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Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

nationalreview.com

41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that cost was not enough? We needed more investment into hard power head cracking policing, and reduced soft power community policing?

Eliminate Iran and you'll eliminate Russia. They need to be stopped. You do not realize how much of suffering they are causing. Every day I bring kids to playground there's 1 or 2 Ukrainian family. Mother + child + grandmother usually. And it's likely to be worst year yet for them. You wanna send condoms to Africa while there is active genocide happening in Europe? Send your money, there are plenty of ways to donate.

..... are you serious?

We could have been more directly helping Ukraine already if that was the admin's priority, instead of expending $165B (so far) on a bumbling losing sidequest invading Iran. What an insane proposition.

This admin has also been very publicly friendly with Russia and hostile to Ukraine every single time Zelenskyy has met with them.

My heart breaks for my Ukrainian friends and colleagues. It is unimaginable suffering. Especially since the US has been more enemy than ally to them. Neutral war profiteer off their hellish struggle at best.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See and here I thought we were already spending more on our military than the 2nd - 7th highest spending countries combined

It's the cost of being world police.

Relevant movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/

Still seems pretty accurate.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that cost was not enough? We needed more investment into hard power head cracking policing, and reduced soft power community policing?

Eliminate Iran and you'll eliminate Russia. They need to be stopped. You do not realize how much of suffering they are causing. Every day I bring kids to playground there's 1 or 2 Ukrainian family. Mother + child + grandmother usually. And it's likely to be worst year yet for them. You wanna send condoms to Africa while there is active genocide happening in Europe? Send your money, there are plenty of ways to donate.

> Eliminate Iran and you'll eliminate Russia.

Iran isn't the only friend and supporter of Russia. They seem to have a large adjacent neighbour helping them out, plus Nth Korea supplying soldiers.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#44
post #10

Maybe they didn’t save any money but they did manage to exfiltrate huge amounts of info on citizens and residents that had been provided under the understanding that it would be held in confidence and that was siloed to event cross-correlation and privacy violations. So at least they accomplished that even if they failed to accomplish the cover story.

Ya have to wonder if there is a DOGE-Musk-Palantir connection.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#45
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the U.S. would've had to supply foreign aid for eternity, then? Instead of appreciating the vast sums given by the U.S. and her taxpayers, there's only vitriol for the stream of aid money having been cut off.

What a sad response to the obvious immediate harm done by poorly thought out policy. I thought hackernews was better than this.

It’s really not. This place is full of people that never grew past the simplistic ideas of Ron Paul that they fell in love with twenty years ago.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#46
post #18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the U.S. would've had to supply foreign aid for eternity, then? Instead of appreciating the vast sums given by the U.S. and her taxpayers, there's only vitriol for the stream of aid money having been cut off.

I'm not rich, but I give a lot of money every year to charity, to try to help those who need help. The United States is the richest country in the world. It was also giving to charity to help those who badly needed help. It was a small amount compared to its budget, and we called it USAID. To protect the money from being scammed by those running the countries we were helping, the US itself administered those programs…

Exactly. Since 2001, the amount of money we’ve spent on foreign aid is a DROP in the bucket between 0.7% and 1.4% of the federal budget; not much for us - but had an outsized impact on people in the greatest need.

It’s helped alleviate poverty, supported disaster relief, and even from a purely US centric motive helped to advanced our own interests by strengthening U.S. soft power abroad.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/06/what-the-...

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#47
post #7

But closing USAID did result in lots of deaths around the world as life saving aid was just cutoff with no warning. Was done with no regard to consequences or Congressional approval.

So, the U.S. would've had to supply foreign aid for eternity, then? Instead of appreciating the vast sums given by the U.S. and her taxpayers, there's only vitriol for the stream of aid money having been cut off.

That's one way of looking at it.

Another way of looking at it, is that this relatively small amount of money the USA was spending on US AID did amazing things to stabilize the world, which also benefits Americans.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#48
post #7

But closing USAID did result in lots of deaths around the world as life saving aid was just cutoff with no warning. Was done with no regard to consequences or Congressional approval.

So, the U.S. would've had to supply foreign aid for eternity, then? Instead of appreciating the vast sums given by the U.S. and her taxpayers, there's only vitriol for the stream of aid money having been cut off.

It used to feel less bad when America caused an incident, because at least we helped people around the world in meaningful ways. Now there's really nothing. There's no underlying moral excuse to support the empire anymore.

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#49
post #7

But closing USAID did result in lots of deaths around the world as life saving aid was just cutoff with no warning. Was done with no regard to consequences or Congressional approval.

So, the U.S. would've had to supply foreign aid for eternity, then? Instead of appreciating the vast sums given by the U.S. and her taxpayers, there's only vitriol for the stream of aid money having been cut off.

[deleted]

Re: Obviously, DOGE Did Not Save Money

#50
post #8

Although it seems to have been a flop in practice, I do appreciate the spirit of making good use of tax dollars. I only wish the program was more carefully guided, since the motive behind it did seem genuine.

> the motive behind it did seem genuine

put down the Kool-Aid my friend

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