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DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

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Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#321

Post by vel0city »

ty6853 wrote: post #279
llamaimperative wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I frankly have never heard of anything like this, and it doesn't appear the dozens of federal budget experts, Constitutional law experts, political historians, or policy legal analysts I follow closely have heard of anything similar either. I don't think anyone at any location on the political spectrum would describe what's going on right now as "business as usual," but apparently you believe that's the case. So p…

[flagged]

> Every year's appropriation bill, there is a line by line partison fight over funding

And who normally does that, a billionaire with grudges loosely appointed by the executive branch mostly doing it on his own in secret or the representatives in Congress?

You sure this is normal?

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#322

Post by slashdev »

affinepplan wrote: post #187
slashdev wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What power exactly does it have? Be specific.

Full access to US Treasury payment infrastructure and private data on millions of US citizens, for two.

That's not power.

That's information access, and yes, they are getting that, and that's not unexpected either. How else would they do their job?

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#323

Post by affinepplan »

slashdev wrote: post #322
affinepplan wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full access to US Treasury payment infrastructure and private data on millions of US citizens, for two.

That's not power. That's information access, and yes, they are getting that, and that's not unexpected either. How else would they do their job?

Knowledge is power

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#324

Post by voxl »

the_optimist wrote: post #176
malfist wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably part of the goal. Get people to quit and not replace them. One party has been on the "break the government to prove the government doesn't work" warpath for decades now

Perhaps revisit your premise prior to asserting malicious intent.

The biggest problem with the USA is people look at the current state of the government and somehow don't see pre Nazi Germany. If the percentage of these sympathizers is large enough then there is no course correction that will be possible in two years.

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#325

Post by andy12_ »

kurikuri wrote: post #305
plugger wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50 million for condoms in Gaza is a good example.

Has there been any proof to this claim outside of the White House press secretary?

This grant [1]. "SUPPORT SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH (SRH) CARE CLOSE TO THE DISPLACED POPULATIONS. [...] Place Of Performance //XGZ GAZA STRIP GAZA STRIP". Though I don't think that it will be used exclusively for condoms, the one paragraph description doesn't give much details about how exactly the 45 million dollars will be spent.

[1] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_SPRMCO24VC0339_19...

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#326

Post by UncleMeat »

ty6853 wrote: post #279
llamaimperative wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I frankly have never heard of anything like this, and it doesn't appear the dozens of federal budget experts, Constitutional law experts, political historians, or policy legal analysts I follow closely have heard of anything similar either. I don't think anyone at any location on the political spectrum would describe what's going on right now as "business as usual," but apparently you believe that's the case. So p…

[flagged]

And if this were Congress passing a budget then people would be upset but wouldn't be calling it illegal.

There's a huge difference between Congress passing a budget (within its constitutional powers) and the Executive just killing anything and everything that seems "woke" them with no legislative authorization.

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#327

Post by kemayo »

Ancapistani wrote: post #316
mrtesthah wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state dept issued an evacuation order for all USAID staff overseas. How will they accomplish their mission? This includes medical care and distribution of HIV medication to up to 20 million people.

Why are American taxpayers paying for medical care and HIV medication for 20 million people? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those people foreign nationals as well?

You can certainly disagree with whether we should be doing it, but the fact remains that Congress made a law saying that we are doing it. The vehicle for changing that is to change the law, not for the President to decide to break the law.

On a separate note, assuming that "it's good to help people if you can" doesn't move you, the cynical reason for USAID's existence is marketing and soft power projection. For a tiny fraction of the US budget, we get to look good for how nice we're being to people, and get other countries to want us to come in and get our hands all over their infrastructure until it'd be painful for them to oppose us and lose that aid.

(Also, HIV specifically? That's something where lowering the levels of it in foreign countries will directly help the US, because it makes it less likely that US citizens will get exposed to it when people travel.)

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#329

Post by mcv »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #260
dylan604 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hope it will be get reined in before oops. they already have access to data, and there's no unseeing what they've seen.

They are also tweeting 'findings' to create a narrative. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1885964969335808217

Flynn and Musk attacking Lutheran organizations? I thought this administration was going to pretend to be super Christian.

Re: DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack

#330

Post by leovingi »

littlestymaar wrote: post #299
ty6853 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard for me to imagine any entrenched civil service being cooperative with plans to shit can their jobs. So I'm not sure that means much. Almost by human nature, most people are uncooperative ( and deemed such ) with plans to end their dental plan and rent money.

In democratic countries, civil servants aren't supposed to be changed after each elections, while they have their individual opinions they know their duty and follow the orders that come from the political power (and should they not obey to the order from above, there are disciplinary sanctions that can be leveraged against them). And it's not some theoretical idea, in all Western democracies, every civil servant tha…

>while they have their individual opinions they know their duty and follow the orders that come from the political power

Have you forgotten Trump's first presidential term? The resistance [1], the gleeful celebration of the "deep state" fighting back against Trump [2], a US general calling his Chinese counterparts before the 2020 election [3]?

Bureaucrats cannot fight against a democratically elected executive, call themselves the resistance and then be surprised when they are treated as the resistance.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/opinion/trump-fauci-deep-...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-top-general-secretly-cal...

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