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GSA Eliminates 18F

nextgov.com

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Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#361

Post by jmathai »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #84
araes wrote: post #66

Bad 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 motivation behind DOGE didn't make sense to me until I also realized the money saved on government employees could be used to justify reducing taxes on corporations or the very wealthy.

And the rhetoric that the reason the working class have lower quality of life now than 20 years ago being due to immigrants and the poor ... is a way to focus attention elsewhere instead of increasing taxes on the rich.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#362

Post by refurb »

acdha wrote: post #326
refurb wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh is there a full clip because 18 seconds of what looks like a speech seems like cherry picking.

What kind of context do you think would excuse that sentiment? Given his extensive public record, would you argue that this is somehow out of character for him? It seems rather consistent based on the rest of his career: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/03/russ-voug...

Why? Because I've seen Propublica cherry pick quotes before and taken them entirely out of context?

The media has been lying to us for decades and no, I don't take them at their word, especially when they share a clip that removes all context.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#363

Post by hypothesis »

refurb wrote: post #362
acdha wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of context do you think would excuse that sentiment? Given his extensive public record, would you argue that this is somehow out of character for him? It seems rather consistent based on the rest of his career: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/03/russ-voug...

Why? Because I've seen Propublica cherry pick quotes before and taken them entirely out of context? The media has been lying to us for decades and no, I don't take them at their word, especially when they share a clip that removes all context.

> I've seen Propublica cherry pick quotes

Wait until you see Twitter Files or whatever Elon is going to drop from DOGE.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#364

Post by Nevermark »

khazhoux wrote: post #310
Modified3019 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The cruelty is the point”

Incorrect. Their goal is to dissolve these agencies, to reduce regulation that burden certain industries.

Yes, that is the goal, but not quite how they sell it.

The sell is to individuals to get their votes, not corporations (who of course are on board, but cannot vote), and more amorphous for not being above board. About how people's hardship are being caused by "enemies" who must be punished. Thus the "cruelty is the point" observation.

Simply stating their goal, "the hyper rich feel too fettered, with respect to the rights/safety/wellbeing of individuals", would fail for being overly direct and honest.

(I have no doubt there is governmental waste. But their behavior is not consistent with doing the work of identifying and eliminating waste. Waste elmination here is a side effect (that can be pointed to) of mass elmination independent of waste.)

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#365

Post by ants_everywhere »

homebrewer wrote: post #318
ants_everywhere wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't he be Lenin, the guy who turned the country into a cynical police state? Rather than Gorbachev, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize and started to end totalitarianism in Russia and the Soviet empire?

This is a very one-sided take, you should ask people on the street of any Russian city what they think of Gorbachev and his policies. I agree with GP with one exception: Gorbachev probably thought he was doing good things for his nation and the actual consequences were unintentional. Probably less so in this case, but I have no desire to tell Americans how to operate their country, so pay no attention to me.

IMO you have to take that with a grain of salt. Stalin is increasingly popular in Russia and more popular than Gorbachev. And Stalin is one of the world's most prolific mass murderers.

Russia currently is run by an ex-KGB dude. The KGB opposed Gorbachev's reforms. Putin is actively trying to rehabilitate the Stalin personality cult and revive a longing for Soviet era colonialism to legitimize his war of expansion.

The Russian people are amazing, but there's only so far you can go if you don't have a free press, if expressing certain facts about history is illegal and if people are murdered for being too open about their opinions.

I don't doubt there are people who are still unhappy that Russia lost its status from the imperial days, just as there are British people frustrated that they're no longer an important empire. But that was happening anyway and it was only a matter of time.

It's not really surprising that the average opinion in an authoritarian country aligns with the position actively promoted by the government of that country. Just like it's not surprising that the party wins by a landslide in a one party state.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#366

Post by rl3 »

justin66 wrote: post #312
encomiast wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't actually know who the bureaucrats are that they want to traumatize. Anyone calling a product manager, UX designer, or software developer at 18F a "bureaucrat" simply has no idea what they actually do. They are just demonizing the scapegoat du jour. Also among these so call "bureaucrats" are psychologists at the VA helping veterans with PTSD; search and rescue professionals working for forest service, park…

> They don't actually know who the bureaucrats are that they want to traumatize. Anyone calling a product manager, UX designer, or software developer at 18F a "bureaucrat" simply has no idea what they actually do. "Bureaucrat" is always a pejorative for a professional person who works in a bureaucracy. It doesn't mean anything.

>It doesn't mean anything.

It certainly means something in context, seeing as virtually everyone in the civil service has been painted with this same brush regardless of whether the term's use is correct or not.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#368

Post by sangnoir »

khazhoux wrote: post #260
physhster wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat interesting that the NYT acts all outraged while the refused to report on the orange guy's numerous conflicts of interest/crimes/dubious connections, and all out penchant for fascism before the election...

How do you figure? I saw plenty of coverage. What did they miss?

The NYT had 3 straight weeks of breathless Biden is too old front-page headlines based on speculation and tenuous connections. Trumps equivalent actions/incoherence which could be interpreted in as an age-related decline were being continually "sanewashed". Further, all concerns about an old president suddenly vanished when Biden dropped out, even though Trump will be older than Biden was by the end of Trump's term.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#369

Post by mfkp »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #297
almostgotcaught wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man it's American exceptionalism all the way till the end. Do you see all the other countries that have gone through the exact same transformation without and such civil unrest? What exactly makes the US different from them? Name absolutely anything. All this bluster and wishful thinking is exactly why we're here today. "you should admit your situation there would be more dignity in it"

~120 firearms for every 100 citizens? https://www.ncja.org/crimeandjusticenews/nearly-half-the-wor... https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-co... > Nearly Half The World's Civilian Guns Are In The U.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihrGNGesfI

And guess which team is itching to use those guns the most?

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#370

Post by larkinnaire »

refurb wrote: post #322
hayst4ck wrote: post #238

Everyone should watch the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, speak on government workers: We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because the…

Uhhh is there a full clip because 18 seconds of what looks like a speech seems like cherry picking.

There's not a full clip, probably because it was taken from private speeches. But the article does a good job of putting it into context, and discussing how his private rhetoric is just a scarier, more insulting version of stuff he says in public all the time: https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-v...
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