9 ms·
DOGE Track
- spiderfarmer 8mo ago[flagged]
- bryancoxwell 8mo agoWell that’s a really, really easy thing to say. Curious if you’ve actually thought through how you’d go about that. If there weren’t any non-peaceful protests to participate in would you start one? How? Is it possible that it’s not that simple?
- bluescrn 8mo agoCommon trend with online activists is that they clearly don't want to risk jail themselves, but they like to actively encourage others to get violent.
- jgbuddy 8mo ago[flagged]
- jryan49 8mo agoSo we should all go out and get arrested and put and jail to solve nothing. Sounds like a plan...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- dilfred 8mo agoHow very very brave of you
- FrustratedMonky 8mo agoreal change is difficult. look how many people in the US just post on facebook and think they have done enough.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoSorry, I absolutely abhor violence as a means to an end (and in all cases really).
- iammjm 8mo agoViolence sometimes absolutely is the right response. Let me quote some George Orwell: "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. " source: https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/english/e_patw https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/english/e_pa...
- energy123 8mo agoIn the context of 1942, sure, but there are many other contexts where such views are over-simplistic or dangerous.
- ahhhhnoooo 8mo agoNote the parent said non-peaceful. They did not say violent. You can have non-violent, non-peaceful protest. (E.g., making a ton of noise at specific places to disrupt their ability to work there isn't peaceful, see also blockading businesses and roads.) A lot of civil disobedience fits in non-peaceful (not calm, not orderly) and non violent.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoGood point, I mistakenly assumed non-peaceful to in fact mean violent.
- mrguyorama 8mo agoHow do you think the USA was made? Rejecting violence is un-american lol.
- jazz9k 8mo ago[flagged]
- aoeuhtnsaoeu 8mo ago[flagged]
- hagbard_c 8mo ago[flagged]
- wesleywt 8mo agoOP then proceeds not to list the massive fraud.
- righthand 8mo agoTrump is the massive fraud.
- pjc50 8mo agoThe sad thing is that people don't miss the administrative state until it's too late. I'm reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal ; one side effect was people importing baby formula to China from Australia, because they trusted the Australian food safety authorities more than the Chinese ones. The DOGE gutting has most likely set up some sort of similar problem that hasn't arrived or gone public yet. Not to mention the background level of problems like the Purdue Pharma one.
- chii 8mo agoThis is the macroscopic outcome that also play out in a company microcosm - people who _prevent_ disasters and fix problems _before_ they occur get no credit, and on the balance sheet it looks like they're just a waste of resources. On the big scale, like in gov't, the disasters that did not happen end up also not getting any credit to the institutions and regulators, so on the budget it feels (to uninformed voters) that these departments are simply wasting taxpayer money.
- throw0101a 8mo ago> This is the macroscopic outcome that also play out in a company microcosm - people who _prevent_ disasters and fix problems _before_ they occur get no credit, and on the balance sheet it looks like they're just a waste of resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox > On the big scale, like in gov't, the disasters that did not happen […] Michael Lewis (of The Big Short fame) has two books on the things that government(s) do that no one else (often) can, either because they're too big, too expensive/unprofitable, or a co-ordination problem where it effects many actors simultaneously: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/788713/who-is-government-by-edited-by-michael-lewis/9798217047802 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/788713/who-is-govern...
- wwweston 8mo agoI haven't read _Who is Government_ yet (in spite of the fact that it has a better title!) but _The Fifth Risk_ was a fantastically illuminating paradigm-shifting read for me. "What roads would any dare to tread, what safety would there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were asleep, or were all gone into the grave?"
- yabones 8mo agoSpecifically talking about USAID, that's the biggest erosion of US soft power in the country's history. All that "foreign aid" wasn't for charity or the goodness of anybody's heart, it was to keep the "3rd world" aligned with US foreign policy objectives. And to set a price floor for agricultural products.
- pjc50 8mo agoIt's quite likely that, sprinkled in among the idealistic helpers of the third world, were some number of CIA agents. For good or ill. (the hatred of USAID seems to be tied into hatred of the State Department, and in turn Hilary Clinton. I'm sure someone can unravel the alleged thought process there)
- sedawkgrep 8mo agoDo you have any source for any of this?
- irl_zebra 8mo agoIf nothing else, the "Political Operations Abroad" section of USAID's wiki has some links and background.
- ChrisMarshallNY 8mo agoNPOs are traditional places for CIA agents. Tends to make them targets of suspicion. Source: My father[0] was in the CIA, and worked at an NPO, in Africa. [0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
- heisgone 8mo ago>Increasingly, he found his cover work more engaging and important than his intelligence-gathering. Your father was a great man.
- 8mo ago
- aaa_aaa 8mo agoTo me improving "government efficieny" is unattainable for large states. Who claims to achieve this is a fool or a bad actor.
- irl_zebra 8mo agoLots of organizations have massively increased government efficiency in the USA. 18F comes to mind as one.
- bfeynman 8mo agoBasic knowledge of civic history and political science makes this point very salient. Anyone with a clue would know this from the beginning - that's why it was so terrifying to see what actually was motivating people, feels like the ultimate recipe for unchecked power and disaster with bad actors employing fools to do their bidding.
- estearum 8mo agoYep. Governments, by virtue of being the functional backstop on all possible negative outcomes, necessarily runs with enormous slack. The ones that do not simply break under stress and they're replaced over and over until a government emerges that figures out that extreme efficiency is a liability. Not to mention the US government in particular was quite literally deliberately designed to be inefficient as a way to safeguard personal liberties as well. Not to say we shouldn't cut inefficiencies where we can, but the early DOGE promises were obviously made from a place of profound ignorance and (worse) lack of curiosity.
- lokar 8mo agoGore reduced the federal civilian workforce by 20% in a careful bi-partisan effort that did not really hurt effectiveness. Clinton left office with the budget in surplus. Government can work if you pick good leaders.
- badgersnake 8mo agoAbsolutely it can be done, but this kind of slash and burn cuts from people who come in from outside and have no understanding of how anything works are always going to be counterproductive.
- FrustratedMonky 8mo agoThis site is great. But needs some overall graphic, some charts or something, to tell a story. Something like dollars spent versus saved, to show how this whole effort was in-efficient. And. I'd like to see something similar for Project 2025.
- ahhhhnoooo 8mo agoThe problem with Doge was not that it was inefficient.... It's that it damaged a whole lot of essential infrastructure, exfiltrated a bunch of data, and generally destabilized a lot of essential systems. Doing so but more efficiently would not have improved it.
- reenorap 8mo ago[flagged]
- ahhhhnoooo 8mo agoThere's a wide gulf between "nothing was disrupted" and "reenorap isn't aware of anything being disrupted". It's also different from "reenorap did not value the things that were disrupted". Here's a single counterfactual to your statement that nothing was disrupted: approximately 1,500 grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities were cancelled abruptly.
- reenorap 8mo ago> approximately 1,500 grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities were cancelled abruptly. So, it's working as intended? I'm all for cutting as much money from government spending as possible, because we are $36T in debt and we can only get out of this by cutting spending.
- mjmsmith 8mo agoWhat percentage of the $36T debt did those 1,500 grants make up?
- plasma_beam 8mo agoI like the layout of this site. However I feel it should be stated more prominently that the primary source of data are online news articles.
- Sparyjerry 8mo agoIt's probably just sourcing data from doge.gov which already lists every single thing doge is cutting. This "tracking" website is just a way to add a democrat slant toa republican led project. This version literally starts with "tracking the damage" as their sub-header slogan.
- wildrhythms 8mo agoJudging by your comment history, you might be Elon Musk's fiercest warrior!
- Sparyjerry 8mo agookay? Why are you browsing my comment history lol
- GetTheFacts 8mo ago>okay? Why are you browsing my comment history lol Why not? That's kind of the whole point of having accounts here on HN. To create an environment where folks can discuss stuff in good faith. Posting history is public because the posts were public in the first place and they represent who you are (or present yourself to be) on the site. It allows each of us to be authentically 'us'. Do you not stand by the things you've posted in the past four plus years? If you do, why do you care if people are looking at your posting history? If you don't stand by what you've written here in the past, you're likely not posting in good faith. Either way, why are you concerned about folks looking at the stuff you've publicly posted in the past?
- Sparyjerry 8mo ago
- myrmidon 8mo agoI think it is really important from time to time to shed partisan tendencies and critically review policy initiatives and form a somewhat subjective overpromise/underdeliver judgement (also looking at where, why and how they succeeded or failed). To me, the whole Doge initiative scores quite poorly in this regard: Initial promises appear not realistic (or even worse: deceptive), while the (preliminary) results are lackluster, too. My impression is that the vast majority of "savings" was never achieved by promised efficiency gains or elimination of pure waste, but instead simply by cutting projects, i.e. slashing some form of public service or benefit in order to save tax money. Which is obviously inferior. I think promises along that exact line deserve extreme skepticism: "Simply" slashing regulations/public budget for "easy gains" is just not credible, and if anyone is gonna bring up the same arguments in favor of nuclear power or similar things I'm just gonna label them "liar/idiot" and watch reality endorse my view...
- coffeefirst 8mo agoIf you wanted to do this for real, your would double the size of 18F (which was doing extraordinary work), and given the Inspectors General a blank check to eliminate fraud. These are both apolitical entities. Frankly the only people this would upset is the legacy government contractors. So obviously they eliminated one and gutted the other.
- jdross 8mo agoIs that very different from what Joe Gebbia is doing now as chief design officer? Seems to be largely a rebranding of 18F's mission with different people and prioritization
- convolvatron 8mo agoI don't know how into building organizations you are, but 18f succeeded. they had a small footprint, and outsized impact, and really good relationships with the rest of the government. That kind of effectiveness is really difficult to grow in a massive bureaucracy. If your goal is efficiency you try to nurture that success. throwing it away and starting over for purely political reasons is a completely negative outcome. the best you could hope for is to replicate what it was, but odds are against you.
- reenorap 8mo ago[flagged]
- krapp 8mo ago[flagged]
- bluescrn 8mo ago[flagged]
- pocksuppet 8mo agoNot even if it's true?
- selectodude 8mo agoWe’re not allowed to call it what it is because otherwise the people that got us here might feel bad.
- krapp 8mo ago>This sort of deranged rhetoric doesn't win anybody over to your side It's an accurate description of a deranged and openly fascist government and its behavior. If that makes the party shooting innocent Americans in the street then publishing racist memes about them afterwards seem reasonable to anyone, then they have already picked their side, and the rhetoric isn't even the issue.
- ahhhhnoooo 8mo agoWhich part is "deranged"? It feels pretty causal and reasonable from what I've observed. Two primary assertions are being made: 1) DOGE wrecked infrastructure. I think this one is self evident. 2) DOGE harvested data (which we know is true) to provide it to ICE and Palantir (this we have no concrete evidence for, but does not feel implausible).
- nobody9999 8mo ago
- baggachipz 8mo agoOh great, I was really hoping to get my blood boiling today. Reading about data breaches done in the light of day is appalling, infinitely more so when it's condoned by the government who's supposed to prevent such grift and violations of privacy. It will take a long time to recover from this insane timeline (if ever).
- hamdingers 8mo agoThe true purpose of DOGE was to exfiltrate sensitive data from the IRS, SSA, Medicaid, and other agencies. We may never know what all they have done/are doing with it, but it's certainly playing a role in the current immigration crackdowns. Long term it will affect us all, likely more than the cuts the news prefers to focus on (tragic though they may be).
- bluescrn 8mo agoWhy on earth would they need something as visible and aggressive as DOGE to extract data? Can't it simply be a case of aggressive and overoptimistic attempts to cut spending (especially spending viewed as ideological) doing far more harm than good?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- krapp 8mo agoNo, because there is evidence DOGE did exfiltrate a vast amount of data, illegally, and gave it to Palantir and possibly others. Maybe they were naive and useful idiots, but that doesn't just happen by accident.
- jacob_harris 8mo agoThere definitely has been a pattern of shoddy behavior, but it's been difficult to find a smoking gun of DOGE exfiltrating the data at many agencies. I am looking to see if there are more revelations to come out of DOGE's activities at SSA for instance. That said, lack of evidence isn't necessarily exonerating. DOGE's MO has often been to take over the CIO and/or front office of the agency to ensure there is nothing to monitor them. It's basically like if the CEO of the bank sends all the security guards home and lets robbers in through the side door. You can't prove they took anything necessarily (my bank metaphor falls flat here, because data can be copied but if money were stolen, you could count it), but also it IS often shady as hell too.
- PopAlongKid 8mo ago
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- squeegmeister 8mo agoYou might consider sharing this in the fednews subreddit. Awesome project
- kyle_martin1 8mo ago[dead]
- youknownothing 8mo agoPutting everything that DOGE has done, am I the only one who thinks that there is a teeny, tiny conflict of interest in Musk naming a department pretty much the same as one of the cryptocurrencies that he supports (Dogecoin)? Isn't that using the government for marketing?
- mlnj 8mo agoAnd THAT is the biggest issue you have with the whole ordeal?
- krapp 8mo agoYes, when you set aside Musk buying Twitter and using it to platform white supremacists and extremists to help get Trump elected in exchange for benefits to his companies and direct control over private regulatory and financial data that allowed him to gain potential advantage over his competition and punish his enemies, naming your fake government office after your memecoin is also a problem. People probably don't focus on that because it's the least worst aspect of any of this. Also the President of the United States rugpulled the public on two memecoins and wiped out $4 billion, and no one talks about that either.
- intermerda 8mo agoIf the list of crimes and improprieties of this administration were ranked by their severity, this one will surely get a 5-digit rank.
- dang 8mo agoWe banned this account, not because of what it posted here but because of personal attacks in other threads. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47106839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47106839. (I'm replying here as well because the other comment was already a week old.)
- mrguyorama 8mo agoTrump sold beans in the oval office.
- dfilppi 8mo agoDOGE has no power. It produces information. Is the premise of this page that information about government operations is bad? If the goal is to persuade somebody that government should grow with no oversight forever, good luck. Democrats will read the site with horror. Republicans will cheer the accomplishments listed. People in neither camp probably won't pay attention, but if they do, they'll split down the middle.
- dlev_pika 8mo agoOne of the lessons of this Trump administration is that we *can* affect radical change, if the will is there. I truly hope our future DSA gov takes this experience to heart.
- jccalhoun 8mo agoJust today I ran into one of the very minor legacies of doge. When talking about conflict styles I used to have students take a survey on the US Institute of Peace's website. Doge shut it down. I guess that survey was taking up too much money to run... Now the only thing there is a press release stroking Trump's ego.
- ikeashark 8mo agoThis websites seems incredibly biased and uses quite emotional language.
- Sparyjerry 8mo agoDoge.gov already has the most transparent listing of everything they are cutting. This other website that starts out its header with "Tracking The Damage" is clearly a biased attempt by democrats to discredit a program that was started by republicans. It's actually kind of sad people don't realize that the two-party system involves tribalism where no matter how good something is, the other side will call it bad if it wasn't their idea.
- senordevnyc 8mo agoI haven’t looked at it in almost a year, but was that the site that was full of basic errors and misleading info that was clearly designed to expose “waste, fraud, and abuse” that actually wasn’t any of those things? Yeah, I don’t know why we wouldn’t trust them…
- Sparyjerry 8mo agoMost things are clearly linked to the contracts themselves with descriptions. Waste is a broad term and things like DEI or many more definitely fall into that category. Imagine spending billions of dollars on your HR department for the specific purposes of DEI without any tangible return on the investment. Its definitely wasteful and at most corruption. Discretionary funds for things like 'payroll' were being used to fund a very specific political ideology that aligned with one political party and congress did not authorize the use in that manner, which is why they were able to cut it so easily.
- senordevnyc 8mo agoSorry, too many blatant lies from Elon and co, I don't trust anything on their bullshit site. lol, this is relevant: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/19/doge-bros-grant-review-process-was-literally-just-asking-chatgpt-is-this-dei/ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/19/doge-bros-grant-review-p... DOGE Bro’s Grant Review Process Was Literally Just Asking ChatGPT ‘Is This DEI?’ Fuck these unserious clowns.
- burnt-resistor 8mo agoPutin, Erdoğan, Modi, MbS, Netanyahu, Berdimuhamedow, and much of the worldwide pedophile oligarch class are celebrating all of their various, ascendant authoritarian restoration of de facto criminal aristocracy in multiple countries. Fascism rarely leaves peacefully once it takes hold.
- typesafeJ 8mo agoI built https://dogedownloadtool.pages.dev/ https://dogedownloadtool.pages.dev/ to download doge data as CSV.