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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

#221

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #167
torlok wrote: post #54

Why is this flagged? Even if the comment section isn't up to standards, the article should be relevant to everybody.

I've been posting a lot about this lately. Here are some recent posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43093299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43051836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 If you (or anyone) will read some of those and follow some of the links i…

I'd be glad if you'd do something about the influx of trolls, like maybe requiring a few submissions before allowing comments. Right now it's easy to create an account and then just post slurs on 30 or 40 threads before getting shadow banned (and those of us who have showdead turned on still get to see it).

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

#222

Post by spiderfarmer »

uses wrote: post #205
cuuupid wrote: post #84

I think impartial observers have not spent time in actual government bureaucracy. Basically everything will seem like “they’re cutting something important!” Or “they’re stopping critical research!” because every government contract needs justification; so naturally they will all sound good. The data and accounting itself is such bad quality in all cases that it is impossible to be perfect at this; there are entire in…

Even if you’re 100% correct, these aren’t the right people and these aren’t the right methods. Completely the opposite actually.

Exactly. They exploit people like the one you’re responding to as mouthpieces for their broader campaign against the institutions that regulate their businesses. As long as they can claim they’ve stopped some money from being “wasted,” these people will look the other way and let them operate unchecked.

Trump and Musk are both petty, vindictive, greedy, and narcissistic billionaires, known for grifting, deception, abuse, and ruthless behavior. How can anyone trust them?

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

#223

Post by Tade0 »

cuuupid wrote: post #84

I think impartial observers have not spent time in actual government bureaucracy. Basically everything will seem like “they’re cutting something important!” Or “they’re stopping critical research!” because every government contract needs justification; so naturally they will all sound good. The data and accounting itself is such bad quality in all cases that it is impossible to be perfect at this; there are entire in…

> However bad your experience with corporate politics, know that government is 100x worse.

Reading your comment I saw so many similarities to any large organisation which I worked for that I can't help but think it's simply on the same level.

Hell, my first internship was 100% budget filler and, in line with my role, I was useless.

Regarding inefficiency: I'm a contractor for a large organisation and have been for over three years now.

My contract is up in a few months and by that time I will have a total of four years of cancelled projects under my belt. At least one of them started out as an Excel sheet and in truth could have remained so.

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

#224

Post by hagbard_c »

FireBeyond wrote: post #183
hagbard_c wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Let's not act like you were somehow forced to read the comments to a thread titled "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes" and whine that it really needs a politics tag so you don't accidentally stumble across it. What were you expecting, after wading half way through the comments?

I was expecting for these political posts to be treated the same as other political posts, i.e. shut down due to them being off-topic for this site. Alternatively I'd expect the 'no politics' rule (yes, rule) to be either restated as 'Bay Area politics welcome, other politics off-topic' (/s) or 'politics welcome, tag title [politics]' (like PDF's are tagged) or 'politics welcome, thread will be tagged' or something along those lines. What's good for the goose is good for the gander after all.

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

#225

Post by munchler »

rayiner wrote: post #211
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

It’s quite debatable what the founders intended here. Congress has the power to appropriate funds, it’s not clear as a constitutional matter it has the power to compel the executive to use all the appropriated funds. Even as a legal matter, the impoundment act only requires rescission notification once it’s clear that the executive won’t use all the money appropriated for a “program.” When Congress is appropriating s…

Forget the Impoundment Act -- this is a Constitutional issue. The Supreme Court ruled in 1975 that the President is required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which budget authority is provided by the United States Congress. Shuttering USAID, as Trump and Musk have done, goes way beyond mere line item impoundments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_v._City_of_New_York

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

#226

Post by aSanchezStern »

rayiner wrote: post #215
uses wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you’re 100% correct, these aren’t the right people and these aren’t the right methods. Completely the opposite actually.

[flagged]

Actually exit polls say that most people who voted for Trump did so because they thought he would lower grocery prices, not because they thought he would make the government more efficient. So far grocery prices have risen significantly under his administration. As far as I know there is no evidence that there was a program to destabilize bangladesh that doge cut, that appears to be another case of doge not really understanding what it was cutting. But if you have a credible reference on that which isn't just saying "Elon said so", I'd love to see it.

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

#227

Post by derriz »

rayiner wrote: post #187
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…

“Soft power” and “hegemony” are fake concepts invented by credentialed elites. Americans are properly distrustful of those ideas. The point of a Republican democracy is so the public doesn’t have to decide the best way to build warships. But what values America should spend its money supporting absolutely are what should be decided by the democratic process.

How is soft power is a fake concept?

At the scale of organizations and business, it's probably the most important tool you need to learn if you want to be at all effective. I've never seen a manager who was able to actually "get things done" who didn't skillfully wield soft power. The least effective managers I've worked beside needed to constantly resort to the use of authority and/or bullying to achieve results.

Which also generally pisses off lots of people. Then again some people seem to get a kick out of pissing off others.

It's quite reasonable to assume that a similar dynamic works at larger scales also.

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

#228

Post by mpalmer »

rayiner wrote: post #211
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

It’s quite debatable what the founders intended here. Congress has the power to appropriate funds, it’s not clear as a constitutional matter it has the power to compel the executive to use all the appropriated funds. Even as a legal matter, the impoundment act only requires rescission notification once it’s clear that the executive won’t use all the money appropriated for a “program.” When Congress is appropriating s…

Cutting matters not one bit if Congress doesn't pass tax cuts. Voters don't care about the national debt if they don't see more money coming to them.

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

#229

Post by aSanchezStern »

christophilus wrote: post #206
cuuupid wrote: post #84

I think impartial observers have not spent time in actual government bureaucracy. Basically everything will seem like “they’re cutting something important!” Or “they’re stopping critical research!” because every government contract needs justification; so naturally they will all sound good. The data and accounting itself is such bad quality in all cases that it is impossible to be perfect at this; there are entire in…

I spent a few weeks working at a contractor who specialized in VA contracts. I put my two week notice in after the first few weeks. There’s no way I could “work” like that. They had teams and teams of people doing the job of a single person at a normal startup. I’ve never seen such bureaucratic waste anywhere in the private sector. It made my stint at Microsoft look like a lean startup by comparison. I talked to them…

Yeah, if you're actually interested in government efficiency, Ro Khanna has been advocating for significant cuts to the federal budget in a way that actually improves efficiency.

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

#230

Post by Sysreq2 »

munchler wrote: post #186
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…

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

I keep harping on this - but two points:

1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment.

2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the ability to extend our line of credit until Congress raises the debt ceiling.

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