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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

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Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#171

Post by dang »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #88
nathanaldensr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either that or, you know, we want to keep Hacker News about tech. Lots of us don't want /r/politics here.

Why is everything about their data access for example also being flagged? Sometimes there is a crossover between tech and politics so there needs to be some slack.

Not all—for example, there was this megathread a couple days ago:

DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112084 - Feb 2025 (1644 comments)

Why not more? The short answer is that avoiding too much repetition is core to HN. For a longer answer, follow the links I posted elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43142645 - they'll give you more material on this than you could possibly want to read.

> Sometimes there is a crossover between tech and politics so there needs to be some slack.

That's how we look at it too. For more, see the links at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43142682. These also point to years' worth of explanations (which you may or may not want), but all the common questions have been answered many times there.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#172

Post by almosthere »

biophysboy wrote: post #53
MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

The estimate should at least be within an order of magnitude; otherwise, the estimate is pointless. Also, I am booing them because all of the doge line items on their website are in the millions, and our debt is trillions.

[flagged]

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#173

Post by rayiner »

turtlesdown11 wrote: post #38
MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

Strong points in the face of this inaccurate, politically biased ledger that has revealed zero fraud, corruption or waste.

[flagged]

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#174

Post by FireBeyond »

mandmandam wrote: post #164
MisterKent wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are not just cheering for that. They're cheering because of the stated causes that money was going to were "woke" and "not America first" The general public's understanding of soft power, a global economy, and maintaining an economic hegemony is just not there. We have a democratic Republic because our founding fathers were smart enough to realize the general public is not smart enough (or, doesn't have the ti…

> We have a democratic Republic because our founding fathers were smart enough to realize the general public is not smart enough (or, doesn't have the time to) rule on every issue. Maybe - maybe - a merry band of lily-white slave-owners born hundreds of years before solar power and social media don't know how best to run a modern government. And maybe we'd be smarter if our government didn't treat schools as a pipeli…

We have this myth of the founding fathers as wisened, street smart old men. In reality, many of the signatories were in their 20s, often early 20s, hell the Declaration of Independence has a few teenage signatories.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#175

Post by projectileboy »

Frankly, this doesn’t matter. What matters is that an unofficial agency of the executive branch is deciding unilaterally - with no oversight - to stop payments that were voted on by Congress. Even if Musk and team were geniuses and doing brilliant work, it would be outside the rule of law.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#176

Post by rayiner »

MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

[flagged]

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#177

Post by FireBeyond »

cuuupid wrote: post #115
TomK32 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice examples, but why then doesn't DOGE go through every project? Why did Trump end all DEI contracts, why cause the disruption by freezing all outgoing money, why fire the Inspector Generals that are inspecting their agencies for waste, why fire all probationary workers, and why the fuck do they want to mess with the IRS, the one agency that brings money in at a very successful rate? Clearly no one at Musk's D…

These are good questions that are easy to answer once you’ve spent time in gov: - it is very hard to go thru every project and generally not worth it, it seems like they are sorting by contract vehicle size. there are 120k+ contracts spit out by the government every fiscal year alone so this is a monumental effort - the DEI programs are probably a PR thing, generally speaking though they accomplish essentially nothin…

> not all outgoing money has been frozen, idk how this rumor got started, it’s very specific and generally just foreign aid

No, that's absolutely not true. My partner is the accounting manager for a university. All their access to federal funding was turned off for a couple of days, and several grants (which they could draw from and get overnight) have not shown up in several weeks (specifically there are some that even remotely hint at DEI, that the university now expects will never be fulfilled).

It's not just "foreign aid".

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#178

Post by jfengel »

TomK32 wrote: post #116
mandmandam wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans cheered for the gutting of USAID because they thought that spending 25% of the federal budget was too much, and should be around 10% instead. The actual spend on foreign aid? Under 1%. Americans are systemically and catastrophically disinformed. Expecting us to be able to assess the real impact of the DOGE team's fuckups is a violation of GIGO.

It'd be fantastic if surveys would allow those surveyed to do a minute or two of research before answering or correcting their answer.

They are voting based on their opinions without doing additional research. Getting at that opinion via a poll is informative, and letting them research it would actually be counterproductive.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#179

Post by pclmulqdq »

JeremyNT wrote: post #129
MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

2) is questionable. Most of the budget is spent maintaining global hegemony through military dominance. Whatever inefficiencies that exist on the civil side are nearly irrelevant.

You should look at the CBO's reports on this. Most of the budget is spent maintaining Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. The sleight of hand involved in the idea that the military budget is "most" of the spending is by calling large parts of the government's spending (but none of its military spending) "mandatory," and then slicing up the "discretionary" portion only, most of which is the military.

However, the discretionary part of the budget is less than half the size of the mandatory part of the budget. If the entire discretionary budget were cut to $0, between mandatory spending and interest, there would still be a government deficit.

That sleight-of-hand is how $900 billion of military spending becomes "most of the budget" when the full budget is $4.4 trillion.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#180

Post by munchler »

projectileboy wrote: post #175

Frankly, this doesn’t matter. What matters is that an unofficial agency of the executive branch is deciding unilaterally - with no oversight - to stop payments that were voted on by Congress. Even if Musk and team were geniuses and doing brilliant work, it would be outside the rule of law.

It still matters. In addition to just being criminals, now we know that they are also incompetent.
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