Earlier quoted context omitted.
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When did the left do this to the right? Be specific please.
From 2008 on
DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
221–230 of 413 posts
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The President decides..." within the limits of his constitutional powers. Which do not include, for example, impoundment or unilaterally shutting down agencies authorized by Congressional acts.
People are throwing around the word "impoundment" lately. But it has a very specific meaning, and no impoundment has happened.
Virtually all of the spending through USAID was Congressionally authorized. Can you explain how blocking or delaying that spending fails to meet the definition of Impoundment?
To say nothing the freezes that have been put on hold by the courts.
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the executive is not allowed either to redirect or to stop or slow the Congressionally apportioned funds. This is called impoundment and it's unequivocally illegal.
No wonder everyone always tries to figure out how to spend money if they still have some left before end of the fiscal year. Some individual "I saved us $1 million by shutting down servers we don't use!" Manager "Fuck, now need to quickly figure out some way to spend $1 million..."
That's a much more mundane bureaucratic imperative that exists at every level in every budgeted system. But yeah, that more mundane imperative definitely doesn't help to control costs in the next budget cycle, for sure.
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the executive is not allowed either to redirect or to stop or slow the Congressionally apportioned funds. This is called impoundment and it's unequivocally illegal.
No wonder everyone always tries to figure out how to spend money if they still have some left before end of the fiscal year. Some individual "I saved us $1 million by shutting down servers we don't use!" Manager "Fuck, now need to quickly figure out some way to spend $1 million..."
Most of the US Government spending is on things that are fairly fixed and fairly known. There isn't a lot of elastic spending like this, or at least not in a way that really turns a dial.
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#225Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#226> used by journalists and lawyers to hold government accountable. The journalists from Politico have just been ousted by DOGE has having had received $8 million in annual funding from USAID (another Government-run institution that has been ousted by the same DOGE), so I can understand how come Musk would want to keep DOGE's dealing away from journalists that might see this agency as very antithetic to their (the jour…
USAID gave Politico $24k, not $8M. The entire US govt did pay Politico about $8.2M, presumably in the form of buying their subscription products. Politico really does do deep-dive analysis behind a paywall, and I can see why government people might want access. (I have no idea how justified this is, honestly, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss it.) This seems like a fair enough summary: https://www.axios.com/2025/02/…
So you see nothing wrong with the Government paying the media that is supposed to be independent?
For what it's the worth the NGOs supported by American institutions like USAID have been raising hell accompanied by cries of "democracy is dying" when our Government here in Romania had done a similar thing, i.e. paying Government money to the local media (supposedly in order to advertise Government initiatives in said media).
So you can see how hypocritical this all seems to us, Eastern-Europeans, us who had been called naughty and worse for doing the same thing that organizations like USAID had been doing on their home-turf ($8 million, $24k, it doesn't really matter, the intention was there, we've had a former political leader thrown in jail for corruption/political influence that involved no money, so $0). Samantha Power and those that stood behind here deserve prison-time, the same prison-time that the NGOs that her organization supported had called for the corrupt leaders here in Romania.
LAter edit: Now that I've gone through that Axios article more at length, come on, they can't be serious with stuff like this:
> A fake theory about Politico being funded by the government is catching fire in right-wing circles
They call this "fake"? They call the Government actually giving money to Politico as "fake"? Pardon my French, by what the hell? What did they expect? For the Government to have written on said money: "this is corruption money"? Of course that the Government "bought" something from Politico, that's how it's done, that's how our corrupt government here in Romania is also doing it when it needs the media on its side. Again, the US "liberals" should smarten up, that's why they've lost last year's elections, because they though the rest of the populace as still being stupid, stupid enough to believe that the Government giving money to Politico is "fake".
To say nothing of the "right-wing" innuendo, for what it's worth I'm pretty left-wing, the "I want communist nationalizations" left-wing.
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Musk talked Trump and Rubio into doing and they did. which is illegal. USAID can only be "shut down" by an act of Congress
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> Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?
Congress holds the power of the purse, so they aren't "forcing" the President, the President has no say in the matter
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I mean Musk has literally tweeted that DOGE is "dismantling the radical-left shadow government."[0] This is not about efficiency or rooting out corruption, it's about persecuting political enemies and purging wrongthink. Which was something people here screamed bloody murder about when they accused Biden of doing it, just by asking Twitter to moderate content, but I guess this is all fine now. [0] https://x.com…
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Hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t exist. It’s like me coming over to your house and saying that I’m going to root out the ghosts in your home by dismantling it.
Would you let me proceed because you don’t like ghosts?
He’s telling what he’s doing, but the reason is a made-up pretext.
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation This narrative infuriates me. Either you are right, and entire wings of our government are abetting a coup, or you are wrong, and our government has huge back doors that no one is watching. Both realities reveal something urgently broken with the United States. In a way that should scare the entire western world to its core.
I'm not really sure if you can call it a "coup" if all parties involved admit he was legitimately elected. Furthermore, this isn't exactly a bait-and-switch. He told us what exactly what he wanted to do. We already knew he would try to do illegal stuff. If you break the law and nobody who voted for you complains (unrealistic I realize, but bear with me), is the rule of law really that secure? If we only criticize Tru…
What most people do seem not to grasp here is that MAGA is full steam working to make sure it doesn't matter who you are going to vote. Trump is just the smoke screen.
IF, by a rare circumstance, the media moguls decide to not sane-wash the incredible fire-hose of lies, corruption, fake news, and religious extremism, and the DEMs get into office in some next term, those DEMs will find the state destroyed beyond repair.
Health epidemics, broken foreign relation relations, dysfunctional government agencies (filled to the brim with stupid or evil clients from the shadow elites), downright abolished agencies, information sphere completely muddied in Musk-style, tech oligarchs sworn allegiance to MAGA (done), abolishment of fact checkers (in progress), removal of experts and intelligentsia (busy), impoverished voters (in progress).
You can enter the cockpit, but MAGA makes sure you are never going to fly again. If you want to get somewhere, you will need the fixers.
People here are discussing legalities with a situational awareness of 3 millimeter maximum. This feverish is understandable, we MUST interpret things like they are normal. If you want to keep it that way, don't read the next sentence.
As soon as the news broke of Trumps reelection, all cases where dropped quickly. That is all you need to now.
Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Well my luck, turns out he can't do transformations either. > Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated ... may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by ... the United States Agency for International Development ... without prior consultation ... with the appropriate congressional committees. > (b) ... a reorganization, redesign, o…
It's remarkable how much effort some people put into portraying this as a 'highly complex' legal issue. In reality, laws like this one typically include standard boilerplate provisions precisely to prevent situations like the current one, regardless of the administration. A simple Google search is actually enough to establish what one _should do_ here according to the law.
Claiming that this is complex isn't just a matter of disagreement; it's a deliberate distortion of language and intent. This approach dismisses a clear legal bright line in favor of framing the issue through power dynamics and a 'what can I get away with' mindset. Without independent or ethical agents of enforcement or a process that's interested in keeping up, what we can get away with ends up being a lot and will likely be substantially impactful.