| ▲ | chasd00 2 days ago |
| Yeah 99% is sour grapes from the other team. I like what doge has turned up so far and will give them the benefit of the doubt. My wife is a long time liberal Democrat and even she admits the main problem is Musk is just doing out in the open what is usually done behind closed doors and people don’t like it. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Do you like them turning up a wasteful $8 billion contract that turned out to be $8 million, but they’re a bunch of incompetent ninnies who can’t even verify they have the right number of zeroes in their figures before they tell the world? |
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| ▲ | andsoitis 2 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | lokar 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Aiui, the 8M contract was not fraudulent, they just disagree with it. Also, it was multi-year and less then half has been paid out. | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Great that all of that information is getting published so we can judge for ourselves the efficacy of both the relevant agency or department, but also effectiveness of the DOGE. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you saying that federal spending should always be done in chunks of less than $8 million? | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Are you saying that federal spending should always be done in chunks of less than $8 million? I'm saying that focusing on an incorrect zero ($8b) distracts from the fact that $8m is easily spent wastefully by people (and systems) whose job it should be to be accurate. | | |
| ▲ | Volundr 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > whose job it should be to be accurate. Surely the people doing an audit should be just as accurate no? If they can't keep track of (several) zeros how can you trust them to accurately work through all the documentation involved in figuring out what is waste, what is fraud, and what is legitimate spending? I'd actually support this effort if there was evidence any care was being taken. Instead I see wild statements like this, 100 million spent on condoms, people in the SSA database being too old with no discussion of if they are actually receiving payments or not (oh look they aren't!) A real audit take time, discipline and attention to detail. I see none of that. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It reminds me of Tesla removing turn signal stalks from their cars because they're going to be self-driving real soon so why waste money on unnecessary controls? And then we're still years away from full self-driving and a bunch of human drivers are struggling with ridiculous capacitative touch sensors for their turn signals. This is the sort of thing that happens when you refuse objectivity and spend all your time getting high on your own farts. | | |
| ▲ | vuln 2 days ago | parent [-] | | “Human drivers are struggling” Yet teslas are still selling like hot cakes. If there were actual humans struggling we’d see an obvious decrease in sales. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They brought back the stalk in the new Model Y, so they seem to agree with my assessment. A product can still be successful even if there’s something bad about it. I don’t like the capacitive turn signal buttons at all but it wouldn’t have stopped me from buying a Tesla. |
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| ▲ | andsoitis 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Surely the people doing an audit should be just as accurate no? Yes they should. These are not auditors though. They have an axe to grind with confirmation bias driving the zealotry. The plus side is that they are publishing information in real time so we can all judge it, which one could argue is an improvement over not publishing. A counter argument would be that this is just to create the illusion of transparency, but I suspect they are not playing 5D chess. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Can you trust their assessment of wastefulness when you can't trust them to be within 1000x of the actual amount supposedly being wasted? Beyond that, you're not going to make the Federal government efficient by cutting $8 million at a time. Musk's goal is $2 trillion in cuts. He said he thinks there's a good shot at achieving $1 trillion. The deficit in 2024 was $1.8 trillion. If your top item is $8 million, your task is utterly hopeless. Imagine being a family drowning in debt, with expenses exceeding income by $330,000/year, and a financial planner comes in and says that your top priority is not to buy that hot dog at the Costco food court this weekend. Not even that you should stop buying hot dogs weekly, that you should not buy one. They make you a list of things you should stop spending money on, and "One Costco hot dog combo planned to be purchased sometime in the coming year" is top of the list. Oh, and they also have it listed as saving you $1,500 because they didn't actually check the cost of a hot dog before they gave you the list. | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Can you trust their assessment of wastefulness No we can’t because they control the narrative. There should be more transparency in an objective manner without using the qualifiers like “wasteful” so that readers can decide for themselves. Or at the very least express both the arguments for and against, similar to how voter guides often come with a listing of arguments from both sides of the coin. |
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| ▲ | larksimian 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, what's 3 orders of magnitude wrong between strong and stable geniuses. They're claiming to cut $16b and actually only cut like $6b and none of it was actually fraudulent it just literally matched grep trans or something. I know this is how I and my definitely not a bot liberal friend want our country to be governed, fellow humans. beep boop bzzzzzzt | | |
| ▲ | vuln 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > it just literally matched grep trans or something. Do you have a source for this opinion presented as a fact? |
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| ▲ | larrywright 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think what you mean to say is that you like what doge has claimed to have found so far. Unfortunately it doesn’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. |
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| ▲ | mdale 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's like we go out to a twelve course dinner and get home and there is one 10 calories carrot on the table and we are tweeting to no end about our genius and our total transparently and robust diet of throwing away that carrot. "Carrots don't taste good anyways" they screen and people cheer. Meanwhile we are actually losing vision and dying of obesity. There is plenty to do to get more healthy for real; but that's not where we are heading with these initiatives so far: https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trill... |
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| ▲ | Loughla 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is no rhyme or reason. That's the problem with it. Not that it's out in the open. Not that it's musk. There is no rhyme or reason, other than stripping off the parts. I'll bet you. Once the stripping is complete, Musk and Trump have the brilliant idea of replacing the old, "bloated" government functions that were cut with private for profit contractors (that are obviously "more efficiently" run because they're for profit). |
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| ▲ | onemoresoop 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A team of kids without the capacity for discernment and bad morals to get through government agencies data is unprecedented. This is not sour grapes, this is a radical shift to how things have been done. These kids talk about bling bling, pull pump and dumps in the crypto world and are now at Elon Musks command. This is pushing any conversation away completely because you cannot have a normal conversation with trolls. What’s next, uncontrolled violence? |
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| ▲ | mystraline 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That's where I think things are headed. For example, when the NLRB was crippled by trump firing a member and losing quoroum, they forgot an important part of union history. Prior to a proper process of grievances, the old answer was to basically wage war, guns and all, against the bosses and their families. The companies also hired Pinkerton's and every so often had the national guard also fight for the companies. Union history is a bloody and murderous affair. The NLRB was the compromise to "go to the bosses house and shoot it up to leave a message". With the NLRB effective destruction, the next logical devolution for worker rights is violence, and a lot of it. As for me, I'm looking at what it would take to get out of the USA. Already interviewing with a few places in EU. The USA is basically an invaded country at this point. And I really dont want to be around when the violence picks up. | | |
| ▲ | Acrobatic_Road 2 days ago | parent [-] | | IMO firing the people inside the agency wasn't enough. He needs to install anti-union replacements to destroy it from the inside. | | |
| ▲ | mystraline 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | How I'm reading and interpreting this, is that you dont want workers collectively communicating and joining forces at a negotiating table. By denouncing this right of peaceably assembling and negotiating at a table of law, means that you're wanting the old solution of mass widespread violence against workers and management. Because this is exactly what happened before. But dont believe me - go read how unions were formed. Most civilized countries have good worker protections. The USA is speedrunning the elimination of worker protections. And it doesn't take too much history knowledge to figure out how that works out. I think the zoomer term is "fuck around and find out". We're in the 'fuck around' stage. I dont want to be here during the 'find out' stage. | |
| ▲ | onemoresoop 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why anti union? Union protect workers, is there a war being waged on workers now? | | |
| ▲ | Acrobatic_Road 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Unions produce nothing and don't innovate. Yes, they can benefit some people, but they provide no net societal benefit. In fact, they are a net negative because they misallocate resources (such as by keeping factories open producing cars that nobody wants). | | |
| ▲ | onemoresoop 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They could benefit some people? They benefit the workers who would otherwise be worked literally to death. I wish they were not necessary but they came to existence exactly for this exact reason. If you could come up with an equitable and non exploitative system that works for everyone, suddenly you no longer have a need for unions. | | |
| ▲ | Acrobatic_Road 2 days ago | parent [-] | | >They could benefit some people? They benefit the workers who would otherwise be worked literally to death. The problem is that they benefit workers not through productivity increases, but via collective bargaining, i.e. at the expense of society. Consider that when unions go on strike, they reduce economic productivity and disrupt the economy. Likewise, when unions fight to prevent factories from closing to protect the jobs of workers, this causes an inefficient allocation of resources - so now companies must bid up the prices of raw materials to produce things that nobody wants just to keep some people employed. Unions oppose automation for similar reasons, which is why we have the most inefficient ports in the world (worse than Africa!). So in sum, unions do literally nothing to make society better off. What benefits unionized workers receive come at cost of society (including other unionized workers!) >If you could come up with an equitable and non exploitative system that works for everyone, suddenly you no longer have a need for unions. Capitalism is working great, actually. It would work better without unions. |
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| ▲ | gaganyaan 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is braindead capitalist propaganda. Stop filling your head with garbage. At the very least, keep it to yourself so other people don't have to smell it. Gross. | | |
| ▲ | Acrobatic_Road 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Economics is braindead capitalist propaganda. Got it. | | |
| ▲ | gaganyaan 2 days ago | parent [-] | | "Economics" in the sense of "blathering on about nonsense opinions", yes. "Economics" in the sense of "any sort of understanding of how the world works", not so much. Drain the rot from your brain. Ew. | | |
| ▲ | Acrobatic_Road 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Nothing I'm saying is particularly hard to understand or controversial - and that's with most economists being left-wing! If a field dominated by the left can't even find strong support for unions, then perhaps its actually you who lacks "any sort of understanding of how the world works". |
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| ▲ | lonelyasacloud 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What’s next, uncontrolled violence? https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/how-did-adolf... Hitler was elected, loved to hear himself talk, many people did not take him seriously, blamed Germany's weaknesses on minorities, anti democratic. Even teamed up with Stalin's Russia to invade Poland. If the pattern continues then the push back will be used to grant himself emergency powers. | | |
| ▲ | Hikikomori 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Black flag attack next, like Hitler did, the right wing is obsessed with those. Or will crack down hard on a protest and when they try to fight back he'll declare a state of emergency. Doubt anything short of a military coup that dismantles maga can stop this. Hopefully neither party survives and the US will have an actual democracy. |
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| ▲ | gaganyaan 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Stop being naive. This is an unelected billionaire successfully couping the government and replacing competent people with incompetent lackeys. Musk is fucking you over and you're cheering him on because you've suckled at the teat of propaganda for far too long. Get your head out of your ass and actually think |
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| ▲ | MyneOutside 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Denial on what is actually happening is rampant at the moment. When in weeks, months, and years the consequences of these actions maybe, maybe, it will be acknowledged, though the pattern has been so far scapegoating the 'other'. |
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| ▲ | kennysoona a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Yeah 99% is sour grapes from the other team. I like what doge has turned up so far and will give them the benefit of the doubt. This is peak ostriching. They haven't turned up anything so far, they've just been making monumental messes and lying about progress. |
