6 ms·

Genuine question: are people genuinely against the work being done by DOGE? I am frequenting both X and HN + other liberal leaning news sources, and it's like t

Genuine question: are people genuinely against the work being done by DOGE? I am frequenting both X and HN + other liberal leaning news sources, and it's like the people in the comments are living in different solar systems. I see a post on X with receipts showing millions of dollars of pretty obvious waste and/or corruption, many involving news outlet grants and subscriptions, including names, amounts, etc. Then I see some tearjerker story about families of USAID workers on one of the beneficiary news outlets. And in the comments, people lamenting that Elon Musk's success is only due to luck and his estranged father's defunct gem mine. Or worrying Elon will use their SSN (which is already available on the dark web) to open a credit card. You're pretty smart people. Do we really think auditing government spending by a super-competent outsider is a bad thing? The last time it was done was by Clinton, btw, who managed to create a surplus (granted, the debt situation was nothing compared to today). And before that, Truman, back before hyper-partisan politics. I can't imagine the level of grift back then was anywhere close to today in our bloated budget. I'm optimistic, and I think y'all need to relax.

llamaimperative 2y ago
USAID was audited by an (actual) independent (actual) auditor in November of 2024. They recommended a review of leases and to tighten up their employee expense reporting requirements. You have no reason to believe Elon is either competent, nor independent, nor well-intentioned on any of this. No, no one is against “a more efficient government.” Obviously. No one is “pro-fraud.” Obviously. Please post specific examples of fraud that DOGE has surfaced, not just “things that were congressionally approved but I don’t like.”
- paulddraper 2y ago
  > congressionally approved You say that like it’s a good thing…
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Following the constitutionally designed balance of powers is a good thing, even when some line items appear in the budget which I personally disagree with. This is what’s known as “compromise,” or otherwise “being a fucking adult.”
    - paulddraper 2y ago
      Yeah it's called pork.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        One man's pork is another man's bacon. That's why it's in the budget. Everything in the budget had someone advocating for it, whether you agree with them or not. That's part of living in a society. As a child, you may have run into situations where you had to accept something you didn't think was perfect in order to get something you really wanted. This is like the big kid version of that! It's so complicated and so important to do at scale that we actually create these very elaborate systems called "governments" to manage the process. What we found over time was that these big systems could be captured by people who didn't want to compromise, so we invented "Constitutions" that constrain the system, regardless of who is currently operating it. Right now, you're saying that your personal assessment of what's pork and what's not justifies weakening the system that keeps all of us safe from our government. lol @ civilized people in 2025 falling for the “authoritarianism in exchange for quality of life promises” trick.
- lend000 2y ago
  This is what I saw most recently: [0]. Whether or not it could be vaguely considered to be congressionally authorized (the executive branch has leeway in the execution of said laws) is more or less irrelevant to whether it's wasteful and/or fraudulent, but it looks like those examples were not documented in law anyway. I imagine it will be thousands and thousands of examples of "small time corruption" with a few million here and a few tens of millions here that in no sane world should be spent. And for some reason, people prefer to hate billionaires that create wealth when instructed by multimillionaires who siphon wealth from taxpayers but happen to own newspapers. > You have no reason to believe Elon is either competent, nor independent, nor well-intentioned on any of this. You could say the last two about anyone, but to deny that Elon is competent, especially coming from an anonymous internet commenter... okay. [0] https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1887562751364481290 https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1887562751364481290
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    If only there were professionals we could pay to go into an organization and find waste, fraud, and abuse so we wouldn't have to rely on people like @ricwe123 on X. Ah, yes, there are. They're called auditors. They audited USAID 4 months ago. The entire US government spent only $7.7MM on Politico over the last 12 months. Oooo spooky stuff, if only there was a way to see what for! Turns out there is. You can scroll down and see the shocking revelation that the US government paid a news publication for subscriptions to a news publication! Similar to how if you work in the energy industry, for example, a smart employer would pay for energy trade publications so you can do your job better. https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c3-1bd39cc6a49e-C/latest https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c... In fact you can drill down all the way to individual line items. Here's the 49 subscriptions to Politico Pro that HHS, an organization with 83,500 employees, purchased. Looks suuuuper abusive... /s https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75F40120P00453_7524_-NONE-_-NONE- https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75F40120P00453_75... > to deny that Elon is competent Please show evidence of Elon being a competent public sector financial auditor. Or are we to believe that competence is just arbitrarily cross-applicable?
    - 2y ago
mjamesaustin 2y ago
If DOGE was serious about finding cost savings, they would start with the biggest budget hog, the one that has never once passed an audit in its entire history – the Pentagon. US "defense" spending is so absurdly overflowing with bloat and waste, it would be like a kid in a candy store. But instead DOGE started with a tiny department controlling ~1% of spending, one which has routinely passed independent audits and also happened to have opened an investigation into one of Musk's companies. And the action taken? Preventing the release of existing supplies of medicine and food to literal starving children in third world countries.
- lend000 2y ago
  > If DOGE was serious about finding cost savings, they would start with the biggest budget hog, the one that has never once passed an audit in its entire history – the Pentagon. I imagine that's the goal, but we're literally just a few weeks in and a large amount of the DoD is extremely secretive and difficult to access by the elected government (which is concerning enough as it is). From what I understand they are already moving to downsize the FBI, and the more secretive three letter agencies will hopefully follow. > Preventing the release of existing supplies of medicine and food to literal starving children in third world countries. This is really your strongest point, but if you look at the US track record abroad, most of that aid is damage control for wars/coups/etc. started directly or indirectly by the US. Most of those people, and certainly US taxpayers, would be better off with no US influence in the long run. Whether that will actually happen under this administration remains to be seen.
harperawl 2y ago
> auditing government spending Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769) > super-competent outsider I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless, why would I trust the richest man in the world to decide what the citizens of the country need and/or want from the government? Honestly, I can keep going if you'd like, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that Elon Musk should not have illegal access to the government through his immense wealth and power (if that was not already self-evident.)
- porridgeraisin 2y ago
  > Gutted NIH and research funding This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US) What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of funding you're allowed to chalk down to administrative overhead as opposed to direct research expenses. For example in 2023, of the 35billion in NIH grants, 9billion went to administrative overhead (25%). The new rule is them capping this to 15%. By the way this rate is around the standard in all private grant foundations. Here is the primary source of information: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-068.html https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0... Now, I'm not sure if all the DEI stuff the new government doesn't like comes under "administrative overhead". If it did, it would explain the timing of the announcement. But adjusting indirect cost rates is in general a very normal thing to do, and 25% is very high, even for a prosperous grant system like the NIH. Here [2] is a university mentioning their negotiated indirect cost rate of 56%(!!!) For comparison, the NSF from 2010 to 2016 varied their rate only between 16% and 24% [3]. The NIH rates are absurdly high. News articles such as [1], that directly quote the above primary source and still misconstrue it, deserve jail time. Also, it is really disingenous to say "cutting funds for cancer research" as if it's directly targeted at cancer research. Engagement driven media like Twitter, news websites, etc, are truly the devil of the world. And the incentives are rotten, so no matter what Musk says X isn't fixing it in any way. </rant> [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-bi... [2] https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-cap/ https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-... [3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t

llamaimperative 2y ago

USAID was audited by an (actual) independent (actual) auditor in November of 2024. They recommended a review of leases and to tighten up their employee expense reporting requirements. You have no reason to believe Elon is either competent, nor independent, nor well-intentioned on any of this. No, no one is against “a more efficient government.” Obviously. No one is “pro-fraud.” Obviously. Please post specific examples of fraud that DOGE has surfaced, not just “things that were congressionally approved but I don’t like.”

paulddraper 2y ago
> congressionally approved You say that like it’s a good thing…
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Following the constitutionally designed balance of powers is a good thing, even when some line items appear in the budget which I personally disagree with. This is what’s known as “compromise,” or otherwise “being a fucking adult.”
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    Yeah it's called pork.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      One man's pork is another man's bacon. That's why it's in the budget. Everything in the budget had someone advocating for it, whether you agree with them or not. That's part of living in a society. As a child, you may have run into situations where you had to accept something you didn't think was perfect in order to get something you really wanted. This is like the big kid version of that! It's so complicated and so important to do at scale that we actually create these very elaborate systems called "governments" to manage the process. What we found over time was that these big systems could be captured by people who didn't want to compromise, so we invented "Constitutions" that constrain the system, regardless of who is currently operating it. Right now, you're saying that your personal assessment of what's pork and what's not justifies weakening the system that keeps all of us safe from our government. lol @ civilized people in 2025 falling for the “authoritarianism in exchange for quality of life promises” trick.
lend000 2y ago
This is what I saw most recently: [0]. Whether or not it could be vaguely considered to be congressionally authorized (the executive branch has leeway in the execution of said laws) is more or less irrelevant to whether it's wasteful and/or fraudulent, but it looks like those examples were not documented in law anyway. I imagine it will be thousands and thousands of examples of "small time corruption" with a few million here and a few tens of millions here that in no sane world should be spent. And for some reason, people prefer to hate billionaires that create wealth when instructed by multimillionaires who siphon wealth from taxpayers but happen to own newspapers. > You have no reason to believe Elon is either competent, nor independent, nor well-intentioned on any of this. You could say the last two about anyone, but to deny that Elon is competent, especially coming from an anonymous internet commenter... okay. [0] https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1887562751364481290 https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1887562751364481290
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  If only there were professionals we could pay to go into an organization and find waste, fraud, and abuse so we wouldn't have to rely on people like @ricwe123 on X. Ah, yes, there are. They're called auditors. They audited USAID 4 months ago. The entire US government spent only $7.7MM on Politico over the last 12 months. Oooo spooky stuff, if only there was a way to see what for! Turns out there is. You can scroll down and see the shocking revelation that the US government paid a news publication for subscriptions to a news publication! Similar to how if you work in the energy industry, for example, a smart employer would pay for energy trade publications so you can do your job better. https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c3-1bd39cc6a49e-C/latest https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c... In fact you can drill down all the way to individual line items. Here's the 49 subscriptions to Politico Pro that HHS, an organization with 83,500 employees, purchased. Looks suuuuper abusive... /s https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75F40120P00453_7524_-NONE-_-NONE- https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75F40120P00453_75... > to deny that Elon is competent Please show evidence of Elon being a competent public sector financial auditor. Or are we to believe that competence is just arbitrarily cross-applicable?
  - 2y ago

mjamesaustin 2y ago

If DOGE was serious about finding cost savings, they would start with the biggest budget hog, the one that has never once passed an audit in its entire history – the Pentagon. US "defense" spending is so absurdly overflowing with bloat and waste, it would be like a kid in a candy store. But instead DOGE started with a tiny department controlling ~1% of spending, one which has routinely passed independent audits and also happened to have opened an investigation into one of Musk's companies. And the action taken? Preventing the release of existing supplies of medicine and food to literal starving children in third world countries.

lend000 2y ago
> If DOGE was serious about finding cost savings, they would start with the biggest budget hog, the one that has never once passed an audit in its entire history – the Pentagon. I imagine that's the goal, but we're literally just a few weeks in and a large amount of the DoD is extremely secretive and difficult to access by the elected government (which is concerning enough as it is). From what I understand they are already moving to downsize the FBI, and the more secretive three letter agencies will hopefully follow. > Preventing the release of existing supplies of medicine and food to literal starving children in third world countries. This is really your strongest point, but if you look at the US track record abroad, most of that aid is damage control for wars/coups/etc. started directly or indirectly by the US. Most of those people, and certainly US taxpayers, would be better off with no US influence in the long run. Whether that will actually happen under this administration remains to be seen.

harperawl 2y ago

> auditing government spending Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769) > super-competent outsider I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless, why would I trust the richest man in the world to decide what the citizens of the country need and/or want from the government? Honestly, I can keep going if you'd like, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that Elon Musk should not have illegal access to the government through his immense wealth and power (if that was not already self-evident.)

porridgeraisin 2y ago
> Gutted NIH and research funding This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US) What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of funding you're allowed to chalk down to administrative overhead as opposed to direct research expenses. For example in 2023, of the 35billion in NIH grants, 9billion went to administrative overhead (25%). The new rule is them capping this to 15%. By the way this rate is around the standard in all private grant foundations. Here is the primary source of information: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-068.html https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0... Now, I'm not sure if all the DEI stuff the new government doesn't like comes under "administrative overhead". If it did, it would explain the timing of the announcement. But adjusting indirect cost rates is in general a very normal thing to do, and 25% is very high, even for a prosperous grant system like the NIH. Here [2] is a university mentioning their negotiated indirect cost rate of 56%(!!!) For comparison, the NSF from 2010 to 2016 varied their rate only between 16% and 24% [3]. The NIH rates are absurdly high. News articles such as [1], that directly quote the above primary source and still misconstrue it, deserve jail time. Also, it is really disingenous to say "cutting funds for cancer research" as if it's directly targeted at cancer research. Engagement driven media like Twitter, news websites, etc, are truly the devil of the world. And the incentives are rotten, so no matter what Musk says X isn't fixing it in any way. </rant> [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-bi... [2] https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-cap/ https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-... [3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t