Having access to the data scares me less than the utter ineptitude demonstrated in presenting “findings”. Findings in quotes because if I used that level of analytical rigour I’d be instantly fired, probably out of a cannon into the sun.
What's Elon's beef with USAID? I would think he would go after something like food stamps first owing to his libertarian ethos. Maybe he sees USAID as a completely benevolent handout and a waste of money? I cannot begin to understand why.
They'll work their way up to anti-constitutional attacks on everything else if they get a chance, USAID is their starting point because it's a softer target in a few ways:
1. The people who'll suffer or die from their mal-management will generally be faraway foreigners, as opposed to people voters know.
2. More of the victims have a much more difficult time launching any kind of lawsuit in US courts.
3. It has a small veneer of Presidential-involvement-ness due to its proximity to diplomacy and foreign relations.
4. Like tariffs, being able to withhold aid allows Trump to commit extortion against other countries, much like how he was impeached for extorting Ukraine in his first term.
Ironically USAID might help Americans more than foreign folks, and disproportionately Trump’s own supporters - if the money is being spent to buy American products, particularly food, that is then shipped overseas.
> U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): The USAID Inspector General initiated a probe
into Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine
From a House Committee report matching Elon’s actions to agencies he has personal issues with:
USAID was funding the StarLink deployment in Ukraine and was reexamining the deal[1], likely to try to negotiate a cheaper plan or to reduce the funding. My opinion is that it likely hit his ego a bit and it was a really sweet deal for StarLink, so losing out on it would suck.
Calling a guy a pedophile repeatedly because you made yourself look stupid getting excited about your cool submarine and how awesome everyone will think you are when you save some kids wasn't really worth much money either. I don't think Musk has the self-control to think like that, honestly.
This raises a potential conflict of interest, as Musk's company was under investigation by USAID shortly before he began calling for the shutdown. Starlink's activity in Eastern Europe has been criticized, with many Russian operatives claiming to have access to Starlink despite Musk's assurances that only Ukraine was using the service.
Additionally, in September last year, Ukrainian forces downed a Russian drone that had a Starlink terminal integrated with its systems, raising questions as to how secure Starlink's operations during the Ukraine war are.
> it was so well known to have been a slush fund for Democrats
So well known by whom, and how? I never heard a peep about this until a few weeks ago, and all such claims seem to be coming from the same group of people with obvious ulterior motives.
Funny thing is that kind of government foreign aid is the kind of soft-power over smaller countries thing that right-wingers politicians love, or at least used to. Similar to the BS that China pulls with the belt and road initiative (but probably not as bad in most instances).
Basically give/loan money, get international political support back. Use political support to bully international institutions (UN, WTO, WHO, etc) to do what you want.
I guess soft-power is not enough anymore, they want all the power.
Marco Rubio has been very vocal on his support for USAID for years if you want to see what the traditional right wing take on this has been. "Critical to our security" etc. And he is of course in charge of the smoking remains of it now.
The funny thing is just how inverted the situation is, for years leftists were saying that this kind of foreign aid is often used to hold small countries hostage. While the right wanted to keep the soft-power the aid gives and claiming this kind of aid is used to keep countries democratic.
Now the right is "screw soft-power" and the left is "think of the children". And in the middle people suffering like always.
The worse part is that a lot/most of that aid is probably of very benign influence, but it is definitely also used for nefarious reasons.
When Trump attacks USAID (or the CIA or the FBI) from the nationalist authoritarian right, it in no way counterbalances people criticizing it from the left.
In particular, the left criticism of USAID were always "think of the children" because they wanted it to do that more and better. They have remained consistent in that.
Conservatism before Trump was George W Bush, and while they're very different, it definitely wasn't all sunshine and roses. I don't remember a time in my lifetime when conservatism represented anything good.
I'm a boomer, so I at least remember a time when it was at least more consistently about some sort of values. The Republican party has been through so many changes since then.
However, my entire life Republicans have been the party the KKK is happy to vote for. For a long time that was dismissed as not a problem because they were seen as a fringe, but people pointed out that if your party platform is attractive to the KKK, that is a problem -- you have to kick those people out or they invite their friends and their friends bring worse and worse people.
Lo and behold, the KKK contingent took over the entire party, to the point Liz Cheney (of all people) got kicked out. And the KKK, neo-Nazis, neo-feudalists, Christian nationalists fringes banded together in common cause.
So yes, the Republican party doesn't look like it did 40 years ago, but at the same time it looks exactly like it did 40 years ago.
International aid is such a cheap way to get soft-power while also being able to, you know, help people. Even if a lot of it is misused or inefficiently used the soft-power is there.
A lot of that soft-power has been spent on getting other countries to be more democratic, which is a good thing. Although I don't doubt it has been used for bad reasons as well.
I'm not refuting Musk probably hate them like all other regulators or might take advantage of getting into like FAA's operation. It's been obvious on both sides of the aisle. Is USAID corrupt? I think so, foreign money is the most difficult to track. Is FAA technology and management sucks? I believe that, too. Many things can be true at the same time. Since no body can fix it before Musk got his butt in started farting, why are people not benefiting from the kickbacks or inefficiencies complaining is beyond me.
You should have lived long enough to know a person can be a good father to his kids and still murder innocent people. Both things can be true. If a person doing these good things while made $30 million in 3 years on $200k salary, I can reasonably assume some serious corruption is going on.
Keep believing those baseless conspiracy theories. [0]
>"U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, ..."
>"Nichols noted that despite Trump’s claim of massive “corruption and fraud” in the agency, government lawyers had no support for that argument in court."
Meanwhile, the reality of the situation is simply tragic. [1]
"USAid money is spent supporting independent journalism" is an oxymoron. When a state sponsors something journalistic, it's called propaganda... not independent. Not saying they are not heroic doing this work, this money shouldn't come from US. If they can't keep the effort alive organically, they should get help from donations. These US congressmen for God sake need to keep their hands in their own wallets, not taxpayers.
Not sure what's your point on the Politico article. It is tragic that disrupt a lot of people's lives. Like I said, it doesn't mean there's no corruption, only good is happening. Both things can be true at the same time. This thing can be tragic, Congress might get their shit together - hopefully.
what's with people not having beef with USAID? It's done so many crazy and bad things, for example:
USAID funded the hepatitis vaccination drive that the CIA used as a cover for espionage against the bin laden family, leading to polio outbreak in pakistan.
Distaste for USAID in any other time would be bipartisan; the Clinton Administration floated shuttering it too. If you go to DC a lot of insiders will say, 'yeah, USAID's got to go'.
This seems like a criticism of the CIA, not USAID, no?
> The decision to enlist Afridi was probably made by the CIA station chief in Islamabad and was passed on to the Counterterrorism Center back in Langley.
What makes you think so, exactly? It's not like CIA would let everyone within the organisation know they are doing it. Do you think USAID could just say no to CIA?
IF YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH LYING TO PEOPLE AND NOT ADMINISTERING VACCINES AND DOING DNA TESTS, THEN IT IS YOUR INDVIDUAL DUTY TO STOP YOUR ORG FROM CONTINUING.
Again, do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?
What makes you think they were informed at all? That's kind of the entire MO of CIA - they don't inform other agencies what they are doing when it concerns national security, they just go and do it.
If you're a midlevel program manager (or whatever role label they have) at USAID you should be noticing that vaccines are not being given out. If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists, then it shouldn't exist.
Look, we can both play this game - let me spell this out for you the 3rd time
"do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?"
>>If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists
If you think CIA hasn't thought about this and addressed it some other way, then I guess the assumption we're working with is that CIA is literally incompetent at their actual job.
You're barking at the wrong tree. Be angry at CIA for doing this shit, not at USAID for running a program that got hijacked by them.
I postulate a slow, multi-generational decline in critical thinking skills (maybe this is driven, at least partially, by the over abundance of unchallenging media/entertainment) coupled with grievance politics and the bucket-of-crabs mentality that sets in when people start to sense the “pie getting smaller” or at least having reached its peak size.
I didn't bring this up because it would be controversial on this website. I think USAID is a tool for advancing US geopolitical interests aims first and foremost and I would like it to be abolished as well. But someone like Musk wanting it to be shuttered doesn't make sense because these organisation in one way or another advance the interests of US businesses and he would benefit from that as well.
I think USAID could certainly be classified as “soft power.” I think throwing it all out makes little sense in light of the provably good things it did.
My understanding is USAID was one of those organizations thet refused to pause spending when Trump lawfully asked all agencies to stop spending (it was a 90 day hold, not a outright denial, only congress can do that). Agencies that should adhere to trumps orders went to the top.
Scenario: You give someone $40B to feed people, and $1B actually feeds them while $39B vanishes into overhead and ideological reprogramming. Then they tell you they need more. If this is success, what does failure look like?
I have my own experience. As a non-American, I know a lot of hungry people. And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID. And who do you think received help from USAID out of all those I have encountered and ever heard about? Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes. And what I see (on this particular issue) is way more consistent with what Musk says than with what his opponents say.
> And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID
Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
> So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes.
So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
E.g. between the poor and hungry people in Moldova (my own native country) and in Sudan USAID would probably chose those in Sudan (what with war and genocide and...). And they might chose to support businesses in Moldova instead (and they did).
I'm not saying it's a perfect program devoid of any corruption. What I'm saying I can come up with as many bogus numbers, and with as many personal anecdotes as the next guy.
And Elon sure as hell resists any attempts to shed light on his activities and claims.
> Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
>Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
Obviously. But when such anecdotes are consistent with the position of the democratically elected president of USA... What specific reasons do I have to not trust to MY eyes?
>So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
No, where did you get that from?
>USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
Got it. My leftist country were targeted by programs, that promote democrat's left-leaning agenda. Helping poor and hungry - it is for others countries. It’s even surprising, why anyone would hinder such an amazing organization.
>Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
How are you imagine this? I mean if China or Russia is ready to pay to promote the idea that Trump is the greatest evil on the planet, then maybe.
It looks like USAID had 4B of the 40B budget actually reach endpoint users, which would make the overhead closer to 90% [1], not 97.5% like I originally estimated.
Eliminating foreign aid seems to be a common cause of neo-conservative movements.
Boris Johnson shut down the British equivalent(Department for International Development) and scrapped the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid.
It's simplistic, drastic and brings no specific domestic effect which could be a rallying point for unrest.
It's also very easy to come up with rage bait stories of corruption and waste as justification, because in any organisation spending billions of dollars around the world you will always be to find something ridiculous that got funding, even though the proportion of the budget it represents is insignificant.
Lol you clearly have no idea what a 'neo-conservative' is or their history.
Neo-Conservatives were a branch of Democrat wark-hawks who wanted to police the world, that were upset about the pacifist attitude of the Democrats at the time - they emerged in the 60's and managed to largely take control of the Republican party moving forward, peaking under George W Bush.
Their founding principal was "Peace Through Strength" and have a strong belief in worldwide interventionism.
If you think the 'MAGA' / 'Trump' party is neo-conservative you literally just are ignoring the entire history, the power struggle (which Trump won) to retake the party from the Neo-Cons, and the fact that the trump admin is largely isolationist and opposed to being the world police.
Don't get me wrong there are still some neo-cons in office and with roles in his admin, but the republican infighting can be summarized as neocon vs MAGA.
Words mean things. The MAGE/America First party is focused on non-interventionism, advocate against regime change abroad, with a focus on America and it's interest rather than the endless wars.
You can debate the success or merit of that approach I guess, but the Neo-Cons are very happy to provide foreign aid as it is core to their ideology. They tend to do it via NED while the left uses USAID more (although both use both, but they each have lean in one direction).
Just for fun, I just tried this little experiment you can try to:
"
CoPilot:
Can you rationally describe Trump as a neocon?
CoPilot:
No, it would not be accurate to rationally state that Donald Trump is a neoconservative (neocon). Here are some key differences:
Foreign Policy:
Neocons: Advocate for interventionist foreign policies, promoting democracy and regime change abroad.
Trump: Emphasizes “America First” policies, focusing on non-interventionism, reducing military engagements abroad, and prioritizing domestic issues.
Military Engagement:
Neocons: Support maintaining strong international alliances and a significant military presence globally.
Trump: Criticized NATO, praised authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, and negotiated troop withdrawals from conflict zones like Afghanistan.
Economic Policies:
Neocons: Generally support free trade and globalization.
Trump: Advocates for economic nationalism, including tariffs and renegotiating trade deals to favor American interests.
These differences highlight that Trump’s policies and ideology do not align with neoconservative principles. If you have any more questions or need further details, feel free to ask!
"
‘Libertarian ethos’. The guy who’s hoovering up personal data on behalf of a guy who just claimed to be king, that one? Like, how are we defining ‘libertarian’ here?
I didn't mean it too seriously. Just with regard to how one point in the ideology is about governments being small and how DOGE is at least in rhetoric trying to fire federal employees en masse.
It's more likely it came from Trump instead of Elon. Trump is an isolationist and has long complained about money being spent abroad rather than at home.
If they have the ability to change data, then absolutely none of their claims can be trusted. Neither Musk nor his A-team of hackers have demonstrated any integrity through their career - contrary to HN guidelines, the default position is to assume the worst from them.
Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show trials.
Your comment is vague so it's not clear if you are accusing voters in general of uncrtitically accepting obvious propaganda or if you yourself have believed obvious propaganda generated by DOGE.
The distinction between whether or not someone is formally registered as dead and whether or if they receive money are two completely different things and should not be confused. If you conflate the two issues then you can only be being disingenuous.
I've worked at a company which had people who have been dead longer than America exists in their database and some of them do not have a recorded date of death. That does not mean they are not dead, just that the death was not confirmed. And no they weren't being paid.
However if you get some junior developer in with no real knowledge of what they are doing on the job, stuff like this will appear and you can use it for political collateral because no one cares enough to understand the problem and ask questions. Like yourself.
There is a 'okayisch' way to stop everything (its the USA choice if the most powerful and richest country is no longer able or motivated to help around the globe despite the damage a country like the USA does around the globe, think co2, resources etc.) and there is the Musk/Trump way and no this is not okay at all. Its a breach of social contract, respect etc.
Now that they can edit data, nothing can be proven, as they broke the chain of trust and accountability.
A criminal case can be thrown out if policemen didn't follow procedure, the same applies here. Those rules are put in place to protect all of us, and can't be handwaved because "that guy got elected" (with 49.8% of popular votes BTW).
> The single biggest ticket item is a DHS contract listed as saving $8 billion. Wow, that's a huge contract! Actually no, it's $8 million. They must have tried to automate scraping the FPDS form and failed.
This is inaccurate.
In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly.
The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.
Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth $8B?
"By examining past versions of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million...
It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. "
-NYT TFA
So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2 years, DOGE fixes it.
Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
It was a typo. No one was paid that amount and wouldn't have been paid that amount. If fixing a typo in a reporting system is a huge win for you I guess...ok.
No, the DOGE website scrapes from the FPDS DB. The DB wasn't updated immediately. Like I quoted in an adjacent comment "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it on a non-political website.
I just want to point out one more thing:
DOGE didn't advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings
They occasionally make minor mistakes! If only voters had known that occasionally minor mistakes (in reporting of all places) might be made, they'd have insisted we stick with the bureaucracy they know and love!
But hey, I guess it at least did happen. It's better than the grasping-at-straws "they'll probably leak your SS number" talking point. And the "he'll redirect treasury payments to himself" talking point.
How is it not? If you report a saving of 100% of a contract that is 80% already executed, you either don't understand what you're doing or you are intentionally lying.
Or you're working, despite opposition, against the largest bureaucracy the world has ever known, on a very tight timeframe with limited resources, and staffed by humans that are not perfect.
I find it wild that apparently there is no law onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests. Is it all just based on conventions, goodwill and culture?
Why do you want them to refuse audit requests? There is no upside to hiding egregious government waste other than paying politicians via kickbacks more than what is legally mandated.
Waste is all things i do not understand? And i dont understand all things, because i fired the experts. Thus all is waste. Its running a state, how hard can it be- my cousin was major of a town once.
I will however gladly send all credentials to my work-related accounts to authorized individuals in my company (with appropriate verification of course).
You should never send your credentials. Granting access to someone who should have access is one thing, but not your credentials that individually identify you. Also, if it isn't coming through standard protocols and procedures you probably shouldn't do it.
You never give your individual credentials to anyone for any purpose - be it personal or official. In fact, leakage of credentials and unauthorized access to privileged information is a failure in many types of audits. That's a very poor data security practice - especially in government organizations handling any sort of private and personal information. In case the auditors absolutely need data, they arrange extra channels outside the normal employee access channels to officially review, authorize and convey the data - just like how bank employees can see your account information without requiring your bank password or pin.
I don't believe that anyone who has worked in any official capacity would make such claims. The distortion of such well-defined practices is an attempt to gloss over the illegality of unprecedented events in progress right now.
'Audit' is not something where you turn in the keys to your locker unconditionally to some random stranger who just walks in making demands. Audits are based on pre-determined and documented criteria, with the participation and supervision of responsible in-house officials. They just check if everything is in order. Auditors are rarely given unsupervised access to any data - especially to sensitive information. Meanwhile, the auditors themselves have to be held to a high level of integrity - elimination of conflicts of interest being the most important. This is a sham audit if it can be considered to be one at all.
They are sincerely following Project 2025, decimating government, and very likely to fire A LOT more federal workers over the summer, then they will install Loyalists throughout.
Billionaire Musk .. aka "The Auditor" .. is "primarying" or threatening to fund opposition candidates for Senators who fight him on this.
We’ve come a long way from “Hillary shouldn’t be President because she has demonstrated a disrespect for national security information protocol” to “its Trump’s right as POTUS to disrespect national security information protocol”
That's a gross misrepresentation of what's happening here.
We don't have to respect anything, except the law. Trump and Musk's actions are neither legal, ethical nor sensible. If you're of that mind then removing Musk and Trump via any legal or political means is not only acceptable but, if you care about your country, an imperative.
The biggest problem America has is how readily it normalizes incompetence and evil, to its detriment.
No they don't. Do a bit of googling before you post. Trump's actions are in defiance of the conventions of government and the written constitution. It's not even a judgement call, it's bleedingly obvious.
The reason they're now pretending that Musk is an "advisor" is that there are laws against what he proudly says he's doing, and Trump has said Musk is doing.
He can't lead a government department without being confirmed by congress. If he's just an advisor, he and his Musk Youth army can't actually give orders to government employees the way they've been doing, much less fire them.
If someone keeps lying every other breath for years and years, at some point you should stop taking their word at face value.
We've had a lot of these in 3 weeks, but this is an emperor has no clothes on moment. DOGE is running around saying they have access because of Musk. Even Trump has a hard time saying anything else. Now they are saying Musk isn't really in charge and has no power. They also won't say who runs DOGE. Everyone knows it's bullshit, but people accept it. That's the real lesson from 1984, and here we are.
I'm really at a loss how anyone still believes or supports these people.
Let's suppose for a second you're right - Musk is just trying to do a transparent audit. Why do they feel to need to have DOGE and Musk operate outside of the usual channels for transparency?
It doesn't make you wonder at all? All over this thread are supporters saying anyone fighting an audit is hiding something. Trump and Musk are literally fighting against transparency and your response is they have the discretion to do that. The cognitive dissonance around Musk and Trump is really unbelievable.
Is respecting the result of an election what Trump did for 3 months after he lost in 2020?
Trump ordered Mike Pence to overturn that election. Is that respecting the result of an election? When Pence refused the order, Trump sent a mob to have the VPOTUS assassinated and to stop Congress from doing its job. Not at all respectful.
This is a political party that went apoplectic about Obama wearing a tan suit, while insisting he was illegitimate, i.e. the racist lie of birtherism.
And then they elected a pussy grabbing rapist, felon, and vile insurrectionist.
I think they're getting all the respect they deserve.
And when you have an executive on one hand stating that only the president and the AG can interpret laws for the executive [0] and that you can't break laws if you're "saving the country" [1], that approach also just doesn't seem too promising.
Yeah, if we (even in other countries) weren't all personally affected by it, I couldn't stop laughing. The way things are, I'd rather go with Max Liebermann, who reportedly commented on the previous wave of fascism with the words "I couldn't eat as much as I would like to throw up" ("Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte" - https://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/93763).
Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You really have to read it twice to understand just how far out that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?
Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it’s frequently useful to have them hash out agreements for the same reason that it’s useful for scientists to get peer review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it’s good to have multiple people validate your reasoning.
> Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— […]
CIGIE has done similar stuff in the past, it was created under George W Bush
> continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;
> develops plans for coordinated, Government wide activities that address these problems and promote economy and efficiency in Federal programs and operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit, investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or entity;
Clearance does not allow indiscriminate access, it just means you are theoretically trustable. You still need a reason to access the data, usually negotiated with the data owners, who is legally responsible for protecting the data. DOGE has bypassed all of that to just hoover up whatever they can.
Not really, whoever allows access could be prosecuted for failing any of a number of laws and regs for just rolling over so it would come down to a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The proper way to do it would be to work through both the organization's chain of command and send clearances through the security chain. Maybe that's being followed, but given the stories and timelines, I doubt it- Musk's war boys wouldn't even have time to obtain a clearance from scratch 3 weeks into the administration.
There is no "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The President and agency directory have authorized and ordered it. Career bureaucrats are not legally required to resist their bosses because they disagree with them.
Anyone who has a clearance has signed numerous statements acknowledging their personal responsibility to protect the information in their care. If you want access, follow the procedures, then that responsibility is fulfilled. And if DOGE posts whatever to some unsecured S3 bucket its on them, not the bureaucrat (well, let's be real, contractor) who let them in.
What I found significant here is that Trump (yesterday) and/or the Whitehouse stated that Elon Musk does not work for Doge and has no authority over it at all, that Elon Musk has no authority regarding anything and is solely an advisor to the president.
Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.
Cynically, Trump and Musk are using each other. They both want huge swaths of the federal government dismantled—Trump found his whims stymied by laws and regulations and the bureaucrats who abide by them in his first administration, while federal regulations are constraining both Tesla (cars should work and be safe) and Space-X (starships blowing up shouldn’t pollute, Starlink shouldn’t clutter space, etc).
Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time, Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his bounds—I have already seen this talking point privately from GOP operatives. They’ll both have gotten what they wanted, and we’ll all be stuck footing the bill.
My experience is that for anyone sufficiently famous and polarizing, there are widespread false allegations. It's hard work to work from primary sources and sort fact from fiction.
It's impractical to check everything, do I tend to do deep dives spot checking a small number of things.
For readers, I'd suggest the same thing here. Disregard claims on the Internet, or even court rulings, and just look at primary evidence. Pick a small number of issues.
I make this statement generically, without prejudice to the outcome here.
I'm not sure what you mean. I generally agree with you — but I think in the case of Trump you have to disregard at least 26 [1] public allegations of rape if you want to give him a pass, blame his fame, or partisanship, or whatever.
Right.. the credulousness of these people is insane. “I can’t believe the guy who said he liked to sneak backstage at the Miss Teen USA pageant and bragged about grabbing women by the pussy would assault someone!”
It's worth noting that Stormy Daniels' description of her encounter with Trump also amounts to rape. I don't think she ever used the word, but it's clearly what she describes.
Ms Daniels said she "blacked out" despite consuming no drugs or alcohol after Mr Trump prevented her from leaving the room by blocking the door. She said she woke up on the bed with her clothes off.
"I was staring at the ceiling and didn't know how I got there, I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there," Ms Daniels testified.
Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she did not tell Mr Trump to stop. "I didn't say anything at all," she said and that she left the hotel room quickly afterwards.
>you have to disregard at least 26 [1] public allegations of rape if you want to give him a pass,
Allegations mean little, and for celebrities they tend to pile up proportionate to their fame. We live in a society that has absolutely no disincentives for false allegations of rape, and that has only grown more true the last few decades.
Instead of disregarding 26 allegations, one has to wonder why anyone would regard them in the first place. Furthermore, for many people, their regard/disregard is highly selective and comes down to the politics of the accused.
There is no incentive to make up allegations against most of those people. But if you make up a false allegation against a presidential candidate, it could cost him the election and move national politics in the direction you favor. How many allegations did Trump have against him before vs. after running for president?
There is no incentive to make up allegations, period. Lying about sexual assault in court is perjury and jeopardizes victims as much as the defendant.
The simpler correlation is that most of the people on that list respect the law and do not consider themselves beyond reproach. Mind you, Tate was fleeing Interpol on human trafficking charges when he was arrested. These men know what they did wrong which is why they lash out when accused instead of respecting due process.
>There is no incentive to make up allegations, period.
That's obviously not true. For example, this woman confessed to making up an sexual assault allegation for political purposes:
>One of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers admitted this week that she made up her lurid tale of a backseat car rape, saying it “was a tactic” to try to derail the judge’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
>Lying about sexual assault in court is perjury and jeopardizes victims as much as the defendant.
So what? If I make up an allegation against you, there is little risk to me unless you can PROVE I lied. But if the "evidence" against you is just my word, what can you do with that to establish that I am lying?
I think your argument is spot on, but there is important context which can be revealed by doing the same list for assassination attempts. Trump is qualitatively different from these other people - it just isn't because he is famous and polarising.
And Vladamir Putin (0), seriously? Good luck to anyone who attempts to make a public accusation against him. There will be a fatal fall through a window in their future. He could have raped 200 women and nobody would say a thing.
Unless you were in the courtroom and heard the evidence, you don't have enough information to have an opinion. The jury heard the evidence, and made their determination.
There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices. We balance that against a Supreme Court in the US, but that court is almost uniquely powerful & active in forming policy relative to its place in the rest of the world, and right now, most of it has been appointed by fascists; Ultimately the population will have its say in the long term.
Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?
I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.
If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.
For those who tend to fall for right wing talking points:
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”
I really wanted to believe that it would step up to the occasion, but twice now, it didn't.
I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.
Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.
I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".
I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.
> I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system.
What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.
"Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?"
There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)
*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...
>There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head.
That metaphor breaks down here and is not really applicable. If two people are chained to each other at the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only way to save their own life is to take that of the other person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is asinine.
The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the other person irreversibly. But any time that is suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together, that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people all chained together, and now people are upset that the other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at their ankles.
>and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote
Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.
This isn't 1861, sectionalism isn't strong enough. One part of what's going on here is cities at odds with the countryside, another part is the internet, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, filter bubbles. People are physically present in the same locations but they are not eating the same bread and drinking the same water, metaphorically speaking. I recommend looking at this Wikipedia article for a possible best-case scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...
In the UK, the Prime Minister has a lot less discretionary power, but much more ability to get legislation changed.
So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.
That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
> Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.
> There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the population from harming itself with its choices.
Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".
In that case, can't the next president just illegally imprison Elon or trump or whoever for their entire administration, ignore supreme court rulings or lawsuits or whatever, and then issue themselves a pardon at the end?
Yes, and restrict the 2nd amendment by fiat, etc...
But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do it.
That's the problem with the argument that Republicans need to be careful about setting precedents that Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes that any Democratic president will actually do this. In fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that there will ever be another Democratic president.
Based on last year's Supreme Court rulings and what Trump/DOGE have gotten away with thus far, it'd seem so. However, democrats insist on wearing kid gloves to a chainsaw massacre, so don't count on anything like that (or, more realistically, within a lesser order of magnitude) ever happening.
Trump has explicitly said he is above the law: "He who saves the country cannot break the law" is what he posted.
He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE employees is child's play -- but it would never get that far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not fully subservient to Trump.
Perhaps why 'easy for me to say' was the first part.
Would be interesting to know if the poster would financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to, you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?
Statutes can't really constrain the president's authority to do this sort of thing (firing appointees, firing employees for cause, laying people off, auditing the executive agencies). Constitutionally the president is just plenipotent within the executive branch.
In most rule of law democracies the law is above the president.
The civil servants are beholden to the law as passed by the representatives of the people, the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law.
Granted there will be times of murkiness that require interpretation.
But "fuck it I'm the president and everything I say is legal" is not a valid interpretation in any democracy I know of.
Given the context in which you answered, it is wrong. The president carries out the law, but isn't above the law, doesn't decide what is the law, and his actions are to be verified, if necessary, if conform to the law. His authority is not the law, but executing the law.
Oh but there was a supreme court ruling that said that official presidential actions are in fact above the law, and he signed an executive order that says he gets to decide what the law is, which is not illegal because it's an official presidential action.
That's not what the EO the other day said. The EO claimed and confirmed policy-making power, ie. interpreting the law and pouring it into policy, for the executive branch. It is quite common internationally that the elected executive has this power and it is weird that it has to be spelled out in the US.
What is worrisome is the overreach in claiming that power for institutions that are not in the executive's purview with the argument "everything is in the executive's purview". No, it is not, and there are reasons why institutions are spread over the three basic powers of a state, one is called "checks & balances". Ah, well.
>> The federal bureaucracy is not a separate branch of government that gets to have its own checks and balances on the president. They are people that he hires to carry out his duties in his stead.
> The civil servants are beholden to the law as passed by the representatives of the people, the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law.
And I restated the first point.
This is the context in which I am responding — and that point is true: they are not a fourth entity that is created by law, but an extension of the president carrying out his duty to enact laws.
To the extent the president gives a lawful order, failure to comply by the bureaucracy isn’t lawful — it’s a coup against the elected government of the US.
> the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law
The mistake is here: the law does not permit the president to carry out executive functions, but restrains what he can do from the presumption of anything. He does not need permission in law; the absence of restraint is sufficient.
I understand many people (such as yourself) don’t respect that because you favor an autocratic politically aligned bureaucracy — and hence are outraged that the public will is imposing itself on the rogue bureaucrats.
Of course if it isn't lawful then the civil servant should comply.
That's a strawmen.
Trump wants them to comply without considering lawfulness. That would be a betrayel of their position.
US president has a lot of powers, I’m not aware of any elected official in Europe with the same amount of powers (ignore Russia).
President of France is probably the most comparable, but in France you also have the prime minister, selected by the president but supported by the parliament.
In Sweden we have a separation of powers within the executive branch. Government agencies are independent of the cabinet.
DOGE’s audit wouldn’t be possible in Sweden, that would have required legislation or even constitutional changes.
Sweden has already an independent government agency that audits the rest of the government, but it has support in the constitution for that and it is technically administered by the parliament and not the cabinet.
It seems that many objects to the audit on technicalities and use that as an argument that the audit itself is illegal or unconstitutional. It is a flawed argument.
The audit might be unconstitutional because it's coming from a department which is wielding a great deal of Article II power even though it's not led by a cabinet official who was confirmed by congress. In other words, unconstitutional for organizational reasons that are unlikely to land any one person in criminal trouble. I wouldn't want to argue that point either way, but I bet the question of DOGE's constitutionality will be considered by a federal court in the coming years.
The notion that the audit is illegal because of "technicalities" is a lot more sympathetic. The handling of secure information in the government in unorthodox ways can be deemed to violate the law, or not, in some surprising (or maybe even arbitrary) ways. The last really big time this played out politically in the US was probably Clinton's email server.
As I hinted at above, I don't think anyone here is really conversant with that area of the law. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain even if DOGE has broken the law, the current DoJ will not find that DOGE has done anything requiring legal action, for the obvious political reasons.
I find your answer most interesting yet, especially about Article II.
Apparently the president can appoint temporary advisors that does not need approval from congress. If Mr Musk qualifies for such appointment I guess is that something for the courts to decide. I guess that implies that the audit itself is time framed.
In the Appointments Clause case challenging Musk’s role, the Administration has said Musk is officially an non-decision-making adviser (not a temporary one, just a generic White House staffer not requiring confirmation), and completely unconnected from US DOGE Service.
Oddly, they failed at the time, on direct questioning by the judge, to identify who the Administrator of US DOGE Service currently is.
In the USA, both are true. Civil servants can (and should) refuse to follow an order they think is unconstitutional, illegal, or simply unwise. But this won't stop them from being fired for insubordination. I don't think the courts will attempt to force the president to retain subordinates that are actively opposing him on the job.
If they can still be fired, then what does it even mean to say that they can refuse to follow an unconstitutional order? Refusal to follow any order is not illegal. If the consequences for refusing to follow an illegal order are the same as the consequences for refusing to follow a legal order, then there is no sense in saying civil servants can refuse illegal orders.
The consequences for following an illegal order include being sued, being held in contempt of court, or being criminally prosecuted by a subsequent administration. They don't have the same immunity that presidents do because they don't have a direct vesting of authority under Article II.
Ok? The question is, in what sense are they allowed to refuse an illegal order, given that the consequences are the same as refusing to follow a legal order?
That’s simply not true. Congress has the power to organize the executive branch, not the president. Congress created the agencies and departments and they cannot be closed by the president.
> the Constitution also provides for subordinate officers to assist the President in his executive duties.
> Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.
And of course:
> President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.
Got it. I’m talking about this President’s EO and the implications it makes about independent agencies. Which are effectively his officers, so they are exercising his powers.
My understanding is that everyone takes the same oath of office to the constitution, not their boss:
> The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution …
Yes, like the 7 DoJ prosecutors who chose to resign last week rather than sign a dismissal of the charges against Eric Adams, because it was an obvious quid pro quo, and the case against Adams is very strong. There's absolutely no legitimate justification for not prosecuting Adams.
The dismissal was eventually signed and filed by Emil Bove, a very recent Trump appointee, whose former job was as one of Trump's criminal defense lawyers.
The stink of corruption is heavy around Trump and Musk.
I don't like Musk. That's true. The reasoning is irrelevant.
Let's take someone I do like. Linus Torvalds. If Trump (or Harris or ...) appointed Linus, unilaterally, to do what Musk is doing, I'd still have a problem with it.
Now the two responses you might have are:
- I don't believe you.
- Linus wouldn't be bad either.
Both of which completely miss the point. Nobody should have singular, unilateral, unsupervised access to governmental systems like this.
Truly an incident where I couldn't tell how much of that was legitimate insanity, and how much of it was carefully curated fake-controversy-as-distraction. A common question I ask myself about conservatives every single day. Multiple times a day, lately.
It's objectively true no sane person would have cared about that issue.
I'm not a fan of Bill Gates in a lot of ways, but he actually has experience building and running a large, successful, long-lived organization. There's no way he'd come in and make drastic changes to an organization he knows absolutely nothing about in the name of "efficiency".
Advisors with unlimited power and endless conflicts of interests with zero obligation for transparency?
Whether I like Musk or not has very little to do with it.
Apparently they have the power to fire people, ignore access clearance rules, get full read/write (this was already confirmed and documented by multiple sources) access to data, terminate federal programs and agencies. Or at least there's no executive opposition to them trying to, so... in practice they do have the power. So far a few judges are still holding the ground, but we'll see how long that is allowed. Musk announced a few big changes as done before they were officially confirmed by Trump.
> and endless conflicts of interests
Musk practically leads the efforts to cut government spending while receiving government funding in defence and comms spending. And with weird procurement entires appearing https://www.ttnews.com/articles/armored-teslas-government Those are conflicts of interest.
> with zero obligation for transparency?
There are no obligations for transparency. The agencies being reviewed don't get a report of things to implement and we don't see any of the audit reports.
I get you may like how this unfolds, but denying it happens is weird.
He's an advisor with no lawful power to fire, no lawful security clearance for the DOGE team*, no lawful authority to terminate programs.
De facto, anyone standing in his way gets pushed.
Which is why nuclear weapons teams were let go.
* unless President said so. I think the office of President can do that, but has Trump actually done so, or is this like those classified documents he refused to return?
> Musk does not have the authority to fire anyone, or terminate any programs. He's only an advisor
Sure, I agree he has no authority. He's only an advisor that seems to have any advice rubber-stamped. And he announces the changes personally before the executive action is announced. And opm employees get an email with basically the same wording as Twitter employees about a leave offer which legally cannot be offered to them.
We can pretend that "actually it's not Musk making those changes" but it's obvious he's telling others what to do. And not in an "advice" way. (He's obviously shielded from legal responsibility in this case.)
> The team aren't accessing data they don't have appropriate security clearances for.
Why are there multiple examples of agency heads resigning, in series, until someone agrees to implement Musk’s advise? They report being pressured and bullied into doing so. This isn’t how advising typically works.
It's because this particular advisor has the full backing of the duly-elected President. It's absolutely wild to me that HN refuses to acknowledge this fact. This idea that the civil servants should defy the President (and his advisor) is substantiating the deep state critiques from the right.
As a Canadian I disagree entirely. Our prime minister Stephen Harper years ago muzzled scientists who had time sensitive, extremely pertinent research to act on. After he was replaced, that research was immediately put to use in policy making. Throughout his term, scientists in the public service spoke out about what was happening.
If justice is important to a democracy, these scientists did the right thing. That takes real courage.
I see no difference in what’s happening in the American public service. The processes occurring now are not democratic in nature. Musk’s role is extremely unorthodox and only ostensibly voted for ‘by the people’.
In the weeks since Trump took office, I see no hard evidence to support any kind of deep state corruption. I see inefficiency, and yet, I see that in how DOGE dismantles things as well. I see it in every organization I work in, in every industry, in every home. It’s inevitable.
Yes, but to the degree you believe in "democracy," then you believe the duly-elected President gets to come in and make changes, provided he's acting within the scope of the law. Trump specifically ran on the DOGE/Musk platform/strategy. It was a major component of his closing argument. This is, in fact, the exercise of popular will -- that is, "democracy."
Civil servants ultimately work for the President. That's how it works. There have been many reductions in force prompted by Presidents over time (my own grandfather took one in the seventies). I appreciate there is some disagreement about whether Trump is tripping over any specific laws, but to the degree he's not (the courts will answer that), then he's well within his right to take the direct advice of his advisors, and to act within the scope of his authorities. The President also has the power to get access to even the most confidential information (how could he not?), and to share that with his advisors who have the requisite security clearances (which in many cases he can dictate).
I'm just stunned by all the hand wringing about access to "government data." They're government employees!
This is the line the White House told us, but it contradicts what Musk and Trump themselves have said. It's also clear from their actions and social media posts that if Musk is merely advising, then Trump is rubber stamp approving whatever Musk tells him without any independent verification.
"Trump tends to echo the words of whomever last spoke to him, making direct access to him even more valuable" is what people said about him in 2016 [1]. Being his advisor is an incredibly powerful role, much more so than with most other government leaders
See I know something of what actually wanting to fix the government's waste fraud and abuse would look like. It would be beefing up the IRS (where every dollar more than pays for itself), it would be banning people in congress from buying individual stocks; it would be a lot of things that deeply nerdy policy wonks have been saying for years.
That's not what I'm seeing happen. I'm not seeing cost benefit analysis, I'm not seeing the use of existing experts.
What I am seeing... well perhaps we'd have different perspectives. To pick an example, look Musk saying that people who are over 200 years old are marked as alive.
If you assume the worst of Elon Musk, you might think he's an idiot who doesn't understand how COBOL represents dates in the SSA system, nor how large government databases deal with missing data.
I've worked, not for the SSA, but with public health data. Real people and historical records and old databases are messy as fuck.
The SSA neither throw out data, nor do they add data they haven't received, except when there is funding appropriated for it.
So these old people are simply actually people they never got death info on.
Could they just add a date? Well you have to consider the data integrity issues around date of death. If you pick a nonsensical date, can you assume that the SSA, department of commerce, and other orgs, not to mention the internal SSA progroms that rely on processing SSA data can handle it? Nope, an engineer can't assume that, there's an implicit API.
But the fact is, this has been looked at. Per this 2023 audit the SSA estimated it would cost 5.5 to 9.7 million to mark people as deceased in the database when they don't have death date information. They didn't do that, probably because no money was appropriated for it.
Does that mean there's massive SSA fraud of dead people? Nope. back in 2015 they decided to automatically stop giving benefits to anyone over 115. The oldest living American is, in fact, Naomi Whitehead, who is 114.
In other word, Musk is acting like saving the government 5.5 million minimum is a "HUGE problem".
Now, I don't think Elon Musk is an idiot who doesn't understand COBOL or how messy data can be from real people. I also don't think he thinks that 200 year old benefits fraud is really an issue.
Which begs the question, why bring this up at all?
My interpretation is perhaps less charitable than yours, but I'd be interested in hearing what you think.
> See I know something of what actually wanting to fix the government's waste fraud and abuse would look like. It would be beefing up the IRS (where every dollar more than pays for itself), it would be banning people in congress from buying individual stocks; it would be a lot of things that deeply nerdy policy wonks have been saying for years.
Pelosi is the top grifter. Instead of spending her last years with her kids she stays “employed” in order to keep her and her families crimes under wraps. She will die in office, there will be great fan fair of how amazing she was, followed by countless breaking stories of her and her families corruption of over half a century.
That's not exactly true, to pick some examples Bernie quitting the race in 2020 used his connections with biden and got a lot of things into a unity party platform, and I've seen it argued that AOC and the green new deal pushed the overton window for the infrastructure recovery act, and while it definitely wasn't everything they hoped for, it did include elements, including a massive investment in clean energy.
This is exactly what the dems need. Currently we have two options.
#1 status quo complacency which does things like congressional insider trading, identity politics, is completely ancient, and useless and ineffectual in identifying or implementing any actual changes that would improve people's lives.
#2 is a wing of the party ready to take a wrecking ball to things (bravo), but thinks taxes are the solution to everything.
We need more wrecking ball type options than just #2. We need a diversity of wrecking ball options that are energetic, smart, able to identify the places where the system (both private industry & governmental) isn't functioning properly and have the guts to actually push change through.
What’s especially frustrating, if you care about governance being more serious than pro wrestling, is that we have a couple organizations in government that’d happily provide all kinds of ways to reduce the deficit: the GAO and the CBO.
But they tend to say reality-based things like “no, your tax cuts won’t pay for themselves, in fact they’ll cost $1.2T over ten years” or “no, this war won’t pay for itself, lol, what the fuck even” or “no, you can’t make meaningful progress on cutting the deficit by attacking benefits fraud, because there’s not very much of that.”
All things Republicans would rather pretend aren’t true, and certainly don’t want to act on. So what do you do when you need to show progress but are constrained by operating based on fiction? You tout tiny wins and hope the numbers seem big to people who don’t know much; you make things up; and you cause harm or even incur long-term costs or cause waste and call that savings by doing bad accounting.
He literally declared himself king multiple times yesterday.
He literally campaigned a promise that we wouldn't need future elections.
He literally states he is the one true interpreter of the law with respect to the federal bureaucracy.
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
>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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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).
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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'.
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:
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.
I concur, but White House staff that are not confirmed by Congress have limits placed on their power when dealing with some agencies (as legislated by Congress) and there are of course many other laws and regulations pertaining to information security (FISMA), security clearances, data privacy, employee protections, and so on that I would expect such a White House functionary to respect.
This administration's legal theory is that executive power is concentrated entirely in the person of the president, which, to be fair, is because the Constitution says that it is.
That's not conducive to good government and is not the current precedent set by the Supreme Court, but it's been the conservative legal view since the 1980s and to be fair again, is again what the Constitution actually says. It will pretty much certainly be the prevailing view after this returns to the Supreme Court.
If that legal theory is true then Congress cannot create independent executive power and so it is not illegal for the President to fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason, including inspectors general, the chairman of the Fed, etc., regardless of any law to the contrary. Again, to be clear a third time, the effects of this will be bad, but the constitutional language isn't really ambiguous.
The enforcement of these laws should be a function of the executive. There are ways for the supreme court or congress to intervene when the executive isn't doing their job. Sadly that requires them to believe a series of checks and balances is necessary.
Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
It seems the only thing the supreme Court can do now days is rule if something is unconstitutional or if a last has been broken. But has no check on the executive according to the regimes arguments. The only check is for Congress to impeach and convict apparently. And there are too many demagogue followers in those changes for that to ever happen.
The real check here is for congress to write laws that are actually specific in their text. That is hard, though, so they instead write laws that empower parts of the executive branch to do some broadly-defined thing, including the power to make the relevant rules. When you get an executive who doesn't play your game, those poorly-written laws come back to bite you.
You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith. And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system, even more so when they convince ~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
> You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science." They already pass laws of unimaginable length and complexity, so I see no reason why Congress can't pass a huge omnibus "these chemicals are bad" bill every year, even if that bill is 5000-10000 pages.
By the way, speaking of the EPA, there's a lot of whiplash in that arm of government based on which party holds the presidency. If the EPA's rules were actual laws, they would need a much stronger mandate from the people to change. IMO this would be better for both environmental protection (since you don't have the party of "drill baby drill" arbitrarily changing things whenever they want) and for business because there is more certainty.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
The whole premise of the American system of government is that power corrupts and a functioning government needs a series of working checks and balances. One arm of America's tripartite government has ceded most of its real power to another arm. This mostly works because the people who get into that other branch (presidents) want to play an iterated game, where burning things to the ground doesn't benefit them. We are seeing what happens when you have someone in power who is playing to win this round without regard for the iterated game.
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science."
All that would do is transfer power from bureaucrats within the executive to bureaucrats within the legislature. No Congressperson is fully knowledgeable on all the areas on which they pass laws. Maybe it is a better approach than what we have today, but I'm unconvinced. At least with the system we have today, the bureaucrats are generally experts within their areas. Congressional staffers have no such experience and generally rely on lobbyists.
The transfer of where the bureaucrats work is exactly what I am proposing, and has very significant differences in terms of the mechanics of government. A law has much more binding power over the executive branch than a rule made by the executive branch, and if the last month hasn't convinced you of that, I don't know what will. Laws can also establish private causes of action that require no intervention from a bad-faith executive to enforce. Congress today already has no knowledge of the laws they pass, anyway.
Good points. My next concern would be the churn inherent in such a system.
Every two years, the entire House and 1/3 of the Senate is re-elected. That doesn't give much time for a bureaucrat to gain experience before needed to concentrate on the re-election of their benefactor (I use that word purposefully here, because the US did away with patronage for career bureaucrats in the executive in the late 19th century - no such rules exist in the legislative).
The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced to churn at least every 8 years. In practice, it's not a concern, and it wouldn't be under congress, either.
Think about this in good faith and try to make it work in your head, and you will see that this proposal is actually not that different from how the executive branch rule-makers work today from a day-to-day perspective, while carrying very different legal implications.
The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced to churn at least every 8 years.
That only applies to political appointees. The rank and file are permanent employees (or were until a few weeks ago).
Anyways, not saying your idea couldn't work, only that it's not easily implemented and needs a lot of consideration to do well. It's a wholesale change to how we've governed ourselves for ~150 years. But, the idea of a permanent set of legislative experts has some appeal.
We haven't governed ourselves with an executive-branch-led bureaucracy for 150 years. It's been about 70-80 years total. This model started with FDR and was really expanded in the 60's and 70's. The US existed for most of its lifetime without a permanent bureaucracy. The system you are talking about as the one that has worked forever is much younger and much less stable than you think.
>And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
This doesn't even require bad faith actors for it to become a clusterfuck. It's a scaling issue. Things that used to work at smaller scales accumulate cruft and other issues, until things ultimately fall apart. 200 years is of course a good run, but it wasn't going to last forever. Actually 200 years is such a long run, one doesn't have to bring "bad faith actors" into the equation at all to reach this conclusion, but I guess when things start to fall apart some people need someone to blame. Ask yourself this though... if the system was doing so great, how would it have allowed someone like Trump to ever win in the first place (let alone in the second place, as he did in 2024)? That's not a healthy system. Too many were disillusioned, and that's not their fault.
>~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
They are disgusted with what they see, and have for a very long time felt powerless to change it. Not really just "felt", but were powerless to change it. Trump ran for office, they saw an opportunity. It's not exactly unreasonable, it's just inconvenient to a class of people who have grown comfortable because they're a little closer to the spigots of graft that pour forth. Being "reasonable" in the way you'd use that word hasn't really ever worked for those people, and they waited quite a long time for it to do the trick.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
It very much is not.
It is, however, that the people will not simultaneously elect sufficent majorities in both houses of Congress and a President who all fail to do so, such that the systems by which the political branches check eachother continue to function in a way which constrains those actors in either that do act in bad faith.
> I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
Electoral reforms to the legislative branch that could be done through statute could go a long way to reducing the probability of a sufficient concentration of bad faith actors to overwhelm the system, and electoral and structural reforms to the executive branch to make it less unitary, which would take a Constitutional amendment, could increase the necessary concentration to achieve a total breakdown.
No, the real check is impeachment of executive officers when they flagrantly violate the law.
The tradgedy of Trump's first term was that the House of Representatives undermined the legitimacy of that check by using it in partisan, ambiguous and non-compelling circumstances, and failing as a result to obtain a conviction. Using the heavy machinery of impeachment ineffectively made it harder to use should the executive take the tremendous steps you're suggesting.
Anyway, Trump just mocked the leader of a foreign ally for refusing to hold elections. Viewed together, his comments sound like an extended troll of the political opposition.
Before 2016, we all thought impeachment was reserved for transgressions that can't be fixed any other way since it is congress overriding the will of the people. It's not a real check on small overreaches. The balance of powers between the branches is a real check (when it works).
>since it is congress overriding the will of the people.
Say what?!
It's Congress keeping the President in check. BTW, the President is not directly elected by the people and doesn't actually [directly] represent them. The President is elected by the state governments (legislatures) and is supposed to be chosen because the States belief the President will faithfully uphold the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. It may happen the the States use a popular election to choose their electors that elect the President, at least for now, but the President isn't supposed to represent "the mob" (majority or the populace). It's also why the electoral college is used for electing the President rather than straight popular vote.
> Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
It's this kind of contempt that got him elected. You have no empathy or interest in the will of the people. Maybe if you talked with some of them, you'd understand their grievances. But something tells me you'd sooner ironically prejudicially dismiss them all as racist bigots.
Laws come from norms with a few practices to make them seem "legit". It's too hard and expensive for the ruler to oppose the masses. It has a significant political cost. Successful rulers just ride the masses current trend. It's like a tamed down hysteria.
There is no constitutional way the president to not have access to any data in the executive branch. And since doge is reporting to him - it just send the data to the president and he will forward it to whomever he pleases.
Even the concept of independent executive agencies is probably more vulnerable constitutionally than more people think.
Yeah, that's my point. Not even the president should have unrestricted access to that data. He's not a king or the head of a corporation. And government workers aren't his subjects or employees. In most places, at least honest government workers can stand their ground because they're backed by a law governing this access.
Should have made it clear that I'm not American and I'm just finding it wild from afar.
I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch, as informed to me by the other comments. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
Laws are only a suggestion, they are not being enforced and there are no consequences.
The other thing is that in the US, people's lives depend on their jobs, with half of polled people indicating they live paycheck to paycheck. This makes them easy to manipulate into complying, putting their morals aside because standing up for morals or indeed the law will mean they lose their job.
I mean the US president declared yesterday that only he gets to decide on law and called himself king on his social media. There's heaps of 'legal' texts that indicate it means he can be deposed and yote into jail, but if there's nobody enforcing them they're useless.
Democracy is held together by people willing to follow the rules.
In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera saying as much.
Here's Bannon's quote verbatim -- "I said, all we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity."
All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state legal counsels.
Indeed, VC culture (esp. for the fabled "unicorn" wannabes) is DOGE culture.
It might rarely be admitted openly, but it sometimes is alluded to... e.g. Eric Schmidt's Stanford talk where he said:
"I want to say that if your product becomes popular, you can hire a bunch of lawyers to sort everything out. If no one uses your product, don’t worry -- no one will care that you stole someone else’s content."
Why would you want a law that says government workers have zero accountability over how they spend the money they extract by threat of violence from the citizenry?
We should all have "root access" to everything but the most national-security sensitive topics.
One side is understandably on edge but nothing DOGE has been doing is unexpected, except in the sense that it's actually happening or seems to be happening. It went through the whole political process's standard change control mechanism, in other words the current Administration literally campaigned on it and received a mandate via both the EC and popular vote.
The Constitution vest all executive authority on the president. The president can delegate that authority. That's what all is happening here. Within the executive branch the president has practically total power, hardly if at all possible to constrain by statute, and that's by design in the Constitution.
The president needs the Senate's "advice and consent" to hire principal officers, and does not need the Senate's "advice and consent" for certain other officers as specified by statute. The US Digital Service ("DOGE") is an agency where he did not need the Senate's advice and consent.
The president does NOT need the Senate's advice and consent to fire anyone in the executive branch. For principal officers this was established by the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson for firing a confirmed cabinet secretary nominated by Lincoln. For other officers this was established by judicial precedent fairly recently when Biden terminated two Trump appointees to minor offices and they sued (and lost).
Similarly the president needs the Senate's advice and consent to enter into treaties. The Constitution is silent as to terminating Senate-confirmed executive officers, officers whose appointments did not require Senate confirmation, or treaties (abrogation). It's essentially settled law that the president does not require the Senate's advice and consent for any of those kinds of terminations.
Therefore, under the Constitution and the political and binding judicial precedents, there can be no law "onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests."
Thanks for the explanation. Like I said, sounds wild that yes, the American Constitution does establish the president as basically a king over the Executive branch.
Copying what I typed elsewhere, I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
Is it not the same pretty much in all systems with unitary heads of state? Prime ministers surely have similar powers, subject only to votes of no confidence by their parliaments. Kings, where they have power, are also like this.
> I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history
The various assassinations of presidents were kinds of coups, don't you think? Soon we'll find out if the CIA did or did not kill JFK. Suppose the CIA killed JFK -for argument's sake-, surely that would have been a coup, no?
Not really, based on the little I know from legislation. When it comes to public administration, the principle of "you can do whatever the law doesn't forbid you to do" is reversed: it can only do whatever the law says it can, and there are some general principles, written in the law as well, governing the flexibility in the interpretation as well. And specially they're not at will employees, there are very complicated processes to justify firing them.
For instance, there is no law allowing the president to do a SELECT * in the income tax database. So an honest government worker can just say f-off when he is requested to do so.
They’re wrong. They are advocating for an extremely niche and fascist view of executive power in America. One that goes beyond even strong Unitary executive theories (which themselves are a relatively new idea, stemming from George W. Bush).
Not really, agencies are merged and split and have their remit changed all the time.
If there were a way to efficiently manage 2.5 million staff in a single department, then we'd likely do that, but it's more efficient to specialise, so we do that instead.
Firewalling data between departments is rarely a design consideration, except in obvious cases (military), and it hardly matters in this scenario anyway, because it's not like Musk is walking into all 400 agencies with a laptop. DOGE is hiring an army of advisors and dividing them up between agencies.
I believe Americans would be terrified of the idea of government agencies linking all their information together. Letting them be siloed is quite likely intentional.
You seem to be making the analysis based on first principles, but it looks like it’s inspired by some facts or experience you have. could you share that source /info?
I don't know about the US but in other countries it is definitely by design that the departments and their data are separate. It is far too easy to abuse gathering and joining data on people otherwise. History did teach us these lessons, and it's continuously visible as well today, fortunately at small scales just because they are separate.
It would truly be a nightmare scenario to have all government databases under a single potentially corrupt roof or having someone with access to all of them cough.
> It's just the default nature of systems that were created by different agencies, under different projects with different teams.
... Yes, because those teams by default do not simply get to share access, because of various very well understood security and privacy issues by doing so.
> Trump only granted DOGE a 12 month window to eliminate waste, and there's 400 federal agencies, so parallelism is crucial.
That's what he says, at least. Also, if their current blatant lying[0] about the """waste""" continues then I don't really see a point. It seems clear Musk and the Breakfast Club boys who are unilaterally changing government finances have no idea how a government contract works (or it's willful ignorance).
In clearance there is the concept of classification by compilation, which means that the clearance required for a piece of information can be higher than the one required by any single component that makes up that information. Being able to combine data across agencies makes it much more dangerous than keeping it separate and compartmentalized. Parallelism is a gigantic risk from a security perspective and ripe for abuse, especially given that DOGE itself has flaunted court orders trying to hold it accountable.
Musk's DOGE Accused of 'Cooking the Books' After $8 Billion Savings Is Immediately Debunked
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) falsely claimed an $8 billion cost savings from a canceled government contract, which was later revealed to be worth only $8 million.
After several delays, @DOGE has finally posted its purported savings. Why did it take so long to create a simple webpage with a 1000-row table? Who knows! Let's dig in.
Headline number: $55B saved. They list the savings per nixed contract. This should be easy to verify then. [...]
I can't believe people believe that it's actually an "audit". Both Trump. and Elon are famous liars. The reality is they think they found a loophole to destroy the government without having to pass any laws by fiting as many people as they can and stopping payments randomly. It's all illegal and evil.
Most people don't want a strong man in charge with absolute power. Dictators rule by fear and naked force, far more so than even the "monopoly on violence" claimed by modern states. A king is just another word for dictator, it's all the same. Although I would say Americans aren't really drawn to the model of a king so much as a "CEO in chief," but CEOs are essentially kings within their domain.
The people who do support it believe that they themselves will be granted noble status within the new regime, rather than being serfs.
Natural order. We structure all of nature into kingdoms. They flower out from a core archetype. And it also helps project an inheritable identity.
The problem above any American political and philosophical questions (moral questions notwithstanding), is mistaking Trump for anything resembling a worthy king. It will bring trouble.
In the ancient world the king was a symbol of the prosperity of the people and scapegoat for the sins and troubles of the people and was ritually killed and replaced when things weren’t working out. History whispers that one should be careful what one wishes for.
In my experience, your statement is opposite of true. Hence the term, 'die hard fan'. In fact, the more fans get abused, the deeper their love and loyalty grow.
That's because many current regimes have exploited anocracy with the appearance of individual choice while manufacturing consent. Previously, it was done by force which is what doesn't scale.
It’s very easy to reason about when someone says “I alone can fix this.” You have a single person to look at and listen to. Not a faceless sprawling beauracracy and slow wheels of legislative progress.
It’s the same reason the antagonist in nearly every film is a single bad guy who is eventually karate-chopped down to size. It’s the same reason WW2 is a ‘simpler’ and more palatable narrative (a couple main bad guys) than WW1 (complex political and social movements across many countries led to war). Even though the same complexity of politics and social changes were also at play
In a big society where end effects are far away, we look to the strong men to handle the big problems
It shouldn't be hard to understand why absolute power in the hands of yourself is the best political system. Since everyone can't be king, their next preference is going to be absolute power in the hands of someone who has their interests in mind. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people have varied interests and you can't really trust that anyone is fully aligned with you anyway.
Desperation, ignorance, and failure of the golden rule. They want their cult to win, and are fine with inconsistency and illegality when it benefits them. This is perhaps the ultimate vulnerability of representative government that cannot be remedied except through education and socially-enforced norms, or else democratic government must be abandoned but not for a malicious emperor.
I remember reading Glenn Greenwald in the 2000s when he was railing against the expansion of executive power under GWB.
> But the same individuals peddling this theory are simultaneously objecting quite vigorously to the notion that they are bestowing George Bush with the powers of a King. Bill Kristol and Gary Stevenson, for instance, called such claims "foolish and irresponsible" in the very same Washington Post Op-Ed where they argued that Bush need not "follow the strictures of" (i.e., obey) the law, and the President himself angrily denied that he is laying claim to a "dictatorial position" in the very same Press Conference where he proudly insisted on the right to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant even though FISA makes it a crime to do so.
define "everyone" -- elected officials who are supposed to have oversight and insight into where our tax dollars are going? It's not like they're providing replicas over bittorrent.
A Chinese APT had unfettered access to the Treasury Department, discovered back in December. It's interesting that people are much more excited about new government employees accessing these systems as part of their duties than they are about this.
Are you arguing that people are at risk because a comparison of Treasury and IRS records is going to reveal tax fraud or something? I don’t think that’s on the table. At any rate, Trump doesn’t need DOGE to do that, he can just order the IRS to do it like FDR did if that’s what he’s going to do.
A foreign adversary hacking a governmental system isn't good, but it's also kinda expected that they'll try.
That "just an advisor (but not really)" Musk and his ragtag group of junior developers get god mode access to lots of governmental systems is less expected. There are legal ways for the president to direct these departments, so when he opts for the illegal path, it's definitely noteworthy.
So who is the head of Department of Government Efficiency? If it's Musk, like Musk and Donald has said lots of times, why is he not confirmed by congress?
Hard to say. I only know the salary data ends up at less scrupulous data brokers (e.g. ones that sell directly to advertisers, though perhaps TWN does this too, idk)
It's not the employers themselves that use TWN directly, but the payroll companies the employers use. Perhaps in your industry or at your particular choice for jobs, the choice of payroll software does not end up aligning with TWN? _All_ of my previous salaried tech jobs do use TWN (I had to call each one, when a background check company seemingly couldn't do it themselves)
It seems most payroll companies send data to TWN [0]. Though I'd question the quality and breadth of each data feed. I also haven't looking into the percentage of US companies who use payroll software from the big providers and/or do it themselves
USAID collaborates in fighting for worker rights when they are in exploitation or near-slavery.
They likely have records of the people inside organisations who provide data for them. These people usually want to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation. And in many cases, we’re not just talking about being fired or legal actions as retaliation.
That might sound incredibly foreign to you, but this is the norm in many Nordic countries, see Norway, Sweden and Finland, for a start. Tax returns for everyone are public, and so are addresses through a national registry.
Salary negotiations are a very simple example, you can easily compare your salary to that of your peers and to similar positions in other companies. If your boss tells you they pay you the industry average or company average or whatnot, you wouldn't be able to check whether that's actually true otherwise. You can also have a rough ballpark of what a company pays before you apply for a job there. In general, information like this being public empowers people, whereas in most countries companies hold all the cards and use this information asymmetry to their advantage.
As a foreigner who moved to Sweden, it was quite shocking first to see all this info displayed online for everyone to see but there are definitely some good sides and bad sides to it.
One of the good side is that, you can look at the people living in a given area and decided if this is the kind of neighborhood where you want to live. Lower (declared income) can have a correlation with crime so if you just want to have a quite life, you may want to select an era that has loads of working people with a higher than average income.
One bad side, some people have used it in the past to harass people, think ex-lovers and so on. There is a procedure in place where if you are afraid of being stalked you can ask for your information to be removed from these registries or at least be hidden from public view.
Which works, until you have mass immigration from MENA-countries that results in a huge rise in criminality which makes everyone afraid because any criminal can look you up from the license plate or simply by searching for your name and instantly know where you are.
I hate this system. It used to be a good system when most people was law abiding and there was no gang criminals. But today? Jeez, you are like a fish just hoping not to get struck by the sharks and there is no protection available due to the failing state.
Yep! In Sweden, this is part of the constitution. I think it beautifully demonstrates that the state works for the public, and that all information held by the state should by default also be accessible to members of the public, unless there is an important exception, such as personal medical privacy or national security.
It acts as a great tool for journalists, who are able to obtain meaningful insight into the actions of the state at all levels. While of course there are downsides, I think this is a very important principle.
Here you get SWATted for "fun" by kids, and targeted by Right-Wing extremists with death-threats for "political speech", and targeted by criminals based upon your vulnerability. USA is sooooo not Sweden.
The wonderful thing about SWATing is the sinister nature if it. It is a euphemism, for the fact that the US is a police state. So much so that private citizens can manipulate it as a weapon.
There is no consequence, or even drastic change in policy, for the police in the face if this phenomenon. But if the same private citizen were to hire or manipulate a gang to carry out such an attack, everyone would be in prison for life.
> It is a euphemism, for the fact that the US is a police state
Fantastic point, agreed. My 1980s anger at the authoritarian misuse of "freedom" by Regan-nauts all wearing the same their greased helmet hair is affirmed moreso these days
Addresses are not public information, you can opt out from having your info public. They are not even a national registry (one exists, not public) but your telco will put you in "the phone book" if you don't opt out.
Taxes are public information but only to a degree. You can opt out from having them shared en masse (primarily to the media) but you can still inquire someone else's paid taxes from the tax office but it requires you to know their full given name, year of birth and home town.
Salary is not public information, only the total amount of paid income taxes. You can correlate them to some degree but you won't be able to know how many jobs a person has or where their capital gains are from.
Access to this information can also be limited in exceptional cases (politicians, harassment victims, identity theft etc).
> Employers almost always know the salary and location of their employees.
Employers do, individual stockholders of the employing firm do not, generally.
> Government workers are (in theory) employees of the citizens.
No, they are in theory employees of the government, in which the citizenry are stakeholders. They are not, even in theory, direct employees of the citizens.
A US Attorney is not, in theory, your attorney just because you are a US citizen.
Most of it already was, but normies don't go looking for public expenditure databases, so they assume it doesn't exist. Then DOGE comes along and pretends they're doing something new.
If you want accountability someone needs to have root access. If you don't want accountability, you are a politician getting kickbacks through obfuscation.
That's an empty argument. I think people hate musk, if they do, for the things he does and has done. It's not the other way around. Judging people for their actions is a fair way to look at it.
Luckily the right has never had radicalized violence, so let's give anyone with an "I love Trump" bumper sticker unfettered and non-transparent access to any resource they want.
Trump fired the person investigating him, now Musk got to do the same. It's a Republican right of passage.
I mostly liked Musk until he decided that a vindictive, incompetent moron was the best person to run the country, and poured vast resources into ensuring that happened.
You might say this just shows it’s because I hate Trump. To which I’d ask, do you really think my description of the guy is inaccurate?
That someone needs accountability themselves. Musk is not elected, his role isn’t defined. Really, he’s a patsy, he can do what he does, fortify his corporations, maybe trim some waste, have a falling out with Trump (it’s inevitable) and then trump blames him for the damage.
So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data and if they can be trusted.
This is generally quite restricted. I personally had to undego a "Public trust" civilian security clearance (which is binding for life unlike the 75 years of TS-SCI).
I already know the answer to this, but if Obama had George Soros hire a bunch of anti-white people to oversee the Doge systems, would you still be supporting it? Or it's okay because you're white and the people are in charge are white.
Public trust is not a security clearance; it is simply a more involved background check. A security clearance is only granted after a T3/T5 investigation and adjudication of the request. The SF312 NDA signed in order to receive your clearance does not expire.
Usually you don’t have access to “everything”. It might even be illegal to cross reference certain data, e.g., the same person or department might not even be allowed to have access to two databases.
I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.
Course theres something wrong with it. When the frik did Americans, and American techies - get so blasé about personal information security! America fought against the idea of biometric ID cards. People on HN have railed against giving more information to the government forever.
What the hell? Like this shit didn’t happen back home in INDIA, and that’s a nation which is comfortable with a stronger state.
It’s NOT OK, and you can very well acknowledge that fact because you can just imagine what eviscerating a legacy code base without a replacement looks like. It looks like the disaster you wish on your worst enemy while you quit the firm and look for a new job.
This isn’t beyond the project execution and technical ability of most people here to grasp.
ask yourself how many consecutive miracles would it take for this to go off without a hitch. Then ask yourself if you are that lucky.
>What makes you think DOGE is being blasé with personal data?
Their site was hacked? And given the overconfidence that some of the people involved seem to display, I think it's reasonable to ask for at least checking of what's happening... which isn't occurring.
>They only touch personal data incidentally, and no doubt sanitise and anonymise it whenever possible.
Come now. Good faith is earned. They MAY be doing it correctly. But show the damn receipts. This is the basic ask when someone comes to any firm and promises to fix everything and then runs away once the project fails.
And if they ARENT showing the receipts - then make a noise about it.
>the last thing anyone at DOGE wants is for personal data to leak
The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing.
or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive"
> Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field.
and
> More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.
> What makes you think DOGE is being blasé with personal data?
Why should a government agency run by a random unelected tech ceo even have the option to be blasé with personal data? Like I thought this website was pretty vehemently against things like the Patriot Act giving the NSA granular personal data and backdoors into communication, that at least had the guise of "national security" backstopping it. Giving a new department personal data access for no reason other than "government efficiency" (no actionable goals given by the department btw) is significantly more tenuous than "national security".
It is not, it's the same there are just different people viewing your private information, probably more corrupt who banks all that money to themselves now instead of it going to whoever it was going to previously.
Except in exceptionally poorly run or small organisations, random employees do not have access to everything; generally they need a reason to look at stuff, and there’s a paper trail indicating that they looked at it.
> So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs?
Are you asking why it's any different a non-American billionaire who has multipole government contracts having access to your data any different than Joe Bob who was hired and vetted by those same people unlike the other guy?
Yeah I more concerned “God Mode” is a thing that exists. One would hope that these systems are heavily locked down but my experience maintaining legacy systems makes me think “God mode” is a thing you get because you have to run a quarterly report and it is too much of a hassle setting up the correct permissions.
Anyone who has ever had root on a database server has that access. There's no technology available that prevents the people responsible for correcting failing RAID volumes from reading blocks from /dev/sda. In theory, yes, there are DRM technologies that prevent you from getting a copy of a song Spotify stores in your cache. But those technologies are not used on multi-gigabyte databases.
The only thing that protects that data is professional ethics, and in extremely paranoid (i.e. airgapped) environments, metal detectors.
There are considerable processes to make sure that happens, including proper background checks, seniority at the job, etc. You don't just hand some rando newbie the keys to the kingdom -- any company that did that would be laughed at.
The moment they had physical access to the system, it was necessary to assume this. It's called an 'evil maid' attack, and of all communities this one should have been blowing the whistle. Loudly, repeatedly, and in open defiance of people who argue that this is a storm in a teacup, a non issue, just another MOT, etc.
Especially when you look at the background of the Doge team - 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists', full-on racists...
Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
Some of the stories about this topic which have been flagged here can be seen in my favorites. I'd be interested in collecting more examples, if you know of any missing.
> In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA, according to sources we’ve spoken with at each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be working to open back doors into systems used throughout the federal government.
If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
I'm starting to wonder if HN has also been taken over by bots and astroturfers.
Audits require transparency and people who know wtf they are doing. Musk and his team have shown none of either. They have repeatedly talked about what they think they found that was later shown to be false. Instead of correcting course they double down (see the recent story of 8B vs 8M or Musk saying 10s of millions of dead people getting social security, there are many more that come out daily). They have also fought against efforts to increase transparency into what they are doing through a number of ways, either taking down datasets that could be cross checked or moving DOGE under the records act to avoid FOIA until 2032.
They’re trolling and what they want to do is poison the conversation we’re all having. Elon Musk is a troll too, why do you think they’d be any different? These people don’t read books (aside from a few scriptures they follow), they read memes instead. This is horrifying and but could also be their undoing.
1. Politicians are watching their favorite pork barreling disappear day by day
2. Since Trump was elected President the waste identified is going to be what Trump thinks is waste
3. The job of the Democrats is to get elected, and you don’t get elected by sitting by as your opponent keeps doing things many voters are supporting, you try and stop it
Because government waste is high on the list of priorities of many voters and DOGE seems to have only improved Trump’s approval rating, the Democrats can’t come out and say “stop cutting government waste”!
So instead they try to politically attack DOGE by saying many of them are young (so are the soldiers we send overseas to fight wars), they are unelected (so are all government workers), they aren’t allowed to do this (to be determined by courts) and they are cutting the wrong things (the voters will decide this in the end).
So if you like what DOGE is doing, sit back and buckle up because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I didn’t get something until it was pointed out very recently.
The issue isn’t what we think. The issue is what we think OTHERS think.
This is what social media truly fucks up. We can’t see the people nodding in disagreement. We can only see their silence, and we must respond to the person who IS talking and holding our attention.
Practically - I care about privacy, and I expect that damn near most people here care about it.
People can have their “well actually” arguments, but when push comes to shove, techies on HN should vocalize their annoyance with the way this is being done. Even if you support their politics, this ISNT how you execute secure projects.
Wrong from the start. The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes territory. We dont have to agree on other things.
> Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
> …
> If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
Just want to add to this topic that HN advertises YC AI Startup school: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus - where Musk is listed as a first speaker.
Though it doesn’t surprise me - YC is in the same circle of radical technocrats (a16z, Altman, Musk, etc.) and hosted Balaji talking about dystopian plans about techno-authoritarian city states 10 or 15 years ago.
I just checked his blog. Latest post “The Origins of Wokeness”.
Protesting against police brutality of suffocating apprehended person is apparently “peak woke”.
Musk apparently “succeded in neutralizing” twitter - “without censoring either” (left or right). He argues in the notes that Musk prioritized paid users and paid users are more right wing and hence left wing users self censored themselves, but left “could tilt it back if they wanted to”.
EDIT: also again proving my original comment - PG is thanking Sam Altman for proof reading the post…
It’s not surprising the CEO of YC supports this, he also supports the idea of the network state. This community is now primarily exists to launder Curtis Yarvins galaxy brain ideas.
Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Honestly when DOGE was first announced, I thought it will be a tiny department that does almost nothing and produces recommendations and PDFs that nobody reads. I didn't expect this.
But also when you make cuts, you go hard, fast, and recover from there. Any effort of small trimming over a long period achieves no saving while producing the same negative publicity. I doubt such cutting effort will happen for another 30y.
There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
In the French saying is cutting the tail off a dog seen as a cruel and unnecessary action, that you shouldn't prolong any longer than necessary, or a valid task that needs done?
I see the legal status of tail docking is slightly laxer in France but in North America the US and Canadian Vetinary Associations disavow the practice as bad for the dog.
There were signs but people thought it implausibly stupid:
> Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[17][52]
What happens to the country is beside the point, from his perspective. Which is why he's more than happy to let Musk and the Heritage Foundation call the shots. He has no interest in actually running things, that's too much work.
Vance doesn’t have Trump’s sway with the ‘base’, or mob. Vance can have all the dictatorial aspirations in the world, but he doesn’t have the popular support or influence, like Trump does, to act on them.
My brain immediately latched on to how much control could be exerted through the guise of "efficiency", you could effetely run a whole government from there. But I was expecting more installing a bunch of so-called "efficiency officers" in every department to report back when they weren't being loyal... er efficient.
I was not expecting the complete takeover of computer networks and rapid firing of large numbers of employees.
Musk has basically discovered that you can ignore existing laws, since by the time lawyers sue and courts order injunctions, it'll be too late and too expensive. Especially when lawyers can argue against basic facts like "Musk doesn't head DOGE". It's the same playbook as the twitter layoffs - when you are so rich, you don't need to care about laws.
And move fast enough to get dirt on your prosecutors so you can, at first, kindly ask them to leave you alone. If that fails, release the dirt and cause chaos, confusion, and doubt...
Trump's biggest mistake was not firing all the Obama holdovers on the first term, like Obama did for GWB's. He isn't making that mistake this time around apparently.
Read the Bufferfly Revolution by Curtis Yarvin (April, 2022)
> We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945.
> Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.
An audit only needs read access, not God mode.
It should be conducted by a neutral third party, not someone on a witch hunt who has conflicts of interest.
The people on the ground should have auditing qualifications, clear background checks, and knowledge of specific systems or processes, not a random 19-year-old named "Big Balls" with a history of selling company secrets to a competitor.
Their findings should go through QA, and they should take the time to come up with an accurate report, rather than rushing through and blurting out whatever they think is happening.
You'll be on your knees begging for bureaucracy after all your info is sold to the highest bidder and you spend the next 20 years fighting identity theft.
"New court documents shed light on what a 25-year-old DOGE employee named Marko Elez did inside Treasury Department payment systems. They also provide extensive new details about which systems Elez accessed, the security precautions Treasury IT staff took to limit his access and activity, and what changes he made to the systems. The documents indicate that the situation at Treasury is more nuanced than previously reported."
(...)
"Additionally, he could only connect using a government-issued laptop that had "cybersecurity tools" installed on it to prevent him from accessing web sites or cloud-based storage services with the laptop or connecting a USB or other external storage device to it to copy large amounts of data from Treasury systems. "
It's so funny you think quoting a newspaper that says some random staffer doesn't CURRENTLY have access is some sort of gotcha. Do you know how time works?
THE staffer? I don't remember singling anyone out so I have no clue what you're talking.
You're argument is "This document said this one dude isn't currently accessing the system" as if that somehow means they aren't going to in the future and or that other team members don't have access. What are you even talking about? No one is saying "It's all this guy"
I don't know AND THAT'S THE POINT. No one knows. There is ZERO oversight except for a guy who just coincidentally made his billions on US government subsidies.
Would you buy shares in a company if the sole auditor of their financials was the CEO's best friend, who had no experience or qualifications in auditing, and he was not accountable to anyone if he was wrong? "Trust me bro" does not cut it. These structures and processes can be onerous but they exist for good reason. BTW our government is not so strapped for cash that they can't afford to do this properly.
In a publicly traded company you get to chose whether to buy or sell the shares of a company based on how the CEO is running the company (including who he appoints to audit it)
In US Govt, we don't get to chose whether to "invest" in the govt or not, our taxes our collected by force.
So instead we have the power to vote for people in congress (who decide home much taxes are collected on how they are spend), and the president (who can execute on the spending directed by congress, but also has the power granted by constitution to audit and spend effiecntly)
The US Govt Shareholders (Voters) have SPOKEN, and SPOKEN LOUDLY! (Electoral College victory, and Popular Vote victory). They elected republican majority congress, and President Trump. Thus the voters voted for a deep gov't audit headed by Musk (Trump publicly campaigned on auditing and cleaning up spending, and publicly stated who will be in charge of the audit).
The point I was trying to make is that DOGE is not doing a proper audit, and this should concern everyone including those who voted for him.
Many of the findings Musk has published have been proven to be mischaracterized or erroneous (numbers off by 1000x etc), which gives us grounds to question the rest. Except their process and data is opaque. Trump is firing entire departments based on this bad information. This could ironically _increase_ govt expenditure when they realizes we need to hire new people, possibly at higher salaries (after paying the old people a severance).
Fair point. But i don't think a few mistaken reports, justifies calling it as an invalid audit.
They are auditing a Multi-Trillion bureaucratical behemoth (with terrible record keeping on top of it). Even a "certified auditor" can make a few mistakes.
Instead of focusing on onef misreported 8 billion line item, you should focus on the fact that they discovered 3 TRILLION in payments with no budgetary codes (literally TRILLIONS in blank untraceable checks)
I would rather have an businessman experienced making billion dollar companies efficient doing the audit, and doing it FAST, but making some mistakes.
Than having a typical beurocratic "certified auditor" audit, that does it slowly and won't even make a dent in a budget in a single year.
The US Govt is paying TRILLIONS in just INTEREST on the debt every year, and not even paying down the principal right now. And they have to borrow MORE MONEY, just to be able to cover the INTEREST payment next year. The US Gov't is in dire financial straights. We don't have time for a typical "bureaucratic auditors" auditing a trillion dollar bureaucracy.
We need an experienced businessman to come in and start cutting, and cutting FAST.
Don't downplay it as just a few mistaken reports or one wrong line item. The majority of the dollar value they claimed to have saved was wrong.
Now they _allege_ to have found 3 trillion in mystery payments, but we can't take them seriously because of their lack of proper audit techniques. They have no idea what they are doing.
I believe the entire country is watching in real time as a teenager tries to navigate his first legacy system and he just hasn't found the rest of the business logic. Just like how they implied that millions of dead 150 year olds were still receiving social security payments. It was a known issue that dead people are still in the database, but they are not in fact receiving payments. A real auditor would have known what to ask and where to look.
Yes. Democracy's intent is not efficiency. It is to provide a rule of law that is fair enough for most citizens. All other forms of rule are worse. As soon as you have 'efficient government', you no longer have democracy. But something worse.
They have read-only access, as the latest court documents (Google "Zeitner DOGE") show, and contrary to the fakenews that were peddled in the early days of that stuff. Big Balls can only use this read access from a provided Treasury laptop, on premises, and he's operating under review of other Treasury employees.
“Now at least I get to watch horrible people get a dose of their own medicine”
Doge is not being this careful, in fact I’d argue that Doge will disproportionately impact people not on your target list.
All the “horrible” people you don’t like are going to be “punished” with lucrative contracts in the private sector while line workers, most of whom may agree with you suffer
European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh
In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information.
I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.
It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The American Executive branch is given broad powers since the very beginning and considering the success there might be something to it.
In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch.
Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified.
This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn from Germany's example:
> According to the court document, the public prosecutor stated “public interest” in pressing criminal charges as the retweet was “punishable as an insult against people of political life”. It potentially constituted “incitement of the people”.
> Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws “against hate and hate speech” were passed under then-chancellor Angela Merkel.
Not descending into a dictatorship requires democratic participation, a pluralistic mindset and a zeitgeist to uphold it. In a pivotal moment, just a single judge collapsed and enabled hitlers takeover.
The erosion of trust in institutions and elections, up to insurrections are way out of that picture. Infront of that background, boasting about a strong executive branch, being cleansed not by merit (opposed to trumps own standard) sounds so absurd to me as a german.
Your orwellian interpretation about limited free speech is rooted in your free speech absolutism. We distinguish between limited freedom speech and unlimited freedom of oppinion. We also have processes involving courts to ban new, factually incorrect statements, aka. non-oppinions, to make it illegal bullshit.
Insulting politicians isn't free speech and America is going to descend into fascism because they allow people to get away with shit like that. Germany is leading the way, showing the rest of the world how democracy is done.
Europe has been more or less militarily occupied and subjugated for that time. Conquered nations tend to be pretty docile on the international level and generally don't go around waging war independently.
> Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified.
Europe hasn’t descended into total war since WWII because the US has military bases all over Europe, mostly in Germany.
> The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
> The man was arrested on Thursday as part of nationwide police operations against suspected antisemitic hate speech online.
> The public prosecutor's office in Bamberg has now announced: The search had already been requested before the Green politician himself filed a criminal complaint in the case.
> Habeck only filed a criminal complaint in the case more than a month after the search warrant had been requested.
> According to the public prosecutor's office, the suspect is also facing another charge: According to this, in spring 2024, he allegedly uploaded a picture on X with a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which could potentially constitute the criminal offense of incitement to hatred. According to the investigators, it shows an SS or SA man with the poster and the words “Germans don't buy from Jews” and the additional text “True democrats! We've had it all before!”.
> You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world
That's the level of delusion in your own greatness that led to Trump. USA was the first (representative!) democracy with written constitution at best. And that's if you overlook the fact that only some people were entitled to vote at all.
America has never saved anyone unless they thought it was from a threat to America.
And no, the executive branch had much less power “in the beginning”. As many people have learned, what America’s constitution says has never really matched what America does. The increasing mindless worship of a dead text, called “originalism”, is part of what will destroy it.
The person you respond to explicitly said the US wasn't the only one (and didn't suggest they were the worst either). Seems likely that they would agree that Russia and China are amongst these "very few" indeed. Don't be so aggressive please.
>The CCP through the NPC enacts unified leadership, which requires that all state organs, from the Supreme People's Court to the president of China, are elected by, answerable to, and have no separate powers than those granted to them by the NPC
This is the situation in China. In theory NPC is their governing body.
Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal.
They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments.
Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.
> False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has time to review it.
It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid ways.
> So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
Those employees are employed by a government agency established, funded and given their mission by Congress. The heads of these agencies are approved by the US Senate.
None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or "DOGE."
I agree with all of the above, but to be blunt, even if they were to go through the congress, they would be approved since Republicans have majority everywhere and they seem to have given a blank check to the President.
That's definitely possible. Ultimately, it was up to the public of the USA to be the backstop against this and they chose not to.
I think it's worth pointing out that it's not a given Congress would have approved it all. For a start, it would take longer to legally setup the instruments that Musk wanted. Also, the current situation allows Republicans to conveniently wash their hands of any negative consequences. Which is likely a big reason they're not pushing on this at all, as demanding a vote would require them to take a clear side on DOGE.
Musk has publicly threatened to fund a primary challenger for any Congressman who gets in his way so, in some very real sense he's the one doing it, rather than the voters who voted for their congressman, perhaps not expecting them to be threatened into compliance by the richest man in the world.
> They are unelected,
So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.
There is. It was given during Obama. You might not like it, but it looks like DOGE is likely to be completely legal and working within the frameworks of the government.
DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability to change it.
"The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."
And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own.
As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases).
The mandate and personnel of the Digital Service are completely different from DOGE, so they are effectively different things. Renaming an existing one was just an administrative shortcut taken by an executive that clearly does not care for the spirit or the letter of any law (as stated by the president himself in his infamous tweet).
As you are well aware Washington DC isn’t big on following “the spirit of the law” and is a big fan on quick workarounds for the bureaucracy that slows things to a crawl.
I give credit to Trump and Musk for playing the DC game like professional politicians.
It’s pretty clear you can’t get anything done in DC without it.
The dude made a Nazi salute in public in broad daylight. So yes, I'm inherently anti-Musk because I'm inherently anti-Nazi because Nazis are inherently anti human rights and anti basic freedoms.
Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.
Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?
Communication is so messy man, two sides, same iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.
> Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.
Historically, that has not been the case, hence the question.
> Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?
Just yesterday this[0] was a headline: "Hegseth wants Pentagon to cut 8% from defense budget for each of the next 5 years"
Just on the un-elected private group bit. This would apply to every one of the staff members of these departments. How many elected software developers worked on the original software? How many private contractors were elected?
Are there a pile of elected software developers working as cobol and java devs?
It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every last staff member of the us treasury.
I wouldn't dismiss the concerns; which seem reasonable. But the argument is pretty stupid.
None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has been gathered by the government to perform its functions. Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this data to streamline government. The office of president is pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't.
The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it is that they're collecting and storing the data. Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it isn't.
> The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data
Like tax returns? What legitimate need does management consultant have to see the individual tax returns of any person without any accountable transparency?
There is a pretty reasonable case for tax returns being public by default - I'd certainly like to know how much of the financial burden my fellow citizens are upholding. I bet I could spot a bunch of tax evaders right quick. Rather than asking why someone should be able to see them; I'd prefer to ask why I can't.
It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk & team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It isn't like the security of these departments is expected to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or later even if that happens because it is sold on the darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
I'm not sure how it would be possible to run a functioning government without some departments storing some sensitive data.
"On the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for the agency authorised to fund medical treatments to store people's sensitive medical records related to treatments they pay for" sounds like a much less defensible proposition than "on the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for what is nominally the government's IT advice body to hire a bunch of script kiddies without proper vetting or any genuine auditing credentials to download said sensitive medical records, store them as insecurely as they like, cross reference them with whatever other sensitive data they find on the grounds that they might be able to use them to tweet dubious claims about waste"...
If people checking that the records make sense isn't kosher; why do they need to store those records? The government only really needs to hand out money and the technical details can happen somewhere else; sign them up for #n recurring payments, keep some anonymised aggregate stats and throw away the records. They can even keep their own records signed off by the government; we have the tech where none of this stuff needs to be stored centrally.
We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people who do data analysis for government health departments. Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but they are youthful and do run scripts. The process appointing Musk is was more public and accountable than the one appointing my friends. Musk even gets public debate on the subject of whether hiring his people is a good idea or not. They're being very well vetted.
People are weird. I feel like a lot of ink gets spilled pointing out that one day the government will be controlled by people you don't like no matter who you are. But that argument doesn't seem to get through to all these people who panic every time it turns out that democracies don't always elect the same people with the same ideologies over and over. Government isn't trustworthy and people shouldn't be discovering that en masse in February 2025.
> If people checking that the records make sense isn't kosher; why do they need to store those records? The government only really needs to hand out money and the technical details can happen somewhere else; sign them up for #n recurring payments, keep some anonymised aggregate stats and throw away the records. They can even keep their own records signed off by the government; we have the tech where none of this stuff needs to be stored centrally.
I mean, even if it was as simple "$n recurring payments for $drug to $SSN over $period", that absolutely is sensitive private information, especially when linked to originally entirely separate but equally critical records about someone's employment by a body tasked with firing people...
It absolutely makes sense for records to be audited with great care by qualified people in an airgapped environment with anonymization by default, but that's not what's happening here, is it? It's like I'm actually pretty convinced that it's necessary for the state to be able to arrest and incarcerate people, but I'm not convinced that the "due process" bit doesn't matter or that untrained edgelords to be making the decisions on incarceration is fundamentally the same as having police, prosecution and a trial to lock people up. I don't think the answer to the fact I might not like every executive the electorate votes in (or every law that exists) is to defund police, I think the answer is to have due process, and not due process that is de facto abolished on the day a new executive assumes power. It's much the same with governments being able to store some data
> We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people who do data analysis for government health departments. Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but they are youthful and do run scripts.
I think it's a pretty accurate description for a 19 year old whose short and undistinguished career history involves being fired from an internship at a cybersecurity firm for leaking its secrets to a competitor, and soliciting DDoS attacks on The Com.
Certainly better than "very well vetted".
I imagine young people you know that do data analysis for health departments have more auditing experience, fewer red flags, very carefully controlled access to data and senior people training them and checking their work. They would, I imagine, also be competent enough to be unlikely to confuse $8b and $8m when estimating cost savings...
True. The actual difference between this troupe of clowns and employees who can be trusted is the hiring process and background check required before getting access to all this data. And of course, all regular employees report up to an official who was confirmed by congress, as required in the constitution. Just small things known as “checks and balances”.
> Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal.
It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the orders yourself.
Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over this, and are burning through their credibility - some judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have their bank account number and routing info had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering, not journalism.
I don't understand why we can't oppose this without reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this seems to be getting much worse over time.
> They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data.
Do you mean to say that the lack of expertise, conflicts of interest and lack of adequate security clearances are not considered as disqualifying factors for a US government employment?
Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The FUD is unfortunately not working.
All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also setup for Trump to do the same.
The dogs working at DOGE haven't the idea on what are they looking at and are lying to cover it. I wouldn't count on them exposing anything but their asses.
Maybe it's temporary, not 'once you build it they will use it'. Time will tell, if in the end a dictatorship proves itself to run things more efficiently and make everyone richer, then other countries will follow the US and adopt the same model.
He doesn't need to follow that recipe for dictatorship. He just needs to do whatever he wants, being a bully without consequences both internally and externally, transforming the image of the US into an aggressive nation. At this moment Americans are as guilty as Russians for allowing this to happen.
Who has been tasked? Under what authority? Not Elon Musk, according to Donald Trump.
More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.
What are their guardrails? Do they have accountability? Does "parallelise" mean compiling data on people from different systems? Dossiers? Are they even following the law?
> They have simply...
Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
Serious question to those who are cheering for the 'elimination of waste'. What do you expect to happen to the money thus saved? In what ways do you expect those savings to benefit you or the broader citizenry?
We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups.
Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of
1) Complex projects
2) Security
3) High functioning teams
4) Ethics
This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part.
You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast?
What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap?
Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on?
And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them?
Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes?
If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.
That's actually not what they've been tasked with:
> This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
that that moron has been tasked with finding inefficiency is so concerning, he is a man so convinced of his own intellectual superiority that he has zero respect for complexity.
We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for the average observer.
It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and nothing more?
Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current
cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the
word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing
connotations.
I have strong feeling that in the past 50 or so years, we often have traded resiliency for efficiency. I think we might have gone too far.
That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will improve resiliency.
Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like the word I am looking for.
Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/
In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs.
It was established by a 1990 law [1].
There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded.
Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture.
I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized) monitors access on a regular basis.
And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
I worked for the equivalent of the IRS for two month in my country (student job basically). When people asked for a deferred payment, i could accept it if it was the first time, but when they asked for a deffered payment the second time, or for reduced taxes (recent job loss, loss of a house or big events like this), i had the mean to verify who the person asking for this was, but not the mean to approve it.
I verified the information and filled a form, then asked for approval. The person approving had no idea who the person asking was (he had no access to the tool i used to match the internal ID to an actual person), but had the form i filled, and approved of the deferred payment/reduced taxes without any knowledge of who asked. Also i did not know who that person was, and he did not know who i was.
All of that is not very effective, but it reduces the risk of corruption from civil servants: you either have limited information, or limited power (this isn't the case with mayor or other elected officials though).
> I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
Consider it from this hypothetical perspective: My mom is an analyst in the health service and has database access to produce various reports. Her access is extensive, to allow reporting on things like whether the courses of antibiotics prescribed by doctors are of the recommended length.
Meanwhile, I'm a rebellious teenager. My doctor asks me how often I smoke, drink, take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex. If my doctor enters my answers into my electronic medical record - should my mom be able to look at my record?
The answer, of course, is that her right to access data depends on what she's doing.
But when culture fails you, it's nice to have guardrails. This is why we have a constitution, law, institutions etc. It's defense in depth, it can buy you time and that's important because the more time you have, the higher chances that the wind start blowing in another direction.
This is why the electoral college is a weak point in American democracy and no wonder it was the actual target of the Jan 6th coup attempt, the Capitol invasion being merely a distraction. Weak points like this must sealed over so that the overall system is more robust to attacks.
Well, in Italy the "IRS" (Agenzia delle Entrate) is not allowed to cross-check banking statements with its own data from Tax Returns.
Whenever anyone proposes to allow it, the members of the informal "Party for Tax Evasion" scream and denounce the descent towards "Taxation Fascism". It's so pathetically cheeky, that it feels a bit endearing (how dare them, what rascals!)
Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens.
Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope.
> Case in point In Germany the Polizei will swat and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
Sounds like a system which could easily be abused. "politeness" and "decency" are ripe for all manner of interpretations.
In the US we see that the only things keeping authoritarianism at bay is larger the people following norms (like the peaceful transfer of power after losing an election), and the executive obeying orders from the judiciary. All it takes is for a group to not to that any more and boom.
Short road to where 'slander' means any criticism (however objectively true and justified) of people in power and you get a swat team at your door and steel boot on your neck.
>Sounds like a system which could easily be abused.
It is constantly abused, the issue is Germans have gaslit themselves into thinking that it's the right thing to do "because nazism was bad", so they have Nazi levels of speech censorship to fight imaginary Nazism, because once you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you are free to censor them, which then in turn is causing the uprising of actual Nazism because people are tired of being censored for having opinions that oppose the mainstream narrative. Germans are really a difficult bunch to reason with logically.
>That's because slander isn't protected speech and is directly illegal.
In one case it wasn't slander. A person pointed out a politician's Nazi/Stati past on social media and he still sued abusing the "muh dignity" bullshit law.
I do not see how checks and balances that are there to limit data access via previously unauthorized organizations negatively affect Europe/Europeans. It is true Europe if facing a hard time, but saying that it's caused by the checks and balances we have on privacy feels misguided to me
They obviously didn't mean the laws prevent sql joins directly. Those prevent data aggregation, which in practice prevent various technical implementations of that.
I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is already predetermined.
Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more.
What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.
Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in an organized digital form than an organized physical form?
> $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.”
Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it.
> Paying dead people social security isn’t popular.
Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere.
> Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular.
Is there a source for this?
> When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing.
He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.
Some insights or decisions cannot or should not be placed on the public, thats why you elect representatives in the firt place. Insight can be granular, like an oversight commitee publishing a redacted report, but i agree on full transparency about anything regarding our representatives.
> When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level of data access DOGE has been given.
European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts [1]
It's a classic Motte and Bailey. "Europe acts in this way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part of Europe!"
How is the most populous state in the EU doing?
> The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy.
> The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy.
> The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration.
I don’t know much about many of those countries, and I have no reason to spend hours googling them.
but I know my home country Sweden, which used to have solid freedoms, have deteriorated quickly in the last few years.
Which is why I have moved to Switzerland, where the citizenry respect each other privacy(no country is perfect, but I do believe their decentralised direct democracy
will keep protecting their liberties).
A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
Don’t get me wrong, the Swedes want it this way. They are no longer a freedom loving people, sadly.
> I don’t know much about many of those countries, and I have no reason to spend hours googling them.
A good reason might be to back up the serious accusation a few comments above.
> A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
While this isn't ideal in a vacuum, I don't see the alternative. If physical mail is given inviolable privacy, you're pretty much handing bad actors the perfect delivery system on a silver platter. I'm sure there's other examples of decisions that increased Swedish authorities' surveillance capabilities, but to call a country a surveillance state requires a little more than "They can check your mail if they suspect you're using it for drug delivery".
While I agree in principle, that's not an entirely intellectually honest evaluation. The government is prohibited from creating an electronic registry of guns, not because of the guns themselves, but ultimately because of the judicial understanding of the Second Amendment confirming (not granting) an inherent right of citizens to possess them. The restriction is in service to the gun owners by protecting them from government overreach. The guns are merely a layer of abstraction on that.
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security."
This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent.
Government is no different.
European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have.
The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
This is either woefully naive or active disinformation.
Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying to:
”Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this task.
To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work.
The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate audits in parallel.
Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).”
> Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending.
"Make recommendations" ?
Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons sounds like an action, not a recommendation:
Apart from government being very different from private business indeed; I wouldn't want to eat food, drive a vehicle, or use software made by a company made with that mindset. "Safety first" is also a hard rule in all sorts of sports where people move faster than non-expert spectators can fully comprehend. If you need to cut corners to "gain efficiency" it just means you're bad.
It's not euro democracies that look like they are dying, comparing government to companies, yeah, iro ic that is USA that forgot the meaning of the word democracy
Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers?
It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch.
Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people?
Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.
> Most likely this involves scrubbing any personal data whenever possible, or anonymising it whenever it's not.
Don’t you think it’s a problem you can’t say this with certainty or point to an authority who has assured us this, and there’s no way to verify if it’s true because theres’s no oversight of DOGE?
Would you tolerate such uncertainty from even a SaaS provider? Why should we tolerate it from our government?
> they are not linking personal data between agencies
> Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict
I'm not saying these are or aren't happening, but it seems like a lot of "good faith" assumptions here. If you assume Musk is an unethical actor, these seem mostly meaningless.
You haven't yet learned the lesson of the Trump victories. The lesson is that he can just do whatever he wants, and there are no adults in the room to stop him.
That's an interesting rephrasing for "sidestepping all security to get access".
> The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies
Yup, that's exacly what someone who wants to change the beneficiaries of a few contracts and payments, as well as fire some of the people overseeing my companies would say.
Since you seem to know what you are talking about:
I am a bit confused by your stressing the access is read-only. Isn't that obviously given (apologies for the redundant words, but I really don't know how to convey my confusion). For what purpose they could ever be given a write access to the hundreds of federal databases they are supposed to analyze?
Also, if they don't have the manpower to go over the data one by one then they don't have the power to go over them in parallel. When you say "parallelising the work" what exactly does that mean? What is it specifically that they are "parallelising"? Is there an engineer/analyst looking at multiple screens simultaneously and arriving conclusions for multiple agencies at the same time?
No, the animosity is coming from the belligerent way DOGE is going about its work, and the lack of security clearance or any oversight of these people, some of whom are very inexperienced and some of whom have clear conflicts of interest, and the enormous power they are accumulating.
Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software.
So by your logic, after musk donated $288 million to his campaign and then trump fires five inspector generals that are investigating his companies, that's not a conflict of interest?
Secondly, Trump has clearly stated that Musk is not permitted to act where he has a conflict, and the agency directors will be aware of this.
Trump is honest and can be trusted in your experience?
If these aren't conflicts of interest, what would an actual conflict of interest look like?
Deferred resignation offers ("fork in the road" emails) and terminating all probationary employees (those without civil service protections) are cross-agency recommendations by DOGE since the beginning. It doesn't make sense to say they "aren't even active yet" when 8 days after inauguration the entire civil service was sent the same email that Twitter employees got.
Additionally, the EO establishing DOGE required all agency heads to assign a team from DOGE within 30 days, which has passed. They're everywhere.
DOGE is literally making up that people had bad work reviews to justify firing them. They are liars 100% down.
They are literally firing people first and then calling them back? How is that efficiency?
I cannot believe we are talking about these people seriously with all the BS "We saved $* Billion dollars to stop Mind Control News" on the DOGE "website".
Musk is not in a position to identify waste and fraud.
What does he know of the genesis and status of these payments? Congress directs spending and oversees the administration, not the other way around.
Why does he have to finish in an arbitrary time frame?
This is all justification after the fact for those who support Musk/Trump unconditionally.
It's all fun and games until your Medicare/Social Security/Tax Refund or other legitimate payment gets cancelled arbitrarily, illegally and unconstitutionally.
> check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government.
I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.”
When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
It's worth noting all those regimes were really only streamlined at getting people killed one way or the other. Their internal history is always a story of wild incompetence and corner-cutting. The Nazis in particular got a lot of undue credit for effectiveness.
> I'm worried that one of Musk friends might be a Chinese or Russian spy.
Given Musk's ties to China and his overt friendship with Putin, I don't think there's a need for one of his friends to be a spy when he's right there with a glowing neon finger over his head.
Even completely ignoring the dubious ethics invoked - a lot of non Americans will get worse outcomes than the US because of this. Given the work that has been cancelled so far, some of those non Americans are likely already dead.
A thin majority in an election with a poor (and/or constrained) turnout in a lop-sided nonsense of an electoral system with disproportionate weightings voted for parts of this.
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president.
Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters didn't vote for Trump.
Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or otherwise disenfranchised.
Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that all of them voted to fire the chief government records keeper, to empower DOGE to gut departments, etc; like Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
In the campaign Trump ran to avoid jail he repeatedly stated he wasn't aware of the Project 2025 playbook, that he would be all things to all people. People who voted for Trump voted for what they heard, what they thought he promised.
Most of the citizens in the USofA did not vote Trump, not all of those voted to gut the government, the sciences, foreign aid, etc.
Did you mean to respond to another comment? I was responding specifically to the claim that election turnout was low. As I said, it’s the 2nd highest since 1968 - 2020 was indeed the higher year.
Like Brexit, people who don’t like what’s happening come up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for why democracy doesn’t apply when their position loses. It seems to regularly boil down to “people who don’t vote the way I would like are too foolish and were tricked or brainwashed and if only they were enlightened they would vote my way.” I don’t think this is a winning message but we seem to be doubling down.
It's straighforward in all democracies to point out that people claiming that bad policy enactment "is what most people wanted" are making a false statement.
It is very rarely what the minority that voted directly for a specific party of candidate wanted. That's just a dull bald fact, not at all convoluted.
They claimed to discover .. yes, but they're essentially too young, dumb, and inexperienced to understand the oddities in the data .. the 100+ year old peole are a result of COBOL NULL entries for people with no birth record dates (which is a real thing in 300+ million people), etc.
Also:
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
You're brainwashed. They're robbing you of essential services and you're still going "yeah, go on!!".
Notice how they only go after things the common man might benefit from? Surprisingly DOGE uncovers no waste whatsoever in the many billion dollars military contracts.
What do you think will happen to your country when the ban on medicaid takes effect? Will the millions that rely on it simply die? Do you even care or are you totally void of empathy?
It's not the government's job to take money from Paul to give to Peter. I fundamentally object to this. I take the view of Austrian economics. IMO, all the corporate monopolies we have today are caused by excessive government money printing, weaponizing the people's money against the people. How about having empathy for the worker, the value creator, who has been robbed of money and, worse, opportunities as a result of government-backed corporate monopolies and regulatory moats?
You can't imagine how bad things have been for some of us.
You are gravely mistaken. How is the extensive union-busting, deregulation, wage theft and general disregard for worker protections going to help you?
Musk and Trump's class interests are diametrically opposed to ours, the real value-creating workers. They want you to work more for less pay. Watch you and your loved ones' situations dégrade over the next few years, and reconsider your position.
The only issue I have with that claim (ignoring the obvious blurring between whether it's fraud or waste), is that it's all being reported by a single party with no validation or accountability.
Because the other party is perceptively playing political games rather than being bipartisan? Or maybe the massive misinformation being played out is drowning out legitimate voices..
Reference please! To my knowledge DOGE has not uncovered any obvious cases of financial fraud. Every example of their cost-cutting that I've looked at (and I've dug!) has been lawfully congressionally appropriated funds being spent according to guidelines from the previous administration making reasonable interpretations of the congressionally passed budget. The new administration forbids spending on initiatives related to increasing diversity, equity, or inclusiveness or decreasing climate change, as well as disapproves of most kinds of foreign aid. None of this is fraud.
That’s a bold statement. US is a young country. Empires that lasted longer by 5x have been consigned to the dust bin of history with nary but an oral tradition to remember them. If looking at americas military capability is any indication it is already in steep decline especially with regards to its seeming inability to not crash or destroy million/billon dollar hardware purely based on incompetence and short staffing. Its inability to prosecute an illegal war in the ME (occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan) is also a great example of the lack of exceptionalism exhibited by americas armed forces and their inept leadership.
Sure. But right now what do care more about - the nitty gritty details of
1) The way software and projects at DOGE are going
2) “leftist claims that men can become women and vice-versa.”
This is a fundamentally a distracting question. It may give you mental relief (Yahh the other team is dumb, Reality is dumb)
Great! Take the breather.
But then talk about 1.
I get that things are polarized. I get that there is an INTENT behind it. But you’ve got all 3 branches of government. You have the ability to actually make this work.
Why THIS approach. What are the accountability checks and balances?
Are they just creating a new talking point to bounce down the years???
Did people get the required clearances? If not, why were the clearances there? IF yes, How are they making sure this is not going to be FUBARED.
How is responsibility going to be allocated? Are we going to have this over our heads for all generations to come? A new political ball to punt blame?
How do we get accountability for what - even to you - must look like the wrong way to do things.
I was just responding to a dubious assertion with a clear counter-example.
As for DOGE, I live in a different country and not really care to be frank, as an external observer the US is a testbed. We will see what kinds of results going all guns blazing to reduce fraud in government, instead of asking nicely, will produce in due time. As your leftist friend said, you need to break some eggs to make an omelette.
sure - the extreme left voices have definitely become louder, because this kind of emotive argumentation is wildly successful.
But they are following the path blazed elsewhere. The primary source of griping and emotion have been owned by right wing media. It’s their whole shtick.
The statement itself, is because tons of research comes for universities, which the conservative news and opinion machine are dedicated to denigrate and demolish.
So you see reality have a left wing bias, because conservative information providers have to reduce support and credibility of science.
See creationism for an example of how far this has been taken.
I know. I have some modest claim to expertise on these matters. I am well aware it feels the exact opposite to conservatives. I’d guess that many feel that leftist extremism has been shoved in their face for as long as they remember.
IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines.
Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.
It's true if you're ignoring the no-true-scottman fallacy.
Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior.
But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
So far all of the bad things I've heard about our system, such as the economic unsustainability and now this, are effects that will happen in the perpetual future.
You have to think about who you’re listening too. The economic sustainability of the actions Trump has taken so far is a pittance:
* The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been.
> The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap.
> Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending
So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes.
[1]
* The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military.
* The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority.
This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3].
> Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society.
Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society.
Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.
> who are pushing things in dumb directions because their careers and wealth are tied to what they do for work so they advocated for those things to be advanced to the point of absurdity and everyone on their coat tails cheers for it because they benefit too.
Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
>Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example.
Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on.
It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them.
But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is.
If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.
My guess is that your original comment got downvoted because you characterized people with this kind of discretionary power as "upper middle" class (I would just call this upper class as it is realistically a very small portion of the overall population).
FWIW, I think I agree with you and I think it is possibly the biggest weakness of our system that it is vulnerable to these types of manipulations from various angles: campaign finance, regulatory capture, disproportionate power given to unelected members of the executive, etc. That being said, those same weaknesses really open the door for the power-tripping Musks and Bezoses to get in and do a lot of damage, which is what I believe we are witnessing in real time.
You're doing that common conservative thing of correctly identifying the principle, but then taking a turn into ridiculousness when enumerating examples. We are, in fact, in this mess because of the upper middle/professional class. It's not because of green regulations or DEI. It's because that class has a vested interest in enabling the aforementioned billionaire charlatans and their flights of fancy/fear, no matter wht those might be. Literally, if we're talking about their retirement accounts. Why are the best minds of our generation working on ads and addiction machines? Why can't we, as a country, solve problems that poorer countries solved decades ago? Because so very few with a salary and mortgage can think 5-10 years ahead, outside of their plan to scale the crab bucket walls (as rugged individuals). It won't end until a critical mass are ready to say, when presented yet another boondoggle meant to impoverish their neighbors economically and spiritually, "I don't care, I won't do it, fire me," and mean it. The robots aren't ready yet; the wealthy and deleterious elements of society still need poorer cosigners. Snap the pen in half.
Your ideology and desire to demonize the billionares and the rulers and whatnot is limiting you here. There's only a few of them. They literally don't have sufficient brain power to think up all the stupid crap that goes on on the micro level that adds up to the macro problem.
The upper middle/professional class is the problem (this is a theme, there's a reason that every time there a real good bloody revolution in history they do poorly). They have pushed ideas that are grounded in sound principles (diversity and inclusivity are good, the proliferation of high tech communication is good, sustainable environmental practice are good) to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public. They take these causes of the moment and run with them to absurd levels because that is a reliable way to make a quick buck with the way we've structured our society.
It's like telling a rookie engineer the priority to lighten the part and he shaves so much mass that it will obviously, even to him too readily in real world conditions despite passing in the simulation. He justifies it in his own mind in various ways but at the end of the day the reality is he DGAF. He got his bonus for hitting the metric and moved on. The upper middle class is that rookie engineer. The upper middle class decision makers got that bonus for increasing DEI (in a bad way that makes people hate it), making the production greener (if you don't measure what's offshored) and so on and so on. And of course such behavior comes around to cast shade upon those goals even if the goals are noble. Eventually management says "stop lightening things" in the same way that the populist leaders say things like "no more DEI crap". Such moves aren't the right answer per-say, and even they know it. But they do stop the bleeding enough to not be a serious existential problem for a little while until a new fad comes around.
I don't know how you get a whole society of people to give a crap generally and give a crap about the big picture impact of what they're doing. If I did then surely enough other people would and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public
This is incorrect. The actions of wealthy people speak for themselves; they don't need to be demonized, they are plainly wrong on their face. That said, we're in agreement that these people don't have power without the less-wealthy people who enable them.
> If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that
That is what I asked for, yes.
Be clear about what you're saying. If you hesitate to to just say what you believe, that's probably a good indication that some introspection would be worthwhile.
I work on software for government agencies. Some of the paperwork processes are absurd. There is a high number of people in leadership positions within government that push for processes and make software purchases that quite frankly have little to negative benefit. It is sad because I think government can be a force of good, but people are too busy spending effort on processes that don't matter. That leaves other work undone. An example is industry specific SAAS software that costs millions to pass documents around in the cloud, for a small group of users, which is no better than MS office solutions.
I personally support trimming bureaucratic fat, but the way the current administration is doing it is the worst way possible - with no due diligence - and will lose public support soon.
Yeah unlikely.
I don’t even care that Elon isn’t just being altruistic and is in on all this just to benefit himself. My support of what they’re doing thus far is pretty steadfast, and I just want to see more and more people fired, and more and more budget cut.
I don’t care what happens to Ukraine, just don’t want us to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which is more likely now than it was with previous administration.
Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.
As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped, and I’ll check back in a year and see if I’m worried.
From the reporting I've seen, they're not firing "at random", they're firing more or less every single new hire they can, because new hires have less protections than more established employees.
Not just new hires, but also anyone who took a promotion or lateral move, which also puts them into a probationary period. So they're firing all the new employees and all the employees exceptional enough to be promoted or recruited to another department.
You mean Peter Principled into another department...? Sorry, just joking. It's terrible and unfair to fire people like this. They are removing the low hanging fruits first.
Dude, what is wrong with you? Tens of thousands of real, human people trying to support tens of thousands of real, human families. That's what your joke is about.
You need to find more reporting then. It's both, and more, and worse. The folks fired at DOE's NNSA were not exclusively probationary employees. DOGE doesn't even know the function of the departments they're eliminating. It's not evident they even know _what_ they're eliminating. See the "find and fire" approach to the word transitional. Oops... turns out that one's used in more than the context of gender.
Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere where the last two years of hires were all just completely worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh but understandable if it were said to be done for simple budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable less protected situation, but to call them all poor performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an obvious and transparent lie.
The people they fired at the VA weren't probationary and one of the first changes they made to the VA was removing gender identity from the account information.
This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them the keys but they cheered them on.
Not just new hires.
They are firing people on "probationary" status,
and people in civil service go through a brief probationary period after being promoted or moved to a new position.[1]
This means some people being fired are long-time senior civil servants with expertise and knowledge.
The reason they are firing probationary people is because they are easier to let go,
by civil service rules.
I suspect the people in charge of the firings are under the same mistaken impression as you are,
that all the probationary people are new hires who aren't yet essential.
Witness the "oops, we fired the wrong people" rush to rehire.[2][3]
It's not just new hires. Employees who move to a new position, even if they've been in that agency for a long time, also have less protections and are being fired.
But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being mass fired.
This[0] doesn't seem random, and is just one example of many similar ones.
And that's not counting the firings at the DOJ and FBI which were explicitly retribution (though you could argue DOGE had nothing to do with those firings, which may be true, but I'm referring to Trump's mass firings in general).
Depends on how they weigh the cost of a false positive versus false negative decision. The former seems to often be the key focus of a bureaucracy, slowing down the rate of diffusion of new technologies even among willing adopters.
Every human knows that governments and bureaucracies are inefficient in some way. It's been mocked since the dawn of times. The issue is that you don't toy around with big legacy systems like you do with twitter. To satisfy their little immaturity and get political points on their fans they start ripping off everything without enough time. If they started real medium term efforts to analyze, organize and then migrate it would be different. Plus there are other factors due to human group and political time that will come back later and muddy things up again when someone feels like fixing elon's patch.
I disagree with that, if a system needs time to check, then it's not inefficient, it's right at the speed it needs to be to work. What I'm thinking of is absurd structure beyond the need for checks and balances.
Some examples of "stupid" ineffiency: delegating tech support outside government. Meaning no technician could fix a laptop on-site, their role was to notify a private company to come one day to take the device and come back later with a fix. The delays were bad, and compounded rapidly, the employees couldn't work, citizen wasted days off and had to reschedule a month later.. really bad. Plus technicians skills were unused/wasted, they hated their jobs, and communication with partners was mostly hostile/red-tape adding more friction. They didn't have enough money to change LCDs but didn't allow you to give some even though there were plenty of working ones for free. Same for printers.
This is the kind that needs to be pruned.
Also I believe there's another form of "perfect" government, that is not a mechanical human grinder like a dictatorship: harmonious. It might be a naive dream but .. maybe not.
Not always. Both the Digital Service and 18F appear to be (to have been...) good faith efforts to apply state of the art system engineering to the federal bureaucracy, and quite successfully.
This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.
I don't think it's just one, unfortunately. It's not even much of a co-opt; more just an inevitable progression of the ideology that was held by that administration since the beginning.
Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress, so he took an existing department, removed all the people, switched it to do a different job, moved it to a different state, and replaced its name.
It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
yeah from what I understand the original focus of the department was to make the software better serve its customers. its obvious that trump doesn't like congress, judicials, laws. heh cutting government waste is actually a good cause but you need skilled no nonsense auditors and well I think by inspecting trump's resume and reputation, I bet he REALLY doesn't like auditors haha
> Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress,
When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along.
Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
>Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
It was a fishing expedition for them to figure out who to threaten and/or actually primary in 2 years...
That’s just a question of how you define “state-of-the-art”. The term doesn’t preclude secure or reliable - prior to the “move fast and break things” era where adtech dominated the tech industry, those used be considered a requirement.
Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they serve.
The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.
I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
Try the "shoe on the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next Progressive president.
Unelected bureaucrats don't have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive. The power to remove them arbitrarily is simply not a power that the leaders should have. Ideally, Trump's lifetime leaders in those agencies would have been installed by committee between both parties and so are apolitical whose sole focus is their job duties and serving the people, and can fight against the next Progressive president purely on that basis.
> I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.
They don’t have more power. Whoever is telling you that has been lying to you, starting with the idea that these are lifetime jobs or lack accountability.
The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions.
What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances.
Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice.
In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.
It's interesting you invoke the constitution and law here when law is being violated per the constitution - funds are being unilaterally revoked by unelected individuals, funds that were voted on by congress. Congress has the power of the purse. Weird you leave that little tidbit out of this whole screed, it's almost like you're being purposely dishonest.
It’s definitely a problem that money appropriated by Congress isn’t being spent as intended, but I’m not sure how you got the idea that I support the Trump administration’s decision to do so.
The unelected bureaucrats should be responsible for upholding the Law and the mandates of their position, not to any individual or party. And the Law is set by Congress, not the Executive. The Law is enforced by the Judiciary, not the Executive. The whole point is to have an engine that can keep working and keep accumulating domain expertise regardless of which political party is in control, beholden to the Laws set by the Congress over time, representing all constituents over time, held responsible by the courts, and not the whims of any given administration (or, for that matter, any single Congress). The entire problem _is that_ we now have what may effectively be lifetime leaders being put into positions and _being told to ignore the law and their government issued mandates_.
And so much reeks of a Watergate like situation, except done publicly instead of in secret, with Congress and the Judiciary refusing or unable to hold any of these people to account. "We will now gather all information about our adversaries and fire anyone who doesn't give us the keys to the vaults, and if anybody doesn't like it, good luck, because the courts are going to be VERY busy, indefinitely, as we proceed to break every law the Legislature has issued, and is unlikely to have time to hear your case for a few decades."
But let's take at face value the idea that the Executive doesn't need to follow or even acknowledge the decisions of the Legislature, and that they can tell anyone to do anything whenever they feel like it. There's a pragmatic issue, not just a separation of powers issue: How can you possibly accumulate domain expertise, and what motivation would you have to accumulate that expertise anyway, when every agency is going to be dismantled every 2-4 years?
Besides, these bureaucrats are "elected" in a way similar to the Electoral College. We vote in the Legislature, and the Legislature votes on the appointments. If we don't want "lifers" then we should be voting on term-limits for these positions, not allowing the wholesale remodeling of our bureaucracy every election, where "just anybody" can come in and walk away with whatever they can loot each cycle.
It's not uncommon for some agency leaders to be replaced - particularly those dealing with policy-oriented matters, like say the FTC. But that doesn't apply to the rank-and-file because of various civil service reforms which are designed to provide continuity between administrations and avoid partisan flip-flopping of large numbers of employees. They were also designed to avoid corruption or the "selling" of government positions to those favored by the president, which was common back in the 1800s. Trump is taking us back towards greater corruption while disguising his acts in a cloak of "rooting out corruption".
I don't think elected leaders in the executive branch should be allowed to supersede the role of the elected legislature in formulating public policy.
The whole problem can be sidestepped by pulling back on the excessive levels of discretion and rule-making that have been delegated to executive agencies in the first place.
that's why Democracy is not a "Tyranny of the majority" but it's subject to process that is both collectively agreed and consistent with constitutional principles.
Of course some level of bureaucracy is essential for any human society but your generalization takes us nowhere because it's riven with assumptions about that 'human element'.
It’s HN, I can’t write a full abstract here. Of course, my view is full of assumptions, just as any general discussion of governance is. And dare I say, idealism too. Democracy itself is an ideal -- one that depends on human participation to exist at all.
Not at all. Bureaucracy isn’t a flaw: it’s how governments function. Civil servants work, usually beyond politics, to keep society running -- from veterans’ healthcare to highway construction. That you, and others, may not realize that points to a really painful reality that people don't see democracy as participatory, but a spectator sport. Elected officials steer, but we -- those in the system -- propel it forward. Or in my case, have.
When systems fail, people step in to fix them. Sometimes, the failure is a person, and their supervisor or colleague is the safeguard. Replacing that with AI/ML is political offloading -- shifting responsibility from elected officials to code that can’t dissent, negotiate, or care. You’re lucky if it can even explain itself.
I know I’m on HN, where this isn’t the prevailing mindset. But public systems aren’t startups. They don’t get to fail. The common good isn’t about efficiency; it’s about endurance. It’s about ensuring society functions for everyone -- not just those with money, power, or influence. Public systems safeguard the commons, whether it’s infrastructure, social services, or even the basic principles of justice. They exist to serve not just the people you identify with, but those you ignore, fear, or even condemn. Bureaucracies, with all their flaws, aren’t meant to be efficient, they’re built to endure.
never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.
Even if this was true, breaking things with reckless abandon has real human costs today and will until they’re fixed. That’s part of the reason government is ‘inefficient’ is the responsibility to serve everyone and get as close to zero downtime as possible.
yours is a stability-over-change argument: bureaucracy exists to prevent reckless, harmful disruptions.
you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses?
you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits?
if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient.
other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?
I'm framing these specific DOGE initiatives where they're firing people at random as reckless. Because they are and there are real human costs that are just being glazed over.
I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.
in theory, laws and policies are crafted by elected officials or experts, and bureaucrats are just the executors. but in reality, bureaucracies interpret, refine, and sometimes even reshape these rules through policy implementation. this is where a lot of inefficiency, red tape, and unintended consequences creep in.
That hardly ever works or did ever work in reality. Almost no legislation (unless it solves and issue that is very straightforward) is written with such granularity that would makes this possible.
The people writing it are not necessarily subject experts in the area and even if they were or consulted such experts they can't foresee all eventualities. So those laws would need to be constantly updated all the time which is simply infeasibly (especially in the US where the legislative branch is stuck in a near permanent gridlock by design). IMHO that would make the system much, much more inefficient.
It's impossible to tell the difference between inefficiency and a timing hack unless you're deep in the guts of a system. Civic maintenance of snow plows can be a good real-world example.
> apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible
Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging.
There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them.
The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.
Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society.
They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them.
Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption.
In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.
> Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society
No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different.
The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
> No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business
Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance.
> The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do).
A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.)
> Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.
You do realize one of the first users of private computers was the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy. There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers made it possible to have such complex rules.
Bureoucracies are invariably the most efficient way to concentrate corruption efforts. There is no better spot to corrupt and make elite unelected decisions. Revolutionaries love to infiltrate these because they can covertly use their profession to move promote designs and budget flows that exlusively forward their mission hidden in complexity.
Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.
The President is the head of the executive branch. If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too.
Because it isn't the case. For good reason. So it isn't acceptable. Spend some educating yourself about security standards like FedRAMP and build a mental model of things that are or have been true, and the reasons they were made so.
Yes, when you're not from this country (a foreigner), you need a citizenship card to reside and work here (or a visa). Thanks for verifying that for me.
If the CEO of my ecommerce company had easy, unmonitored access to all our data, we would fail industry audits and not be allowed to take credit card transactions. Sure, they have access if they really need it, but it's logged and monitored, and if you use it too much there will be questions.
It's a joke that any of you assholes are defending this. This does not pass any sniff test.
The president has absolute authority to access to all secrets within the executive branch, and has absolute declassification authority, both statutorily and presumptively constitutionally as a result of a) being the president, b) being able to nominate his cabinet, c) being able to issue executive orders to his executive branch officers and acting officers.
The president therefore has the authority to access every last secret and every last system within the executive branch. No statute can limit this power. The president also has the authority to delegate (to some extent; only the president can issue EOs, but presumably his officers can recommend EOs to him) these powers to his or her officers.
The titular of the U.S. Digital Service (DOGE) is statutorily not subject to Senate confirmation, though considering how Trump's controversial nominees have sailed through Senate confirmation it's easy to suppose that Musk would also likely be confirmed to head the USDS were it an appointment subject to Senate confirmation. Since the president can appoint someone like Elon Musk to head the USDS, and since the president can delegate his clearance and declassification authority to someone like Elon Musk, his doing so does very much "pass [the] sniff test".
Most people in the US don't know that there are three branches of government, or if they do, they don't know WHY there are three, and even if they know that, they don't know what each branch's purpose is.
This is absolutely the job of the executive branch.
Perhaps DOGE should have been created by an act of congress, but in reality that's just a formality because the Republicans control Congress right now.
Trump renamed USDS to DOGE via executive order. It's true that it's not an agency, but it was created during the Obama administration.
I'm not sure it'd be better as an agency because there are strict rules and hierarchies around agencies. The way DOGE is operating right now, seemingly, is:
- Agency directors are directed by executive order to work with DOGE and give them access to what they need
- DOGE team members are actually hired as employees of the agencies in which they are operating
- DOGE makes recommendations to agency directors on what things to cut
- Agency directors review recommendations and make cuts
This means that all cuts are being recommended and made within the scope of each individual agency. It is not the case that one agency is telling another what to do, and all decisions are ultimately being made by each agency's director. It simplifies the hierarchy and authority.
It is only the job of the executive because Congress told them so via Acts of Congress. Looking at e.g. the firings of the inspector generals, Congress has put very clear language into its laws on why and when those inspector generals can be removed by their post, yet Trump and his cronies ignored this.
It should not be a formality because while it is true that the Republicans have a slight majority in Congress, the founding fathers never intended this most powerful of the three branches to be run by parties. The power in Congress is split up geographically for this very reason, but the party system, that secured its seats with gerrymandering, is highly toxic for a functioning legislative power in the US. It is disappointing to see Republicans in Congress not restricting the executive orders of the new self-proclaimed King.
The president can fire any executive branch officer at any time for any reason regardless of what any statute says about it.
There are two precedents for this to my knowledge, though there may be more:
- the failed impeachment of
Andrew Johnson established
that the president can fire
principal officers without
the Senate's advice and
consent
- Spicer vs. Biden, which
established that the president
can fire officers with fixed
terms
> self-proclaimed King
He was clearly trolling. Grammatically that tweet does not parse like himself calling himself a king. For all you know he loves the British king, or some other king, or maybe he was referring to Jesus. But he got what he wanted from that quip: it got reported, along with credit for ending congestion pricing in Manhattan. Why the media still falls for that, I don't know.
He is not a monarch. The core principles of a well functioning democracy include that there are multiple, balanced powers and that none of the powers can overrule the other too much. It is cumbersome by design, because the other path leads to dictatorships.
Under U.S. constitutional law -meaning the Constitution itself and the binding judicial precedents and the impeachment precedents (mainly from the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson)- the president is plenipotent within the executive to do things like:
- fire principal officers without
the Senate's advice and consent
- fire other appointed offices who
did not require the Senate's
advice and consent to confirm
- lay off federal employees in the
executive branch
- audit the executive branch's
agencies
- set policy for all executive
branch agencies
etc., as long as it's all within the executive branch.
The president can also abrogate treaties without the Senate's advice and consent.
Most of the above are not explicitly in the Constitution as such, but are understood to be constitutional law either due to SCOTUS decisions, longstanding and unchallenged practice, or the result of the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Not only that but also most if not all recent presidents going back decades have done some if not all of the above. That includes Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden.
In other words: there is no innovation here, no judicial controversy. This is all standard fare for any new administration. The only difference is the extent of what Trump is doing in his second term compared to any other recent presidency. The sheer number of EOs, the auditing (which basically hasn't been done recently), and the layoffs (which are rare in DC). And yes, he's goring a lot of oxen -more than other presidents in recent memory-, but they all do that, just not eliciting so much outrage from the opposition.
So are you saying that the President's office could not get this information, or any information it needed, from government agencies before? Of course it could. doge going in and getting unfettered access to computer systems is not at all the same thing.
1,815 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 448 ms ] thread1. The people who'll suffer or die from their mal-management will generally be faraway foreigners, as opposed to people voters know.
2. More of the victims have a much more difficult time launching any kind of lawsuit in US courts.
3. It has a small veneer of Presidential-involvement-ness due to its proximity to diplomacy and foreign relations.
4. Like tariffs, being able to withhold aid allows Trump to commit extortion against other countries, much like how he was impeached for extorting Ukraine in his first term.
From a House Committee report matching Elon’s actions to agencies he has personal issues with:
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02....
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-elon-musk-starlink-probe-ukra...
Given that, your retort inadvertently supports the GP.
Mess with me and Ill shut you down.
The FAA and EPA have been much much bigger headaches for Musk.
USAID was just a juicy target, since it was essentially a slush fund.
https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-elon-musk-starlink-probe-ukra...
This raises a potential conflict of interest, as Musk's company was under investigation by USAID shortly before he began calling for the shutdown. Starlink's activity in Eastern Europe has been criticized, with many Russian operatives claiming to have access to Starlink despite Musk's assurances that only Ukraine was using the service.
Additionally, in September last year, Ukrainian forces downed a Russian drone that had a Starlink terminal integrated with its systems, raising questions as to how secure Starlink's operations during the Ukraine war are.
So well known by whom, and how? I never heard a peep about this until a few weeks ago, and all such claims seem to be coming from the same group of people with obvious ulterior motives.
Musk gets his world view from far-right conspiracists.
Basically give/loan money, get international political support back. Use political support to bully international institutions (UN, WTO, WHO, etc) to do what you want.
I guess soft-power is not enough anymore, they want all the power.
Now the right is "screw soft-power" and the left is "think of the children". And in the middle people suffering like always.
The worse part is that a lot/most of that aid is probably of very benign influence, but it is definitely also used for nefarious reasons.
When Trump attacks USAID (or the CIA or the FBI) from the nationalist authoritarian right, it in no way counterbalances people criticizing it from the left.
In particular, the left criticism of USAID were always "think of the children" because they wanted it to do that more and better. They have remained consistent in that.
Oh, and of course, graft.
Lo and behold, the KKK contingent took over the entire party, to the point Liz Cheney (of all people) got kicked out. And the KKK, neo-Nazis, neo-feudalists, Christian nationalists fringes banded together in common cause.
So yes, the Republican party doesn't look like it did 40 years ago, but at the same time it looks exactly like it did 40 years ago.
A lot of that soft-power has been spent on getting other countries to be more democratic, which is a good thing. Although I don't doubt it has been used for bad reasons as well.
They were investigating Starlink:
https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6814
https://web.archive.org/web/20250101100055/https://www.usaid...
That's now removed from the live website.
Point being, it's a little strange USAID was immediately targeted for destruction with extreme prejudice by the same man providing the terminals.
Especially given their contentious history:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66752264
Yeah wow, so corrupt. /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-usaid-official-calls-closur...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2q13113wwo
>"U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, ..."
>"Nichols noted that despite Trump’s claim of massive “corruption and fraud” in the agency, government lawyers had no support for that argument in court."
Meanwhile, the reality of the situation is simply tragic. [1]
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/judge-blocks-trump-...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/donald-trump-u...
Not sure what's your point on the Politico article. It is tragic that disrupt a lot of people's lives. Like I said, it doesn't mean there's no corruption, only good is happening. Both things can be true at the same time. This thing can be tragic, Congress might get their shit together - hopefully.
Harsh words for people documenting genocide.
>Not sure what's your point on the Politico article.
It was a supporting citation for the federal judge pointing out that no evidence was presented of the supposed corruption.
USAID funded the hepatitis vaccination drive that the CIA used as a cover for espionage against the bin laden family, leading to polio outbreak in pakistan.
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/he-led-cia-bin-laden-and-...
Distaste for USAID in any other time would be bipartisan; the Clinton Administration floated shuttering it too. If you go to DC a lot of insiders will say, 'yeah, USAID's got to go'.
I think you’ve identified the wrong culprit there buddy.
> The decision to enlist Afridi was probably made by the CIA station chief in Islamabad and was passed on to the Counterterrorism Center back in Langley.
Again, do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?
What makes you think they were informed at all? That's kind of the entire MO of CIA - they don't inform other agencies what they are doing when it concerns national security, they just go and do it.
If you're a midlevel program manager (or whatever role label they have) at USAID you should be noticing that vaccines are not being given out. If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists, then it shouldn't exist.
"do you think the head of USAID could have just told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?"
>>If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its programs to the point where that level of accountability exists
If you think CIA hasn't thought about this and addressed it some other way, then I guess the assumption we're working with is that CIA is literally incompetent at their actual job.
You're barking at the wrong tree. Be angry at CIA for doing this shit, not at USAID for running a program that got hijacked by them.
However, I'm sure Cia has done, does, and will do much worse things than usaid
How do you imagine any agency to "stop spending"? Are salaries not to be paid? Are contracts not to be fulfilled? Are rents not to be paid?
So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes. And what I see (on this particular issue) is way more consistent with what Musk says than with what his opponents say.
Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
> So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting my own eyes.
So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
E.g. between the poor and hungry people in Moldova (my own native country) and in Sudan USAID would probably chose those in Sudan (what with war and genocide and...). And they might chose to support businesses in Moldova instead (and they did).
I'm not saying it's a perfect program devoid of any corruption. What I'm saying I can come up with as many bogus numbers, and with as many personal anecdotes as the next guy.
And Elon sure as hell resists any attempts to shed light on his activities and claims.
> Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent" journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
Obviously. But when such anecdotes are consistent with the position of the democratically elected president of USA... What specific reasons do I have to not trust to MY eyes?
>So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a few things you can't see with your own eyes?
No, where did you get that from?
>USAID had many programs, only a number which where about helping the poor, and it's possible those didn't specifically target your country.
Got it. My leftist country were targeted by programs, that promote democrat's left-leaning agenda. Helping poor and hungry - it is for others countries. It’s even surprising, why anyone would hinder such an amazing organization.
>Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with literally the same support programs?
How are you imagine this? I mean if China or Russia is ready to pay to promote the idea that Trump is the greatest evil on the planet, then maybe.
I despair at the thought process that crams these two things together.
2.5% overhead would be really good. Most charities don’t come close.
“Ideological reprogramming,” whatever that actually means, would be completely different.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67b7a0c4-bf48-8011-9997-41b350dd0b...
How are you figuring that none of that is reaching endpoint users? E.g. I imagine the International Red Cross could be such a partner.
Boris Johnson shut down the British equivalent(Department for International Development) and scrapped the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid.
It's simplistic, drastic and brings no specific domestic effect which could be a rallying point for unrest.
It's also very easy to come up with rage bait stories of corruption and waste as justification, because in any organisation spending billions of dollars around the world you will always be to find something ridiculous that got funding, even though the proportion of the budget it represents is insignificant.
Neo-Conservatives were a branch of Democrat wark-hawks who wanted to police the world, that were upset about the pacifist attitude of the Democrats at the time - they emerged in the 60's and managed to largely take control of the Republican party moving forward, peaking under George W Bush.
Their founding principal was "Peace Through Strength" and have a strong belief in worldwide interventionism.
If you think the 'MAGA' / 'Trump' party is neo-conservative you literally just are ignoring the entire history, the power struggle (which Trump won) to retake the party from the Neo-Cons, and the fact that the trump admin is largely isolationist and opposed to being the world police.
Don't get me wrong there are still some neo-cons in office and with roles in his admin, but the republican infighting can be summarized as neocon vs MAGA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoconservatism
Words mean things. The MAGE/America First party is focused on non-interventionism, advocate against regime change abroad, with a focus on America and it's interest rather than the endless wars.
You can debate the success or merit of that approach I guess, but the Neo-Cons are very happy to provide foreign aid as it is core to their ideology. They tend to do it via NED while the left uses USAID more (although both use both, but they each have lean in one direction).
Just for fun, I just tried this little experiment you can try to: " CoPilot: Can you rationally describe Trump as a neocon?
CoPilot: No, it would not be accurate to rationally state that Donald Trump is a neoconservative (neocon). Here are some key differences:
Foreign Policy: Neocons: Advocate for interventionist foreign policies, promoting democracy and regime change abroad. Trump: Emphasizes “America First” policies, focusing on non-interventionism, reducing military engagements abroad, and prioritizing domestic issues.
Military Engagement: Neocons: Support maintaining strong international alliances and a significant military presence globally.
Trump: Criticized NATO, praised authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, and negotiated troop withdrawals from conflict zones like Afghanistan.
Economic Policies: Neocons: Generally support free trade and globalization.
Trump: Advocates for economic nationalism, including tariffs and renegotiating trade deals to favor American interests.
These differences highlight that Trump’s policies and ideology do not align with neoconservative principles. If you have any more questions or need further details, feel free to ask! "
/ ˌlɪbəˈtɛərɪən /
noun
They were funding censorship campaigns on American citizens etc
Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show trials.
I've worked at a company which had people who have been dead longer than America exists in their database and some of them do not have a recorded date of death. That does not mean they are not dead, just that the death was not confirmed. And no they weren't being paid.
However if you get some junior developer in with no real knowledge of what they are doing on the job, stuff like this will appear and you can use it for political collateral because no one cares enough to understand the problem and ask questions. Like yourself.
The USA Gov is not completly brain dead.
And no 'people didn't vote for this'. 1. only about 60-70% of people voted and from them around 50% voted for Trump.
The question is still valid if this should allow the current gov to overhaul the whole system that agressivly.
A gov and the people depending on it, are not tech bros who can afford to get fired.
Musk/Trump is already responsible for real death alone through the way they cut USAID: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
There is a 'okayisch' way to stop everything (its the USA choice if the most powerful and richest country is no longer able or motivated to help around the globe despite the damage a country like the USA does around the globe, think co2, resources etc.) and there is the Musk/Trump way and no this is not okay at all. Its a breach of social contract, respect etc.
A criminal case can be thrown out if policemen didn't follow procedure, the same applies here. Those rules are put in place to protect all of us, and can't be handwaved because "that guy got elected" (with 49.8% of popular votes BTW).
https://twitter.com/electricfutures/status/18918983362081056...
> The single biggest ticket item is a DHS contract listed as saving $8 billion. Wow, that's a huge contract! Actually no, it's $8 million. They must have tried to automate scraping the FPDS form and failed.
And it does not say anything about what is being cut by cancelling the contract and whether it is useful or not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.
Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth $8B?
It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. "
-NYT TFA
So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2 years, DOGE fixes it.
Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it on a non-political website.
I just want to point out one more thing: DOGE didn't advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings
They occasionally make minor mistakes! If only voters had known that occasionally minor mistakes (in reporting of all places) might be made, they'd have insisted we stick with the bureaucracy they know and love!
But hey, I guess it at least did happen. It's better than the grasping-at-straws "they'll probably leak your SS number" talking point. And the "he'll redirect treasury payments to himself" talking point.
It's not often you're asked to do something that could break the law, with the whistle-blowing chain being potentially broken at the top.
I don't believe that anyone who has worked in any official capacity would make such claims. The distortion of such well-defined practices is an attempt to gloss over the illegality of unprecedented events in progress right now.
Change the data, Firing everybody , leave no way to contact them, this is not auditing.
They are sincerely following Project 2025, decimating government, and very likely to fire A LOT more federal workers over the summer, then they will install Loyalists throughout.
Billionaire Musk .. aka "The Auditor" .. is "primarying" or threatening to fund opposition candidates for Senators who fight him on this.
It's an autogolpe.
There are reasons behind some processes. Such as getting a security clearance to access sensitive data.
Just be aware of the consequences of failing, or succeeding.
We don't have to respect anything, except the law. Trump and Musk's actions are neither legal, ethical nor sensible. If you're of that mind then removing Musk and Trump via any legal or political means is not only acceptable but, if you care about your country, an imperative.
The biggest problem America has is how readily it normalizes incompetence and evil, to its detriment.
Trump, and every president before Trump, has had the authority to do exactly this.
He can't lead a government department without being confirmed by congress. If he's just an advisor, he and his Musk Youth army can't actually give orders to government employees the way they've been doing, much less fire them.
If someone keeps lying every other breath for years and years, at some point you should stop taking their word at face value.
I'm really at a loss how anyone still believes or supports these people.
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-doge-white-house-layoff...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-do...
President has the discretion to make that call.
Trump ordered Mike Pence to overturn that election. Is that respecting the result of an election? When Pence refused the order, Trump sent a mob to have the VPOTUS assassinated and to stop Congress from doing its job. Not at all respectful.
This is a political party that went apoplectic about Obama wearing a tan suit, while insisting he was illegitimate, i.e. the racist lie of birtherism.
And then they elected a pussy grabbing rapist, felon, and vile insurrectionist.
I think they're getting all the respect they deserve.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-sec...
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu... Sec. 7
[1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140091792251...
By my reading, this is a clarification that if an agency makes a significant policy change or regulation, they ought to run it by the president first.
It doesn't preclude other branches of government from checking this power.
They're also responsible liable for keeping the data safe, which has already been broken at least once:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43052432
Possibly violating:
> Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— […]
* https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
> continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;
> develops plans for coordinated, Government wide activities that address these problems and promote economy and efficiency in Federal programs and operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit, investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or entity;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Inspectors_Gene...
That's as valid of a reason as you can get in the executive branch.
There is no "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The President and agency directory have authorized and ordered it. Career bureaucrats are not legally required to resist their bosses because they disagree with them.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memo...
If the President himself breaks the law, he argues that it was in the course of his official duties [1].
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.
Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time, Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his bounds—I have already seen this talking point privately from GOP operatives. They’ll both have gotten what they wanted, and we’ll all be stuck footing the bill.
Trump will get his unchallenged power like Xi or Mao did.
For federal laws, yes.
If you can find a state-level law that's been violated then he has no jurisdiction to pardeon.
Trump himself was charged at the state level twice (and already convicted once):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_in...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_...
See also the civil case against him for rape:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._T...
It's impractical to check everything, do I tend to do deep dives spot checking a small number of things.
For readers, I'd suggest the same thing here. Disregard claims on the Internet, or even court rulings, and just look at primary evidence. Pick a small number of issues.
I make this statement generically, without prejudice to the outcome here.
I'm not sure what you mean. I generally agree with you — but I think in the case of Trump you have to disregard at least 26 [1] public allegations of rape if you want to give him a pass, blame his fame, or partisanship, or whatever.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct...
Ms Daniels said she "blacked out" despite consuming no drugs or alcohol after Mr Trump prevented her from leaving the room by blocking the door. She said she woke up on the bed with her clothes off.
"I was staring at the ceiling and didn't know how I got there, I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there," Ms Daniels testified.
Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she did not tell Mr Trump to stop. "I didn't say anything at all," she said and that she left the hotel room quickly afterwards.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-08/stormy-daniels-testif...
Allegations mean little, and for celebrities they tend to pile up proportionate to their fame. We live in a society that has absolutely no disincentives for false allegations of rape, and that has only grown more true the last few decades.
Instead of disregarding 26 allegations, one has to wonder why anyone would regard them in the first place. Furthermore, for many people, their regard/disregard is highly selective and comes down to the politics of the accused.
"When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."
However, I've seen both credible and less than credible allegations even against him.
I have no idea about this specific one, but we live in a disinformation sphere on just about everything these days....
1. Elon Musk - 1
2. Donald Trump - 26
3. Kanye West - 0 known
4. Greta Thunberg - 0 known
5. Joe Rogan - 0 known
6. Jordan Peterson - 0 known
7. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - 0 known
8. Andrew Tate - < 10
9. Vladimir Putin- 0 known
10. Mark Zuckerberg - 0 known
The idea that just being famous and polarizing attracts false allegations, is false.
The simpler correlation is that most of the people on that list respect the law and do not consider themselves beyond reproach. Mind you, Tate was fleeing Interpol on human trafficking charges when he was arrested. These men know what they did wrong which is why they lash out when accused instead of respecting due process.
That's obviously not true. For example, this woman confessed to making up an sexual assault allegation for political purposes:
>One of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers admitted this week that she made up her lurid tale of a backseat car rape, saying it “was a tactic” to try to derail the judge’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kavanaugh-accuser-admits-she-fabr...
https://globalnews.ca/news/4628088/brett-kavanaugh-rape-accu...
And we know that at up to 10% of rape accusations are provably false. The real number of fake accusations could well be higher.
https://archive.is/x0DEo#selection-915.19-919.1
>Lying about sexual assault in court is perjury and jeopardizes victims as much as the defendant.
So what? If I make up an allegation against you, there is little risk to me unless you can PROVE I lied. But if the "evidence" against you is just my word, what can you do with that to establish that I am lying?
And Vladamir Putin (0), seriously? Good luck to anyone who attempts to make a public accusation against him. There will be a fatal fall through a window in their future. He could have raped 200 women and nobody would say a thing.
Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?
I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.
If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.
“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”
James Madison
I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.
Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.
I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".
I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.
What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.
There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)
*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...
That metaphor breaks down here and is not really applicable. If two people are chained to each other at the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only way to save their own life is to take that of the other person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is asinine.
The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the other person irreversibly. But any time that is suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together, that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people all chained together, and now people are upset that the other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at their ankles.
>and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote
Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.
So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.
That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.
It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.
Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".
Democracy as a term has been defined to include represtative Republics for at least a century. Stop being a retrograde pedant.
But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do it.
That's the problem with the argument that Republicans need to be careful about setting precedents that Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes that any Democratic president will actually do this. In fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that there will ever be another Democratic president.
He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE employees is child's play -- but it would never get that far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not fully subservient to Trump.
you mean "He pardoned people who were guided in by the security staff working the capital building"?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z3YBtzwmHk
Would be interesting to know if the poster would financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to, you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?
It's true only insofar as Congress won't impeach and remove from office.
...yeah.
What is worrisome is the overreach in claiming that power for institutions that are not in the executive's purview with the argument "everything is in the executive's purview". No, it is not, and there are reasons why institutions are spread over the three basic powers of a state, one is called "checks & balances". Ah, well.
> The civil servants are beholden to the law as passed by the representatives of the people, the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law.
And I restated the first point.
This is the context in which I am responding — and that point is true: they are not a fourth entity that is created by law, but an extension of the president carrying out his duty to enact laws.
To the extent the president gives a lawful order, failure to comply by the bureaucracy isn’t lawful — it’s a coup against the elected government of the US.
> the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law
The mistake is here: the law does not permit the president to carry out executive functions, but restrains what he can do from the presumption of anything. He does not need permission in law; the absence of restraint is sufficient.
I understand many people (such as yourself) don’t respect that because you favor an autocratic politically aligned bureaucracy — and hence are outraged that the public will is imposing itself on the rogue bureaucrats.
That fascism is disgusting.
President of France is probably the most comparable, but in France you also have the prime minister, selected by the president but supported by the parliament.
In Sweden we have a separation of powers within the executive branch. Government agencies are independent of the cabinet.
DOGE’s audit wouldn’t be possible in Sweden, that would have required legislation or even constitutional changes.
Sweden has already an independent government agency that audits the rest of the government, but it has support in the constitution for that and it is technically administered by the parliament and not the cabinet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_National_Audit_Offic...
My personal opinion is that the US system of government is vastly inferior to Sweden’s.
The audit might be unconstitutional because it's coming from a department which is wielding a great deal of Article II power even though it's not led by a cabinet official who was confirmed by congress. In other words, unconstitutional for organizational reasons that are unlikely to land any one person in criminal trouble. I wouldn't want to argue that point either way, but I bet the question of DOGE's constitutionality will be considered by a federal court in the coming years.
The notion that the audit is illegal because of "technicalities" is a lot more sympathetic. The handling of secure information in the government in unorthodox ways can be deemed to violate the law, or not, in some surprising (or maybe even arbitrary) ways. The last really big time this played out politically in the US was probably Clinton's email server.
As I hinted at above, I don't think anyone here is really conversant with that area of the law. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain even if DOGE has broken the law, the current DoJ will not find that DOGE has done anything requiring legal action, for the obvious political reasons.
Apparently the president can appoint temporary advisors that does not need approval from congress. If Mr Musk qualifies for such appointment I guess is that something for the courts to decide. I guess that implies that the audit itself is time framed.
Oddly, they failed at the time, on direct questioning by the judge, to identify who the Administrator of US DOGE Service currently is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
The question here is just BS. The President created organizations to enact the executives will.
The executive is now saying they want the power to come back to them. Which it always was - they had to work through the structures they created.
Apparently they dont want the institutions.
Edit:
Constitutional explanation: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/sec...
report on Congress control of executive branch agencies https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45442/2#:~:te...
> the Constitution also provides for subordinate officers to assist the President in his executive duties.
> Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.
And of course: > President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.
> The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution …
The dismissal was eventually signed and filed by Emil Bove, a very recent Trump appointee, whose former job was as one of Trump's criminal defense lawyers.
The stink of corruption is heavy around Trump and Musk.
I don't like Musk. That's true. The reasoning is irrelevant.
Let's take someone I do like. Linus Torvalds. If Trump (or Harris or ...) appointed Linus, unilaterally, to do what Musk is doing, I'd still have a problem with it.
Now the two responses you might have are:
- I don't believe you.
- Linus wouldn't be bad either.
Both of which completely miss the point. Nobody should have singular, unilateral, unsupervised access to governmental systems like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
It's objectively true no sane person would have cared about that issue.
> Advisors with unlimited power
Apparently they have the power to fire people, ignore access clearance rules, get full read/write (this was already confirmed and documented by multiple sources) access to data, terminate federal programs and agencies. Or at least there's no executive opposition to them trying to, so... in practice they do have the power. So far a few judges are still holding the ground, but we'll see how long that is allowed. Musk announced a few big changes as done before they were officially confirmed by Trump.
> and endless conflicts of interests
Musk practically leads the efforts to cut government spending while receiving government funding in defence and comms spending. And with weird procurement entires appearing https://www.ttnews.com/articles/armored-teslas-government Those are conflicts of interest.
> with zero obligation for transparency?
There are no obligations for transparency. The agencies being reviewed don't get a report of things to implement and we don't see any of the audit reports.
I get you may like how this unfolds, but denying it happens is weird.
He's an advisor with no lawful power to fire, no lawful security clearance for the DOGE team*, no lawful authority to terminate programs.
De facto, anyone standing in his way gets pushed.
Which is why nuclear weapons teams were let go.
* unless President said so. I think the office of President can do that, but has Trump actually done so, or is this like those classified documents he refused to return?
Sure, I agree he has no authority. He's only an advisor that seems to have any advice rubber-stamped. And he announces the changes personally before the executive action is announced. And opm employees get an email with basically the same wording as Twitter employees about a leave offer which legally cannot be offered to them.
We can pretend that "actually it's not Musk making those changes" but it's obvious he's telling others what to do. And not in an "advice" way. (He's obviously shielded from legal responsibility in this case.)
> The team aren't accessing data they don't have appropriate security clearances for.
You're arguing against a federal judge. Do you know something they don't? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo
Even if they were allowed access, we know they disregard the access rules by posting NOFORN level data publicly https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-doge-posts-classifi...
> They don't have write access to data, only read access.
Are you arguing that both Ron Wyden is incorrect and the treasury secretary is lying about granting write access? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/02/elon-musk... And that the staff didn't remove the access later on with audit note of that change? https://archive.is/s5myG
> Musk is not authorised to review any agency or program where he has a material conflict.
Yet he's involved in the review of treasury which he has conflict with.
(from the score jumping up and down, I'm guessing people don't like seeing receipts...)
That's certainly a material conflict.
If justice is important to a democracy, these scientists did the right thing. That takes real courage.
I see no difference in what’s happening in the American public service. The processes occurring now are not democratic in nature. Musk’s role is extremely unorthodox and only ostensibly voted for ‘by the people’.
In the weeks since Trump took office, I see no hard evidence to support any kind of deep state corruption. I see inefficiency, and yet, I see that in how DOGE dismantles things as well. I see it in every organization I work in, in every industry, in every home. It’s inevitable.
Civil servants ultimately work for the President. That's how it works. There have been many reductions in force prompted by Presidents over time (my own grandfather took one in the seventies). I appreciate there is some disagreement about whether Trump is tripping over any specific laws, but to the degree he's not (the courts will answer that), then he's well within his right to take the direct advice of his advisors, and to act within the scope of his authorities. The President also has the power to get access to even the most confidential information (how could he not?), and to share that with his advisors who have the requisite security clearances (which in many cases he can dictate).
I'm just stunned by all the hand wringing about access to "government data." They're government employees!
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/29/12691276/trump-believe-flop-fl...
That's not what I'm seeing happen. I'm not seeing cost benefit analysis, I'm not seeing the use of existing experts.
What I am seeing... well perhaps we'd have different perspectives. To pick an example, look Musk saying that people who are over 200 years old are marked as alive.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891557463377490431
If you assume the worst of Elon Musk, you might think he's an idiot who doesn't understand how COBOL represents dates in the SSA system, nor how large government databases deal with missing data.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/new-social-security-chie...
I've worked, not for the SSA, but with public health data. Real people and historical records and old databases are messy as fuck.
The SSA neither throw out data, nor do they add data they haven't received, except when there is funding appropriated for it.
So these old people are simply actually people they never got death info on.
Could they just add a date? Well you have to consider the data integrity issues around date of death. If you pick a nonsensical date, can you assume that the SSA, department of commerce, and other orgs, not to mention the internal SSA progroms that rely on processing SSA data can handle it? Nope, an engineer can't assume that, there's an implicit API.
Oh yeah, agencies for state governments deal with that data too. https://www.ssa.gov/dataexchange/documents/sves_solq_manual....
But the fact is, this has been looked at. Per this 2023 audit the SSA estimated it would cost 5.5 to 9.7 million to mark people as deceased in the database when they don't have death date information. They didn't do that, probably because no money was appropriated for it.
https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
Does that mean there's massive SSA fraud of dead people? Nope. back in 2015 they decided to automatically stop giving benefits to anyone over 115. The oldest living American is, in fact, Naomi Whitehead, who is 114.
In other word, Musk is acting like saving the government 5.5 million minimum is a "HUGE problem".
Now, I don't think Elon Musk is an idiot who doesn't understand COBOL or how messy data can be from real people. I also don't think he thinks that 200 year old benefits fraud is really an issue.
Which begs the question, why bring this up at all?
My interpretation is perhaps less charitable than yours, but I'd be interested in hearing what you think.
Where can I vote for these changes??
https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-07-08/bi...
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/thank-green-ne...
The Dems cooperate more, so the media highlights their occasional disagreements.
#1 status quo complacency which does things like congressional insider trading, identity politics, is completely ancient, and useless and ineffectual in identifying or implementing any actual changes that would improve people's lives.
#2 is a wing of the party ready to take a wrecking ball to things (bravo), but thinks taxes are the solution to everything.
We need more wrecking ball type options than just #2. We need a diversity of wrecking ball options that are energetic, smart, able to identify the places where the system (both private industry & governmental) isn't functioning properly and have the guts to actually push change through.
But they tend to say reality-based things like “no, your tax cuts won’t pay for themselves, in fact they’ll cost $1.2T over ten years” or “no, this war won’t pay for itself, lol, what the fuck even” or “no, you can’t make meaningful progress on cutting the deficit by attacking benefits fraud, because there’s not very much of that.”
All things Republicans would rather pretend aren’t true, and certainly don’t want to act on. So what do you do when you need to show progress but are constrained by operating based on fiction? You tout tiny wins and hope the numbers seem big to people who don’t know much; you make things up; and you cause harm or even incur long-term costs or cause waste and call that savings by doing bad accounting.
Well someone should tell him: https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1892295984928993698/photo/1 !
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.
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.
"Economics" in the sense of "any sort of understanding of how the world works", not so much.
Drain the rot from your brain. Ew.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you refuse objectivity and spend all your time getting high on your own farts.
Yet teslas are still selling like hot cakes. If there were actual humans struggling we’d see an obvious decrease in sales.
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.
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
Do you have a source for this opinion presented as a fact?
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.
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.
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...
This is peak ostriching. They haven't turned up anything so far, they've just been making monumental messes and lying about progress.
You are either delusional or purposely misrepresenting facts
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fired-inspecto...
That's not conducive to good government and is not the current precedent set by the Supreme Court, but it's been the conservative legal view since the 1980s and to be fair again, is again what the Constitution actually says. It will pretty much certainly be the prevailing view after this returns to the Supreme Court.
If that legal theory is true then Congress cannot create independent executive power and so it is not illegal for the President to fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason, including inspectors general, the chairman of the Fed, etc., regardless of any law to the contrary. Again, to be clear a third time, the effects of this will be bad, but the constitutional language isn't really ambiguous.
Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).
The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith. And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system, even more so when they convince ~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science." They already pass laws of unimaginable length and complexity, so I see no reason why Congress can't pass a huge omnibus "these chemicals are bad" bill every year, even if that bill is 5000-10000 pages.
By the way, speaking of the EPA, there's a lot of whiplash in that arm of government based on which party holds the presidency. If the EPA's rules were actual laws, they would need a much stronger mandate from the people to change. IMO this would be better for both environmental protection (since you don't have the party of "drill baby drill" arbitrarily changing things whenever they want) and for business because there is more certainty.
> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.
The whole premise of the American system of government is that power corrupts and a functioning government needs a series of working checks and balances. One arm of America's tripartite government has ceded most of its real power to another arm. This mostly works because the people who get into that other branch (presidents) want to play an iterated game, where burning things to the ground doesn't benefit them. We are seeing what happens when you have someone in power who is playing to win this round without regard for the iterated game.
All that would do is transfer power from bureaucrats within the executive to bureaucrats within the legislature. No Congressperson is fully knowledgeable on all the areas on which they pass laws. Maybe it is a better approach than what we have today, but I'm unconvinced. At least with the system we have today, the bureaucrats are generally experts within their areas. Congressional staffers have no such experience and generally rely on lobbyists.
Think about this in good faith and try to make it work in your head, and you will see that this proposal is actually not that different from how the executive branch rule-makers work today from a day-to-day perspective, while carrying very different legal implications.
That only applies to political appointees. The rank and file are permanent employees (or were until a few weeks ago).
Anyways, not saying your idea couldn't work, only that it's not easily implemented and needs a lot of consideration to do well. It's a wholesale change to how we've governed ourselves for ~150 years. But, the idea of a permanent set of legislative experts has some appeal.
This doesn't even require bad faith actors for it to become a clusterfuck. It's a scaling issue. Things that used to work at smaller scales accumulate cruft and other issues, until things ultimately fall apart. 200 years is of course a good run, but it wasn't going to last forever. Actually 200 years is such a long run, one doesn't have to bring "bad faith actors" into the equation at all to reach this conclusion, but I guess when things start to fall apart some people need someone to blame. Ask yourself this though... if the system was doing so great, how would it have allowed someone like Trump to ever win in the first place (let alone in the second place, as he did in 2024)? That's not a healthy system. Too many were disillusioned, and that's not their fault.
>~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.
They are disgusted with what they see, and have for a very long time felt powerless to change it. Not really just "felt", but were powerless to change it. Trump ran for office, they saw an opportunity. It's not exactly unreasonable, it's just inconvenient to a class of people who have grown comfortable because they're a little closer to the spigots of graft that pour forth. Being "reasonable" in the way you'd use that word hasn't really ever worked for those people, and they waited quite a long time for it to do the trick.
It very much is not.
It is, however, that the people will not simultaneously elect sufficent majorities in both houses of Congress and a President who all fail to do so, such that the systems by which the political branches check eachother continue to function in a way which constrains those actors in either that do act in bad faith.
> I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,
Electoral reforms to the legislative branch that could be done through statute could go a long way to reducing the probability of a sufficient concentration of bad faith actors to overwhelm the system, and electoral and structural reforms to the executive branch to make it less unitary, which would take a Constitutional amendment, could increase the necessary concentration to achieve a total breakdown.
The tradgedy of Trump's first term was that the House of Representatives undermined the legitimacy of that check by using it in partisan, ambiguous and non-compelling circumstances, and failing as a result to obtain a conviction. Using the heavy machinery of impeachment ineffectively made it harder to use should the executive take the tremendous steps you're suggesting.
Anyway, Trump just mocked the leader of a foreign ally for refusing to hold elections. Viewed together, his comments sound like an extended troll of the political opposition.
Say what?!
It's Congress keeping the President in check. BTW, the President is not directly elected by the people and doesn't actually [directly] represent them. The President is elected by the state governments (legislatures) and is supposed to be chosen because the States belief the President will faithfully uphold the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. It may happen the the States use a popular election to choose their electors that elect the President, at least for now, but the President isn't supposed to represent "the mob" (majority or the populace). It's also why the electoral college is used for electing the President rather than straight popular vote.
And multiply-bankrupt, and (on the second term) multiply-convicted felon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_af...
Vox populi, vox Dei, but unfortunately the Deus in question is Κοάλεμος
Political scientist Robert D Putnam suggests that this is in part due to the culture fragmenting and isolating.
Watch 10m video https://youtu.be/5cVSR8MSJvw?si=5NxRUnYENhfzTbXe easy interview with him from recently on that. Interesting.
It's this kind of contempt that got him elected. You have no empathy or interest in the will of the people. Maybe if you talked with some of them, you'd understand their grievances. But something tells me you'd sooner ironically prejudicially dismiss them all as racist bigots.
Norms, are basically the way laws work in the real world.
I despaired, because this is natural to lawyers, and alien entirely to the layperson.
No one is going to think Justice, and then accept “Oh, our norms are how laws work”.
Even the concept of independent executive agencies is probably more vulnerable constitutionally than more people think.
I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch, as informed to me by the other comments. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
The other thing is that in the US, people's lives depend on their jobs, with half of polled people indicating they live paycheck to paycheck. This makes them easy to manipulate into complying, putting their morals aside because standing up for morals or indeed the law will mean they lose their job.
I mean the US president declared yesterday that only he gets to decide on law and called himself king on his social media. There's heaps of 'legal' texts that indicate it means he can be deposed and yote into jail, but if there's nobody enforcing them they're useless.
In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera saying as much.
Look at AirBnB, Uber, Lyft.
All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state legal counsels.
It might rarely be admitted openly, but it sometimes is alluded to... e.g. Eric Schmidt's Stanford talk where he said:
"I want to say that if your product becomes popular, you can hire a bunch of lawyers to sort everything out. If no one uses your product, don’t worry -- no one will care that you stole someone else’s content."
We should all have "root access" to everything but the most national-security sensitive topics.
The president needs the Senate's "advice and consent" to hire principal officers, and does not need the Senate's "advice and consent" for certain other officers as specified by statute. The US Digital Service ("DOGE") is an agency where he did not need the Senate's advice and consent.
The president does NOT need the Senate's advice and consent to fire anyone in the executive branch. For principal officers this was established by the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson for firing a confirmed cabinet secretary nominated by Lincoln. For other officers this was established by judicial precedent fairly recently when Biden terminated two Trump appointees to minor offices and they sued (and lost).
Similarly the president needs the Senate's advice and consent to enter into treaties. The Constitution is silent as to terminating Senate-confirmed executive officers, officers whose appointments did not require Senate confirmation, or treaties (abrogation). It's essentially settled law that the president does not require the Senate's advice and consent for any of those kinds of terminations.
Therefore, under the Constitution and the political and binding judicial precedents, there can be no law "onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests."
Copying what I typed elsewhere, I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
> I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history
The various assassinations of presidents were kinds of coups, don't you think? Soon we'll find out if the CIA did or did not kill JFK. Suppose the CIA killed JFK -for argument's sake-, surely that would have been a coup, no?
For instance, there is no law allowing the president to do a SELECT * in the income tax database. So an honest government worker can just say f-off when he is requested to do so.
https://archive.ph/Oa42l
The systems were built as separate systems to avoid (in a systems designers most fevered nightmares) a scenario like this.
If there were a way to efficiently manage 2.5 million staff in a single department, then we'd likely do that, but it's more efficient to specialise, so we do that instead.
Firewalling data between departments is rarely a design consideration, except in obvious cases (military), and it hardly matters in this scenario anyway, because it's not like Musk is walking into all 400 agencies with a laptop. DOGE is hiring an army of advisors and dividing them up between agencies.
You seem to be making the analysis based on first principles, but it looks like it’s inspired by some facts or experience you have. could you share that source /info?
It would truly be a nightmare scenario to have all government databases under a single potentially corrupt roof or having someone with access to all of them cough.
... Yes, because those teams by default do not simply get to share access, because of various very well understood security and privacy issues by doing so.
> Trump only granted DOGE a 12 month window to eliminate waste, and there's 400 federal agencies, so parallelism is crucial.
That's what he says, at least. Also, if their current blatant lying[0] about the """waste""" continues then I don't really see a point. It seems clear Musk and the Breakfast Club boys who are unilaterally changing government finances have no idea how a government contract works (or it's willful ignorance).
[0] https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1891898336208105676
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team included a big error.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-s-doge-accuse...
Musk's DOGE Accused of 'Cooking the Books' After $8 Billion Savings Is Immediately Debunked
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) falsely claimed an $8 billion cost savings from a canceled government contract, which was later revealed to be worth only $8 million.
https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1891898336208105676
Momentum Chaser @electricfutures
After several delays, @DOGE has finally posted its purported savings. Why did it take so long to create a simple webpage with a 1000-row table? Who knows! Let's dig in.
Headline number: $55B saved. They list the savings per nixed contract. This should be easy to verify then. [...]
We've spent the better part of 80 years moving power from legislative to execute and granting executive a whole host of new powers.
We made this bed, now it sure seems like Trump is making us sleep in it.
The people who do support it believe that they themselves will be granted noble status within the new regime, rather than being serfs.
The problem above any American political and philosophical questions (moral questions notwithstanding), is mistaking Trump for anything resembling a worthy king. It will bring trouble.
In the ancient world the king was a symbol of the prosperity of the people and scapegoat for the sins and troubles of the people and was ritually killed and replaced when things weren’t working out. History whispers that one should be careful what one wishes for.
If they want to be abused, then lean all the way in.
It’s the same reason the antagonist in nearly every film is a single bad guy who is eventually karate-chopped down to size. It’s the same reason WW2 is a ‘simpler’ and more palatable narrative (a couple main bad guys) than WW1 (complex political and social movements across many countries led to war). Even though the same complexity of politics and social changes were also at play
In a big society where end effects are far away, we look to the strong men to handle the big problems
> But the same individuals peddling this theory are simultaneously objecting quite vigorously to the notion that they are bestowing George Bush with the powers of a King. Bill Kristol and Gary Stevenson, for instance, called such claims "foolish and irresponsible" in the very same Washington Post Op-Ed where they argued that Bush need not "follow the strictures of" (i.e., obey) the law, and the President himself angrily denied that he is laying claim to a "dictatorial position" in the very same Press Conference where he proudly insisted on the right to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant even though FISA makes it a crime to do so.
https://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-bush-defender...
And he was equally critical of Obama admin not only keeping those powers but further expanding them.
Americans stopped caring around the Patriot Act and executive power has only grown under every administration since
Perhaps the first foreign adversary nation state getting there will patch the security flaws after stealing the data?
That "just an advisor (but not really)" Musk and his ragtag group of junior developers get god mode access to lots of governmental systems is less expected. There are legal ways for the president to direct these departments, so when he opts for the illegal path, it's definitely noteworthy.
The article also mentions information about employees operating in conflict zones.
It seems most payroll companies send data to TWN [0]. Though I'd question the quality and breadth of each data feed. I also haven't looking into the percentage of US companies who use payroll software from the big providers and/or do it themselves
[0]: this comment tree at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510103#41512326
They likely have records of the people inside organisations who provide data for them. These people usually want to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation. And in many cases, we’re not just talking about being fired or legal actions as retaliation.
a) creating more productive value than you or doing something more in demand by society [strong signal you should join them!]
or
b) manipulating their situation for better outcomes unfairly or fraudulently
In both cases it's in the interest of the greater good to have these things out in the open.
[0] https://lexing.network/swedens-latest-inquiry-into-protectin...
As a foreigner who moved to Sweden, it was quite shocking first to see all this info displayed online for everyone to see but there are definitely some good sides and bad sides to it.
One of the good side is that, you can look at the people living in a given area and decided if this is the kind of neighborhood where you want to live. Lower (declared income) can have a correlation with crime so if you just want to have a quite life, you may want to select an era that has loads of working people with a higher than average income.
One bad side, some people have used it in the past to harass people, think ex-lovers and so on. There is a procedure in place where if you are afraid of being stalked you can ask for your information to be removed from these registries or at least be hidden from public view.
I hate this system. It used to be a good system when most people was law abiding and there was no gang criminals. But today? Jeez, you are like a fish just hoping not to get struck by the sharks and there is no protection available due to the failing state.
It acts as a great tool for journalists, who are able to obtain meaningful insight into the actions of the state at all levels. While of course there are downsides, I think this is a very important principle.
There is no consequence, or even drastic change in policy, for the police in the face if this phenomenon. But if the same private citizen were to hire or manipulate a gang to carry out such an attack, everyone would be in prison for life.
Fantastic point, agreed. My 1980s anger at the authoritarian misuse of "freedom" by Regan-nauts all wearing the same their greased helmet hair is affirmed moreso these days
In Finland they publish everyones salaries over a certain threshold in the newspaper every year.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/zoomify/33070/page-from-the-public-...
Anecdotally they were mainly used to evaluate potential dates.
Addresses are not public information, you can opt out from having your info public. They are not even a national registry (one exists, not public) but your telco will put you in "the phone book" if you don't opt out.
Taxes are public information but only to a degree. You can opt out from having them shared en masse (primarily to the media) but you can still inquire someone else's paid taxes from the tax office but it requires you to know their full given name, year of birth and home town.
Salary is not public information, only the total amount of paid income taxes. You can correlate them to some degree but you won't be able to know how many jobs a person has or where their capital gains are from.
Access to this information can also be limited in exceptional cases (politicians, harassment victims, identity theft etc).
Employers do, individual stockholders of the employing firm do not, generally.
> Government workers are (in theory) employees of the citizens.
No, they are in theory employees of the government, in which the citizenry are stakeholders. They are not, even in theory, direct employees of the citizens.
A US Attorney is not, in theory, your attorney just because you are a US citizen.
Not in theory nor in practice, for the same reason a teacher isn’t the employee of a student’s parents.
No, they hate Musk for the things he says and has said (And things he allows other people to say on his platform).
Some people treat actions more seriously than words. Others choose to treat words more seriously than actions.
But on the other hand, regimes that crack down aggressively on speech don't tend to end up on the 'right side of history' either.
Trump fired the person investigating him, now Musk got to do the same. It's a Republican right of passage.
First it was destroying Twitter, which was something I rather enjoyed using.
Then, far worse, it was pouring vast resources into getting a terrible person elected.
You might say this just shows it’s because I hate Trump. To which I’d ask, do you really think my description of the guy is inaccurate?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo
I already know the answer to this, but if Obama had George Soros hire a bunch of anti-white people to oversee the Doge systems, would you still be supporting it? Or it's okay because you're white and the people are in charge are white.
I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.
What the hell? Like this shit didn’t happen back home in INDIA, and that’s a nation which is comfortable with a stronger state.
It’s NOT OK, and you can very well acknowledge that fact because you can just imagine what eviscerating a legacy code base without a replacement looks like. It looks like the disaster you wish on your worst enemy while you quit the firm and look for a new job.
This isn’t beyond the project execution and technical ability of most people here to grasp.
ask yourself how many consecutive miracles would it take for this to go off without a hitch. Then ask yourself if you are that lucky.
Their site was hacked? And given the overconfidence that some of the people involved seem to display, I think it's reasonable to ask for at least checking of what's happening... which isn't occurring.
Come now. Good faith is earned. They MAY be doing it correctly. But show the damn receipts. This is the basic ask when someone comes to any firm and promises to fix everything and then runs away once the project fails.
And if they ARENT showing the receipts - then make a noise about it.
>the last thing anyone at DOGE wants is for personal data to leak
Theres a great article which was shared here:
"Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing.
or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive"
> Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field.
and
> More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.
Why should a government agency run by a random unelected tech ceo even have the option to be blasé with personal data? Like I thought this website was pretty vehemently against things like the Patriot Act giving the NSA granular personal data and backdoors into communication, that at least had the guise of "national security" backstopping it. Giving a new department personal data access for no reason other than "government efficiency" (no actionable goals given by the department btw) is significantly more tenuous than "national security".
Are you asking why it's any different a non-American billionaire who has multipole government contracts having access to your data any different than Joe Bob who was hired and vetted by those same people unlike the other guy?
This is false.
Elon Musk has South African, Canadian, and US citizenship. Let's not play the xenophobia card.
The only thing that protects that data is professional ethics, and in extremely paranoid (i.e. airgapped) environments, metal detectors.
Sincerely, God Mode on x DBs, where x > 1.
None of that matters with what DOGE is doing. That should worry you.
Especially when you look at the background of the Doge team - 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists', full-on racists...
Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
Some of the stories about this topic which have been flagged here can be seen in my favorites. I'd be interested in collecting more examples, if you know of any missing.
> In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA, according to sources we’ve spoken with at each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be working to open back doors into systems used throughout the federal government.
If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
I'm starting to wonder if HN has also been taken over by bots and astroturfers.
Audits require transparency and people who know wtf they are doing. Musk and his team have shown none of either. They have repeatedly talked about what they think they found that was later shown to be false. Instead of correcting course they double down (see the recent story of 8B vs 8M or Musk saying 10s of millions of dead people getting social security, there are many more that come out daily). They have also fought against efforts to increase transparency into what they are doing through a number of ways, either taking down datasets that could be cross checked or moving DOGE under the records act to avoid FOIA until 2032.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/musk-misreads-social-securit...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-do...
1. Politicians are watching their favorite pork barreling disappear day by day
2. Since Trump was elected President the waste identified is going to be what Trump thinks is waste
3. The job of the Democrats is to get elected, and you don’t get elected by sitting by as your opponent keeps doing things many voters are supporting, you try and stop it
Because government waste is high on the list of priorities of many voters and DOGE seems to have only improved Trump’s approval rating, the Democrats can’t come out and say “stop cutting government waste”!
So instead they try to politically attack DOGE by saying many of them are young (so are the soldiers we send overseas to fight wars), they are unelected (so are all government workers), they aren’t allowed to do this (to be determined by courts) and they are cutting the wrong things (the voters will decide this in the end).
So if you like what DOGE is doing, sit back and buckle up because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
The issue isn’t what we think. The issue is what we think OTHERS think.
This is what social media truly fucks up. We can’t see the people nodding in disagreement. We can only see their silence, and we must respond to the person who IS talking and holding our attention.
Practically - I care about privacy, and I expect that damn near most people here care about it.
People can have their “well actually” arguments, but when push comes to shove, techies on HN should vocalize their annoyance with the way this is being done. Even if you support their politics, this ISNT how you execute secure projects.
Wrong from the start. The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes territory. We dont have to agree on other things.
> …
> If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually even worth.
Just want to add to this topic that HN advertises YC AI Startup school: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus - where Musk is listed as a first speaker.
Though it doesn’t surprise me - YC is in the same circle of radical technocrats (a16z, Altman, Musk, etc.) and hosted Balaji talking about dystopian plans about techno-authoritarian city states 10 or 15 years ago.
Listening to him talk about Elon taking over Twitter and that leading to more free speech was embarrassing. Like, actual adults believe this shit.
Protesting against police brutality of suffocating apprehended person is apparently “peak woke”.
Musk apparently “succeded in neutralizing” twitter - “without censoring either” (left or right). He argues in the notes that Musk prioritized paid users and paid users are more right wing and hence left wing users self censored themselves, but left “could tilt it back if they wanted to”.
EDIT: also again proving my original comment - PG is thanking Sam Altman for proof reading the post…
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Also: please don't use 'edit' to do deletions that deprive replies of context. That's unfair to readers.
There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
Dismantling USAID overnight will do a lot of damage.
Well there’s cutting off the dogs tail, and then there’s accidentally cutting off your own fingers in your haste to get the dogs tail.
There is another saying:
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Act quickly when needed but not so quickly that you don’t have time to assess. You should know what you’re cutting before you cut.
I see the legal status of tail docking is slightly laxer in France but in North America the US and Canadian Vetinary Associations disavow the practice as bad for the dog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_(dog)
> Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"[17][52]
It's obvious from recent video of Musk and Trump that Trump is also a figurehead at this point.
1) Staying out of prison
2) Being adored
What happens to the country is beside the point, from his perspective. Which is why he's more than happy to let Musk and the Heritage Foundation call the shots. He has no interest in actually running things, that's too much work.
I was not expecting the complete takeover of computer networks and rapid firing of large numbers of employees.
Easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
YOLO.
> We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945.
> Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution
You'll be on your knees begging for bureaucracy after all your info is sold to the highest bidder and you spend the next 20 years fighting identity theft.
"New court documents shed light on what a 25-year-old DOGE employee named Marko Elez did inside Treasury Department payment systems. They also provide extensive new details about which systems Elez accessed, the security precautions Treasury IT staff took to limit his access and activity, and what changes he made to the systems. The documents indicate that the situation at Treasury is more nuanced than previously reported."
(...)
"Additionally, he could only connect using a government-issued laptop that had "cybersecurity tools" installed on it to prevent him from accessing web sites or cloud-based storage services with the laptop or connecting a USB or other external storage device to it to copy large amounts of data from Treasury systems. "
You're argument is "This document said this one dude isn't currently accessing the system" as if that somehow means they aren't going to in the future and or that other team members don't have access. What are you even talking about? No one is saying "It's all this guy"
Also, not all court documents are the same. You can make whatever claims you want in some of them.
His first term, he handed out security clearances to anyone who would ask. There is even less stopping him from just giving them out this term too.
WTF are you talking about? What govt agency does haven't oversight the way DOGE does? Stop lying.
congress didn't create DOGE. no one is overseeing that goon running it. you're a child if you believe the words coming out of his mouth
They're using public LLMs to analyze it. Every single LLM provider collects the data you put into it.
There's also the NRO incident recently where they publicly released the classified org chart.
In a publicly traded company you get to chose whether to buy or sell the shares of a company based on how the CEO is running the company (including who he appoints to audit it)
In US Govt, we don't get to chose whether to "invest" in the govt or not, our taxes our collected by force.
So instead we have the power to vote for people in congress (who decide home much taxes are collected on how they are spend), and the president (who can execute on the spending directed by congress, but also has the power granted by constitution to audit and spend effiecntly)
The US Govt Shareholders (Voters) have SPOKEN, and SPOKEN LOUDLY! (Electoral College victory, and Popular Vote victory). They elected republican majority congress, and President Trump. Thus the voters voted for a deep gov't audit headed by Musk (Trump publicly campaigned on auditing and cleaning up spending, and publicly stated who will be in charge of the audit).
Many of the findings Musk has published have been proven to be mischaracterized or erroneous (numbers off by 1000x etc), which gives us grounds to question the rest. Except their process and data is opaque. Trump is firing entire departments based on this bad information. This could ironically _increase_ govt expenditure when they realizes we need to hire new people, possibly at higher salaries (after paying the old people a severance).
They are auditing a Multi-Trillion bureaucratical behemoth (with terrible record keeping on top of it). Even a "certified auditor" can make a few mistakes.
Instead of focusing on onef misreported 8 billion line item, you should focus on the fact that they discovered 3 TRILLION in payments with no budgetary codes (literally TRILLIONS in blank untraceable checks)
I would rather have an businessman experienced making billion dollar companies efficient doing the audit, and doing it FAST, but making some mistakes.
Than having a typical beurocratic "certified auditor" audit, that does it slowly and won't even make a dent in a budget in a single year.
The US Govt is paying TRILLIONS in just INTEREST on the debt every year, and not even paying down the principal right now. And they have to borrow MORE MONEY, just to be able to cover the INTEREST payment next year. The US Gov't is in dire financial straights. We don't have time for a typical "bureaucratic auditors" auditing a trillion dollar bureaucracy.
We need an experienced businessman to come in and start cutting, and cutting FAST.
Now they _allege_ to have found 3 trillion in mystery payments, but we can't take them seriously because of their lack of proper audit techniques. They have no idea what they are doing.
I believe the entire country is watching in real time as a teenager tries to navigate his first legacy system and he just hasn't found the rest of the business logic. Just like how they implied that millions of dead 150 year olds were still receiving social security payments. It was a known issue that dead people are still in the database, but they are not in fact receiving payments. A real auditor would have known what to ask and where to look.
The article is hyperbola and ultimately trying to push the "Auditing and finding corruption is bad"
Doge is not being this careful, in fact I’d argue that Doge will disproportionately impact people not on your target list.
All the “horrible” people you don’t like are going to be “punished” with lucrative contracts in the private sector while line workers, most of whom may agree with you suffer
In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information.
I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.
It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch.
A bit thankless don't you think?
This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn from Germany's example:
> According to the court document, the public prosecutor stated “public interest” in pressing criminal charges as the retweet was “punishable as an insult against people of political life”. It potentially constituted “incitement of the people”.
> Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws “against hate and hate speech” were passed under then-chancellor Angela Merkel.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-ho...
Also how about never descending into dictatorships and authoritarian regimes?
The erosion of trust in institutions and elections, up to insurrections are way out of that picture. Infront of that background, boasting about a strong executive branch, being cleansed not by merit (opposed to trumps own standard) sounds so absurd to me as a german.
Your orwellian interpretation about limited free speech is rooted in your free speech absolutism. We distinguish between limited freedom speech and unlimited freedom of oppinion. We also have processes involving courts to ban new, factually incorrect statements, aka. non-oppinions, to make it illegal bullshit.
Europe hasn’t descended into total war since WWII because the US has military bases all over Europe, mostly in Germany.
> The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
> The man was arrested on Thursday as part of nationwide police operations against suspected antisemitic hate speech online.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
This article is more informative:
Translated (with DeepL.com):
> The public prosecutor's office in Bamberg has now announced: The search had already been requested before the Green politician himself filed a criminal complaint in the case.
> Habeck only filed a criminal complaint in the case more than a month after the search warrant had been requested.
> According to the public prosecutor's office, the suspect is also facing another charge: According to this, in spring 2024, he allegedly uploaded a picture on X with a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which could potentially constitute the criminal offense of incitement to hatred. According to the investigators, it shows an SS or SA man with the poster and the words “Germans don't buy from Jews” and the additional text “True democrats! We've had it all before!”.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/schwachkopf-belei...
That's the level of delusion in your own greatness that led to Trump. USA was the first (representative!) democracy with written constitution at best. And that's if you overlook the fact that only some people were entitled to vote at all.
And no, the executive branch had much less power “in the beginning”. As many people have learned, what America’s constitution says has never really matched what America does. The increasing mindless worship of a dead text, called “originalism”, is part of what will destroy it.
This is the situation in China. In theory NPC is their governing body.
[insert random ad hominem attack here]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-tem...
They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments.
Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.
It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid ways.
> So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
Those employees are employed by a government agency established, funded and given their mission by Congress. The heads of these agencies are approved by the US Senate.
None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or "DOGE."
We did this to ourselves.
I think it's worth pointing out that it's not a given Congress would have approved it all. For a start, it would take longer to legally setup the instruments that Musk wanted. Also, the current situation allows Republicans to conveniently wash their hands of any negative consequences. Which is likely a big reason they're not pushing on this at all, as demanding a vote would require them to take a clear side on DOGE.
The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.
There is. It was given during Obama. You might not like it, but it looks like DOGE is likely to be completely legal and working within the frameworks of the government.
"The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."
And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own.
As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases).
[1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
I give credit to Trump and Musk for playing the DC game like professional politicians.
It’s pretty clear you can’t get anything done in DC without it.
The dude made a Nazi salute in public in broad daylight. So yes, I'm inherently anti-Musk because I'm inherently anti-Nazi because Nazis are inherently anti human rights and anti basic freedoms.
Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?
Communication is so messy man, two sides, same iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.
Historically, that has not been the case, hence the question.
> Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?
Just yesterday this[0] was a headline: "Hegseth wants Pentagon to cut 8% from defense budget for each of the next 5 years"
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts...
It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every last staff member of the us treasury.
None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has been gathered by the government to perform its functions. Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this data to streamline government. The office of president is pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't.
The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it is that they're collecting and storing the data. Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it isn't.
Like tax returns? What legitimate need does management consultant have to see the individual tax returns of any person without any accountable transparency?
It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk & team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It isn't like the security of these departments is expected to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or later even if that happens because it is sold on the darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
"On the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for the agency authorised to fund medical treatments to store people's sensitive medical records related to treatments they pay for" sounds like a much less defensible proposition than "on the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for what is nominally the government's IT advice body to hire a bunch of script kiddies without proper vetting or any genuine auditing credentials to download said sensitive medical records, store them as insecurely as they like, cross reference them with whatever other sensitive data they find on the grounds that they might be able to use them to tweet dubious claims about waste"...
We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people who do data analysis for government health departments. Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but they are youthful and do run scripts. The process appointing Musk is was more public and accountable than the one appointing my friends. Musk even gets public debate on the subject of whether hiring his people is a good idea or not. They're being very well vetted.
People are weird. I feel like a lot of ink gets spilled pointing out that one day the government will be controlled by people you don't like no matter who you are. But that argument doesn't seem to get through to all these people who panic every time it turns out that democracies don't always elect the same people with the same ideologies over and over. Government isn't trustworthy and people shouldn't be discovering that en masse in February 2025.
I mean, even if it was as simple "$n recurring payments for $drug to $SSN over $period", that absolutely is sensitive private information, especially when linked to originally entirely separate but equally critical records about someone's employment by a body tasked with firing people...
It absolutely makes sense for records to be audited with great care by qualified people in an airgapped environment with anonymization by default, but that's not what's happening here, is it? It's like I'm actually pretty convinced that it's necessary for the state to be able to arrest and incarcerate people, but I'm not convinced that the "due process" bit doesn't matter or that untrained edgelords to be making the decisions on incarceration is fundamentally the same as having police, prosecution and a trial to lock people up. I don't think the answer to the fact I might not like every executive the electorate votes in (or every law that exists) is to defund police, I think the answer is to have due process, and not due process that is de facto abolished on the day a new executive assumes power. It's much the same with governments being able to store some data
> We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people who do data analysis for government health departments. Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but they are youthful and do run scripts.
I think it's a pretty accurate description for a 19 year old whose short and undistinguished career history involves being fired from an internship at a cybersecurity firm for leaking its secrets to a competitor, and soliciting DDoS attacks on The Com.
Certainly better than "very well vetted".
I imagine young people you know that do data analysis for health departments have more auditing experience, fewer red flags, very carefully controlled access to data and senior people training them and checking their work. They would, I imagine, also be competent enough to be unlikely to confuse $8b and $8m when estimating cost savings...
It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the orders yourself.
Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over this, and are burning through their credibility - some judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have their bank account number and routing info had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering, not journalism.
I don't understand why we can't oppose this without reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this seems to be getting much worse over time.
> They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data.
So is everyone else in the Treasury Department.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bi...
Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The FUD is unfortunately not working.
All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also setup for Trump to do the same.
https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrup...
I can't believe I'm reading such comments
More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.
> They have simply...
Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups.
Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of
1) Complex projects
2) Security
3) High functioning teams
4) Ethics
This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part.
You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast?
What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap?
Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on?
And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them?
Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes?
If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.
> This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for the average observer.
It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and nothing more?
Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing connotations.
[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/
[1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/
That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will improve resiliency. Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like the word I am looking for.
In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs.
It was established by a 1990 law [1].
There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded.
[1] https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-...
[2] https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-ba...
[3] https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/
I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
I worked for the equivalent of the IRS for two month in my country (student job basically). When people asked for a deferred payment, i could accept it if it was the first time, but when they asked for a deffered payment the second time, or for reduced taxes (recent job loss, loss of a house or big events like this), i had the mean to verify who the person asking for this was, but not the mean to approve it.
I verified the information and filled a form, then asked for approval. The person approving had no idea who the person asking was (he had no access to the tool i used to match the internal ID to an actual person), but had the form i filled, and approved of the deferred payment/reduced taxes without any knowledge of who asked. Also i did not know who that person was, and he did not know who i was.
All of that is not very effective, but it reduces the risk of corruption from civil servants: you either have limited information, or limited power (this isn't the case with mayor or other elected officials though).
Consider it from this hypothetical perspective: My mom is an analyst in the health service and has database access to produce various reports. Her access is extensive, to allow reporting on things like whether the courses of antibiotics prescribed by doctors are of the recommended length.
Meanwhile, I'm a rebellious teenager. My doctor asks me how often I smoke, drink, take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex. If my doctor enters my answers into my electronic medical record - should my mom be able to look at my record?
The answer, of course, is that her right to access data depends on what she's doing.
Americans are ultimately conditioned to accept leadership. Belgians have never and never will agree on anything.
This is why the electoral college is a weak point in American democracy and no wonder it was the actual target of the Jan 6th coup attempt, the Capitol invasion being merely a distraction. Weak points like this must sealed over so that the overall system is more robust to attacks.
Whenever anyone proposes to allow it, the members of the informal "Party for Tax Evasion" scream and denounce the descent towards "Taxation Fascism". It's so pathetically cheeky, that it feels a bit endearing (how dare them, what rascals!)
Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope.
Edit: @helloplanets Source: https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx
Source?
You can still say anything, with a modicum of decency.
In the US we see that the only things keeping authoritarianism at bay is larger the people following norms (like the peaceful transfer of power after losing an election), and the executive obeying orders from the judiciary. All it takes is for a group to not to that any more and boom.
Short road to where 'slander' means any criticism (however objectively true and justified) of people in power and you get a swat team at your door and steel boot on your neck.
It is constantly abused, the issue is Germans have gaslit themselves into thinking that it's the right thing to do "because nazism was bad", so they have Nazi levels of speech censorship to fight imaginary Nazism, because once you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you are free to censor them, which then in turn is causing the uprising of actual Nazism because people are tired of being censored for having opinions that oppose the mainstream narrative. Germans are really a difficult bunch to reason with logically.
> because once you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you are free to censor them,
Show examples of it.
You're deflecting valid criticism about Germany's speech censorship with "Americans should shut up". Unbelievable.
In one case it wasn't slander. A person pointed out a politician's Nazi/Stati past on social media and he still sued abusing the "muh dignity" bullshit law.
Laws rarely include technical language like SQL joins.
Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more.
What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.
Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it.
> Paying dead people social security isn’t popular.
Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere.
> Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular.
Is there a source for this?
> When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing.
He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.
Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level of data access DOGE has been given.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-e...
There are vast differences between how the different governments operate.
How is the most populous state in the EU doing?
> The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy.
> The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy.
> The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillanc...
...oh
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France
but I know my home country Sweden, which used to have solid freedoms, have deteriorated quickly in the last few years.
Which is why I have moved to Switzerland, where the citizenry respect each other privacy(no country is perfect, but I do believe their decentralised direct democracy will keep protecting their liberties).
A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
Don’t get me wrong, the Swedes want it this way. They are no longer a freedom loving people, sadly.
https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/police-to-contact-thous...
A good reason might be to back up the serious accusation a few comments above.
> A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail to private individuals if they suspect there might be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
While this isn't ideal in a vacuum, I don't see the alternative. If physical mail is given inviolable privacy, you're pretty much handing bad actors the perfect delivery system on a silver platter. I'm sure there's other examples of decisions that increased Swedish authorities' surveillance capabilities, but to call a country a surveillance state requires a little more than "They can check your mail if they suspect you're using it for drug delivery".
Now there is enough reason to open private mail if the mail is a little squishy and it was sent from the wrong address.
You're saying agencies can be directed to opress people and organisations.
Op is saying agencies don't get to willy nilly look into the db of other agencies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2...
Guns are constitutionally protected in a way that humans aren't.
This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent.
Government is no different.
European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have.
The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying to:
”Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this task. To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work.
The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate audits in parallel.
Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).”
"Make recommendations" ?
Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons sounds like an action, not a recommendation:
* https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...
Firing the folks dealing with bird flu sounds like an action, not a recommendation:
* https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-...
Then there's the folks making a list of all the agents who were pulled off other tasks and told to investigate Jan 6:
* https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-compili...
Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA even though it's already short staffed:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo
Seems to be it's less about finding savings and more about blindly purging people with no regard to how useful or inefficient things actually are.
It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch.
Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people?
Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.
Hence why people are reacting negatively.
Don’t you think it’s a problem you can’t say this with certainty or point to an authority who has assured us this, and there’s no way to verify if it’s true because theres’s no oversight of DOGE?
Would you tolerate such uncertainty from even a SaaS provider? Why should we tolerate it from our government?
Phew, and I was worried for a second...
Edit: to the down voters, go do some basic fact checking for Trump and Musk tweets and then we'll talk.
> Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict
I'm not saying these are or aren't happening, but it seems like a lot of "good faith" assumptions here. If you assume Musk is an unethical actor, these seem mostly meaningless.
Elon is starting to catch on.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/19/its-easy-to-save-billion...
These means can easily lead to a nightmare. We've been through that a century ago. Look up Dehomag. Never Again.
That's an interesting rephrasing for "sidestepping all security to get access".
> The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies
Yup, that's exacly what someone who wants to change the beneficiaries of a few contracts and payments, as well as fire some of the people overseeing my companies would say.
I am a bit confused by your stressing the access is read-only. Isn't that obviously given (apologies for the redundant words, but I really don't know how to convey my confusion). For what purpose they could ever be given a write access to the hundreds of federal databases they are supposed to analyze?
Also, if they don't have the manpower to go over the data one by one then they don't have the power to go over them in parallel. When you say "parallelising the work" what exactly does that mean? What is it specifically that they are "parallelising"? Is there an engineer/analyst looking at multiple screens simultaneously and arriving conclusions for multiple agencies at the same time?
You keep saying things that are blatantly untrue, people give you massive evidence they aren't true, then you keep saying them. Why is that?
Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2025/02/elon-musks-companies-...
https://www.levernews.com/trump-purges-inspectors-general-in...
Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-doge-layof...
FDA staff were reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company. DOGE just fired them.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/fda-...
https://gizmodo.com/doge-reportedly-cuts-fda-employees-inves...
Secondly, Trump has clearly stated that Musk is not permitted to act where he has a conflict, and the agency directors will be aware of this.
Trump is honest and can be trusted in your experience?
If these aren't conflicts of interest, what would an actual conflict of interest look like?
Deferred resignation offers ("fork in the road" emails) and terminating all probationary employees (those without civil service protections) are cross-agency recommendations by DOGE since the beginning. It doesn't make sense to say they "aren't even active yet" when 8 days after inauguration the entire civil service was sent the same email that Twitter employees got.
Additionally, the EO establishing DOGE required all agency heads to assign a team from DOGE within 30 days, which has passed. They're everywhere.
They are literally firing people first and then calling them back? How is that efficiency?
I cannot believe we are talking about these people seriously with all the BS "We saved $* Billion dollars to stop Mind Control News" on the DOGE "website".
What does he know of the genesis and status of these payments? Congress directs spending and oversees the administration, not the other way around.
Why does he have to finish in an arbitrary time frame?
This is all justification after the fact for those who support Musk/Trump unconditionally.
It's all fun and games until your Medicare/Social Security/Tax Refund or other legitimate payment gets cancelled arbitrarily, illegally and unconstitutionally.
Ex-Yugoslavian countries have had a global ID forever - the JMBG or, in Croatia, OIB [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Master_Citizen_Number
It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government.
I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.”
When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
Given Musk's ties to China and his overt friendship with Putin, I don't think there's a need for one of his friends to be a spy when he's right there with a glowing neon finger over his head.
A thin majority in an election with a poor (and/or constrained) turnout in a lop-sided nonsense of an electoral system with disproportionate weightings voted for parts of this.
The 2024 election had historically high turnout. The 2nd highest turnout since 1968, the 7th highest since 1932.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters didn't vote for Trump.
Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or otherwise disenfranchised.
Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that all of them voted to fire the chief government records keeper, to empower DOGE to gut departments, etc; like Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
In the campaign Trump ran to avoid jail he repeatedly stated he wasn't aware of the Project 2025 playbook, that he would be all things to all people. People who voted for Trump voted for what they heard, what they thought he promised.
Most of the citizens in the USofA did not vote Trump, not all of those voted to gut the government, the sciences, foreign aid, etc.
Like Brexit, people who don’t like what’s happening come up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for why democracy doesn’t apply when their position loses. It seems to regularly boil down to “people who don’t vote the way I would like are too foolish and were tricked or brainwashed and if only they were enlightened they would vote my way.” I don’t think this is a winning message but we seem to be doubling down.
It is very rarely what the minority that voted directly for a specific party of candidate wanted. That's just a dull bald fact, not at all convoluted.
49.8% Trump, 48.3% Harris
Though you could include the .49% that voted for RFK (you'd maybe need to decide which side to add Jill Stein Green and Libertarian candidate too).
Also:
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
DOGE is not a trustworthy reporter, they are incentivised to make big, bold, bullshit claims.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Notice how they only go after things the common man might benefit from? Surprisingly DOGE uncovers no waste whatsoever in the many billion dollars military contracts.
What do you think will happen to your country when the ban on medicaid takes effect? Will the millions that rely on it simply die? Do you even care or are you totally void of empathy?
You can't imagine how bad things have been for some of us.
Musk and Trump's class interests are diametrically opposed to ours, the real value-creating workers. They want you to work more for less pay. Watch you and your loved ones' situations dégrade over the next few years, and reconsider your position.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN generally. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
(Fortunately your earlier comment history seems fine, so this should be easy to fix.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That's a bit ironic given leftist claims that men can become women and vice-versa.
1) The way software and projects at DOGE are going
2) “leftist claims that men can become women and vice-versa.”
This is a fundamentally a distracting question. It may give you mental relief (Yahh the other team is dumb, Reality is dumb)
Great! Take the breather.
But then talk about 1.
I get that things are polarized. I get that there is an INTENT behind it. But you’ve got all 3 branches of government. You have the ability to actually make this work.
Why THIS approach. What are the accountability checks and balances?
Are they just creating a new talking point to bounce down the years???
Did people get the required clearances? If not, why were the clearances there? IF yes, How are they making sure this is not going to be FUBARED.
How is responsibility going to be allocated? Are we going to have this over our heads for all generations to come? A new political ball to punt blame?
How do we get accountability for what - even to you - must look like the wrong way to do things.
As for DOGE, I live in a different country and not really care to be frank, as an external observer the US is a testbed. We will see what kinds of results going all guns blazing to reduce fraud in government, instead of asking nicely, will produce in due time. As your leftist friend said, you need to break some eggs to make an omelette.
Personally I would say that extreme left supporters are in my experience much louder and more emotive with their arguments.
But they are following the path blazed elsewhere. The primary source of griping and emotion have been owned by right wing media. It’s their whole shtick.
The statement itself, is because tons of research comes for universities, which the conservative news and opinion machine are dedicated to denigrate and demolish.
So you see reality have a left wing bias, because conservative information providers have to reduce support and credibility of science.
See creationism for an example of how far this has been taken.
So much so that there is no point debating it further, because there is no common ground and it just becomes as argument.
This is by design.
Personally I have voted liberal all my life and dont have a conservative bone in my body, so maybe you are not quite so clever as you think.
Also your spelling mistakes and poor sentence structure make it really difficult to figure out what your point actually is.
Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.
Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior.
But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
* The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been.
> The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap.
> Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending
So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes.
[1]
* The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military.
* The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority.
This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3].
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref...
[2] https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fi...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-fl...
Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society.
Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.
This is why they tend to move toward other things, like ... dismantling the US government.
Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example.
Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on.
It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them.
But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is.
If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.
FWIW, I think I agree with you and I think it is possibly the biggest weakness of our system that it is vulnerable to these types of manipulations from various angles: campaign finance, regulatory capture, disproportionate power given to unelected members of the executive, etc. That being said, those same weaknesses really open the door for the power-tripping Musks and Bezoses to get in and do a lot of damage, which is what I believe we are witnessing in real time.
The upper middle/professional class is the problem (this is a theme, there's a reason that every time there a real good bloody revolution in history they do poorly). They have pushed ideas that are grounded in sound principles (diversity and inclusivity are good, the proliferation of high tech communication is good, sustainable environmental practice are good) to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public. They take these causes of the moment and run with them to absurd levels because that is a reliable way to make a quick buck with the way we've structured our society.
It's like telling a rookie engineer the priority to lighten the part and he shaves so much mass that it will obviously, even to him too readily in real world conditions despite passing in the simulation. He justifies it in his own mind in various ways but at the end of the day the reality is he DGAF. He got his bonus for hitting the metric and moved on. The upper middle class is that rookie engineer. The upper middle class decision makers got that bonus for increasing DEI (in a bad way that makes people hate it), making the production greener (if you don't measure what's offshored) and so on and so on. And of course such behavior comes around to cast shade upon those goals even if the goals are noble. Eventually management says "stop lightening things" in the same way that the populist leaders say things like "no more DEI crap". Such moves aren't the right answer per-say, and even they know it. But they do stop the bleeding enough to not be a serious existential problem for a little while until a new fad comes around.
I don't know how you get a whole society of people to give a crap generally and give a crap about the big picture impact of what they're doing. If I did then surely enough other people would and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
This is incorrect. The actions of wealthy people speak for themselves; they don't need to be demonized, they are plainly wrong on their face. That said, we're in agreement that these people don't have power without the less-wealthy people who enable them.
That is what I asked for, yes.
Be clear about what you're saying. If you hesitate to to just say what you believe, that's probably a good indication that some introspection would be worthwhile.
I can't see their original comment anymore though, so, who knows.
They're just firing people at random, they haven't discovered any innovative new way to make systems more efficient.
("at random" is a bit generous and ignores the retaliation against political adversaries)
This is, I think, just "stage 1"
¿Porque no los dos? Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons:
* https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...
Firing the folks dealing with bird flu:
* https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-...
Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA (including maintenance mechanics) even though it's already short staffed:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo
Random and spiteful (?).
USAID was investigating Starlink
Consumer Protection Bureau has numerous investigations open vs Musky companies
Treasury is involved in regulating Muskys X for Finance thing
Sooner than you think.
My tax refund is quite late.
I don’t care what happens to Ukraine, just don’t want us to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which is more likely now than it was with previous administration.
Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.
As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped, and I’ll check back in a year and see if I’m worried.
$4,700,000,000,000 income taxes
$...100,000,000,000 tariffs
Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere where the last two years of hires were all just completely worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh but understandable if it were said to be done for simple budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable less protected situation, but to call them all poor performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an obvious and transparent lie.
This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them the keys but they cheered them on.
I suspect the people in charge of the firings are under the same mistaken impression as you are, that all the probationary people are new hires who aren't yet essential. Witness the "oops, we fired the wrong people" rush to rehire.[2][3]
1 https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298182/trumps-probatio...
2 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g3nrx1dq5o
3 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-fire...
But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being mass fired.
And that's not counting the firings at the DOJ and FBI which were explicitly retribution (though you could argue DOGE had nothing to do with those firings, which may be true, but I'm referring to Trump's mass firings in general).
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/fda-offic...
Generally speaking, I want my government to be stable, predictable, and consistent over fairly long time horizons.
Also, what's important to understand is that inefficiency in a corporation is a bug, but inefficiency in government is a feature.
Government needs to have checks and balances at every stage, which by definition is inefficient. Which in the case of government is a wonderful thing.
There is a word for a perfectly efficient government: dictatorship
Some examples of "stupid" ineffiency: delegating tech support outside government. Meaning no technician could fix a laptop on-site, their role was to notify a private company to come one day to take the device and come back later with a fix. The delays were bad, and compounded rapidly, the employees couldn't work, citizen wasted days off and had to reschedule a month later.. really bad. Plus technicians skills were unused/wasted, they hated their jobs, and communication with partners was mostly hostile/red-tape adding more friction. They didn't have enough money to change LCDs but didn't allow you to give some even though there were plenty of working ones for free. Same for printers.
This is the kind that needs to be pruned.
Also I believe there's another form of "perfect" government, that is not a mechanical human grinder like a dictatorship: harmonious. It might be a naive dream but .. maybe not.
Same with your body, by the way.
This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.
It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along.
Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along
It was a fishing expedition for them to figure out who to threaten and/or actually primary in 2 years...
State-of-the-art is seldom all three of them.
or even one
The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.
It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.
The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions.
What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances.
Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice.
In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.
And so much reeks of a Watergate like situation, except done publicly instead of in secret, with Congress and the Judiciary refusing or unable to hold any of these people to account. "We will now gather all information about our adversaries and fire anyone who doesn't give us the keys to the vaults, and if anybody doesn't like it, good luck, because the courts are going to be VERY busy, indefinitely, as we proceed to break every law the Legislature has issued, and is unlikely to have time to hear your case for a few decades."
But let's take at face value the idea that the Executive doesn't need to follow or even acknowledge the decisions of the Legislature, and that they can tell anyone to do anything whenever they feel like it. There's a pragmatic issue, not just a separation of powers issue: How can you possibly accumulate domain expertise, and what motivation would you have to accumulate that expertise anyway, when every agency is going to be dismantled every 2-4 years?
Besides, these bureaucrats are "elected" in a way similar to the Electoral College. We vote in the Legislature, and the Legislature votes on the appointments. If we don't want "lifers" then we should be voting on term-limits for these positions, not allowing the wholesale remodeling of our bureaucracy every election, where "just anybody" can come in and walk away with whatever they can loot each cycle.
The whole problem can be sidestepped by pulling back on the excessive levels of discretion and rule-making that have been delegated to executive agencies in the first place.
This is a joke --right?
When systems fail, people step in to fix them. Sometimes, the failure is a person, and their supervisor or colleague is the safeguard. Replacing that with AI/ML is political offloading -- shifting responsibility from elected officials to code that can’t dissent, negotiate, or care. You’re lucky if it can even explain itself.
I know I’m on HN, where this isn’t the prevailing mindset. But public systems aren’t startups. They don’t get to fail. The common good isn’t about efficiency; it’s about endurance. It’s about ensuring society functions for everyone -- not just those with money, power, or influence. Public systems safeguard the commons, whether it’s infrastructure, social services, or even the basic principles of justice. They exist to serve not just the people you identify with, but those you ignore, fear, or even condemn. Bureaucracies, with all their flaws, aren’t meant to be efficient, they’re built to endure.
It's just that the abusers are the only ones who make an effort to talk about it, because talking about it provides them cover.
Otherwise it's a regular part of the daily job.
never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.
you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses?
you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits?
if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient.
other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?
I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.
Bureaucrats consider, implement, and modify the structured, rules based systems our society comes up with.
in theory, laws and policies are crafted by elected officials or experts, and bureaucrats are just the executors. but in reality, bureaucracies interpret, refine, and sometimes even reshape these rules through policy implementation. this is where a lot of inefficiency, red tape, and unintended consequences creep in.
The people writing it are not necessarily subject experts in the area and even if they were or consulted such experts they can't foresee all eventualities. So those laws would need to be constantly updated all the time which is simply infeasibly (especially in the US where the legislative branch is stuck in a near permanent gridlock by design). IMHO that would make the system much, much more inefficient.
Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging.
There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them.
The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.
Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society.
They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them.
Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption.
In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.
No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different.
The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance.
> The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do).
A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.)
> Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.
Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.
Why is this hard to accept?
Are you an idiot? Can you point to the last time some foreigner was given access to American's personal data without any oversight?
It's a joke that any of you assholes are defending this. This does not pass any sniff test.
Stop making excuses.
The president therefore has the authority to access every last secret and every last system within the executive branch. No statute can limit this power. The president also has the authority to delegate (to some extent; only the president can issue EOs, but presumably his officers can recommend EOs to him) these powers to his or her officers.
The titular of the U.S. Digital Service (DOGE) is statutorily not subject to Senate confirmation, though considering how Trump's controversial nominees have sailed through Senate confirmation it's easy to suppose that Musk would also likely be confirmed to head the USDS were it an appointment subject to Senate confirmation. Since the president can appoint someone like Elon Musk to head the USDS, and since the president can delegate his clearance and declassification authority to someone like Elon Musk, his doing so does very much "pass [the] sniff test".
This is absolutely the job of the executive branch.
Perhaps DOGE should have been created by an act of congress, but in reality that's just a formality because the Republicans control Congress right now.
I'm not sure it'd be better as an agency because there are strict rules and hierarchies around agencies. The way DOGE is operating right now, seemingly, is:
- Agency directors are directed by executive order to work with DOGE and give them access to what they need
- DOGE team members are actually hired as employees of the agencies in which they are operating
- DOGE makes recommendations to agency directors on what things to cut
- Agency directors review recommendations and make cuts
This means that all cuts are being recommended and made within the scope of each individual agency. It is not the case that one agency is telling another what to do, and all decisions are ultimately being made by each agency's director. It simplifies the hierarchy and authority.
It should not be a formality because while it is true that the Republicans have a slight majority in Congress, the founding fathers never intended this most powerful of the three branches to be run by parties. The power in Congress is split up geographically for this very reason, but the party system, that secured its seats with gerrymandering, is highly toxic for a functioning legislative power in the US. It is disappointing to see Republicans in Congress not restricting the executive orders of the new self-proclaimed King.
There are two precedents for this to my knowledge, though there may be more:
> self-proclaimed KingHe was clearly trolling. Grammatically that tweet does not parse like himself calling himself a king. For all you know he loves the British king, or some other king, or maybe he was referring to Jesus. But he got what he wanted from that quip: it got reported, along with credit for ending congestion pricing in Manhattan. Why the media still falls for that, I don't know.
As a result, opponents are hyper-focused on Musk's involvement instead of Trump's.
And why would you trust Trump or Musk?
That was the whole basis of your constitution.
The president can also abrogate treaties without the Senate's advice and consent.
Most of the above are not explicitly in the Constitution as such, but are understood to be constitutional law either due to SCOTUS decisions, longstanding and unchallenged practice, or the result of the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Not only that but also most if not all recent presidents going back decades have done some if not all of the above. That includes Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden.
In other words: there is no innovation here, no judicial controversy. This is all standard fare for any new administration. The only difference is the extent of what Trump is doing in his second term compared to any other recent presidency. The sheer number of EOs, the auditing (which basically hasn't been done recently), and the layoffs (which are rare in DC). And yes, he's goring a lot of oxen -more than other presidents in recent memory-, but they all do that, just not eliciting so much outrage from the opposition.
Because a lot of people on the other side of the aisle from the current executive said it is bad.
And then they used ad hominem attacks and random slanders to try to shout down anyone who says otherwise.
It's unfortunate.
You'll have to deal with people replying who have been driven literally insane by propaganda.
Money was sent to media agencies (e.g. 9mil Reuters) , to run this massive psyop.
You can't put a band aid on what has been done to them, and they can't critically think their way out of it.