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Move fast and break things mentality over the boring strategy of letting a hiring freeze slowly work. It’s also psychologically challenging the people that stay

Move fast and break things mentality over the boring strategy of letting a hiring freeze slowly work. It’s also psychologically challenging the people that stay to “admit” they can’t get a job in the private sector, which helps the Elon narrative. They want to make government employees feel bad. Plus these people are unlikely to ever get paid. This is all operating outside of congress. If the institutions survive at all this could become a mess of expensive lawsuits and settlements. But I suppose their intention is to permanently cut Congress out of the picture.

sitkack 2y ago
The goal is burn down the federal government, it doesn't really matter to them what happens. Expensive lawsuits and settlements, sign me up! It isn't their money.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  Burn down and loot
  - alaxhn 2y ago
    Can you please be more clear on what is being looted in your view? I can see how a lot of money can be made from having the government fund a project that you benefit from. For example DOGE uncovered that Senator Lindsey Graham sits on the board of International Republican Institute which was funded by USAID. I don't see how someone benefits themselves financially by cutting government spending since the revenue stream that they could direct into their pocket has now dried up.
    - zerocrates 2y ago
      They "uncovered" something that's in financial statements, posted on the agency's website, on the org's website... way to go. You can go read 50 pages of audit that's been publicly available because they got government funding. You can also see the filings that show that Lindsey Graham doesn't get paid for being on their board, nor do any of their directors, and you can go see what they did spend money on. There's a more or less equivalent org that draws its directors from Democrats like this one does Republicans. Speaking of "uncovering" you can go read the press coverage from 2018 when the first Trump administration pushed to cut the funding of the National Endowment of Democracy (which sits above these two party-associated organizations). Of course this was in a time where the Trump administration actually behaved as if Congress controlled the funding. For an amusing detail you can read the letter sent by senators at the time defending the NED's funding, and observe the signature of Marco Rubio, who now purports to have taken over USAID in his capacity as Secretary of State. As far as I can tell there's not even any evidence that DOGE did anything specifically relating to this group beyond just that they killed USAID. DOGE fan Twitter accounts have posted about it, just linking to those same already-available filings. Fans just reading down the list of things USAID funded gets you this same result. It's definitely a good place to go if you want to see a bunch of incurious people posting "head exploding" emojis.
jollyllama 2y ago
> It’s also psychologically challenging the people that stay to “admit” they can’t get a job in the private sector, which helps the Elon narrative. They want to make government employees feel bad. That's probably their angle but tbh I'd think more of the tenure of someone who turned down money to keep their job than one who quit it for a one time payment.

sitkack 2y ago

The goal is burn down the federal government, it doesn't really matter to them what happens. Expensive lawsuits and settlements, sign me up! It isn't their money.

mcmcmc 2y ago
Burn down and loot
- alaxhn 2y ago
  Can you please be more clear on what is being looted in your view? I can see how a lot of money can be made from having the government fund a project that you benefit from. For example DOGE uncovered that Senator Lindsey Graham sits on the board of International Republican Institute which was funded by USAID. I don't see how someone benefits themselves financially by cutting government spending since the revenue stream that they could direct into their pocket has now dried up.
  - zerocrates 2y ago
    They "uncovered" something that's in financial statements, posted on the agency's website, on the org's website... way to go. You can go read 50 pages of audit that's been publicly available because they got government funding. You can also see the filings that show that Lindsey Graham doesn't get paid for being on their board, nor do any of their directors, and you can go see what they did spend money on. There's a more or less equivalent org that draws its directors from Democrats like this one does Republicans. Speaking of "uncovering" you can go read the press coverage from 2018 when the first Trump administration pushed to cut the funding of the National Endowment of Democracy (which sits above these two party-associated organizations). Of course this was in a time where the Trump administration actually behaved as if Congress controlled the funding. For an amusing detail you can read the letter sent by senators at the time defending the NED's funding, and observe the signature of Marco Rubio, who now purports to have taken over USAID in his capacity as Secretary of State. As far as I can tell there's not even any evidence that DOGE did anything specifically relating to this group beyond just that they killed USAID. DOGE fan Twitter accounts have posted about it, just linking to those same already-available filings. Fans just reading down the list of things USAID funded gets you this same result. It's definitely a good place to go if you want to see a bunch of incurious people posting "head exploding" emojis.

jollyllama 2y ago

> It’s also psychologically challenging the people that stay to “admit” they can’t get a job in the private sector, which helps the Elon narrative. They want to make government employees feel bad. That's probably their angle but tbh I'd think more of the tenure of someone who turned down money to keep their job than one who quit it for a one time payment.