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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
181–190 of 1001 posts
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#182Frankly, 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.
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Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#183Why is this flagged? Even if the comment section isn't up to standards, the article should be relevant to everybody.
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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?
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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A trillion is a million millions. A million to a trillion is like a tenth of a cent to a thousand.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#185Earlier 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.
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…
They didn't seem to reckon that against representatives who are sent to reflect the will of that same general public. They are not incentivized to contradict their constituents. In particular they do not have the responsibility to represent the demographic of their losing opponent, and in many ways are encouraged to do exactly the opposite.
It may be the best of all bad plans. But it clearly does not succeed in producing compromises. At the very least it relies on some kind of good will between constituents. When you lose that you no longer have a nation.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#186Two 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.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#187Earlier 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.
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.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Assuming your general lifestyle when employed is around $100k of expense, the US saving $10m against a $6.9T budget would be the equivalent of you saving $0.14.
Even in the straits you’re in (and I sincerely hope the very best for you), how much effort would you put into saving $0.14? It just doesn’t seem like the best use of effort?
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm still not sold on this. I can't yet distinguish if the plan is to get rid of institutions or to gut what's their and rebuild it how the want it. We may not end up with a smaller government, just a different one.
Their stated goals are lower taxes, less regulation, less government presence. What they want bigger is private riches through industry and church. They all believe this, voter and representative. What part do you think gets built back? Maybe the FBI, when they’re sure it can be weaponized against their enemies.
> Their stated goals are lower taxes, less regulation, less government presence.
And if you believe Project 2025, which I do, however the Trump campaign tried to halfheartedly distance itself from them, lower education:
Project 2025 talks of how children finishing school should be looking more to "buying a house and starting a family" than college. Of course, how the average 18 year old with a high school education and single income (because homeschooling is also a very big goal of Project 2025) is meant to buy this house is left as an exercise for the (uneducated) reader. The important thing is less education and more future "Warriors for Christ" (as someone I know on my FB feed calls their children).
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#190Two 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…
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