It is even nicer to get paid for consulting work (or does anyone believe Musk's drones are doing it for free) when it allows you to eliminate competition from lower paid staff. Tax dollars working on establishing new high watermarks for conflicts of interest.
GSA Eliminates 18F
101–110 of 495 posts
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#102I always thought that 18F would be the inspiration behind DOGE. Instead it seems to have become the opposite
DOGE excuses the laws they’re breaking and the cost increases they’re incurring by claiming that there’s a crisis they have to respond to and that they’re so smart nobody else can do it.
The last thing they need are smarter, more experienced people around who can show that none of those assertions are true and all of the costs being racked up are pure waste.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
You support DOGE's mission, but not a fan of this decision? Destroying 18F entirely consistent with DOGE's mission and Trump's goals. Why this decision then and not all their other ones? You wrote a lot of words saying very little.
I'm just an outsider here but it seems very obvious to me that someone could both 1) support the (stated) mission of saving taxpayers' money and reducing the US national debt, and 2) disagree with a specific cut
I guess it's the "Stated" mission that I find impossible to believe is the truth. DOGE clearly is not supposed to be about "saving tax payers money" when they include DEI reviews as well. So even your definition removes the baggage of the racism/transphobia/homophobia/misogyny by focusing only on the money when DOGE has not been focused solely on money in the slightest.
Anyone who trusts the "stated" mission of DOGE is a simple child who hasn't followed project 2025
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#104Amazing how the idea of being able to file tax returns online, without paying for a commercial service to do it, is considered far-left extremism in the US. You’d think that simplifying tax returns and reducing costs in the taxation system would be something the right could get behind?
no, the right wants you to keep paying Turbotax.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#105Anyone interested in helping organize a boycott of filing federal taxes until a direct-file system, that serves everyone, is instituted? I’d like to join, but don’t have the influence to start one on my own.
I think a tax strike could be incredibly effective, but also have really bad failure scenarios.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#106The result of trickle down economics and neoliberalism to its core. Elimination of these “non-critical” agencies are nothing but a drop in the bucket compared to military spending and amounts tax cuts for billionaire parasites.
Having conflict free in-house counsel is critical for major buy decisions. The last thing the buyer wants is the seller to write the spec and contract unsupervised. Eliminating technical and legal counsel is an enabling move for corruption.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The right in America does not believe in a federal government. Anything that helps a federal government exist is to be destroyed.
It absolutely believes in a federal government. It just does not believe in a federal government that it is not in control of.
who, exactly, is in control of independent agencies if Congress never corrects their power and the Executive isn't in charge?
For example: the perennial fight over "net neutrality" was because Congress absconded their duty to write regulation and handed it off to the Executive to figure out in a vague way that allowed for flip flopping policies with the force of law every time the administration changed.
You know what would stop the Executive power grab currently happening? If Congress would do their damn jobs. The Republicans in Congress are more to blame for this mess than the White House. This is supposed to be their power that they are just sitting and watching get taken away.
But the Democrats aren't guiltless either. People who care about this sort of thing have been complaining for decades, right through Democrat majorities and administrations. They had plenty of chances. The whole beltway fucking sucks and we are so cooked.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#108Pro tip to 18F workers: get rehired as consultants for 2x the wages.
The original formula for 18F was to hire elite tech workers coming from highly paid corporate jobs to do term-limited stints in public service at lower wages.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#109Bad result for America, as at least the two that I've been familiar with have both been dramatically better website implementations than much of the federal government. GSA, Digital Analytics Program: https://analytics.usa.gov/ Huge amounts of data about how government websites are used including: locations (cities, countries), languages, referral sources, media sources, devices, browsers, OS, website destination, an…
The goal is to make government as dysfunctional as possible (beside the part that enforces corruption [for your side]), so people want it to get smaller and smaller (except for the corrupt parts that benefit exclusively them), so that it costs less, so that they pay less taxes, so that they have even more money (that they don't need). They definitely do not care if this "makes things worse". Often, it's intended.
> The goal is to make government as dysfunctional as possible
...So it's easier to justify to the people when they tear it down completely and then "rescue" the country by replacing it with a true corpocracy.
Re: GSA Eliminates 18F
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just an outsider here but it seems very obvious to me that someone could both 1) support the (stated) mission of saving taxpayers' money and reducing the US national debt, and 2) disagree with a specific cut
The stated mission is unavoidably at odds with the implementation. The gains to be had are pointlessly minuscule in comparison to the federal budget and the actual cost to Americans is extreme.
I think you could make a reasonable argument that their actions aren't actually effective at implementing their mission. I'm not really in a position to judge that, personally. I was just saying I don't think it requires any great cognitive dissonance for GP to agree with their mission but disagree with a specific cut, as was sort of implied by the reply above.
I generally like my own government but I similarly think they've made some serious blunders at times. I don't think that's a huge contradiction (I'm not American FWIW...)