6 ms·

Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable reference that gives a specific ex

by dzdt 2y ago

Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable reference that gives a specific example of fraud uncovered by DOGE? To be clear, this should be a third-party analysis of some credibility, not DOGE's or Musk's twitter feed or "receipts" website which shows cancelled contracts with no clear link to fraudulent activity.

onemoresoop 2y ago
They will twist the narrative and not provide any evidence. I appreciate your request but please don’t be naive. Have you heard of trolling?
- xtiansimon 2y ago
  I’m happy with a description of a higher standard than, say, a Reddit discussion.
- grobbyy 2y ago
  There is widespread fraud in the government. It needs to be addressed. There is widespread inefficiency too. I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it. I have no evidence that they are doing so, and some evidence of widespread loyalty tests which, while not identical, remind me of how Stalin came to power. However, absence if evidence is not evidence of absence, and some evidence is not the same as proof. I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
  - croes 2y ago
    I bet much of this fraud benefits big donors of both parties. I doubt they will fix that
    - abirch 2y ago
      Some government jobs were basically UBI. They provided incomes in rural America.
      - techorange 2y ago
        This is sort of the group that interests me the most, there is some notion of the government as sort of an employer of last resort in some areas which is a progressive/liberal idea, though id imagine with the areas most impacted by offshoring these jobs are disproportionately in red / Trump supporting states. And even if you’re ok with getting rid of these jobs, the biggest impact might not even be the loss of these jobs but the loss of the consumers who had these jobs spending money in their local communities.
        abirch 2y ago
        In addition to the money that's spent, these people had great health insurance. This helped to subsidize rural hospitals. Between this and cuts to medicaid, more rural hospitals will close.
    - grobbyy 2y ago
      There's a lot of just plain simple fraud too. I've seen embassies issue visas only with bribes, or employees simply collect salaries without doing their jobs. As in you're hired to review documents by some legally mandated criteria, and they simply toss them into piles without even glancing at them and go home early. That benefits no one, except for the employee.
      - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
        I'm certain that happens, but that can't possibly be the trillion dollars they think they are going to save.
      - croes 2y ago
        Sure, but about what amount are we talking? Millions vs billions.
  - lowercased 2y ago
    > There is widespread fraud in the government.... There is widespread inefficiency too... I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it. Given that just getting the names of the people involved in this process incurred Musk's wrath and accusations of criminal behaviour... how can you have any justified belief in people having 'skills' to address 'fraud' and 'inefficiency'? We'd need some common definition of 'fraud' in the first place. Many of the things that have been labelled 'corruption' seem to just be 'things Musk doesn't like'; I suspect 'fraud' would be similar. "Inefficiencies" - we have the Chesterton's Fence idea to illustrate that what might be 'inefficient' is intentional with an overall positive purpose. Again, define 'inefficiency'. The rate at which firings have been happening may certainly be 'efficient' from an operational standpoint, but having to scramble to rehire key people who shouldn't have been fired in the first place is 'inefficient' at best. > I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct. I'm not sure we have enough verifiable 'facts' that can support many conclusions at all, and I think that 'fact' itself is evidence of intentionality in keeping the public in the dark about what's going on and why.
  - oblio 2y ago
    > I think the people in DOGE have the skills Do we know any of them? How many are accountants, auditors, etc, people with decades of experience with government affairs?
    - lowercased 2y ago
      Even trying to determine who the workers were brought down threats of criminal prosecution and investigations.
    - knicholes 2y ago
      With LLMs, it's close to having someone with that experience and knowledge right there with you.
      - redeux 2y ago
        LLMs tend to be very naive in their outputs when you start asking for anything below surface level. If you ask it how to audit something, it'll probably give you a solid high level answer - look at a, b, c and try to build a narrative about how they relate and then look for deviance (I'm not an auditor and I didn't use an LLM for this). Once you start trying to look at the mechanics of how to actually do that, that's when it will start "hallucinating" or just generally swirl. It's the side effect of having a ton of training data on what something is but not much data on how to do it in practice. This may change at some point in the future, but I would hardly say that using an LLM is "close to having someone with that experience and knowledge," or maybe it is "close" but it isn't a substitute for "having" when dealing with serious topics.
      - contagiousflow 2y ago
        Knowledge of what exactly?
        knicholes 2y ago
        The entire Internet and whatever context you provide to it. E.g. COBOL, standard auditing practices, step-by-step guidance on what to do next.
  - Capricorn2481 2y ago
    I'm sure the 5 people investigating Musk's companies for wasteful spending were all fired because they were fraudulent.
hcrisp 2y ago
The government itself self-reports $149B in "improper payments" https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-waste-spending-charts-109f3bcf https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was...
- dse1982 2y ago
  So it was not uncovered by doge? and it is also not simply fraud? „Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services.“ (from the article you linked)
SilverBirch 2y ago
The claims of fraud are a pretext for going into the agencies and making the partisan changes they wanted to make anyway. There's no point asking for a detailed discussion because the whole plan is to use the discussion of fraud as cover for the thing they're actually doing.
- clumsysmurf 2y ago
  I think wired nailed it: "This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable certainty that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things." "And if you don’t believe in the public good? You sprint through the ruination. You metastasize from agency to agency, leveling the maximum allowable destruction under the law. DOGE’s costly, embarrassing mistakes are a byproduct of reckless nihilism; if artificial intelligence can sell you a pizza, of course it can future-proof the General Services Administration. https://www.wired.com/story/doge-incompetence-mistakes-feature-not-bug/ https://www.wired.com/story/doge-incompetence-mistakes-featu...
chatmasta 2y ago
It’s marketed as “fraud, waste and abuse.” The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.” Probably some of them have more nuance when you dig deeper, but does anyone disagree that there is not waste in the government? Fraud and abuse are less clear. But it’s also difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of payments when they’re leaving treasury on checks with no memo or reference, and they’re compared to “do not pay” lists that lack frequent updates. Here are some of my opinions, as someone who is mostly supportive of the effort but also realistic about its outcomes and risks: 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government. The executive must have full authority to examine all data produced by itself. 2. Federal spending on salary, agencies and operations is a drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and defense budget. Slashing jobs and even deleting entire agencies will not make a significant dent in the deficit. But if DOGE can really cut $1 trillion by end of year, it will have positive knock-on effects in the bond market. 3. Entitlements shouldn’t be treated with same bull-in-a-china shop approach as the current one towards agencies. 4. Social security probably has some fraud but I doubt it’s significant and is better resolved by identifying and punishing retroactively. Most of the “150 year old people” problems are exaggerated or outright wrong. However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data. 5. It’s widely known there is significant fraud in Medicaid and Medicare. The true volume of this fraud is unknown and any effort to quantify it would be welcomed. But while fraudulent claims may be an issue, the real problem is unaccountable pricing of the healthcare system that allows for “legitimate” claims to cost more than any sane person would pay out of pocket. 6. In general, “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true. But it does not follow that “things breaking” is an acceptable cost to pay. The approach needs to come with a well-defined rubric for evaluating not only “what to cut,” but also “which cuts to rollback.”
- michaericalribo 2y ago
  So, no third party source.
  - QuarterReptile 2y ago
miohtama 2y ago
One month (2 weeks?) is too early to tell if something will be uncovered, so there are no examples yet.
- dzdt 2y ago
  If it is too early for them to have uncovered a meaningful understanding about what the contracts/programs/employees are doing, why is it also not too early for the contracts to be cancelled/programs ended/employees fired?
CyrsBel 2y ago
CAT should audit DOGE.
scottcha 2y ago
WSJ reports today that the gao Itself reported 140 billion in improper payments. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-waste-spending-charts-109f3bcf?mod=mhp https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was... This is based on their statistics so I imagine the next step is to find the actual waste and fraud and stop it or get the money back.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Fraud means anything that they don't like.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
chasing 2y ago
If they were actually trying to eliminate waste, they’d be working in tandem with these departments instead of just trashing them. More broadly: People who care about improving things move carefully and deliberately and involve all stakeholders. They are open and transparent and they listen. Trump and Musk are exhibiting horrible leadership skills because they do not care about improving things. Trump wants to hurt his perceived enemies and feel like he’s a big smart boss man. Musk wants to be the first trillionaire. That’s the start and end of it.

by dzdt 2y ago

onemoresoop 2y ago

They will twist the narrative and not provide any evidence. I appreciate your request but please don’t be naive. Have you heard of trolling?

xtiansimon 2y ago
I’m happy with a description of a higher standard than, say, a Reddit discussion.
grobbyy 2y ago
There is widespread fraud in the government. It needs to be addressed. There is widespread inefficiency too. I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it. I have no evidence that they are doing so, and some evidence of widespread loyalty tests which, while not identical, remind me of how Stalin came to power. However, absence if evidence is not evidence of absence, and some evidence is not the same as proof. I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
- croes 2y ago
  I bet much of this fraud benefits big donors of both parties. I doubt they will fix that
  - abirch 2y ago
    Some government jobs were basically UBI. They provided incomes in rural America.
    - techorange 2y ago
      This is sort of the group that interests me the most, there is some notion of the government as sort of an employer of last resort in some areas which is a progressive/liberal idea, though id imagine with the areas most impacted by offshoring these jobs are disproportionately in red / Trump supporting states. And even if you’re ok with getting rid of these jobs, the biggest impact might not even be the loss of these jobs but the loss of the consumers who had these jobs spending money in their local communities.
      - abirch 2y ago
        In addition to the money that's spent, these people had great health insurance. This helped to subsidize rural hospitals. Between this and cuts to medicaid, more rural hospitals will close.
  - grobbyy 2y ago
    There's a lot of just plain simple fraud too. I've seen embassies issue visas only with bribes, or employees simply collect salaries without doing their jobs. As in you're hired to review documents by some legally mandated criteria, and they simply toss them into piles without even glancing at them and go home early. That benefits no one, except for the employee.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      I'm certain that happens, but that can't possibly be the trillion dollars they think they are going to save.
    - croes 2y ago
      Sure, but about what amount are we talking? Millions vs billions.
- lowercased 2y ago
  > There is widespread fraud in the government.... There is widespread inefficiency too... I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to address it. Given that just getting the names of the people involved in this process incurred Musk's wrath and accusations of criminal behaviour... how can you have any justified belief in people having 'skills' to address 'fraud' and 'inefficiency'? We'd need some common definition of 'fraud' in the first place. Many of the things that have been labelled 'corruption' seem to just be 'things Musk doesn't like'; I suspect 'fraud' would be similar. "Inefficiencies" - we have the Chesterton's Fence idea to illustrate that what might be 'inefficient' is intentional with an overall positive purpose. Again, define 'inefficiency'. The rate at which firings have been happening may certainly be 'efficient' from an operational standpoint, but having to scramble to rehire key people who shouldn't have been fired in the first place is 'inefficient' at best. > I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct. I'm not sure we have enough verifiable 'facts' that can support many conclusions at all, and I think that 'fact' itself is evidence of intentionality in keeping the public in the dark about what's going on and why.
- oblio 2y ago
  > I think the people in DOGE have the skills Do we know any of them? How many are accountants, auditors, etc, people with decades of experience with government affairs?
  - lowercased 2y ago
    Even trying to determine who the workers were brought down threats of criminal prosecution and investigations.
  - knicholes 2y ago
    With LLMs, it's close to having someone with that experience and knowledge right there with you.
    - redeux 2y ago
      LLMs tend to be very naive in their outputs when you start asking for anything below surface level. If you ask it how to audit something, it'll probably give you a solid high level answer - look at a, b, c and try to build a narrative about how they relate and then look for deviance (I'm not an auditor and I didn't use an LLM for this). Once you start trying to look at the mechanics of how to actually do that, that's when it will start "hallucinating" or just generally swirl. It's the side effect of having a ton of training data on what something is but not much data on how to do it in practice. This may change at some point in the future, but I would hardly say that using an LLM is "close to having someone with that experience and knowledge," or maybe it is "close" but it isn't a substitute for "having" when dealing with serious topics.
    - contagiousflow 2y ago
      Knowledge of what exactly?
      - knicholes 2y ago
        The entire Internet and whatever context you provide to it. E.g. COBOL, standard auditing practices, step-by-step guidance on what to do next.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  I'm sure the 5 people investigating Musk's companies for wasteful spending were all fired because they were fraudulent.

hcrisp 2y ago

The government itself self-reports $149B in "improper payments" https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-waste-spending-charts-109f3bcf https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was...

dse1982 2y ago
So it was not uncovered by doge? and it is also not simply fraud? „Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services.“ (from the article you linked)

SilverBirch 2y ago

The claims of fraud are a pretext for going into the agencies and making the partisan changes they wanted to make anyway. There's no point asking for a detailed discussion because the whole plan is to use the discussion of fraud as cover for the thing they're actually doing.

clumsysmurf 2y ago
I think wired nailed it: "This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable certainty that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things." "And if you don’t believe in the public good? You sprint through the ruination. You metastasize from agency to agency, leveling the maximum allowable destruction under the law. DOGE’s costly, embarrassing mistakes are a byproduct of reckless nihilism; if artificial intelligence can sell you a pizza, of course it can future-proof the General Services Administration. https://www.wired.com/story/doge-incompetence-mistakes-feature-not-bug/ https://www.wired.com/story/doge-incompetence-mistakes-featu...

chatmasta 2y ago

It’s marketed as “fraud, waste and abuse.” The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.” Probably some of them have more nuance when you dig deeper, but does anyone disagree that there is not waste in the government? Fraud and abuse are less clear. But it’s also difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of payments when they’re leaving treasury on checks with no memo or reference, and they’re compared to “do not pay” lists that lack frequent updates. Here are some of my opinions, as someone who is mostly supportive of the effort but also realistic about its outcomes and risks: 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government. The executive must have full authority to examine all data produced by itself. 2. Federal spending on salary, agencies and operations is a drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and defense budget. Slashing jobs and even deleting entire agencies will not make a significant dent in the deficit. But if DOGE can really cut $1 trillion by end of year, it will have positive knock-on effects in the bond market. 3. Entitlements shouldn’t be treated with same bull-in-a-china shop approach as the current one towards agencies. 4. Social security probably has some fraud but I doubt it’s significant and is better resolved by identifying and punishing retroactively. Most of the “150 year old people” problems are exaggerated or outright wrong. However, it’s worrying that a system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data. 5. It’s widely known there is significant fraud in Medicaid and Medicare. The true volume of this fraud is unknown and any effort to quantify it would be welcomed. But while fraudulent claims may be an issue, the real problem is unaccountable pricing of the healthcare system that allows for “legitimate” claims to cost more than any sane person would pay out of pocket. 6. In general, “if nothing breaks, you’re not cutting enough” is obviously true. But it does not follow that “things breaking” is an acceptable cost to pay. The approach needs to come with a well-defined rubric for evaluating not only “what to cut,” but also “which cuts to rollback.”

michaericalribo 2y ago
So, no third party source.
- QuarterReptile 2y ago

miohtama 2y ago

One month (2 weeks?) is too early to tell if something will be uncovered, so there are no examples yet.

dzdt 2y ago
If it is too early for them to have uncovered a meaningful understanding about what the contracts/programs/employees are doing, why is it also not too early for the contracts to be cancelled/programs ended/employees fired?

CyrsBel 2y ago

CAT should audit DOGE.

scottcha 2y ago

WSJ reports today that the gao Itself reported 140 billion in improper payments. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-waste-spending-charts-109f3bcf?mod=mhp https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was... This is based on their statistics so I imagine the next step is to find the actual waste and fraud and stop it or get the money back.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

Fraud means anything that they don't like.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

chasing 2y ago

If they were actually trying to eliminate waste, they’d be working in tandem with these departments instead of just trashing them. More broadly: People who care about improving things move carefully and deliberately and involve all stakeholders. They are open and transparent and they listen. Trump and Musk are exhibiting horrible leadership skills because they do not care about improving things. Trump wants to hurt his perceived enemies and feel like he’s a big smart boss man. Musk wants to be the first trillionaire. That’s the start and end of it.