I can’t believe i used the word doge to describe a government agency. I hate the internet.
they have census and population data for the entire US. this gives them the ability to map out not only density of citizens but variations of wealth, gender, race, age, skill, education, etc.
for the next phase of DOGE they will need this information to create their network states.
the government will collapse by mid-March or earlier. that’s why Trump pushed his “tariffs” out 30 days. it’s not tariffs, it’s a countdown.
they’re going to declare a state of emergency over something within the next two weeks. consolidate the national guards and national police force together to round up citizens. arrest and deport the “undesirables”, and institute the formation of their network state.
DOGE doesn’t mean Department of Government Efficiency.
Death Of Governments Everywhere
Running will only delay the inevitable. those who are actively pursuing the end of democracy need to be removed from society if we want to continue down the path of a Democratic government.
this is no longer an administration that can be protested or discussed. this is a war for the very survival of millions of Americans and the future of our world as we know it. it’s about as bad as a nuclear bomb going off.
don’t believe me? take 30 minutes to watch this. keep in mind, it’s from two months ago.
I am partial to the rest of what you said but Census data were already publicly available and actually what they did was make it less accessible to data scientists and researchers like me working on the normal kind of regional planning stuff.
but it was generalized. now they have the names, addresses of every American. they need that when they start pumping the police state oppression on the people.
I spread this video around like a few weeks ago. It wreaks of Lefty q-anon. It’s fine if you feel differently but no one wanted to engage on it. I’m not talking about content either. I’m talking how they framed their argument. Would love to really discuss this video in a different setting but like I said I spread it a over and it only made people upset.
I have my doubts but we will see. I don’t think you’re far off but I think your timeline is a bit drastic. We can already see trump pull back the reigns here or there, why would he if he’s getting ready to plunge in feet first?
I think it’s a feint. the anger and emotional turmoil of the American public can’t boil over yet and he wants to use that as a force for push us towards attacking the government.
they’re weakening the established government agencies that protect the public. once all the cards are set he’ll push for the public to attack because, “they failed to protect you from me” or “they failed you and now you’re suffering because of it”.
they already tricked Americans to vote against their own interests, it’s not that far to make them attack the only true ally we have in a blind rage.
I don’t think it reeks of any left qanon conspiracy. two months ago I would have questioned it, but now I think it makes more sense than “the Nazis are taking over”.
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 mean, aren’t all our SS numbers readily available? Don’t you remember when our creditor institutions got hacked?
who hacked them?
did we ever find out who?
Doesn’t make what Elon is doing OK in the slightest.
Blackmail.
Oh, so now you’re saying mail is DEI, I can’t even with you people.
Lol nice
Shhh! Nobody tell them about black ice!
The road hazard or the fictional firewall that kills hackers that attempt to breach it? 🤔
Yes
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.
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.
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?
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?
It’s from Homestar Runner originally and unfortunately the Nazis picked the correct pronunciation
It’s from Homestar Runner originally and unfortunately the Nazis picked the
correctevil pronunciationOf course they did, they are evil.
;_; but I pronounce it that way - like the old Venetian head of state.
The power of doggy compels you
Doggy is a pretty damn cute name for the meme
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!
… You didn’t have a problem with it when it was a memecoin? Doge jumped the shark YEARS before that even happened
Nope, dogecoin was a memecoin not a scam oriented shitcoin.
Wasn’t it massively pre-mined, i.e. scam?
But it never seemed worth caring or worrying about
But he knew what it was and it was fun. Now? It’s fascism tearing apart this country from the inside, run by two racist ass holes, one a rapist and sexual predator that acts like he’s 6
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 only way we’re going to get our country back is if we get a sane Democrat in office that rules the same way Trump does.
So it’s never happening.
You can’t play by the rules while your opponent cheats and expect anything but to lose.
Man I bet George Washington is stoked that we’ve skipped hereditary monarchies and went straight to emperors
Yep. Ive stopped playing by the rules now.
Laws are far less important to me than they were a few months ago. Just following the example of the “leadership”…
Out of curiosity, what have you started doing differently?
Nice try
The way things are going, the next “vote” you’ll get is to ratify the new and improved constitution. I’ve actually seen a couple of coups first hand, that’s usually how it goes.
People don’t get to vote for a new constitution. That’s for states or Congress.
At least not with ballots, anyway
Ah, I’ve only seen it done by referendum because parliament / congress had been dissolved by then. But hey, YMMV
They can match employee lists against public donor lists and start targeting people.
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.
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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.
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.
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 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 seem pretty naive.
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.
We were talking about the DOD in one of these other comments somewhere.
I doubt they will be thoroughly checking for loose spending in many departments. I’ll take some cleaning house vs 0 cleaning house.
I’ll take some cleaning house vs 0 cleaning house.
This is like dusting the china cabinet while ignoring a giant hole in the wall from someone crashing their car through it.
More akin to dusting the china cabinet with a hammer while ignoring the missing wall behind it.
Yeah but what if the car crash is happening no matter what and you can’t do anything about it because it killed someone in the way in so you gotta way for the police to do their thing.
May as well dust the china cabinet. Don’t wanna let people think I allow a dusty house.
Pretty easy to say when you’re not the one dying as a result.
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.
The thing is that’s not what they are trying to do. That is what the propaganda sources you follow are telling you they are doing.
This is about laying the groundwork for the fascist coup.
I don’t follow any propaganda sources lol. I don’t use Twitter. I don’t watch fox news or whatever it is you are assuming I do.
I consume a great amount of news from across the spectrum and I try to find the truth that I assume lies somewhere in the middle.
I speak to my far left friends and family about politics often. I speak to my handful of right leaning friends and family a bit less, but I still talk to them fairly often.
I recognize my methods aren’t perfect but it’s better than most people will do these days.
You posted a Sinclair owned station so yes you did post a propaganda source even if you are unaware of that fact.
Alright man. You find a source you like. Pretty much every news source has reported on the USAID situation.
Yeah but the take of an actual journalistoc source is going to be better
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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.
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.
Your source, KUTV, is a Sinclair owned station. They have an insane pro-fascism bias. You might want to find a balanced informed source rather than a propaganda source.
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/kutv
They specifically don’t use ownership as a measurement for bias. They rate news outlets on the content only.
I doubt that will do much to change your opinion on the matter but I figured I would at least let you know where I got the information that KUTV was a center news source.
I try to keep myself informed from news sources across the spectrum, but that is often easier said than done.
And that’s a mistake. Sinclair’s owners heavily influence content and across the board they interject roght leaning takes. This is the news network known for making dictates to share soecific right wing talking points as this clip from PBS will show. If ypu watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver you 'll recognize this clip.
I don’t know who this rating is but I wouldn’t place any faith in them based on this.
Again neigh impossible unless you are fairly comfortable to get a good news source that is conservative as there is only one in English at this moment.
Hmm yesterday you were spouting transphobe shit, today you’re spouting maga shit. I’m thinking maybe Lemmy isn’t the place for you and you should just delete your account and go back to Reddit.
You will not find friends here. No one wants you here.
@Majorllama @Brunbrun6766 yeah idk why they’re here lol, truth.social is more appropriate, they just desperately want ppl who don’t care for their opinions to have to see them (i get it tho, thats me arguing with republicans in other comment sections)
I find it fascinating how often you people dig through peoples accounts before you attack them. I literally never look at how old anyone’s accounts are or their previous comments or posts.
I’m not gonna delete my account and go back to reddit. Mostly because I’m still banned from the entirety of reddit on all my accounts for “breaking reddit TOS”. They immediately denied my appeal asking what rule I broke and still never told me what rule I supposedly broke.
Lemmy is for anyone. Just because you don’t like my opinions doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be here. Block me if you want but I’ll continue using the site as I please.
You would be wrong that I have not found friends where. You would be right that they are super rare, but I have found a handful of other moderates bouncing around.
You don’t want me here. Unfortunately I don’t give a shit what you want as I don’t know you and I don’t owe you anything.
Have a nice day.
@Majorllama @Brunbrun6766 Your past effects your credibility in real life, why should forums be any different?
Hopefully your time here opens your eyes to a more realistic understanding of what is going on as right now you seriously are holding on to a ton if really flawed ideas
It’s worrying to me that you think Lemmy has a real grasp of what’s going on. This entire site and the majority of its users are so far off the left deep end that they haven’t been able to see a moderate thought in years.
I’m sure many of my opinions are flawed to you as I am sure many of your opinions are flawed to me.
The difference is I am willing to discuss your opinions without labeling you instantly, downvoting you and then blocking you. You guys seem to be very eager to label me any number of things, downvote immediately (and go downvote all my other comments elsewhere like weirdos) and then either block me or ban me.
I see most of you as well intentioned people. Humans. We might have a different outlook on things but you are still a person. Most of you guys see me as evil and think I deserve to die. It’s easier to dismiss people after you demonize them.
I know I’m not perfect. I certainly never claimed to be. I just think it’s a very bad idea to immediately dehumanize anyone I disagree with.
Im not the majority of users but what you can find here are some people who are educated in political philosophy/economics and have government experience and some of us do know what we are talking about.
Im not talking about your opinions. You are holding some views that are at odds with objective facts.
While many might insult you I have not. I suspect we are both adults and I treat others as they treat me. You have not attacked me so I will not respond in kind.
The one thing that you should understand is many of us here are not straight so if you support the Trump administration in any way you are supporting making me less equal to you. That is going to understandably be hard for most to get over as how do you treat someone who voted to have people like myself lose equal rights? How should people view the guy who supports fascist candidates and their criminal actions?
Lucky for you I do not support Trump or the right. I was a lifelong Democrat until I switched to independent in 2020. I didn’t vote for Kamala or Trump in 2024 though so many people around here have basically lumped me in as a Trump supporter because would not “vote blue no matter who”. I live in California so my protest third party vote did exactly what I wanted. My state still went blue, but the deathgrip the Democrats have held in California is clearly slipping and they need to see that.
My stance on the whole gay rights thing is my stance on pretty much everything in a similar vein. I do not care what consenting adults do with other consenting adults and I think the government should have absolutely zero sway over any of that. Marry who you love. Fuck whoever you want. I do not care.
Same goes for abortion. I am staunchly pro choice. I don’t agree with pretty much any of the leftist talking points around their pro-choice stances, but I believe the only three people who should have any say on terminating a pregnancy are the two people that caused the pregnancy and whatever doctor they choose to see about it. Nobody else should have a single iota of say over what happens.
I’m an open book. Ask me anything and I’ll answer truthfully.
You take a lot of positions that are identical to the “reasonable conservative” who turns out to be either sea-lioning troll ir a closet fascist. Looking through your posts I don’t think that’s the case with you but if you were familiar with these spaces you might understand the alarms you are setting off.
Not all of Lemmy is hostile but there is a portion whose philosophical education seems to be dependent on youtube/forums and is lacking a lot of the core of political philosophy one gets through academia.
Don’t have to dig at all. I see transphobes and I tag them as such. Next time I see a comment from you I already know what type of person you are. I tag transphobes, Zionist, racists, idiots, trolls, and fascists.
Also, no, Lemmy.world (where your account is hosted) is not for everyone. You may feel free to spin up your own domain and host your own user account. But break enough of these rules in .world and you will be banned.
-Have a nice day bigot 💋
It’s like all the problems with the people on the far left all bundled into one lovely person.
I will have a nice day. Thanks.
All that with data they stole from the American people.
Not really sure what you mean by that. This is data the American people would never even know about in the first place.
And as far as I am aware they only have “read” access. They haven’t actually done anything but point out their findings.
You mean Americans would have never known about their private data? How sinister.
Actually sounds like unspeakably good stewardship which is unheard of these days.
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.
Organizational waste in general seems like an inevitability. Corporations have waste too – this isn’t unique to governments
The problem is it’s not a waste if it’s being paid as salaries to Americans.
This is what these people don’t understand. If the government is inefficient, and that means that they’re employing too many people, that’s a good thing. It stops being a good thing when we have a good safety net. But we don’t, so making up fake jobs is actually a positive.
Japan hiring old people to do nothing has
the right idea… an idea
And what Musk is doing has nothing to do with efficiency
Honestly, I used to say the same thing when my background was mostly large multinationals, banks etc. But I’ve seen things in government contracts that are way beyond anything I came across in the private sector. If I extrapolate my experience across the rest of the government, it’s easy to imagine just how much money is being wasted, and most of it goes straight into the hands of huge consultancy firms.
And it makes sense right? The government is held to way more account than the private sector. Ass covering twinned with lack of accountability is rife. Huge amounts of money are thrown into projects that simply cannot fail or some aspect of the country risks complete shut down.
I’ve no idea what the fix is, but I believe there is an issue here that is unique to the government. Of course though, it’s so sad to think that people would turn to hate and fascism as any kind of solution.
That’s the thing – governments have a lot more requirements than corporations. They’ve also got a whole lot more riding on them, so the stakes are higher.
You have to pay for consultants since you need to get the best talent, but you can’t afford (and don’t need) them to be on the payroll forever.
You have to pay for auditors because you’re under more financial scrutiny.
You have to take things more slowly because you can’t make risky decisions and there are layers upon layers of bureaucracy regarding decisions.
So what do we cut out?
Get rid of the consultants? Well, you either hire them (whose salaries you can’t afford – top talent will leave), or you don’t bring on consultants at all (which means you can’t do the things you need to do). Or you pay your staff for training, which might work, but then those staff might leave and the investment is gone before anything new is built. And it might cost as much as the consultants, plus take longer.
Get rid of the auditors? But we want more financial scrutiny.
Get rid of the bureaucracy? Sure, everyone would love that. Except when the reason for each strip of red tape is revealed when something goes wrong.
Like you said, there are no easy answers. And when these costs have justifications for existing, I think that’s when they turn from “waste” to “necessary (yet unfortunate) expenses”.
