What information could DOGE glean from the data they stole and how would it benefit this administration?
What information could DOGE glean from the data they stole and how would it benefit this administration?
I can't believe i used the word doge to describe a government agency. I hate the internet.
They can match employee lists against public donor lists and start targeting people.
They have your social security numbers as well as other personal legal information. Time to rig some polls or manufacture reasons for you to get arrested and be out of the regime's hair.
I'm still fucking bitter that the meme Elon latched onto was Doge. I fucking loved that meme and hate that it now has ties to fucking fascism.
Par for the course. Nazis have done the same thing to everything from Pepe the frog to the swastika itself.
Do I remember correctly that Pepe dies in the comic because the author didn't want to keep producing material for them to hijack?
Yeah, the point of dog whistles is to fly under the radar. Which means they steal popular symbols to use, so they can have the plausible deniability of “lol we were just posting memes about a comic frog” if anyone confronts them for their nazi shit.
The swastika was a sign of positivity until the 1920s
Kabosu does not deserve to have her legacy tainted by Elon Musk. She was a good girl.
... You didn't have a problem with it when it was a memecoin? Doge jumped the shark YEARS before that even happened
To me, it's ok, because the people behind it pronounce it dōj and I always pronounced it doggy. So now we know the evil pronunciation is dōj.
How about “dodgy”, so that describes the department and their behaviour?
I pronounce it like doge. You know, like dog but with a long o, since that's normally what happens when you add an e at the end of a word.
Con, cone.
Dog, doge!
Don't get me wrong, it's terrible that they were granted access to very sensitive information (government contracts, employee data, probably tax returns last I heard) with no oversight. That's gone, no way back.
But make no mistake, this is not a heist. It's a coup. They are seizing control of meta-infrastructures of the government: payroll, contracts, payments, communications, software. This is how you hold a country hostage.
No doubt, what, are we going to elect a Democrat and elon will just willingly answer to that guy? Yeah fucking right.
The real answer is that as long as nothing becomes violent, the only thing that they can really do is to slowly Take away the supports of the people that are relying on them and provide information that might be harmful to potential employers to increase the number of people that are subservient to the state or otherwise financially incapacitated.
If it becomes violent, then they can use that information to identify the easiest targets for them to take out first And the people most likely to provide resistance should they be given time to gather together.
They can glean where the absurd amounts of money that our government has been wasting on completely ridiculous things has been going for decades.
Yeah there was a probably a nicer way to do what they are doing but given how slow the cogs of government turn this is probably the "better" way to achieve what they are looking for. By rushing through the door and looking at as many things as possible they are essentially overwhelming the system with speed. By the time the law and due process catch up they will have already reported back all the many, many ways the government has been basically burning our tax dollars on shit we never voted for while telling us there is no money to be had for the things we have been asking for.
I understand the worry that this is coup and I will likely be downvoted for this comment, but if you choose to believe that they are actually trying to trim the fat this was going to be the only way they could get that much data without having to slog through miles of red tape and Democrats trying to block them from digging into financial records the entire time.
They have already uncovered so much insane spending that im actually concerned how bad it's going to get as they dig down further. The Democrats were doing exactly the things they constantly accused the Republicans of doing for years. They were directly paying politico to report what and how they wanted. They were using USAID primarily as a tool for meddling in foreign governments and hiding behind it being a global aid organization (the money spent of being used as a shadow government nearly doubles what I USAID actually spent on giving aid).
Seeing as there is nothing I can do about it as an individual I am choosing to sit back and watch it unfold. Worst case out country folds itself in half and things get spicy for awhile. Best case we cut wasted spending and government bloat significantly while also shining a light into all the dark corners of government that the public has never even been made aware of.
The big flaw here is you placing any faith and trust that Elon et all are acting in good faith and truly have a desire to do right by the American people.
Shutting down USAID was the richest man in the world deciding the poorest people in the world do not deserve food and medecine. There are people in a famine in Sudan that will starve as a direct consequence of Elon Musk's actions at the behest of Donald Trump.
And you think that man might have an altruistic reason for wanting to access the entirety of the treasury department data.
That is confoundingly naive.
The attorney general for USAID was investigating Starlink in the Ukraine.
Elon shut down USAID.
Tesla Received Triple the Amount of OSHA Complaints Than the 10 Largest US Car Factories Combined
OSHA is in their sites to dismantle next.
USAID accounts for 1% of the US government's budget - how is eliminating that at all consequential to reigning in spending?
OSHA accounts for 0.0000537322% of the federal budget at $362,800,000.
The federal spending for 2024 was $6.752 trillion.
The department of defense requested $842 billion for 2024. Want to guess if they got it?
There are obvious places to look for excess goverment spending. Completely gutting agencies that barely amount to a rounding error in the budget is not going to accomplish anything.
They are not acting in good faith. Take the blinders off. These are not good people trying to do the right thing for America.
And just in case you missed this earlier: The richsst man in the world decided the poorest people in the world do not deserve food and medecine.
Edit to add: the budget numbers were the best I could do researching from my cellphone but I am quite confident in the dispropotionate funding for the one department no one is discussing reigning in spending for.
Yeah there was a probably a nicer way to do what they are doing
I understand the worry that this is coup
but if you choose to believe
Seeing as there is nothing I can do about it
I empathize with the sentiment, but you're delusional.
The problem is literally none of these people are equipped to make informed decisions. Every single one is a techbro which means they know fucking nothing about how anything functions in the government. Simply put they lack the education and experience to make any informed decisions.
Why would you think a business guy who is a fucking idiot and a bunch of twenty something programmers are going to understand the US budget and economy? You might as well pick pre-schoolers as they are just as equipped
I don’t think you have any understanding of what is going on here.
I never said they have any idea what they are doing. I said that's what they are trying to do. Time will tell if they succeed in finding all the money that leaks out of our government like a colander.
I agree that there are probably many, MANY more people who would be more qualified to be doing this particular job, but that's not what we got.
I'm just along for the ride at this point. If y'all wanna storm the White House for a real revolution let me know. Until it reaches that point I'm just gonna choose to hope some amount of good can come from all this.
It probably won't, but you never know. Crazier things have happened.
Listen, I don't know a ton about USAID, so I won't defend it-though I've personally not seen any reporting that supports what you're saying. Keep in mind, this isn't Trump's first rodeo. USAID was operating under him during his previous term.
What I'd really like for you to explain is how NOAA is presumably burning tons of cash in a way that doesn't benefit taxpayers.
If they were really interested in trimming the fat, they'd go after the DoD, which is where they'd likely "recover" the largest amount. But I'd guess they don't touch that budget at all. And in the unlikely event they did, you can bet anything to do with SpaceX won't be touched.
KUTV is considered a "center" news source so I hope that will be acceptable for you.
I don't know anything about NOAA so I can't speak to that particular topic at this time, but I am curious so I will be taking a look when I get a chance.
You are absolutely fucking right that the DOD is a giant money burning machine. 5k for 1 screw or whatever that meme was (assuming it's true) is just downright irresponsible spending. Something tells me they won't be touching DOD, but we can remain hopeful that it will be receiving similar scrutiny.
And yes it seems unlikely that Musk and gang are gonna throw the books of space x open for the public but you never know. We are in a wild fuckin timeline right now.
I don't understand how people can be so credulous as to believe efficiency is the motivator rather than grift simply because some notorious liars said another lie. Trump used presidential visits as an excuse to visit his own properties at inflated rates, and Elon who holds Dogecoin personally and through Tesla now 'as a joke' runs a fake department called DOGE (check the coin's price now). I guarantee another $7 trillion+ tax giveaway for billionaires will be the most important bill Trump will sign, yet people who have apparently never in their life taken a math class are stoked about the prospect of taking $50 billion/year away from the poorest people on earth which among other projects treats HIV to mitigate mutation risk, resistance to current treatments, and further spread of the virus.
Any news on 'efficiency' work for the defense budget, which is $800 billion/year and only expected to increase under Republican plans?
You think the government has been wasting money, but you're saying that they don't know where that money is being wasted until they get access?
Then how did you know they were wasting money in the first place?
It sounds like you're starting with an assumption and trying to build a case around that assumption.
I mean every single year in their own audit they come back saying they "lost" billions and they "don't know" where it went.
We have known money was going into the government and not going where it was supposed to be going for decades.
It doesn't exactly take a road scholar to see that the people have been asking the government for certain things for ages and they always go "oh we don't have the money". But then they accidentally misplace more than we would have needed to do universal healthcare and other things for ages.
I didn't downvote because you're stating your opinion. Question for you: What would have to happen for you to change your mind from "they're trying to reduce costs" to "oh shit, this really is a coup"?
I mean I guess depending on what definition of coup you are using.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup
First definition... No. It's hasn't been violent and they didn't overthrow anyone. They were elected (well Trump was) and ran on the promise of doing exactly what they have been doing.
Second definition.... Maybe. It depends on if you think this has been or will be "highly successful". It has definitely been sudden. Some would probably call it brilliant.
Now I know that a coup doesn't require violence so you don't need to mention that.
It's not a self coup (yet) so that one's off the able.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/coup
Again if you wanna say it's brilliant and successful sure that coup definition would fit I suppose. It's brilliance has yet to be confirmed and who knows if it'll be successful.
Thanks for taking the time to write this. On the few occasions I've had insights to the scale of government waste it's been eye watering. Of course, that doesn't change anything about my views regarding trump and musk, but I agree with your point... How else could someone tackle a problem of this scale?
Regardless though, it was just nice to read a thoughtful point of view that counters the prevailing emotions on here
The issue is they are completely wrong about theor perspective.
Musk and the programmers he brought are incapable of understanding what they are dojng because they have no background in economics other than Musk who repeatedly shows a glawef understanding of Macro.
The budget is massive and almost no individual is equipped to do this quickly.
What they ARE doing us laying the ground work to create a police state. That has been a goal of Musk/Thiel/Ellison for years now.
You seem pretty naive.