It will never be found - the amount of stories I heard of firms and business pocketing the relief money and closing shop anyways is outrageous. The government was way to loose with how these funds were distributed for what they expected of those recipients.
I was in jail during the pandemic. I would say 80% of the people I was locked up with managed to get at least $10K a piece in PPP loans. There was a number they would call from the jail phone and they would give them all their personal info; the agent would receive $14K, take $4K and pass on the other $10K. I saw some people manage to get two or three hits at it.
DOGE is not a group of auditors. If they had any use for auditors they wouldn't have eliminated all the Offices of Inspectors General where all the auditors routinely work to identify fraud, waste, and abuse of federal monies and programs. OIGs have the responsibility to audit their own agency's operations and results and to make changes to processes in their agencies that improve results. They also have responsibility to audit any individual or entity at any level that receives benefits from their agency programs to insure compliance and root out fraud, waste and abuse. They are the watchdogs that keep things honest and make sure the programs are working according to congressionally mandated guidelines.
DOGE is complicit in fraud. They were never intended to root out corruption or fraud. They are a political tool of a corrupt administration. Once their usefulness has passed they will be tossed aside with few exceptions (those most loyal to the criminals) and offered as defendants in future prosecutions so that those who engineered this massive fraud can escape accountability using them as fall guys.
I think you responded to the wrong post in the thread if you are concerned about someone making something political.
EDIT: You may be able to read my other post on this thread. It was flagged almost immediately, probably by someone whose feelings were hurt. Maybe their self-confidence suffered, I don't know. The truth can be like that sometimes, really challenging everything you thought you knew.
I come into the conversation from the standpoint of someone whose spouse is an auditor for an OIG in a federal government agency. Having spent several decades with an inside view, I have an understanding of how things work when they are done legally.
Existing career auditors have been ineffective for whatever reasons. New people taking a look at things seems reasonable. Whether DOGE is part of the answer remains to be seen.
Existing career auditors are not the problem. The problem is that changes in department audit priorities occur whenever a new department head comes aboard. That person, in many cases especially over the last couple decades, has no prior exposure to department programs, experience in that domain, and only received the appointment as a payback for their support of a candidate who ended up in a position to dole out perks to supporters. Check a few bios for department head appointees to any federal agency over the last few decades.
These people come aboard with skillsets in different domains and need to be brought up to speed by the people that they are expected to lead in all the agency programs, directives, initiatives, etc and the rules governing each. They also are beholden to the one who appointed them and expected to prioritize the agency mission based on that benefactor's objectives for their own administration.
Add to that the inevitable desire to put a personal stamp on an agency while you build your resume that you hope will place you in a situation where you can run successfully for an elected office now that you have built some name recognition. Your party needs you, blah, blah, blah.
Career auditors know all the rules, regulations, congressional mandates and guidelines and if they are ineffective it is only because they are held back by those above them who have a different, variable agenda.
If career auditors had full say over which audits to conduct, and if there was no one immune to the consequences of an audit, then we would not have the levels of fraud that are so easily documented and so rarely prosecuted. These people love their jobs and they take it all seriously.
The only question DOGE is part of the answer to will end up being the question about who took the fall for all the criminality conjured by the current administration as they assisted in looting federal resources.
EDIT: Remember that in order to become an auditor you need to reach a certain educational level, for example you need to pass the CPA exam and then hit all your training targets during the year to maintain that CPA status. They likely get training and certs as a CIA, Certified Internal Auditor. They may also be a CFE, Certified Fraud Examiner which also is a professional position requiring training and recertification. They also have to have ethics training to maintain their certifications.
From current news reports, it sounds like DOGE got ethnics training which clearly is not the same thing.
It's really hard to take people seriously when you know they are not arguing in good faith and offering data to try to prop up their misconceptions.
Is it so hard for y'all that composing more than one sentence while posting a reply in a thread meant to generate a useful discussion leaves you mentally exhausted and unable make a coherent rebuttal?
We have all likely heard the old saying that if you aren't part of the solution then you must be part of the problem.
You own a store that has a reputation for being dirty. People make memes about it, have for decades.
Firing the cleaners and replacing them is proportional and reasonable response. You might be able to reform them but frankly it getting this bad in the first place is a sign reform isn't going to work.
You have some good points, but this store also has an outsized role in the community and a large shock will drastically affect the community. Take a patient who has an infected wound. I guess you would say the prevailing approach was to putter around, let the patient develop gangrene and slowly die. I wouldn't entirely disagree, although I would tone down the severity. What DOGE is doing as reform is way too extreme to me, amputating the patient excessively and without proper care. Ironically, I was calling out "middle grounders" in my sibling reply, but I will say here that surely a middle way is most appropriate. But then DOGE as it currently stands wouldn't exist, and I don't see this administration taking such a route. This is all within expectations when we discuss broken systems. It is easy to take the extreme of standing by the system no matter what. And it is easy to take the extreme of burning it down. Culture and counterculture. The rule and the revolution. These are comfortable, if not likeable. But we should always seek a golden mean. Now whether one administration or the other is better suited for that is an entirely different discussion.
Thanks for your analogy. It doesn't actually fit the situation well but it can serve as a good starting point as a useful generalization.
I'm stepping into it with the assumption that the store is the federal government and that the federal government has a reputation for being dirty, inefficient, easy to exploit, etc. and this reputation is well-earned and has persisted for decades.
Let's tighten this up with a quick explanation of players in the game and then maybe we can add some edge cases to form a more appropriate model input.
You (the people) own a store (elected representatives and their appointees who manage collection and distribution of stored assets based on guidelines they are responsible for establishing and upholding).
The store has a reputation for being dirty (the owners of the store do not trust those they have hired to manage the store operations because they have evidence that business is not being conducted lawfully or in their own best interests by those who have been given the management tasks).
People make memes about it, have for decades. (Everyone acknowledges the long-term mismanagement because it has become a well-worn punch line any time the subject comes up).
Chuckle about it instead of changing it to be better is the commonly applied solution. There are situations though where those owners, through their own biases, will rabidly defend the broken system if the current management aligns with their own biases in some other unrelated domain.
We need to add edge cases to enhance this model a bit to fit our present reality so that you can possibly see that the cleaners (the OIG and audit staff) are not the source of the problem but can be a useful part of a durable solution.
>Firing the cleaners and replacing them is proportional and reasonable response.
Consider this scenario:
The cleaners (OIG and auditors) are the ones who know the store inside and out. They have read all the owner manuals for every asset (Congressional mandates and program guidelines) they manage and understand how to keep it all running smoothly. They are professionals in every sense who are required to maintain high standards knowing that they will be held accountable by the organizations to which they belong if they step out of line. Too bad they are not able to function independently, following evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse wherever it leads and there are several reasons for this reality.
Budgetary constraints on their department, something they have minimal control over, have left them understaffed for a long time with hiring freezes making replacement of those transferring to other departments, private sector employment, or retirement more difficult than it should be. Recent hires who had completed onboarding and were actively contributing to audit operations could've improved performance in those understaffed agencies but they were eliminated first, thus preserving as a cap (maximum) the status quo.
Your store will not get any cleaner operating like that. You have simply redistributed the cleaning load back onto the shoulders of those who already are overwhelmed by the workload. The cleaners have asked repeatedly for the opportunity to hire more trained audit personnel but somehow it rarely makes it into the budget and now, once they have authorization from management to fill empty seats, those hired to help expand capabilities of the audit authority are kicked back to the curb just when they had begun to make solid contributions.
Now we’ll consider your solution – firing the existing cleaners and blaming it on poor performance.
Where will you get new cleaners who understand the store even at a minimal level? If you assume they will learn on the job, who will provide that training, introducing the tools and giving that real-time exposure to all the surfaces that need to be scrubbed? You should understand part of the reasons why the store is dirty if you consider the edge case reality above. Chronic understaffing. As new programs come online, and they do e...
It's also frustrating to see people "rationally" telling us to "wait and see" what DOGE will deliver. Sure, I have preexisting biases against DOGE. I guess I shouldn't ask who has preexisting biases for DOGE, but I don't know if I need to. But I don't think it should take partisanship to conclude that even if DOGE is doing some good, it's also throwing the baby out with the bathwater (e.g. NOAA, NNSA [which maintains our nuclear weapons], DoD, IRS). Is there bureaucratic waste? Sure, I don't doubt it. But DOGE is just slashing jobs without a care in the world. And that's without considering its clear political agenda. So I guess some people will take the middle ground all the way until we "somehow" end up at a terrible outcome. They're not actually taking the middle ground and making a stand, although even that is questionable; you're walking (knowingly or not) towards a side. Rationality is not achieved solely through platitudes. Look at the world around you and make an honest assessment, as unblinded by your biases as you can. Especially since we here tend to be very privileged.
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate your perspective and agree with many things you said.
I'm not sure whether this passage mentioning "you're walking..." applies strictly to me or whether it is a generalization referencing "They're not actually..." in the leading part of that sentence.
>They're not actually taking the middle ground and making a stand, although even that is questionable; you're walking (knowingly or not) towards a side.
I have disclosed my own personal bias in the discussion so that those who wish to discuss can understand where I stand without needing to guess. I have a dog in the hunt and it's a good dog with many successful hunts to brag about.
>Look at the world around you and make an honest assessment, as unblinded by your biases as you can.
I'm always open to changing my mind (altering or eliminating my biases) if the data is there to support a need to change. I'm a geophysicist and massaging large data volumes to find the useful information within drives my processes. We all approach situations with a pre-existing notion about how it will play out. The ones who come out enlightened are those who recognize that new information can enhance our understanding and lead us to change our perceptions (biases) and we are open to that new information and whatever new world it brings. Too bad there are those who are locked into a bias or an agenda so tightly that they are unwilling to accept that things could be different.
>Especially since we here tend to be very privileged.
I agree with the privileged part and would like to add that many do not have a broad experience base to use as a foundation for their beliefs since they walked out of a university with a cheat code that allowed them to skip all the hard parts of life. Loosely translated, many here on HN are out of touch with the world that others inhabit every day, insulated from many of the problems that are ordinary parts of life for most of their fellow citizens.
Sorry, my wording wasn't clear and neither was my direction. I'm mainly talking to the people you replied to, since I find they're pulling a lot less weight in the whole "good faith" endeavor.
You should just accept that your gaslighting has stopped working.
Making these walls of text bigger won't hide the simple truth: "your people" say all the right words. They still failed, out of either incompetence or corruption.
>"your people" say all the right words. They still failed, out of either incompetence or corruption.
Wall of text author here. Not sure why you went after that guy who was just trying to offer useful advice to someone else.
I'm gonna assume that "your people" means the Democratic party and those who support that party. I'm open to being corrected though.
You're conclusion in the last sentence is wrong. Like so many libertarians/conservatives it is way too binary - EITHER/OR.
Expand your mind a bit and consider the reality that it is more likely an AND/OR situation where the AND is the maximum likelihood. I don't see a realistic world where incompetence AND corruption can't work side by side to yield the same results and I've been around long enough to have seen plenty of evidence for both working in concert.
The world is not black and white, it is shades of grey once you consider the edge cases.
The fact that this is your ratio should have told you, if you engaged your brain, that this was one of the most efficient and above-board programs of all time.
> Ms. Bock herself had funneled money to her boyfriend at the time and used it to take trips to Las Vegas and rent Lamborghinis.
She didn't betray the mission and did feed her future. Some people just take things literally, can't blame them /s
> Another defendant, Salim Said — a 36-year-old who oversaw one of the bogus kitchens — was convicted of 20 counts, also including wire fraud and bribery.
> Mr. Said’s operation, for instance, said it had fed 6,000 a day, more than all the children in its ZIP code.
They were stealing from hungry children, this will probably not end well for them. Better stay in isolation in prison, for safety.
> But she sued the state government, saying officials were discriminating against her network because it served many African immigrants and their children.
Aha, lean into the "racism" and "discrimination", hoping the federal govt. will be intimidated. As Cpt. Kirk said "The best defense is a good offense, and I intend to start offending right now."
From someone who has been to jail: stealing from the government, even if you're taking money from the mouths of babes, will be seen as a respectable hustle.
> What is up with this conception that there is some sort of moral death squad running the pecking order among inmates in prisons.
I don't know. I am not saying it's right that it happens that way but it does. I imagine it's country and maybe even state based. Federal vs state prison, too. I just know from someone who worked in a corrections department overseeing the prison system in a US state.
Amazing that this is being downvoted. To everyone the "righteous" side: your thieving overlords wear this "savior" disguise as a disguise. Your putting it on won't ever make you one of them.
Very strange, isn't. I didn't write it a "sides" thing, just a bunch of criminals who claimed they were feeding $90M worth of meals to children, and instead stole the funds. These were certainly the dumbest one. We'd think everyone would be cheering and wanting more of this to be discovered. But somehow the discussion shifted to DOGE and I guess people think this is somehow DOGE related? And if that's the case, better let criminals go just as long as it doesn't bolster any DOGE-related thing? Or something.. But this is not even DOGE related https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/federal-jury-finds-feedin... from what I can see. So who knows...
I was just in a heated discussion on this recently - the current focus on the federal DOE itself being "fraudulent" is in my opinion completely misdirected at where fraud most likely is to occur, and is fully embodied here. The Federal DOE ultimately distributes supplementary (NOT supplant) funds earmarked for specific resources (e.g. food insecurity, special need population) to state education agencies where the actual procurement happens, and further these states decide ultimately who actually receives the money, who is on the approved vendor list, etc.
Unfortunately I think most people will look no further than the headline and think the current administration is correct in their strong attack on federal institutions like the federal DOE, when this was a fraud perpetuated at the state level and caught only by federal oversight (FBI, Postal Service, IRS Criminal Division).
You're wrong. The whole point is that the DoA and its ilk like USAID just dumps money and then feigns plausible deniability.
Did you see Reed Hoffman's answer when asked if he funds lawfare against RFK Jr so that he both can't add his name to ballots as well as remove them? He said, well I just hand off the money but I can't control what happens after that. Which is utter bullshit. That's plausible deniability in full view.
There can be accountability and there needs to be accountability. If DoA is the enabler of fraud when it pays hundreds of millions of dollars to its NGOs that it knows is engaged in fraud, then USAID is guilty. It can't distribute taxpayer money so easily and say it doesn't have any control over the actions.
See, only a few years ago I discovered that practically any agency which distributes "Food Boxes" around here is simply funded by the USDA to do it. Even the Catholic charity which I favor is operating exactly the same as the municipal agency and exactly the same as mental health clinics which give out food.
They may source the food differently and they may rely on volunteers or staff to handle the boxes and Dole them out, but every recipient signs the same acknowledgement form with the USDA's letterhead: that the recipient meets the eligibility requirements, namely a low income at a certain % of the Federal Poverty Level. Otherwise you don't qualify for Emergency Food.
I believe it was President George HW Bush who advanced the federal policy of "faith-based charity" initiatives in order to fill gaps in entitlements and State-administered welfare programs. In order to support the disestablishment of religion and a plurality of faiths in our nation, the USA is levying taxes to make available our funds to every single church, mosque, temple and synagogue which offers charity or outreach to the poor and marginalized. I am willing to bet that the majority could never sustain charitable works on member donations alone, and certainly not at scale to meet the demands of 2025.
Also there are plenty of secular, non-religious organizations which are nevertheless spurred to action and effect change according to their unique political, cultural, or ethnic ideologies. Mental [Behavioral] Health is fundamentally a spiritual/religious practice, and today there are battalions of "priests" in white coats, wearing stethoscopes and wielding medical licenses, in order to leverage Medical Insurance funds for the care of souls and PreCrime operations.
Unfortunately, while the government can send all kinds of money into their coffers, the government cannot provide the volunteers or trained staff who are necessary to actually sustain operations, keep unemployment low, and foster organizational growth. Everyone, especially health care and churches, everyone is desperate for more good workers, and tolerates incompetent or lazy ones as much as possible.
Is this a bad idea or superior to the old ways? The jury's still out. But I'm actually witnessing the flourishing and state funding of New Religious Movements who gain followers and make disciples the old-fashioned way, the way Christians have always done it. In Germany they pay Church tax and Americans are doing the same on a scale that's grander and more expansive than you may conceive.
> I believe it was President George HW Bush who advanced the federal policy of "faith-based charity" initiatives in order to fill gaps in entitlements and State-administered welfare programs.
I'm pretty sure that later Obama had to take it to court to defend it, because it obviously weakens the boundaries between church and state in the service of letting private entities provide services that the government is at a better scale to provide. Most people would be upset if the money were going to Scientologists, because it's not one of the right religions. Or if you sent the money to me, I'd both be able to distribute food and make myself a billionaire; it's obviously a subsidy.
> the government cannot provide the volunteers or trained staff who are necessary to actually sustain operations, keep unemployment low, and foster organizational growth.
They're firing federal workers because of the deficit, national debt, Deep State issues, crumbling empire typical issues, man.
The only ‘volunteers’ the government provides are military forces! I have never once met anyone at church who says that Uncle Sam conscripted them into a ministry! Good God, can you imagine a bishop conscripting priests and colluding with the military to make them chaplains?
The State has always relied on Subsidiarity to provide charity or welfare. The federal level is a last resort, an emergency safety net when Subsidiarity and every other non-profit and religion fails to fill the gap.
The New Deal and all the social service programs here in USA and UK as well have arisen in a secular context just to ensure that churches wouldn’t get too powerful and conversely, that citizens wouldn’t feel obligated or beholden to faith-based charities who were providing many of their basic needs.
But c’mon. No state is realistically capable of doing charity at scale. Basically impossible. Therefore we re-invent church tax. Just look at the shitty situation of health care as the Secular West wrests it from Christian hegemony and literally needs to eviscerate Hippocrates.
Many places with established religions just have the government funding that religion, and it’s not a tangled web like what we’re weaving in 2025.
Disestablishmentarianism simply means “we’ll eventually need to reinvent religion in some form.”
FTA: this case predates the current administration, and has nothing to do with any current claimed fraud-finding actions within the USG. As others have noted, the US has (had?) a robust anti-corruption system, one that is actively being gutted for political reasons.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] thread[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/federal-jury-finds-feedin...
Yet sure let’s blame the government rather than the inherent issues with outsourcing government functions to entities with less oversight.
DOGE is complicit in fraud. They were never intended to root out corruption or fraud. They are a political tool of a corrupt administration. Once their usefulness has passed they will be tossed aside with few exceptions (those most loyal to the criminals) and offered as defendants in future prosecutions so that those who engineered this massive fraud can escape accountability using them as fall guys.
EDIT: You may be able to read my other post on this thread. It was flagged almost immediately, probably by someone whose feelings were hurt. Maybe their self-confidence suffered, I don't know. The truth can be like that sometimes, really challenging everything you thought you knew.
I come into the conversation from the standpoint of someone whose spouse is an auditor for an OIG in a federal government agency. Having spent several decades with an inside view, I have an understanding of how things work when they are done legally.
These people come aboard with skillsets in different domains and need to be brought up to speed by the people that they are expected to lead in all the agency programs, directives, initiatives, etc and the rules governing each. They also are beholden to the one who appointed them and expected to prioritize the agency mission based on that benefactor's objectives for their own administration.
Add to that the inevitable desire to put a personal stamp on an agency while you build your resume that you hope will place you in a situation where you can run successfully for an elected office now that you have built some name recognition. Your party needs you, blah, blah, blah.
Career auditors know all the rules, regulations, congressional mandates and guidelines and if they are ineffective it is only because they are held back by those above them who have a different, variable agenda.
If career auditors had full say over which audits to conduct, and if there was no one immune to the consequences of an audit, then we would not have the levels of fraud that are so easily documented and so rarely prosecuted. These people love their jobs and they take it all seriously.
The only question DOGE is part of the answer to will end up being the question about who took the fall for all the criminality conjured by the current administration as they assisted in looting federal resources.
EDIT: Remember that in order to become an auditor you need to reach a certain educational level, for example you need to pass the CPA exam and then hit all your training targets during the year to maintain that CPA status. They likely get training and certs as a CIA, Certified Internal Auditor. They may also be a CFE, Certified Fraud Examiner which also is a professional position requiring training and recertification. They also have to have ethics training to maintain their certifications.
From current news reports, it sounds like DOGE got ethnics training which clearly is not the same thing.
If they were the solution there wouldn't be a problem.
It's really hard to take people seriously when you know they are not arguing in good faith and offering data to try to prop up their misconceptions.
Is it so hard for y'all that composing more than one sentence while posting a reply in a thread meant to generate a useful discussion leaves you mentally exhausted and unable make a coherent rebuttal?
We have all likely heard the old saying that if you aren't part of the solution then you must be part of the problem.
Do you have any original thoughts to share?
Firing the cleaners and replacing them is proportional and reasonable response. You might be able to reform them but frankly it getting this bad in the first place is a sign reform isn't going to work.
I'm stepping into it with the assumption that the store is the federal government and that the federal government has a reputation for being dirty, inefficient, easy to exploit, etc. and this reputation is well-earned and has persisted for decades.
Let's tighten this up with a quick explanation of players in the game and then maybe we can add some edge cases to form a more appropriate model input.
You (the people) own a store (elected representatives and their appointees who manage collection and distribution of stored assets based on guidelines they are responsible for establishing and upholding).
The store has a reputation for being dirty (the owners of the store do not trust those they have hired to manage the store operations because they have evidence that business is not being conducted lawfully or in their own best interests by those who have been given the management tasks).
People make memes about it, have for decades. (Everyone acknowledges the long-term mismanagement because it has become a well-worn punch line any time the subject comes up).
Chuckle about it instead of changing it to be better is the commonly applied solution. There are situations though where those owners, through their own biases, will rabidly defend the broken system if the current management aligns with their own biases in some other unrelated domain.
We need to add edge cases to enhance this model a bit to fit our present reality so that you can possibly see that the cleaners (the OIG and audit staff) are not the source of the problem but can be a useful part of a durable solution.
>Firing the cleaners and replacing them is proportional and reasonable response.
Consider this scenario:
The cleaners (OIG and auditors) are the ones who know the store inside and out. They have read all the owner manuals for every asset (Congressional mandates and program guidelines) they manage and understand how to keep it all running smoothly. They are professionals in every sense who are required to maintain high standards knowing that they will be held accountable by the organizations to which they belong if they step out of line. Too bad they are not able to function independently, following evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse wherever it leads and there are several reasons for this reality.
Budgetary constraints on their department, something they have minimal control over, have left them understaffed for a long time with hiring freezes making replacement of those transferring to other departments, private sector employment, or retirement more difficult than it should be. Recent hires who had completed onboarding and were actively contributing to audit operations could've improved performance in those understaffed agencies but they were eliminated first, thus preserving as a cap (maximum) the status quo.
Your store will not get any cleaner operating like that. You have simply redistributed the cleaning load back onto the shoulders of those who already are overwhelmed by the workload. The cleaners have asked repeatedly for the opportunity to hire more trained audit personnel but somehow it rarely makes it into the budget and now, once they have authorization from management to fill empty seats, those hired to help expand capabilities of the audit authority are kicked back to the curb just when they had begun to make solid contributions.
Now we’ll consider your solution – firing the existing cleaners and blaming it on poor performance.
Where will you get new cleaners who understand the store even at a minimal level? If you assume they will learn on the job, who will provide that training, introducing the tools and giving that real-time exposure to all the surfaces that need to be scrubbed? You should understand part of the reasons why the store is dirty if you consider the edge case reality above. Chronic understaffing. As new programs come online, and they do e...
I'm not sure whether this passage mentioning "you're walking..." applies strictly to me or whether it is a generalization referencing "They're not actually..." in the leading part of that sentence.
>They're not actually taking the middle ground and making a stand, although even that is questionable; you're walking (knowingly or not) towards a side.
I have disclosed my own personal bias in the discussion so that those who wish to discuss can understand where I stand without needing to guess. I have a dog in the hunt and it's a good dog with many successful hunts to brag about.
>Look at the world around you and make an honest assessment, as unblinded by your biases as you can.
I'm always open to changing my mind (altering or eliminating my biases) if the data is there to support a need to change. I'm a geophysicist and massaging large data volumes to find the useful information within drives my processes. We all approach situations with a pre-existing notion about how it will play out. The ones who come out enlightened are those who recognize that new information can enhance our understanding and lead us to change our perceptions (biases) and we are open to that new information and whatever new world it brings. Too bad there are those who are locked into a bias or an agenda so tightly that they are unwilling to accept that things could be different.
>Especially since we here tend to be very privileged.
I agree with the privileged part and would like to add that many do not have a broad experience base to use as a foundation for their beliefs since they walked out of a university with a cheat code that allowed them to skip all the hard parts of life. Loosely translated, many here on HN are out of touch with the world that others inhabit every day, insulated from many of the problems that are ordinary parts of life for most of their fellow citizens.
Making these walls of text bigger won't hide the simple truth: "your people" say all the right words. They still failed, out of either incompetence or corruption.
Wall of text author here. Not sure why you went after that guy who was just trying to offer useful advice to someone else.
I'm gonna assume that "your people" means the Democratic party and those who support that party. I'm open to being corrected though.
You're conclusion in the last sentence is wrong. Like so many libertarians/conservatives it is way too binary - EITHER/OR.
Expand your mind a bit and consider the reality that it is more likely an AND/OR situation where the AND is the maximum likelihood. I don't see a realistic world where incompetence AND corruption can't work side by side to yield the same results and I've been around long enough to have seen plenty of evidence for both working in concert.
The world is not black and white, it is shades of grey once you consider the edge cases.
Thanks for commenting on this thread.
> Ms. Bock herself had funneled money to her boyfriend at the time and used it to take trips to Las Vegas and rent Lamborghinis.
She didn't betray the mission and did feed her future. Some people just take things literally, can't blame them /s
> Another defendant, Salim Said — a 36-year-old who oversaw one of the bogus kitchens — was convicted of 20 counts, also including wire fraud and bribery.
> Mr. Said’s operation, for instance, said it had fed 6,000 a day, more than all the children in its ZIP code.
They were stealing from hungry children, this will probably not end well for them. Better stay in isolation in prison, for safety.
> But she sued the state government, saying officials were discriminating against her network because it served many African immigrants and their children.
Aha, lean into the "racism" and "discrimination", hoping the federal govt. will be intimidated. As Cpt. Kirk said "The best defense is a good offense, and I intend to start offending right now."
What? What is up with this conception that there is some sort of moral death squad running the pecking order among inmates in prisons.
I don't know. I am not saying it's right that it happens that way but it does. I imagine it's country and maybe even state based. Federal vs state prison, too. I just know from someone who worked in a corrections department overseeing the prison system in a US state.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/prison-living-hell-pedophiles/stor...
Don't know if it will necessarily apply to people who stole from children instead of feeding them.
Very strange, isn't. I didn't write it a "sides" thing, just a bunch of criminals who claimed they were feeding $90M worth of meals to children, and instead stole the funds. These were certainly the dumbest one. We'd think everyone would be cheering and wanting more of this to be discovered. But somehow the discussion shifted to DOGE and I guess people think this is somehow DOGE related? And if that's the case, better let criminals go just as long as it doesn't bolster any DOGE-related thing? Or something.. But this is not even DOGE related https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/federal-jury-finds-feedin... from what I can see. So who knows...
Unfortunately I think most people will look no further than the headline and think the current administration is correct in their strong attack on federal institutions like the federal DOE, when this was a fraud perpetuated at the state level and caught only by federal oversight (FBI, Postal Service, IRS Criminal Division).
Did you see Reed Hoffman's answer when asked if he funds lawfare against RFK Jr so that he both can't add his name to ballots as well as remove them? He said, well I just hand off the money but I can't control what happens after that. Which is utter bullshit. That's plausible deniability in full view.
https://x.com/sheislaurenlee/status/1830358688890024386
There can be accountability and there needs to be accountability. If DoA is the enabler of fraud when it pays hundreds of millions of dollars to its NGOs that it knows is engaged in fraud, then USAID is guilty. It can't distribute taxpayer money so easily and say it doesn't have any control over the actions.
They may source the food differently and they may rely on volunteers or staff to handle the boxes and Dole them out, but every recipient signs the same acknowledgement form with the USDA's letterhead: that the recipient meets the eligibility requirements, namely a low income at a certain % of the Federal Poverty Level. Otherwise you don't qualify for Emergency Food.
I believe it was President George HW Bush who advanced the federal policy of "faith-based charity" initiatives in order to fill gaps in entitlements and State-administered welfare programs. In order to support the disestablishment of religion and a plurality of faiths in our nation, the USA is levying taxes to make available our funds to every single church, mosque, temple and synagogue which offers charity or outreach to the poor and marginalized. I am willing to bet that the majority could never sustain charitable works on member donations alone, and certainly not at scale to meet the demands of 2025.
Also there are plenty of secular, non-religious organizations which are nevertheless spurred to action and effect change according to their unique political, cultural, or ethnic ideologies. Mental [Behavioral] Health is fundamentally a spiritual/religious practice, and today there are battalions of "priests" in white coats, wearing stethoscopes and wielding medical licenses, in order to leverage Medical Insurance funds for the care of souls and PreCrime operations.
Unfortunately, while the government can send all kinds of money into their coffers, the government cannot provide the volunteers or trained staff who are necessary to actually sustain operations, keep unemployment low, and foster organizational growth. Everyone, especially health care and churches, everyone is desperate for more good workers, and tolerates incompetent or lazy ones as much as possible.
Is this a bad idea or superior to the old ways? The jury's still out. But I'm actually witnessing the flourishing and state funding of New Religious Movements who gain followers and make disciples the old-fashioned way, the way Christians have always done it. In Germany they pay Church tax and Americans are doing the same on a scale that's grander and more expansive than you may conceive.
I'm pretty sure that later Obama had to take it to court to defend it, because it obviously weakens the boundaries between church and state in the service of letting private entities provide services that the government is at a better scale to provide. Most people would be upset if the money were going to Scientologists, because it's not one of the right religions. Or if you sent the money to me, I'd both be able to distribute food and make myself a billionaire; it's obviously a subsidy.
> the government cannot provide the volunteers or trained staff who are necessary to actually sustain operations, keep unemployment low, and foster organizational growth.
Of course they can.
But it's not. Never has been.
They're firing federal workers because of the deficit, national debt, Deep State issues, crumbling empire typical issues, man.
The only ‘volunteers’ the government provides are military forces! I have never once met anyone at church who says that Uncle Sam conscripted them into a ministry! Good God, can you imagine a bishop conscripting priests and colluding with the military to make them chaplains?
The State has always relied on Subsidiarity to provide charity or welfare. The federal level is a last resort, an emergency safety net when Subsidiarity and every other non-profit and religion fails to fill the gap.
The New Deal and all the social service programs here in USA and UK as well have arisen in a secular context just to ensure that churches wouldn’t get too powerful and conversely, that citizens wouldn’t feel obligated or beholden to faith-based charities who were providing many of their basic needs.
But c’mon. No state is realistically capable of doing charity at scale. Basically impossible. Therefore we re-invent church tax. Just look at the shitty situation of health care as the Secular West wrests it from Christian hegemony and literally needs to eviscerate Hippocrates.
Many places with established religions just have the government funding that religion, and it’s not a tangled web like what we’re weaving in 2025.
Disestablishmentarianism simply means “we’ll eventually need to reinvent religion in some form.”