DOGE should be able to make those arguments themselves. They're also not particularly transparent, so we have to assemble information from various sources.
They're right now firing all probationary employees at multiple agencies. That is entirely indiscriminate, and almost certainly disruptive to the mission of those agencies.
The actions at NIH and NSF will likely kill a large portion of the scientific research they used to fund. So unless you consider science in general be a waste I think these broad cuts clearly don't target actual waste and abuse.
The Twitter DOGE account posted a screenshot of where a 'Gender Identity Section' had been removed from a website.
Where is the efficiency saving and where was the waste?
This is really what has been on my mind. Simone tagged Elon showing him a screenshot of some veteran website allowing you to select more than two genders. Elon replies with a “On it. @DOGE”
I thought doge was about efficiency, why is he spending resources on the culture war?
USAID, CFPB, 18F (free tax filing), DOJ (lawyers who worked on Trump cases), EPA (halting alternative energy projects), NSF/NIH (funding by keyword search of anything remotely DEI related) etc
There aren’t any examples so far of stuff that is clearly waste and abuse.
If you don't think foreign aid is important for the continued safety of the US then you don't understand soft power and have no business in modern politics.
Sadly the people in charge fit into this category, except for the ones like Marco Rubio who actually do understand this but have no spine and are willing to overlook this stupidity for a seat at the table.
I looked at the screenshot they posted about the 2.23M, which is all they posted. So we know, if I’m correct, absolutely and precisely nothing about this payment? Who was doing the equity assessment, how many people over what time period? What are the details of this, what was the purpose? I went digging briefly and found nothing. Why would I assume this is waste without any clue what it is?
Even if we decided that all of these were waste, that's still not even the bulk of their cuts. "Hey we got rid of some wasteful stuff because we closed 95% of the organization and some portion of that stuff was waste" is not sufficient.
the problem is labeling anything ideological as “waste”; one can get rid of anything under that cover, quite convenient.
You don’t need to write “the agency will no longer do X” you just need to fire the people doing X. Case in point the EPA and CFPB (which catch fraud among companies but were not worried about that anymore are we)
No – but why would you trust their Twitter feed and their Twitter feed only? Elon Musk himself has talked openly about dismantling the CFPB and USAID on his private account; in that case, it's a matter of "agency will no longer do anything".
Oh, they are posting a lot of cancellations, they rarely, if ever show what payments are for, exactly, and whether they are actual waste, or that it doesn't "neatly fits into the function the government agency is supposed to fill".
> but you see a few building leases sprinkled it.
You think agencies cannot lease buildings? And that it's a waste and fraud?
> I haven’t seen anything so far that says “Agency will no longer do X”, but happy to be be corrected.
They have literally unilaterally shut down several government agencies with bogus claims.
DOGE should be able to make those arguments themselves. They're also not particularly transparent, so we have to assemble information from various sources.
They're right now firing all probationary employees at multiple agencies. That is entirely indiscriminate, and almost certainly disruptive to the mission of those agencies.
The actions at NIH and NSF will likely kill a large portion of the scientific research they used to fund. So unless you consider science in general be a waste I think these broad cuts clearly don't target actual waste and abuse.
Not transparent?
Compared to what? The Biden administration? Who never even held a press conference for months?
And what evidence? Did you want a downloadable pdf of justification for each cut?
The partisan nature of the criticism is obvious - Trump and Musk are bad, so nothing they do can be good. Produce evidence? Not good enough!
The Twitter DOGE account posted a screenshot of where a 'Gender Identity Section' had been removed from a website. Where is the efficiency saving and where was the waste?
This is really what has been on my mind. Simone tagged Elon showing him a screenshot of some veteran website allowing you to select more than two genders. Elon replies with a “On it. @DOGE”
I thought doge was about efficiency, why is he spending resources on the culture war?
USAID, CFPB, 18F (free tax filing), DOJ (lawyers who worked on Trump cases), EPA (halting alternative energy projects), NSF/NIH (funding by keyword search of anything remotely DEI related) etc
There aren’t any examples so far of stuff that is clearly waste and abuse.
USAID.
If you don't think foreign aid is important for the continued safety of the US then you don't understand soft power and have no business in modern politics.
Sadly the people in charge fit into this category, except for the ones like Marco Rubio who actually do understand this but have no spine and are willing to overlook this stupidity for a seat at the table.
And the plane. I think. He just wants to travel the world over, stay at lavish places, eat great food, and hand with the powerful, on our dime.
[flagged]
You have a childs-like view of how the world works if you are boiling "international development" down to "interfering in foreign countries elections"
1 reply →
No. It's on DOGE (and you, since you also claim this) to show that what they cut was waste and abuse, and not the function of the agency they cut.
[flagged]
I looked at the screenshot they posted about the 2.23M, which is all they posted. So we know, if I’m correct, absolutely and precisely nothing about this payment? Who was doing the equity assessment, how many people over what time period? What are the details of this, what was the purpose? I went digging briefly and found nothing. Why would I assume this is waste without any clue what it is?
6 replies →
Even if we decided that all of these were waste, that's still not even the bulk of their cuts. "Hey we got rid of some wasteful stuff because we closed 95% of the organization and some portion of that stuff was waste" is not sufficient.
the problem is labeling anything ideological as “waste”; one can get rid of anything under that cover, quite convenient.
You don’t need to write “the agency will no longer do X” you just need to fire the people doing X. Case in point the EPA and CFPB (which catch fraud among companies but were not worried about that anymore are we)
No – but why would you trust their Twitter feed and their Twitter feed only? Elon Musk himself has talked openly about dismantling the CFPB and USAID on his private account; in that case, it's a matter of "agency will no longer do anything".
Oh, they are posting a lot of cancellations, they rarely, if ever show what payments are for, exactly, and whether they are actual waste, or that it doesn't "neatly fits into the function the government agency is supposed to fill".
> but you see a few building leases sprinkled it.
You think agencies cannot lease buildings? And that it's a waste and fraud?
> I haven’t seen anything so far that says “Agency will no longer do X”, but happy to be be corrected.
They have literally unilaterally shut down several government agencies with bogus claims.
* X isn't an official Government archive of record
* They cut things blindly, eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43046466
It's a clown show.
1 reply →
> ~$115M
That's $0.70 per taxpayer (assuming 166M US taxpayers).
Was it worth it?
6 replies →
Nice sealioning ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning