, but I’ve seen several local Republican friends post about their disapproval on social media, including one I never thought would become anti-Trump in any way). Some of that is likely due to the ham-handed way DOGE has gone about things, but the blatant misinformation spread by Musk and others probably has a lot to do with it as well.

Among the claims related to USAID, the allegation that the U.S. was sending $50 million worth of condoms to the Gaza Strip was found by multiple fact-checkers to be false (the BBC found an $83.5 million program in Gaza, Mozambique, for “prevention, care, support and treatment interventions within HIV and TB facilities and communities,” but none of that was used for condoms, according to the granting agency, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation).

The BBC found that in the 2023 fiscal year, $60.8 million was sent around the world for family planning programs, with about $7 million in condoms, but none for the Gaza Strip.

In the “cursory” examination of Social Security data, Musk talked of “crazy things” that had been found: “We’ve got people in there that are 150 years old,” Musk said Feb. 11. “Now, do you know anyone who’s 150? I don’t, OK. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. … I think they’re probably dead, is my guess, or they should be very famous, one of the two.”

Except the oldest living person in the U.S. is about 114. So why would there be 150-year-olds showing up? Most likely because of archaic computer code that the young tech bros have never heard of.

Louis Jacobsen of the Poynter Institute and PolitiFact reported that experts on Social Security he and others contacted said the size and complexity of the Social Security database may have led to peculiar coding unique to that database. A social media theory has also gained attention, and the experts agreed that it was plausible.

“Under an international standard called ISO 8601,” Jacobsen wrote, “a missing value for a date is coded as May 20, 1875, because that was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the ‘Convention du Mètre.’ For that reason, under some coding systems, a missing value for a date will default to 1875 — which in the year 2025 produces a round figure of 150.

“’Some people, particularly some immigrants, really don’t know their exact birthday, so there would have to be some alternative means of verification,’ said C. Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute, a think tank, and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department during the Reagan administration.

“Another possibility is that a beneficiary’s record in the system may have multiple fields for birth dates, one of which is missing data because it’s not needed for calculations.

“’Some records may have missing codes, while others may have conflicting information on age or date of birth, so the staff would have created queries to determine which fields are actually used,’ J. Michael Collins, a University of Wisconsin professor of public affairs, said.”

That doesn’t mean that overpayments aren’t a problem, because they are. But in trying to make people believe that perhaps people are defrauding Social Security by pretending to be 150 (why??), Musk deflects from the real problem, which has been noted many times over the years, wrote Jacobsen. “The Social Security Advisory Board, a group of outside experts, has regularly issued bipartisan recommendations to improve the agency’s accuracy record for payments, such as shifting death data collection to the Treasury Department.”

Claims about USAID funding a DEI musical in Ireland, a transgender opera in Colombia and a transgender comic book in Peru were found by AP to have been made instead by the State Department’s Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and that the White House’s descriptions weren’t quite accurate. (Shocking, I know!)

Rachel Bonnifield, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said of the misleading information being put out, “I would hope everybody could hew back to the facts, which are publicly available, and we can have a good-faith discussion about what USAID should and should not be doing based on those.”

Good advice regarding any government agency, and that includes unofficial ones like DOGE. Expressing concern over DOGE’s actions, especially regarding the lack of transparency, and firings and spending cuts it really has no authority to do, isn’t a sign of TDS. It’s a sign we’re paying attention.

No matter what claims are made, or by whom, we should always be wary, especially if no evidence is offered (a list without context is not evidence). Facts are what should guide us, not misinformation meant to distract from real issues or present a false narrative.

Yes, politics infects everything, but reality isn’t partisan. It’s a shame than politics has made so many lose touch with reality, where facts matter.