Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#21

Post by ourmandave »

The level of incompetence is breathtaking.

Last Thursday they fired several hundred people at the NNSA with no notice, and then had to walk it back by Friday night when they realized that's the people that oversee the fucking nukes.

“The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” Daryl Kimball said to The Associated Press, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons, more than it is the Department of Energy.”

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/national/firings-of-east-t...

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#22

Post by throwawayohio »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #17

Thanks for making a story before the decision actually dropped Ars. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43090862

The article is clear that this was a reversal, or are you questioning the integrity of Ars for the original scoop?

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#23

Post by alaxhn »

thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

Government (local, federal, state) spending as a percentage of GDP is 34% and as a total amount is 6.75 trillion. According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_num... there are ~756 billionaires in the US (interestingly the state-like region with the highest amount of billionaires per capita is Washington DC). The total wealth of these billionaires is ~6.72 trillion. I don't think there is a reliable estimate of billionaire spending so I will use 5% of assets for what I consider a high estimate which yields 336 billion. In reality I would guess that these people are far too greedy to spend enough money that they risk depleting their assets over time.

So to be clear, you think that control over ~336 billion (or feel free to provide a better estimate?) in spending is the "the lion share of the economy" and that we should not take a hard look at the 6.75 trillion in spending by an organization that includes the pentagon and is famous for funding forever wars in the middle east?

Those of us siding with the billionaires here (really just two that you have identified, not all of them - others such as Gates are clearly on the other side of this issue) recognize that there are people earning a living wage from the current status quo but we believe that the country would better be served by having these individuals earn a living wage in a more productive endeavor than what we see as staffing an unproductive and oversized bureaucracy.

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#24

Post by rsfern »

ourmandave wrote: post #21

The level of incompetence is breathtaking. Last Thursday they fired several hundred people at the NNSA with no notice, and then had to walk it back by Friday night when they realized that's the people that oversee the fucking nukes. “The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” Daryl Kimball said to The Associated Press, executive director of the Arms Cont…

Same story with people at USDA working on the H5N1 response

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-works-rehire-bird-flu-...

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#25

Post by skissane »

theGnuMe wrote: post #4

Elon is good buddies with a former Nasa director -- that director gave SpaceX their big break and backing when they were basically insolvent... I imagine conversations were had.

> Elon is good buddies with a former Nasa director

Who specifically are you talking about here?

> I imagine conversations were had.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Jared Isaacman (Trump’s nominee for next NASA administrator, an obvious Musk pick) convinced Musk to call for a back-off. I imagine Isaacman would argue that if there are going to be any personnel cuts, that he get to decide who and how many, rather than inheriting the decision already made for him.

Edit: Now I actually read the article, it contains the same speculation about Isaacman. Obvious enough to be arrived at independently

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#26

Post by voidhorse »

alaxhn wrote: post #23
thrance wrote: post #5

Real, actual workers have their livelihood endangered by out-of-touch billionaires going back and forth on serious economic policies hastily carried on made up grounds of "cutting waste" and "anti-wokeness" while keeping the lion share of the economy for themselves. This enrages me, and I can't comprehend how anyone needing a wage to live can side with them. Don't they understand that Trump, Musk and cie's interests…

Government (local, federal, state) spending as a percentage of GDP is 34% and as a total amount is 6.75 trillion. According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_num... there are ~756 billionaires in the US (interestingly the state-like region with the highest amount of billionaires per capita is Washington DC). The total wealth of these billionaires is ~6.72 trillion. I don't think th…

Are we going to ignore the fact that part of that government spending funded private companies owned by Musk?

Wealth inequality in America is worse than any of its peer nations and has only been getting worse since the 80s (see Pew research on this). Americans on the ground feel this more than they feel the effects of bloated government spending that funds, well you know, stuff that's supposed to be in the public interest (like social security and other programs).

Are we further going to ignore that all the cuts they have made so far are on things that are not even a fraction of that spending and that the billions of taxpayer dollars funding Tesla will likely go untouched while actual people trying to make a living lose their jobs?

I agree that the military apparatus is a massive problem but I fully expect spending in that area to stay roughly the same. I think all that will happen there is a swap in who is getting the contracts. I'm not going to pretend I can't be wrong on this and sure some cuts may well be good, but you have to be extremely out of touch with reality and its consequences for real people if you think this is the right way to do it. The only people cool with this are prepubescents and immature adults who seem to think that life is like a video game full of NPCs and not of people who live actual meaningful lives like themselves.

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#27

Post by ChrisArchitect »

throwawayohio wrote: post #22
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #17

Thanks for making a story before the decision actually dropped Ars. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43090862

The article is clear that this was a reversal, or are you questioning the integrity of Ars for the original scoop?

The story earlier was jumping the gun before the decision had dropped, either way. When reading it earlier kept thinking there was no official news yet, no real substance to it, as we'd have to have another one when the news actually dropped.

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#28

Post by smitty1e »

patagurbon wrote: post #14
smitty1e wrote: post #10

The sad news about chemotherapy is that it blows away good tissue with the bad. Which may or may not be an admonishment to embrace cancer.

The great thing about everything that isn't cancer is we don't need to throw babies out with bath water

The US Government is an ugly baby discovering the reality of Stein's Law[1]. Is DOGE optimal? Very obviously not. The Tea Parties failed to trigger reform. Trump may also fail; it's way too early to tell, and the foes get a "vote".

But the raw chaos that the was the Obama/Biden destination would likely be worse.

The voters can weigh in next year at the mid-terms. Start your candidates. Recommendation: offer a coherent alternative, and not the recent hormonal whinging.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein

Re: In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate NASA employees

#30

Post by palmotea »

ourmandave wrote: post #21

The level of incompetence is breathtaking. Last Thursday they fired several hundred people at the NNSA with no notice, and then had to walk it back by Friday night when they realized that's the people that oversee the fucking nukes. “The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” Daryl Kimball said to The Associated Press, executive director of the Arms Cont…

> “The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” Daryl Kimball said to The Associated Press, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons, more than it is the Department of Energy.”

The predictable result when you send in a bunch of young, obviously arrogant software engineers to "fix" things.

As a software engineer, I can say technology people can be fucking obnoxious. So many have an inflated sense of their own intelligence (and the important of "intelligence"). They swagger around foolishly thinking everyone else is an idiot, and make messes because they're so dumb they didn't learn from the people who know how things work.

Post reply on HN