5 ms·

Strong points in the face of this inaccurate, politically biased ledger that has revealed zero fraud, corruption or waste.

MisterKent 2y ago
I am maybe cynical, but I sincerely doubt there's no fraud or corruption in the government spend. Among trillions of dollars of money being spent by people who can easily siphon some off, etc. Intuitively, there _must_ be some corruption. I have zero faith that Musk is interested in finding real corruption. He seems to be more interested in changing budget allocations and calling the removed regulations / "woke" things corrupt. I also think that corruption was within my acceptance tolerance of wastage. _Think_ is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but maybe that's all that really matters when it comes to something like this.
- rincebrain 2y ago
  It's also a very hard line to draw, in some cases, since you can have the right things happening for the wrong reasons. If a bill contains funding to help fix a main street in a city that was destroyed by a natural disaster, is that corruption? What if there's 500 other destroyed main streets and that one got picked? What if it was destroyed by decades of the local gov't neglecting it? What if it was included because you directly bribed the person writing the bill? What if it was included because you did some horse trading and gave them something they wanted in another bill you wrote? The intent there is not to argue that defining corruption is impossible or futile, but that some people might reasonably argue different sides of whether something was corruption without either side obviously being morally bankrupt.
leereeves 2y ago
[flagged]
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  This is absolutely bizarre. It sounds like something out of Portal
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Are you telling me that the US Government is storing its data in a data storage facility? https://www.ironmountain.com/services/vital-records-storage https://www.ironmountain.com/services/vital-records-storage When will this woke madness stop?
  - leereeves 2y ago
    Read the article. It's not just data storage. Hundreds of people actually work there, processing the applications there, by hand, on paper.
    - djur 2y ago
      The article says they couldn't confirm Musk's claims about the number of employees.
      - leereeves 2y ago
        Snopes hasn't confirmed it in 2025 but they did say that in 2014 the Washington Post reported that 600 people worked there.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        So 0.01% of the Federal workforce or so?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        The facility website says they have roughly 1100 workers there daily, but those aren't all government since other work goes on there too.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      Hers a PDF detailing some of the audio and photographic professionals that work "down the mine" in the state of the art digitisation facilities that corporations have there: https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/ironmountain-c8dd68e9/media/project/iron-mountain/iron-mountain/files/resources/general-articles/s/stories-from-the-underground.pdf?sc_lang=en https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/ironmountain-c8dd68e9/media/pr... So why would it be by definition considered waste that a government has employees working on paper records stored in the same place? There is absolutely no reason to think this is ridiculous. These types of sites exist all over the world. Yet Elon Musk claims it's ridiculous and people now have to defend that claim?
- raydev 2y ago
  Physical backup of important documents seems like the opposite of waste.
  - leereeves 2y ago
    It's not backup, the forms are processed by hand on paper.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  that's why you fix it, not act like you can just destroy it and what it does. It is also why you think practically and tell us, the voter, how much extra it is costing us over your "new and improved" program. Just lying about it and exaggerating the concern is a sad, sad, disingenuous way of governing. I want fixes and unrelenting attempts at efficiency and not "hur-duh-hur I can make a meme out of this on X and not offer a single solution"
- acdha 2y ago
  That’s a good example of penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking: they’ve been asking for funding to modernize for most of this century but Congress chooses not to allocate the money. A big contributing factor is that when money is allocated, it’s often directed towards contractors who cost twice as much and have a higher failure rate so congresspeople can say they “shrunk” the government.
- apical_dendrite 2y ago
  The government does plenty of things inefficiently, but DOGE is making such a colossal mess with their rushed, uninformed, and frequently illegal actions that they're causing more problems than they solve. Indiscriminately firing people because they were hired or promoted within the last 2 years is incredibly wasteful. It means getting rid of the people who were most successful. It also means getting rid of people who had very specialized skills or who just went through a very expensive training process. Also consider how much disruption all of this is causing to the federal workforce and the contractors. People are being forced to upend their lives on very short notice to RTO. They were getting daily emails telling them to quit. It's hard to imagine anyone doing good work when they're scared that some indiscriminate process is going to fire them.
  - leereeves 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - linkregister 2y ago
      > Now it's more profitable than ever. The primary owner of X disagrees with you. "We're barely breaking even" [1] 1. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-x-growth-221307490.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-x-growth-22130...
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - apical_dendrite 2y ago
      This is a stupid comparison. The government is not a business. "Lower costs by making it shittier" has a completely different implication when people are relying on the work for national defense, public safety, health, income, and other life-and-death matters. These are public goods. They shouldn't be run on the basis of "make them as crappy as we can get away with to save as much money as possible".
    - codedokode 2y ago
- intended 2y ago
  Was this replaced by a better, more well funded and resourced system? Or was it made worse ?
EasyMark 2y ago
his cuts are max 0.1% of government outlays, yet the MAGAs are acting like it's slash and burn and worshipping at the idol of their cult of personality(ies?) . Anyway it's so obvious to anyway who steps back and turns off the political blinders. Just look at the sheer number of lies coming from Musk and Trump about the "savings" ,about millions of people over 100 getting social security checks, that the few million of probably waste of money USAID was spending is evidence to cut without any other proof the entire USAID organization, even though it's a $50 billion dollar outlay. It's so effing sad that people fall for this, and that our education system is such a failure on probably the most necessary modern skill other than literacy--critical thinking.
- garden_hermit 2y ago
  The insane thing of all this is that the 1% being cut is almost entirely in investments: money for research that drives economic growth, money for the USAID that provides the US influence around the world, cuts to CDC staff that could help mitigate expensive pandemics…the list goes on. So not only is the DOGE affair not reducing the debt, it is setting the country up for less wealth and more expenses in the future.
rayiner 2y ago
[flagged]
- djur 2y ago
  First, what was done with the money: > The $2 billion was used for the "decarbonization of homes" in low-income communities and paid for new household appliances, such as water heaters, induction stoves, solar panels, EV chargers, and weatherization, according to an April 2024 press release from Power Forward Communities. Second, the claim that it was given to Stacey Abrams, from the LinkedIn post cited in the article: > The coalition includes Rewiring America, Enterprise Community Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), United Way, and Habitat for Humanity International and today, we've applied for $9.5 billion — part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act — to directly fund residential decarbonization and electrification... The application is already supported by 321 partners who have pledged to decarbonize housing units across 46 states and every EPA region. It also includes 156 communities pledging to decarbonize housing units, particularly in low-income and disadvantaged communities, and rural and Tribal communities. It appears that Stacey Abrams was in some way involved in organizing a coalition of existing nonprofits to apply for congressionally authorized grant money. There is no evidence I can see that she received any of the money or that any other impropriety was involved. "$2 billion to Stacey Abrams" is a falsehood, even based on the content of the inflammatory Fox News article.

MisterKent 2y ago

I am maybe cynical, but I sincerely doubt there's no fraud or corruption in the government spend. Among trillions of dollars of money being spent by people who can easily siphon some off, etc. Intuitively, there _must_ be some corruption. I have zero faith that Musk is interested in finding real corruption. He seems to be more interested in changing budget allocations and calling the removed regulations / "woke" things corrupt. I also think that corruption was within my acceptance tolerance of wastage. _Think_ is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but maybe that's all that really matters when it comes to something like this.

rincebrain 2y ago
It's also a very hard line to draw, in some cases, since you can have the right things happening for the wrong reasons. If a bill contains funding to help fix a main street in a city that was destroyed by a natural disaster, is that corruption? What if there's 500 other destroyed main streets and that one got picked? What if it was destroyed by decades of the local gov't neglecting it? What if it was included because you directly bribed the person writing the bill? What if it was included because you did some horse trading and gave them something they wanted in another bill you wrote? The intent there is not to argue that defining corruption is impossible or futile, but that some people might reasonably argue different sides of whether something was corruption without either side obviously being morally bankrupt.

leereeves 2y ago

[flagged]

shepherdjerred 2y ago
This is absolutely bizarre. It sounds like something out of Portal
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Are you telling me that the US Government is storing its data in a data storage facility? https://www.ironmountain.com/services/vital-records-storage https://www.ironmountain.com/services/vital-records-storage When will this woke madness stop?
- leereeves 2y ago
  Read the article. It's not just data storage. Hundreds of people actually work there, processing the applications there, by hand, on paper.
  - djur 2y ago
    The article says they couldn't confirm Musk's claims about the number of employees.
    - leereeves 2y ago
      Snopes hasn't confirmed it in 2025 but they did say that in 2014 the Washington Post reported that 600 people worked there.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        So 0.01% of the Federal workforce or so?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        The facility website says they have roughly 1100 workers there daily, but those aren't all government since other work goes on there too.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Hers a PDF detailing some of the audio and photographic professionals that work "down the mine" in the state of the art digitisation facilities that corporations have there: https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/ironmountain-c8dd68e9/media/project/iron-mountain/iron-mountain/files/resources/general-articles/s/stories-from-the-underground.pdf?sc_lang=en https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/ironmountain-c8dd68e9/media/pr... So why would it be by definition considered waste that a government has employees working on paper records stored in the same place? There is absolutely no reason to think this is ridiculous. These types of sites exist all over the world. Yet Elon Musk claims it's ridiculous and people now have to defend that claim?
raydev 2y ago
Physical backup of important documents seems like the opposite of waste.
- leereeves 2y ago
  It's not backup, the forms are processed by hand on paper.
EasyMark 2y ago
that's why you fix it, not act like you can just destroy it and what it does. It is also why you think practically and tell us, the voter, how much extra it is costing us over your "new and improved" program. Just lying about it and exaggerating the concern is a sad, sad, disingenuous way of governing. I want fixes and unrelenting attempts at efficiency and not "hur-duh-hur I can make a meme out of this on X and not offer a single solution"
acdha 2y ago
That’s a good example of penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking: they’ve been asking for funding to modernize for most of this century but Congress chooses not to allocate the money. A big contributing factor is that when money is allocated, it’s often directed towards contractors who cost twice as much and have a higher failure rate so congresspeople can say they “shrunk” the government.
apical_dendrite 2y ago
The government does plenty of things inefficiently, but DOGE is making such a colossal mess with their rushed, uninformed, and frequently illegal actions that they're causing more problems than they solve. Indiscriminately firing people because they were hired or promoted within the last 2 years is incredibly wasteful. It means getting rid of the people who were most successful. It also means getting rid of people who had very specialized skills or who just went through a very expensive training process. Also consider how much disruption all of this is causing to the federal workforce and the contractors. People are being forced to upend their lives on very short notice to RTO. They were getting daily emails telling them to quit. It's hard to imagine anyone doing good work when they're scared that some indiscriminate process is going to fire them.
- leereeves 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - linkregister 2y ago
    > Now it's more profitable than ever. The primary owner of X disagrees with you. "We're barely breaking even" [1] 1. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-x-growth-221307490.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-x-growth-22130...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - apical_dendrite 2y ago
    This is a stupid comparison. The government is not a business. "Lower costs by making it shittier" has a completely different implication when people are relying on the work for national defense, public safety, health, income, and other life-and-death matters. These are public goods. They shouldn't be run on the basis of "make them as crappy as we can get away with to save as much money as possible".
  - codedokode 2y ago
intended 2y ago
Was this replaced by a better, more well funded and resourced system? Or was it made worse ?

EasyMark 2y ago

his cuts are max 0.1% of government outlays, yet the MAGAs are acting like it's slash and burn and worshipping at the idol of their cult of personality(ies?) . Anyway it's so obvious to anyway who steps back and turns off the political blinders. Just look at the sheer number of lies coming from Musk and Trump about the "savings" ,about millions of people over 100 getting social security checks, that the few million of probably waste of money USAID was spending is evidence to cut without any other proof the entire USAID organization, even though it's a $50 billion dollar outlay. It's so effing sad that people fall for this, and that our education system is such a failure on probably the most necessary modern skill other than literacy--critical thinking.

garden_hermit 2y ago
The insane thing of all this is that the 1% being cut is almost entirely in investments: money for research that drives economic growth, money for the USAID that provides the US influence around the world, cuts to CDC staff that could help mitigate expensive pandemics…the list goes on. So not only is the DOGE affair not reducing the debt, it is setting the country up for less wealth and more expenses in the future.

rayiner 2y ago

[flagged]

djur 2y ago
First, what was done with the money: > The $2 billion was used for the "decarbonization of homes" in low-income communities and paid for new household appliances, such as water heaters, induction stoves, solar panels, EV chargers, and weatherization, according to an April 2024 press release from Power Forward Communities. Second, the claim that it was given to Stacey Abrams, from the LinkedIn post cited in the article: > The coalition includes Rewiring America, Enterprise Community Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), United Way, and Habitat for Humanity International and today, we've applied for $9.5 billion — part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act — to directly fund residential decarbonization and electrification... The application is already supported by 321 partners who have pledged to decarbonize housing units across 46 states and every EPA region. It also includes 156 communities pledging to decarbonize housing units, particularly in low-income and disadvantaged communities, and rural and Tribal communities. It appears that Stacey Abrams was in some way involved in organizing a coalition of existing nonprofits to apply for congressionally authorized grant money. There is no evidence I can see that she received any of the money or that any other impropriety was involved. "$2 billion to Stacey Abrams" is a falsehood, even based on the content of the inflammatory Fox News article.