Vivek Ramaswamy and I share close personal friends.  I happened to have had dinner with a few of them the other day, and we had an excellent talk about D.O.G.E., this new Department of Government Efficiency, and what it was that would make it successful as opposed to every other attempt in history to reign in government overreach and waste at the expense of taxpayer budgets.  We also talked about their appearance in Time Magazine, a special commemorative to President Trump.  From my own experience, I have been pointing out government waste for a few decades now.  To take on a job like this, you have to have independent wealth to a certain extent.  Suppose you are making money off the system. In that case, it is nearly impossible to reform the system, and most of the political figures that have come and gone through the Washington D.C. culture may have had a lot of money, but they aren’t independently wealthy.  To manage something or to reform it, you can’t be a desperate fool trying to rub two dimes together that you found in a couch to make a penny.  You need to be able to insulate yourself to have objective thought.  That is what makes Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk unique at this point in history; they are independently wealthy.  Trump is independently wealthy.  Most people joining Trump at the White House are independently wealthy, and Democrats have taken notice.  They have an unnatural hatred of wealth which is part of the problem.  At the heart of all government waste are these anti-capitalist, money-hating unions that have a side story of collapsing the entire economic system of the United States, and that is certainly the philosophy behind the labor movement, which is at the heart of the problem.  So I was talking about this issue at a nice, intimate dinner, and I can just tell everybody, this D.O.G.E. thing won’t be like anything else ever done or attempted before.  And, it could only happen because of the independent wealth of the leadership.  Because to do the job correctly, you have to have the objectivity to avoid the face up against the glass perspective that most in government always have.  And solve the problem for good.   I know from personal experience that Vivek Ramaswamy is one of the few who are qualified and able to perform the task.

Of course, I’ve been involved in the background many times to try something like this D.O.G.E., such as SB5 back in 2012, where there was an effort to make public sector unions illegal in Ohio.  This has been a problem for a long time; unions are attached to government labor because you can’t have any meaningful discussions about budget reform with radical left-winged unions running the budgets.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a public school or the FBI.  Too many government agencies are locked in place, and too many labor unions pay people too much to work too little.  So, taking that problem on involves many people who make money off the chaos, including many politicians who built that system.  Many became very rich from insider trading, so once everyone drinks from that cup of corruption, there is no going back, and things get out of control.  The SB5 effort failed for many reasons, but it came down to independent wealth.  Too many people involved in the reform were in their key income-making years and could not be objective about the necessity of government operations.  They feared not making their own money out of that process, so they were too weak to perform the task when the rubber hit the road.

The Tea Party effort tried to work with the system for many years, but the SWAMP was deep, and the alligators and pythons wanted to eat you every time you tried to pull the plug, so they were very vicious.  That means you can’t be a swamp creature and still drain that swamp so that we can make something much better.  I remember when I first met Vivek Ramaswamy through the friends mentioned and others, and we talked about where he was in life.  I understood, and he asked me if I wanted a picture with him while we were talking.  I felt strange about it; I’m not the kind who does that very much.  But looking back on it, it was one of those pinnacle moments.  A year later, I had him sign a copy of his book Woke Inc. because I felt he was on to something unique and special.  He wrote in front of my book, “Speak Freely,” because at that time, he didn’t know what he was going to do.  Maybe he would be a senator or the President, but he would use his independent wealth to try and give something back and fix this government waste problem.  He understood that the way to do that was not to attack the problem where it was most potent, but in other ways, such as through free speech, so he wrote what he did in my book.  Vivek Ramaswamy had earned the ability to criticize the system through his private wealth because he wasn’t dependent on it for his livelihood. 

Ironically, that is precisely where Elon Musk is in his life.  What good is being the wealthiest person in the world if the world is declining in value?  It’s not the stuff you can buy, but it’s what the stuff is worth that matters.  And how D.O.G.E. will work was outlined in Vivek’s books.  I saw this early on and have been very excited about that approach.   I knew it would work and that Vivek was on to something that could have only come from his unique perspective.  And that D.O.G.E. will be very effective, not in the way that the government unions are ready for.  They are not prepared to fight on this front but believe me, we have tried to give them all a fair shake, and they spit in our faces.  Don’t try to befriend people who spit in your face.  If they want to destroy themselves, then let them.  And that, ultimately, is what will happen with D.O.G.E. and why it will succeed while all other attempts have failed.  When we’ve had government shutdowns in the past, it was always what labor took away to extort resolution through pain and suffering, the typical radical labor union perspective.  People are tired of that type of management method and are ready for a barrage of free speech on the matter, which only people who are independently wealthy can afford to utter.  In that way, government reform won’t be done through the front door of legislative control, which Congress can hide behind by saying that the rules of government labor tie their hands.  But that the foundation that all the rules were built to protect the very lazy and corrupt from the merits of judgment reside that will be dealt with, for really, the first time in the history of the world.  And I am thrilled to see it and that Vivek Ramaswamy is at the heart of the reform.  I know it will be successful because he and many others are also involved in very healthy ways in front and behind the scenes.  And it’s about time!

Rich Hoffman

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