4 ms·

From what I understand, the funding cuts are primarily related to DEI initiatives. And, generally the administration is trying to align activities with its goal

by afpx 2y ago

From what I understand, the funding cuts are primarily related to DEI initiatives. And, generally the administration is trying to align activities with its goals, so it’s understandable that funds will be adjusted. DEI is a target because its goals are steeped in Marxist philosophy, which is antithetical to their own. Also, Republicans (of whom I’m not one) believe that spending should be controlled by the states. It’s not that they don’t believe in defense - they realize it’s more effective to invest in drones and use nuclear deterrence. Those are more effective and cheaper in terms of lives as well as money. This aligns with the US’s new isolationist strategy as it withdraws from the world.

eesmith 2y ago
Do you have any idea of the breakdown? Because everything I've see is that no one knows, and the limited government publications are full of bullshit. Like, if a project studying biodiversity is cut, is that because it is "related to DEI initiatives" because it shared the word "diversity"? How many of the laid-off VA staff were DEI? The laid-off forest rangers? How much of USAID was DEI? The Trump administration says the cut was due to wasteful spending and fraud, not DEI. How do the cuts in DEI initiatives compare to the massive cuts to indirect grant monies? If the Republicans believe spending should be more controlled by the states, they have a majority and can, you know, change the law. We have a representative democracy to help balance national interests, rather than the interests of a king. I don't think we can regard threats to annex Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal as part of an isolationist policy. Such threats are more closely aligned with expansionism. An isolationist government would not be involved in international negotiations involving Ukraine, or providing support to Israel, to start. FWIW, DEI is no more steeped in Marxist philosophy than the Freedman's Bureau, public libraries, or the FDIC. As far as I can tell, "Marxism" when used this way is a boogieman term used to scare off any critique of capitalism or its effects, little different than how Republicans sneered that Dukakis was an "L word", castigating the word "liberal." Both terms are used as rhetorical propaganda. Given the influence Marx had on studying "class relations, social conflict, and social transformation" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism), it's all too easy to say that any study of those topics must be Marxism, and therefore fomenting a communist revolution.
- atonse 2y ago
  Just to answer your question (not lend any legitimacy), https://doge.gov https://doge.gov has been publishing all the details. I've looked through it a few times to answer the same curiosity you have (I want more specifics, not just the stuff that fits in a tweet). But it still leaves me with questions because I don't know how much of these claims is actually accurate.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Yes, that's the bullshit I was talking about. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-musk-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus... > The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website. > Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation. or from https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-now-saved-65b-federal-funds-impossible-verify/story?id=119174949 https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-now-saved-65b-federal-funds-i... > DOGE says it's now saved $65B in federal funds, but that's still impossible to verify > It only provides records for $9.6 billion in savings from contract terminations as well as: > The official also said they're using a conservative methodology of calculating savings because they're subtracting the contracts' obligated dollars from the ceiling amounts. However, for many contracts the ceiling dollars are much higher than what is actually expected to be spent. You'll note that there's no information about how much was specifically DEI, while saying the total amount was due to a "combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings."
    - Wololooo 2y ago
      The hard truth is that they have no clue about what they are cutting and they mainly do not care because the initiative is not to make things better it is to break a currently working system in favour of God knows what. Every step taken by the current administration has undermined the safety and current position of the US both domestically and on the international stage. The only people that I see profiting from the current situation are Russia and then China. Regardless of opinions on Diversity Equity and Inclusion, one has to look at the current situation with pragmatism: Firing all probatory employees is just insane. Firing the people responsible of your nuclear Arsenal is insane Firing competent workers because of their skin colour or they do not have the genitalia you prefer is insane. Sending an emai, on the weekend, requesting 5 accomplishment or risk getting fired is insane. Let's see it from a different perspective, let's say you have a large company operating on international scale with many stakeholders, you get a consultant tasked with streamlining and optimising operation. Within less than a month, they start arbitrarily firing people based on aggregated numbers from random collection of papers lying around in the office. Would you trust the fact that they would streamline and make things run better or would you assume they just started slashing left and right to justify "optimising". You can tell by my phrasing what my opinion is on the matter but there is no way that you can optimise, let alone understand, those agencies inner working and essential moving parts within less than a month... Now I will refrain from making any political/legality statements, but from a pure practical standpoint it is, to put it mildly, nuts.
bfeynman 2y ago
Find it disappointing that even on HN people seems to blindly parrot manufactured outrage. Do you really think, nay have you ever tried to look a little deeper than surface to see just how preposterous all around the idea is in terms of actual intents and relative numbers that it would be meaningful to "cut" them? US Republicans are not about states rights, its just the excuse they use when they are trying to dismantle or challenge systems.
analognoise 2y ago
> DEI is a target because its goals are steeped in Marxist philosophy Tell me which parts of “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” you disagree with, then tell me how those things tie to Marxism?

by afpx 2y ago

eesmith 2y ago

Do you have any idea of the breakdown? Because everything I've see is that no one knows, and the limited government publications are full of bullshit. Like, if a project studying biodiversity is cut, is that because it is "related to DEI initiatives" because it shared the word "diversity"? How many of the laid-off VA staff were DEI? The laid-off forest rangers? How much of USAID was DEI? The Trump administration says the cut was due to wasteful spending and fraud, not DEI. How do the cuts in DEI initiatives compare to the massive cuts to indirect grant monies? If the Republicans believe spending should be more controlled by the states, they have a majority and can, you know, change the law. We have a representative democracy to help balance national interests, rather than the interests of a king. I don't think we can regard threats to annex Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal as part of an isolationist policy. Such threats are more closely aligned with expansionism. An isolationist government would not be involved in international negotiations involving Ukraine, or providing support to Israel, to start. FWIW, DEI is no more steeped in Marxist philosophy than the Freedman's Bureau, public libraries, or the FDIC. As far as I can tell, "Marxism" when used this way is a boogieman term used to scare off any critique of capitalism or its effects, little different than how Republicans sneered that Dukakis was an "L word", castigating the word "liberal." Both terms are used as rhetorical propaganda. Given the influence Marx had on studying "class relations, social conflict, and social transformation" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism), it's all too easy to say that any study of those topics must be Marxism, and therefore fomenting a communist revolution.

atonse 2y ago
Just to answer your question (not lend any legitimacy), https://doge.gov https://doge.gov has been publishing all the details. I've looked through it a few times to answer the same curiosity you have (I want more specifics, not just the stuff that fits in a tweet). But it still leaves me with questions because I don't know how much of these claims is actually accurate.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Yes, that's the bullshit I was talking about. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-musk-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus... > The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website. > Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation. or from https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-now-saved-65b-federal-funds-impossible-verify/story?id=119174949 https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-now-saved-65b-federal-funds-i... > DOGE says it's now saved $65B in federal funds, but that's still impossible to verify > It only provides records for $9.6 billion in savings from contract terminations as well as: > The official also said they're using a conservative methodology of calculating savings because they're subtracting the contracts' obligated dollars from the ceiling amounts. However, for many contracts the ceiling dollars are much higher than what is actually expected to be spent. You'll note that there's no information about how much was specifically DEI, while saying the total amount was due to a "combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings."
  - Wololooo 2y ago
    The hard truth is that they have no clue about what they are cutting and they mainly do not care because the initiative is not to make things better it is to break a currently working system in favour of God knows what. Every step taken by the current administration has undermined the safety and current position of the US both domestically and on the international stage. The only people that I see profiting from the current situation are Russia and then China. Regardless of opinions on Diversity Equity and Inclusion, one has to look at the current situation with pragmatism: Firing all probatory employees is just insane. Firing the people responsible of your nuclear Arsenal is insane Firing competent workers because of their skin colour or they do not have the genitalia you prefer is insane. Sending an emai, on the weekend, requesting 5 accomplishment or risk getting fired is insane. Let's see it from a different perspective, let's say you have a large company operating on international scale with many stakeholders, you get a consultant tasked with streamlining and optimising operation. Within less than a month, they start arbitrarily firing people based on aggregated numbers from random collection of papers lying around in the office. Would you trust the fact that they would streamline and make things run better or would you assume they just started slashing left and right to justify "optimising". You can tell by my phrasing what my opinion is on the matter but there is no way that you can optimise, let alone understand, those agencies inner working and essential moving parts within less than a month... Now I will refrain from making any political/legality statements, but from a pure practical standpoint it is, to put it mildly, nuts.

bfeynman 2y ago

Find it disappointing that even on HN people seems to blindly parrot manufactured outrage. Do you really think, nay have you ever tried to look a little deeper than surface to see just how preposterous all around the idea is in terms of actual intents and relative numbers that it would be meaningful to "cut" them? US Republicans are not about states rights, its just the excuse they use when they are trying to dismantle or challenge systems.

analognoise 2y ago

> DEI is a target because its goals are steeped in Marxist philosophy Tell me which parts of “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” you disagree with, then tell me how those things tie to Marxism?