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DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

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Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#251

Post by Thraway198 »

Beijinger wrote: post #241
SubiculumCode wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are largely misinformed, and if you are going to make such a wild (and defaming) claim, perhaps you'd back it up with some evidence. Not only are they highly skilled, they are completely dedicated. They are straining to meed the needs of researchers right now, with staff volunteering on the weekends, against policy, to help out where they can, because they believe in their mission and are highly motivated and com…

Unfortunately I have some insights I can not will not, must not talk about. But from another perspective, the reviewers: an idiot and google is a very dangerous combination.

"Unfortunately I have some insights I can not will not, must not talk about."

Lol.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#252

Post by WalterBright »

Jtsummers wrote: post #236
WalterBright wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't really much waste in federal spending. When there is no profit motive, there is no motive to be efficient.

And when there is a profit motive, and no meaningful competition, there is also no motive to be efficient or effective. This is what you'll find in many of the large DOD contracts. So it's a compounding effect. It's down to whether the overseers of the contracts care enough to rein in the contractors, or to do just enough to stay on this side of legal. And the contractors certainly aren't doing charity work, so they'…

And when you get cost plus contracts, the incentive is to maximize costs.

With government agencies, the incentive is to spend 100% of the budget, otherwise their budget will get cut the next year.

Some years back, "Frontline" did an episode on dentist businesses. The government had a new program where they paid dentists who did dental surgery on poor people. There was a sudden drastic rise on dental surgeries on poor people, and little of it was medically justifiable. "Frontline" was shocked, shocked to see this happen. But of course, it was the obvious and inevitable result of how the government issued the payments.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#253

Post by WalterBright »

watwut wrote: post #246
WalterBright wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that the education research has been of any benefit to educational results? The dollars spent is not evidence of accomplishment.

Frankly, yes.

yes as in ... ?

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#254

Post by aeternum »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #74

DOGE fired a whole bunch of NIH staff that processed high scoring grants to get them ready for Notices of Awards (the official document that starts moving funds, etc). Meanwhile, the administration now requires final approval of any grant by non NIH political staff. Consequently, Science is slowing down (and that is outside of other shenanigans). What used to take 3 months is taking 9 or more. For the many medical re…

>DOGE found an actually highly efficient Federal government

For anyone that has worked on either side of government procurement it is obvious that this is not true.

It's quite common for contracts to no longer make sense yet neither side wants to cancel them due to the paperwork involved. "Just put the money towards something else similar"

Plus the many high profile examples like high-speed rail, rent subsidies.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#255

Post by benj111 »

brewdad wrote: post #231
benj111 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still $8000 per capita just for socialised healthcare. So still more than NL. The US has the worst of both worlds.

The socialized segment of US healthcare is almost entirely the over 65 population and those too disabled to work any job. Obviously, the spending on those groups will be higher than the entire population as a whole. That it is does nothing to prove inefficiency.

It kinda of does. Because you're still spending more than NL still have to worry about paying health insurance, still have to worry about how you're going to pay to give birth etc etc.

To be clear this is per capita, not per recipient.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#256

Post by verall »

mothballed wrote: post #233
sedawkgrep wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a profoundly dismissive and even circular take...or at least an intentional misrepresentation of what I said. When I say personnel constraints, I mean there are almost not enough people to do the work that needs to be done. When I say budget constraints, I mean the budgets and projects are funded so lean, that they're always having to cut sections out of projects to get what they can done with the budget they…

I'm referring to things like the DOI rescinding the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule that allowed private ecologically minded conservation groups to restore and preserve land through leases -- something exploitive resource extracting private entities were already able to do. Instead the DOI declared their "lean" and "constrained" force would revoke letting private entities lease for conservation. Something…

It was the post-DOGE DOI that rescinded the rule, after the "fat and waste" had been cut.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#257

Post by sedawkgrep »

mothballed wrote: post #233
sedawkgrep wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a profoundly dismissive and even circular take...or at least an intentional misrepresentation of what I said. When I say personnel constraints, I mean there are almost not enough people to do the work that needs to be done. When I say budget constraints, I mean the budgets and projects are funded so lean, that they're always having to cut sections out of projects to get what they can done with the budget they…

I'm referring to things like the DOI rescinding the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule that allowed private ecologically minded conservation groups to restore and preserve land through leases -- something exploitive resource extracting private entities were already able to do. Instead the DOI declared their "lean" and "constrained" force would revoke letting private entities lease for conservation. Something…

I’m not sure at all why you’re pointing at a rule established in 2024 and promptly rescinded in 2025 as a way to point out govt. waste.

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#258

Post by dgellow »

bs7280 wrote: post #11

One of my biggest criticisms of DOGE that I have not heard elsewhere is - why can't we have a "Department of Government Transparency". Giving Elon the ability to judge, jury and executioner any congressionally approved spending he wants has its own legal issues, but I do think there is a lot of value in having a massive publicly available dataset on where the money goes. I envision something similar to a massive sank…

The general public has no idea how to evaluate government spending, and because of this people are incredibly susceptible to being manipulated and lied to. That’s what we’ve seen with DOGE, people who have no idea how scientific research work cancelling funding based on vibes. It turns out the shrimp treadmills that do sound ridiculous at first glance are in fact made for a very good reason

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#259

Post by bit-anarchist »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #195
jimt1234 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the GAO exists. But under the current administration, it's basically like a security guard that just sits there and watches crooks do bad shit, reports it, and then nothing happens.

And the Trump administration would similarly hamstring any newly created transparency organization. Not that the current congress would ever pass such a thing. And anyway, the Supreme Court has made sure that even if congress passed a law to make a(nother) government transparency agency, they can't make that agency truly independent and protected from presidential interference.

Creating an executive agency to investigate the executive would be pretty stupid. It'll likely lead to "we've investigated ourselves and found nothing", even if the president wasn't vested in all executive power, as the executive branch consolidates.

However, creating an agency in the legislative branch is another story. One of the duties of the legistive is to investigate the executive, is it not? (not that this matters when both the executive and legislative are controlled by the same party)

Re: DOGE is done. What happened to its records?

#260

Post by dgellow »

fzeroracer wrote: post #90
gruez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly did "looting" take place? The trump administration did a bunch of cuts and he personally benefited from being in office, but that's not the same as looting, which implies embezzlement of government funds.

Well, for one, we know there were DOGE members that exfiltrated social security data for personal use [1]. And that's only what we know of so far. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/10/social-se...

Also, Russian IPs accessing systems: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2025/04/user-russian-i...
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