Comment by ganoushoreilly
2 days ago
I understand you're frustrated because of who and what. Do you have any direct evidence they are stealing data? I see a lot of these responses that are emotional but at a factual basis it doesn't appear that way. Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.
I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.
As for the idea of nickle and dimming, everything adds up and they're no where near done yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we need a lot of it. Nearly every person that has run for president in modern years has stated they would go after excess spending and fraud, yet none follow through. This time someone is. If years of doing nothing gets us further down the debt rabbit hole, what harm is being done?
> Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.
Marko "normalize Indian hate" Elez did have read/write access, as DOGE lawyers admitted in court after first claiming that he did not[0].
[0] https://thehill.com/business/5141149-former-doge-employee-ed...
He was mistakenly given write access by the treasury department employees in charge of managing DOGE permissions. He resigned a day later, likely before he even realized he had write access. In that short window, he accessed the system "exclusively under the supervision of Bureau database administrators", and the initial treasury department investigation did not find any misuse of said write permissions.
I don't see how this can be blamed on DOGE. If anything it shows that DOGE employees are closely monitored, and their access is minimized and audited.
https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-ligh...
and they immediately course corrected as they should
let me ask you a question. Richard Nixon had a special team under his direct control, they're popularly known as the white house plumbers. He asked this team to engage in activities not directly authorized by congress including various wiretaps and break-ins. Eventually these activities were discovered, it became a scandal and ended his Presidency.
Do you think Nixon did something wrong by creating this team?
If not, then we have an answer for why most people see this whole thing differently from you — most people see the Nixon presidency as clear overreach and abuse of power.
If so, what is the significant difference between Nixon's plumbers and the DOGE team, in your view?
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By re-hiring him?
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Sorry but this is very clearly moving the goalposts; you asked, got a very seriously problematic example, and then brushed it off with "yeah but..."
Come on man, are we really at the level of just letting that slide and pretending this is a legit operation? That Musk has only the best intentions, as his track record clearly shows right?
I can't believe what I'm seeing, the world has gone fully crazy.
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Sunlight is publish the findings and take action after.
They're firing people's, seeing the repercussion and the publishing a list of program names. Not evaluations, not analysis. Nothing substantial, just gotcha out of context strings.
Do you think the entirety of USAID was "fraud" and waste? What about the US park service?
I am not American and the only time I saw my country do this kind of action in this manner was during its military government.
I have common sense. They put the least serious people possible in charge of it, so of course I'm not going to take it seriously.
> I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.
Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.
> This time someone is.
Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something about it? I see several people supporting these actions that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.
Who do you propose be put in charge? Why when the Democrats were in power weren't they put in charge before?
As for an actual audit, those have been done left and right. Audits only validate where the money is going not why.
Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good programs will likely be impacted, things will be course corrected and brought back where appropriate.
It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your way up.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
You are embracing those clear, simple answers. You are going to pay dearly for it.
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interesting to behold this inversion where the "conservative" side is taking dramatic and rapid action, changing things quickly, while the "progressive" side vociferously defends the status quo
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[flagged]
> Right, which is why it's still ongoing. They have a year to complete it.
So maybe the President's special boy shouldn't be tweeting that 150 year olds are receiving Social Security payments because he doesn't understand cobol's datetime system. That only way I take these people seriously is the way I would take a toddler with a lit torch seriously.
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So, where is your evidence that fraud of such scale is happening in the federal budget that requires unprecedented (and likely extremely illegal) access by people who are not qualified to be running a gas station IT system, let alone the entire financial and IT backend of the federal government? This is such a dishonest discussion and I suspect you types know it.
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