Amateur Hour: Musk's MAGA Morons Miserable Morning

Sometimes these people are so damn stupid that it just makes me mad...

On Friday, three idiots in MAGA hats and DOGE t-shirts walked into San Francisco City Hall, strolled into a few departments and started demanding documents for what they claimed was a DOGE “fraud/government waste” investigation. They hit several offices where they were told, politely, to “Fuck off,” and then had the cops called on them.

One of the offices these imposters visited was the Assessment Appeals Board (AAB) on the fourth floor, a visit that tells me that these morons were randomly grabbing door knobs to find an unlocked door. Why random? Because according the the AAB webpage, the board “is an independent agency, separate from the Assessor's Office, established to decide disputes between the Assessor's Office and property owners.” Also, the Sheriff’s office is also on the fourth floor, a short walk from the AAB.

Clearly these Musk MAGAs – who very well could be San Francisco residents – know nothing about City Hall, San Francisco’s government, or waste and corruption. Hell, I doubt that they even read the news. If they did, they’d have known that the mayor’s office – so far, at least – under newly elected Mayor Daniel Lurie is not corrupt. If they wanted dirty, they should have paid a visit last month when Mayor London Breed was still in charge. They would have known that City Hall is mostly made up of administrative offices, services, and venues used for things like weddings.

Now, I’m not saying San Francisco isn’t corrupt. To quote, Lenny Bruce on Chicago, San Francisco is “so corrupt its thrilling.” Thing is that most of the corruption is found outside City Hall. There’s 49 South Van Ness, a city building which houses the Department of Public Works, the Department of Building Inspection, and the Planning Department, three of the city’s dirtiest departments.

Or if Musk’s MAGAs really wanted to Fight the Power, they would have visited 1231 3^rd Street, headquarters of the San Francisco Police Department, the winner of the Most Corrupt Over the Longest Period of Time award. SFPD is so corrupt that the Public Defender’s Office has repeatedly made public calls to clean the department up.

Another hotbed of San Francisco corruption is its vast non-profit sector, made up of both good honest people as well as a bunch of scumbag insiders who’ve played footsie with various mayors (especially London Breed and Ed Lee) for decades. Over the past couple years, it seems like at least once a month there’s a news story on yet another non-profit’s dirty deeds (done not cheap at all!). Hell, even a non-profit that advocates for the city park system has dirt on it.

So, if you want corruption, San Francisco has a lot of it, but you need to know where to look (which is as easy as doing an internet search for “San Francisco” and “corruption”). If you don’t know or are not willing to do that, you are a fraud yourself.

Another thing that anyone who has ever requested information out of City Hall – and this especially goes for journalists – is that the process is grueling. Though San Francisco has a robust Sunshine Ordinance – which is supposed to result in government transparency – it is routinely subverted, on purpose and by process. It is not rare to submit multiple public record request for the same information only to be stonewalled, delayed, and given incomplete information. Often, obtaining information becomes a war of attrition, the city intent on dragging things out until you’ve given up. They do this by exploiting the rules – acknowledging your request and then sending you formal extensions over and over and over again.

Oh, and to submit public records requests you have to fill out forms and submit them. You can’t just waltz into an office and demand “files.” To start, no one will honor a blanket request for “files,” and even if they did, what would happen is that the city would sandbag you with so many damn boxes of information that you’d drown in paperwork.

Second, the “files” you want are probably not going to be immediately available or even in the office you’ve targeted. There’s an equal chance that what you want isn’t even in the department that you are pressing. Information that you might thing is housed in the police department might be in the Sheriff’s office or with the City Attorney or DA. Information on homeless operations could be with the Department of Homelessness & Supportive Housing, Department of Public Works, Department of Emergency Management, or SFPD. Thing is that there is a lot of information and it is everywhere, including places that no one would bother to look unless they were professional diggers.

Third, while it is quite easy to obtain “benign” information or data that has already been released to the public, getting information for something like a fraud or waste investigation means that the City Attorney’s office or some like entity is going to review it, a process that takes time and might involve them questioning the requester as to why they want the information and what they are going to use it for. And when – or if – you do get the “files” you want, you aren’t going to get everything. Information with be redacted, your documents will be full of black blocks. And if you want more you will have to fight the City Attorney, often with lawyers, and sometimes in court.

This is what happens when legitimate requests for information are filed by legitimate players with legitimate reasons for wanting “files.” It is a pain in the ass for the person requesting information, as well as for the folks on the other side. It is a far easier process when some dorks in MAGA/DOGE gear walk into random offices, demanding “files” for some “investigation” that they have no real authority to undertake. The dorks demand and you tell them to “Fuck off.” When they press, you call the cops and the cops throw them out.

Elon Musk’s DOGE does not have legal authority to do what it is doing. Yeah, I know that Trump has made it an “official” part of his game, but that’s just bluster. None of these people are government employees, they don’t have security clearance, they don’t even know what they are doing or what they are looking for. Like the idiot trio who tried to intimidate San Francisco city office workers, they are a harassment squad, looking to bully and intimidate. They demand with the threat that those who don’t abide get fired, which is a horrible thing to face, but it is also probably illegal, same with the DOGE scam.

What Elon Trump is banking on is that we buckle under their threats, that they fill us full of so much fear that we retreat and hide, which is the same as surrender. They pretend that they have authority that they do not possess, legitimacy that they never earned, and expertise that they will never have. They are, simply, bullies. San Francisco City Hall workers faced these bullies down and sent them scurrying away, and they did so by telling these idiots “No.” When you don’t make these people out to be monsters, that is often all it takes to defeat them.