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GSA Eliminates 18F

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Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#381

Post by khazhoux »

sangnoir wrote: post #368
khazhoux wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Biden was too old. And the problem with his age was not the number, it was that he was visibly very, very old. 10 years ago, Biden was fit, spry, and sharp. He rode his bicycle with ease, and was quick-witted with journalists. In the last year+, Biden became frail and tottering, and his words slurred at times almost to incomprehension (I once rewound a clip 10 times to figure out what he said, and never untangled the phonemes).

Trump is no spring chicken, but he hasn't yet turned that corner into rapid physical decline. It will happen in the next couple of years, but he's not there yet.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#382

Post by skissane »

rayiner wrote: post #374
pclmulqdq wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I firmly believe that Trump was elected to punish the current political class in the US for failing to serve the interests of his voter base (largely working class men). The whole election and his sad little mandate is about tearing down the permanent bureaucracy in the executive branch, not about fixing anything or really even changing any systems.

Don’t forget us minorities! Net 20 point swing among both asians and hispanics. Little Bangladesh—note that bangladesh is literally a socialist country—in Queens, NYC swung a net 55 points to the right.

Digressing a bit: is there any correlation between Bangaldeshi-Americans preferences in US politics (Democrats vs GOP) and their preferences in Bangladeshi politics (Awami League vs BNP vs Yunus)? Or are those largely orthogonal dimensions?

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#383

Post by AnthonyMouse »

BrenBarn wrote: post #350
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People suggest things like that as if the underlying problem is that Republicans often get into office with 46% of the vote and if they had to get 51% every time everything would be perfect, under the assumption that then they would never win. What do think would really happen in that case? They'd change their platform slightly in a way that allows them to get 5% more of the vote and then still get in half the time.…

The issues you mention are more or less valid, but I think you overestimate the extent to which those explain why Republicans get elected. Moreover, the problem isn't so much "Republicans get elected" as "bad stuff happens". That stuff happens in large part because Republicans get elected after talking about doing the things that you mention, and then instead passing tax breaks and "deregulation" that largely favors…

> That stuff happens in large part because Republicans get elected after talking about doing the things that you mention

Which in turn works because, even if they don't solve those problems, the problems are real and people experience them. So if you would make the problems actually go away, they would lose the ability to run on them.

> But they also get elected in large part because of the highly unequal and unrepresentative system that they perpetuate

This is what I mean by 46% vs. 51%. There are way bigger problems than the electoral college or district lines, which would only change how and where both parties campaign rather than making anything obviously better.

> including a media system built on feeding people falsehoods utterly disconnected reality (which is another reason ~half of voters voted for them).

This was never great but the thing that really seemed to turn it into a tornado full of broken glass is the interaction between Trump and the traditional media.

Major media outlets were used to politicians fearing them, and then Trump didn't, so the media got more aggressive and less cautious. Which was only effective for a minute until people started to realize what they were doing and that set the media's credibility on fire and made things dramatically worse.

Meanwhile the right-leaning media outlets, which were traditionally more partisan but only a little, saw this and their conclusion was basically "oh, so we can just do whatever now?"

> There are a lot of problems with the Democratic party as well, which is precisely why radical change is needed rather than just "pass some garden variety Democrat measures".

The most significant thing you could actually do is replace first past the post with one of the cardinal voting systems (STAR, score, approval), because it would allow for more than two parties. Which in turn would upend the the entire partisan apparatus of both sides which has evolved in that environment and would be maladapted to defending itself and therefore vulnerable to positive change. But it's also a subtle enough change and distinct from any of the usual battle lines that all of the villains you'd be disrupting might not recognize the implications until it has already gone through.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#384

Post by snowwrestler »

ein0p wrote: post #215
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…

All that wonderful transparency and analytics, yet failed to uncover this here multimillion dollar Uniparty/DeepState money laundering scheme (one of many!): https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1889172190282821690 . Uncovered by just one deaf, nonverbal, female hacker working part time (until she was doxxed, she's full time now).

This is hilariously bad analysis. She doesn’t even get the names right, let alone anything else of substance.

This is perfectly emblematic of our national decline: a person with little interest in doing the work to understand things, spoon feeding their mistakes over social media to an audience with little interest in doing the work to know whether the things they read are real.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#385

Post by AnthonyMouse »

marsovo wrote: post #357
Sabinus wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An amazing reform that could be achieved is changing to ranked choice voting from the current first-past-the-post. It'll reduce the incentive for politicians to be radical to stand out, and reassures voters that they won't 'waste their vote' if they put an alternative candidate first.

I once thought this was the solution too, then NYC's ranked-choice mayoral race gave it Eric Adams. Now I don't know. Maybe open primaries?

Ranked choice was the error. You want one of the cardinal voting systems like STAR.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#386

Post by fragmede »

khazhoux wrote: post #375
genter wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that incorrect? They're deliberately being cruel to government employees so they quit and the agencies are de facto dissolved.

[flagged]

Why would you assume either? Do you have access to brain scanning technology that would let you know what goes on in the minds of these men? If they think that the federal government is all waste, why wouldn't being cruel to them be more important than this idea about efficiency that idiots are absolutely eating up.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#387

Post by rayiner »

skissane wrote: post #382
rayiner wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget us minorities! Net 20 point swing among both asians and hispanics. Little Bangladesh—note that bangladesh is literally a socialist country—in Queens, NYC swung a net 55 points to the right.

Digressing a bit: is there any correlation between Bangaldeshi-Americans preferences in US politics (Democrats vs GOP) and their preferences in Bangladeshi politics (Awami League vs BNP vs Yunus)? Or are those largely orthogonal dimensions?

I think as between AL and BNP it’s idiosyncratic to the person. Our oldest family friends (BNP) became big Trump supporters during his first term, but that’s just a couple of data points. I think Yunus supporters are almost always Harris supporters, though. Either too young to know how this story will play out, or boomerlib who thinks this time will be different.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#388

Post by CamperBob2 »

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.

This is a very one-sided take, you should ask people on the street of any Russian city

LOL. I'll get right on that, after I ask the North Koreans for their opinion.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#389

Post by EasyMark »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #275
labster wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re not going to get to vote again. There is no future, America’s dreaming.

What do you mean? There are several special elections happening April 1. New Jersey and Virginia have governor elections this November. Mid-terms in every state next November. These elections, like all elections, are run by states, not the federal government. Which ones do you think are not going to happen?

they're talking about federal elections 2 & 4 years. Trump is working to wreck the current independent FBI/NSA/SS and put in toadies loyal to him. They will effectively ignore any malfeasance that red states do at the polls to make sure Trump and republicans win all the races or at least a large enough majority to stay in power indefinitely. So he can call up and say "find me enough votes". It's likely the primary purpose the Project 2025 as first stage and re-enactment of "night of the long knives" in Germany, 1934. Just a bit less bloody and take place over the next year or so.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#390

Post by hayst4ck »

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.

Language is everything. Are they a government workers or are they a bureaucrats? Deep state operatives or public servants? All of these words could describe someone who works for 18F.

18F workers are public servants, some of the best in the government, but by calling them bureaucrats, it makes their work seem inefficient and their removal seem logical.

Accepting the word chosen for the conversation determines what actions are acceptable. Protestors or rioters? Freedom fighter or terrorist? Peacekeeper or occupying force? Security or surveillance? Whistleblower or leaker? Regulation or Red Tape? Tax or Theft? Patriot or nationalist? Socialism, Marxism, or communism?

Peace (justice) or peace (submission)? Woke (generational injustice) or woke (any leftist idea I don’t like)?

It's precisely because these words have exact meanings, that they are so insidious. Many end up becoming shibboleths, dividing us vs them.

There are companies, PR firms, private intelligence, and think tanks that A/B test words and ideas in order to create the right metaphorical context to get people to submit to a certain framing.

A good read on the general topic of control via metaphorical framing:

https://commonslibrary.org/frame-the-debate-insights-from-do...

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