[HN Gopher] The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
___________________________________________________________________
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
Author : medler
Score : 761 points
Date : 2025-02-02 19:12 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| medler wrote:
| I don't know how this will shake out, but I do worry that these
| 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other
| achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.
|
| Edit: by the way, this post isn't off-topic. It is about the
| activities of the US Digital Service (now known as Doge), and the
| exploits of young hackers who came up through top tech companies.
| It has implications for information systems security, especially
| as it relates to Silicon Valley culture.
| minimaxir wrote:
| From a journalistic standpoint, it's entirely fair to report on
| these 19-24 year olds, and it is not doxxing to do so. They are
| quite literally now involved in the US government, and are
| consenting adults making the rational decision to involve
| themselves in real legal jeopardy.
| bko wrote:
| I guess that's good. It's interesting that we're just now
| learning the names of the people that hope to disrupt these
| agencies, but we don't know exactly who, or even how many, of
| these agencies existed.
|
| In other words, there are these critically important agencies
| that I didn't even know existed, but they're basically the
| glue that holds together our democracy. Who runs these
| agencies is not important, what is important is that they
| continue to run as they have in the past and anyone looking
| to disrupt that should be thoroughly investigated.
| electriclove wrote:
| If you believe things have been run well at these agencies
| (that you didn't even know existed), that would explain
| your position.
|
| Imagine someone who believes that things have not been run
| properly. Now imagine half the country feeling this way.
| __loam wrote:
| The proper forum for reforms is congress, not
| steamrolling your way through the federal bureaucracy.
| bko wrote:
| That's another way of saying you don't think there should
| be reforms. It won't happen.
|
| In the past you had events that reshaped and wiped away
| the buildup of bureaucracy. Kind of like a refactor.
| These events have been war or revolutions.
|
| I think its worth thinking about things as a system that
| we can periodically refresh, ditch the old and start from
| scratch. It's not healthy to just keep adding layers
| without a good mechanism to remove them
| jbeam wrote:
| >That's another way of saying you don't think there
| should be reforms. It won't happen.
|
| Because the people's representatives will get in the way?
| The pesky checks and balances of democracy?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's entirely fair to report on these 19-24 year olds_
|
| Of course it is. As it will be to go after them through the
| criminal justice system in years ahead. I believe OP's point
| is they don't realise the jeopardy they're getting themselves
| into.
| euroderf wrote:
| "I was just obeying executive orders."
| beefnugs wrote:
| The whole thing is sham, doesn't matter how illegal,
| apparently presidents can, at alarming rates, and
| completely openly to the public now just pardon anyone
| for anything.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The danger is that in a system without any meaningful
| rule of law, people will turn to violence as a means of
| achieving justice. This is an incredibly dangerous road
| we're going down.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, probably. Why does their jeopardy concern you more than
| the apparent lack of legitimate authority to do what they are
| doing?
| medler wrote:
| It doesn't really. Obviously the alleged security breach is
| egregious and if they're committing crimes they should be
| prosecuted. But given that they're relatively young, part of
| me wonders if these guys are being exploited by Musk and
| Thiel and will be scapegoated if the political winds start
| blowing another way. But that makes no difference to their
| criminal liability.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Trump pardoned the J6 guys for trying to kill the vice
| president, surely he'll pardon these guys for whatever
| bureaucratic rules they are breaking.
| electriclove wrote:
| I thought Marco Rubio is acting director and has given them
| authority. Is this untrue? Why do you say apparent lack of
| legitimate authority?
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Why are you concerned? They're adults and know this is
| blatantly illegal and are serving their lord anyway. They don't
| even have the pleasure of deniability since the government
| officials literally stepped in, physically blocked them, and
| told them they weren't allowed.
|
| Personally, I hope they get what's coming to them.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > blatantly illegal
|
| genuine question, not sarcastic: what specifically is
| blatantly illegal, violating what law?
| afavour wrote:
| They are (according to the accounts given) accessing
| confidential government information they don't have
| security credentials for.
| bdangubic wrote:
| there's this guy named Donald who just might pardon
| whoever is committing whatever crimes are being
| committed...
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm sure he will. But that doesn't refute the assertion
| that what they're doing is illegal. It supports it, even.
| afavour wrote:
| All else aside I wouldn't assume he's going to. I doubt
| Trump cares one way or the other if these kids rot in
| jail.
|
| There's a long, long list of people who thought "Trump
| owes me" would be a guarantee and got a rude awakening.
| bdangubic wrote:
| _I doubt Trump cares one way or the other if these kids
| rot in jail_
|
| they are doing what he is (in)directly ordering - they
| ain't going to jail following the orders of the POTUS :)
| mbesto wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| thanks : it's oh so HN that the question got downvoted,
| and you alone had an answer, much appreciated.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| Your question was valid and you didn't deserve to get
| downvoted. That being said the person who responded to
| you is wrong. They did have the appropriate security
| clearance to access the records.
|
| Some people are skeptical on the legitimacy of what some
| are calling "emergency" security clearances given by
| executive order[1] but there's no evidence this is not
| within the bounds of the president's power. An expedited
| clearance could have been granted in 48 hours but
| presumably the backlog has already lasted longer than
| that and would hamper plans for the first month in
| office.
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/01/memo...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| They have been identified on bsky and reddit with the intent to
| dox them.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They are identified in the linked Wired article...Good job
| though, you are keeping on top of things.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| How many randos on reddit/bsky are reading the Wired
| article? Include who their parents are and their parents
| jobs/business? Good job on being condescending though.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yes, the condescending tone was intentional.
|
| I'm pretty sure that the article is widely linked on both
| sites, so to answer your question, "lots".
| justin66 wrote:
| They're not pseudonymously posting on Reddit or something,
| they're working in the federal government. The concept of
| "doxxing" does not apply.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| When people are creating lists including who their parents
| are, their parents jobs, etc. it kind of does in my mind.
| My bad.
| dbalatero wrote:
| "Bummer"
| ian-g wrote:
| In my mind, there are a number of instances online where
| people (read: men) are acting like entitled princes, and
| the one thing that gets them to back off is making their
| families aware of what's going on.
|
| Considering that these six are almost certainly peak
| internet people, I can't say I entirely disagree with
| trying to make sure their families know what they're
| doing. And so those family members know who to blame if
| data is leaked, potentially like the bank account details
| stored in the treasury payments system.
| freedomben wrote:
| Just to make sure I understand what you're saying and the
| underlying principle and how it might apply. You support
| internet mobs (and eventually IRL mobs) harassing
| innocent people who happen to be related to somebody
| else?
|
| Do you agree with everything your relatives do? Are you
| willing to be held to the same standard? If you
| brother/sister/son/father/uncle/nephew/whatever does
| something I don't like, can I publish your personal
| information and get an internet mob to call and threaten
| your employer?
| viccis wrote:
| When people can't be legally held accountable, then why
| are you surprised that there are those trying to hold
| them accountable via extrajudicial means?
| derangedHorse wrote:
| This is a gross justification of something you know to be
| wrong. If all the employees who are currently working at
| the Treasury had their names leaked you wouldn't think
| twice about it being a case of doxxing.
|
| Somehow people feel justified in their condemnation
| because they don't know what was happening in the
| department before and assume more was done than actually
| was by these DOGE employees. Note that the article has no
| idea of the extent of work done by each of them, the
| internal processes at DOGE, or the legality of these
| events.
|
| At this point it's just fear mongering with words like
| "coup" being thrown around and baseless accusations about
| the halting of payments to essential programs like
| Medicare, Medicaid, social security, etc. None of which
| have been verbally stated as a target for termination
| this term
| username332211 wrote:
| Let's ignore the ethics of your position just for a
| second.
|
| How do you think would affairs develop if the policy you
| defend now continues? Suppose the families of those men
| are "made aware of their son's actions" (i.e. they are
| harassed, because that's what's really going to happen).
|
| The administration will make sure that public the has the
| right to know the name and addresses of the loved ones of
| opposition politicians and their associates. And, it may
| come to a surprise to you, but most crazy people with a
| lot of firearms generally support the administration and
| ruling party. Those people can harrass families with
| unprecedented effectiveness. They can also do much worse.
|
| How is what you are suggesting a good idea from a purely
| tactical standpoint?
| floatrock wrote:
| That's what reporting on public figures entails,
| especially when their public actions are legally murky at
| best. Or are you proposing they're not actually public
| figures (in which case why do they have access to the
| systems they do?)
|
| But really, yeah, lets talk about questionable people
| creating questionable lists......
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Dude I responded to old boy saying 'I fear what might
| happen to these guys' with 'somethings happening'. I
| didn't stake out a moral position.
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| Does that include posting their/their parents home
| addresses? That's what's been happening.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| That's terrible, because taking someone's private data
| without permission and misusing it is wrong.
| timr wrote:
| So the concept of "doxxing" doesn't apply to anyone who
| works in a government job? We can just publish the private
| information of any low-level employee?
| minimaxir wrote:
| Access to the Treasury that is normally highly-restricted
| is the furthest from "low-level employee" that you can
| get.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| We make exceptions for fascists. We have to.
| freedomben wrote:
| What's the underlying principle here? If you think
| somebody is a fascist you can attack their family? Do you
| think there should be any legal process or protection for
| anybody accused by another random person of being a
| fascist?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
|
| To maintain a tolerant society, a tolerant society must
| be specifically intolerant of the intolerant.
|
| Fuck the fascists.
| euroderf wrote:
| Also we make exceptions for ad hoc procedures untested by
| the courts and not even evaluated by the appropriate
| government organ (GSA?).
| throw16180339 wrote:
| When you're helping a fascist destroy our government,
| you've earned everything that happens to you.
| floatrock wrote:
| By their unprecedented and legally-murky access level,
| they're far from "low-level employee".
|
| And for the important folks, we make a loud cry about
| even their birth certificates and birth parents, so why
| not this?
|
| All sense of decorum has been burned down long ago, and
| hilariously, it's been burned down by the same people now
| pretending to complain here.
|
| If we're gonna make it to the other side of all this,
| it's going to take another Washington, Jefferson,
| Lincoln, or Roosevelt to restore any of our former
| dignity. And no, this one's gonna be lucky to have
| history consider it even a Nixon.
| timr wrote:
| Right. So, the basic principle is: if you think you're
| doing something valorious and can rationalize the result,
| you can ruin the lives of whomever you like.
|
| This doesn't seem to be a huge leap from the
| rationalization for "doxxing" in any other period.
| archagon wrote:
| I don't necessarily approve of this action, but... a key to a
| peaceful life is to not piss off too many people at once. If
| you decide spit on a hundred million people, you're not gonna
| like it when a fraction of them spit back. Break the social
| contract at your own peril.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known
| to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real
| legal jeopardy.
|
| They 100% are. This is a full blackhat attack on a nation. Did
| they take no ethics class? (software or otherwise)?
| aswanson wrote:
| The one kid just graduated high school. So, unlikely.
| viccis wrote:
| My experience with ethics classes is that they usually just
| teach you good ways to justify whatever you want.
| wyager wrote:
| If you get your ethics from some class you took in college,
| you definitely shouldn't be given authority over anything
| important
| beAbU wrote:
| They are 19-24. They never completed college.
| justin66 wrote:
| > I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known
| to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real
| legal jeopardy.
|
| I worry that the law will not hold them accountable.
| archagon wrote:
| If not the law, then perhaps social consequences will.
| guelo wrote:
| Nah theyll have pardons if they ever get into trouble. That was
| part of the reason trump pardoned the j6ers, to let all his
| minions know that they have free rein to commit crimes.
| euroderf wrote:
| That's why they need OPM: So they can run off a giant listing
| of DOGE-droids and tear it from the dot-matrix printer and
| stamp every page with a big rubber stamp saying "Pardoned!
| D.J. Trump"
| afavour wrote:
| I'd go as far as to say that's the _intention_ here. They're
| fall guys and they're too naive /arrogant to realise it.
|
| People say "oh, Trump will pardon them" but I wouldn't be so
| sure, why does he care? Once this is done they're not of any
| real use to him so it's entirely possible he won't waste the
| political capital pardoning them. Would be in character for a
| guy famous for not paying folks who have done work for him.
| latexr wrote:
| > I do worry that these 19-24 year olds (...) are putting
| themselves in real legal jeopardy.
|
| On one side you have a handful of arrogant young adults doing
| the bidding of a couple of wannabe despotic man-babies. On the
| other you have an entire nation made up of millions of people
| and with major influence over the rest of the world.
|
| I'm having a hard time understanding why your concern lies with
| the former.
| drysine wrote:
| >man-babies
|
| If only other babies could launch and land rockets. Call Musk
| what you want, but he is not a baby.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Musk doesn't do that. He bought a company and claims all
| the credit for it, he's just a rich brat using daddy's
| blood money.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Lon Horiuchi could not be convicted for literally sniping an
| unarmed women with a child in her arms, standing in a doorway
| of her house threatening no one. Supremacy clause for executive
| federal employees.
|
| They will be fine.
| ansmithz42 wrote:
| They are not executive employees, they are Musk employees,
| not the same thing.
| ty6853 wrote:
| USDS is doge. Musk is a federal employee. Presumably they
| are as well, with USDS?
| dumah wrote:
| Lon Horiuchi couldn't be convicted because the state's
| prosecutor dropped it.
| ty6853 wrote:
| ... The feds invoked supremacy clause to squash the case
| long enough it was too stale by the time it wound through
| appeals. The special prosecutor did not at all want to drop
| it and said as much.
|
| The supremacy clause was what ultimately killed it, by
| being useful enough to delay cases to the point they're
| dead.
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| I don't see why anyone should worry about the people actually
| committing crimes and being in legal jeopardy. That's the
| purpose of the legal system. People need to learn that
| ignorance of the law is not a defense.
| kelnos wrote:
| I really don't worry at all for these people. They're adults,
| even if young, and they've made their choice. Any consequences
| they suffer will be well deserved.
|
| I'm sure Trump will preemptively pardon them at the end of his
| term anyway. My worry is that these people will never be held
| accountable for what they're doing.
|
| Save your worry for things that actually matter.
| ljsprague wrote:
| Of course the State will try to go after these kids when they
| get their people back in power. That's why it must be
| dismantled as much as possible in the next four years.
| cleverwebble wrote:
| thats a wild, and dangerous take
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| My experience working for Tyler Technologies in the Courts and
| Justice division opened my eyes to the absolutely arrogant and
| basically consequence-free mismanagement of public data in the
| hands of private enterprise. The fiasco with JudyRecords.com is
| absolutely important to keep in mind. If anything, I find
| stressing "efficiency" in government is simply a cover for
| "gutting functionality" because anytime something doesn't fit in
| "the model" of services then it simply gets dismissed.
|
| Is this a technology equivalent to burning the libraries of old?
| Once the data is gone, come on, do you think any reasonable
| efforts will be made to restore it? Frankly speaking, is the
| course DOGE taking a mandate by the people to be enacted by
| representatives in the government or is it vice-versa, that "we
| are changing your society whether you like it or not" is the
| fundamental principle.
|
| Then again, I just got out of jail after a year on a made-up
| Terroristic Threat charge politically motivated, so my
| perspective is likely skewed regarding motives and actions of
| those who have unchecked power at their disposal.
| nico wrote:
| This is like crypto, or rewriting the whole code from scratch.
| Re-learning all the lessons
| ericjmorey wrote:
| They're not going to learn anything. They're subverting the
| system for personal gain at the expense of everyone else.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| If they're engaged in doing illegal stuff, at the federal level,
| I fully expect Trump to just pardon everyone involved.
|
| Maybe they're too deep in the Yarvin / Thield / Musk (Kool-Aid)
| sauce, but they should know better. This stuff will follow them
| for life.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > to just pardon
|
| More likely Trump continue to fire prosecutors that try to do
| their jobs upholding the literal law. No prosecution, no pardon
| needed.
|
| The check on that is for Congress to impeach and remove a
| corrupt President from office, but that will be difficult with
| how many Republicans are complicit.
| nullocator wrote:
| Based on what we've seen this past week it seems the next
| administration would have an obligation to fire them all, in
| much the way Trump is firing anyone who looked into or
| investigated him. And extrapolating to the next few months
| I'd say the next administration will likely have an
| obligation to attempt to send anyone associated with DOGE to
| prison for the rest of their lives. At least this appears to
| be the type of government Donald Trump and his voters believe
| America should have.
| ModernMech wrote:
| A lot of people are acting like the end of history is here.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It seems clear the US turned a page in its history.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Do you remember when Presidents disclosed their finances
| and avoided things that could look like gifts/bribes?
| When they didn't fire prosecutors for getting too close
| to their business? When trial-balloons about becoming
| "President For Life" were taboo? When their lawyers
| didn't argue they had presumptive immunity to _literally
| assassinate the other candidate_?
|
| This news item is just one more previously-unthinkable
| line crossed in an unambiguous trend towards more-crazy.
|
| ___________
|
| > "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or
| hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
| That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the
| whole regime had come immediately after the first and
| smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been
| sufficiently shocked--if, let us say, the gassing of the
| Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm'
| stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But
| of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come
| all the hundreds of little steps, some of them
| imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be
| shocked by the next."
|
| -- _They Thought They Were Free: The Germans The Germans,
| 1933-45* by Milton Meyer, published 1955._
| throwaway141728 wrote:
| I want to add here that the Holocaust required a war (the
| Wannsee conference was in 1942), massive censorship (easy
| during a war) and misdirection like model concentration
| camps (Theresienstadt), where international agencies
| could look around and see how "humane" everyone was
| treated.
|
| There was no Internet, only official propaganda.
| Sometimes the truth leaked via the Swedish embassy or
| railway workers, but it cannot spread far if those who
| spread it are killed themselves.
|
| But I agree that people all over the world have been
| docile and compliant since 2020 on all sorts of issues,
| so the danger is there even if it should be harder today.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| It is the end of democracy in the United States.
| kccoder wrote:
| And a lot of people are downplaying the severity of what
| is currently happening.
| Whatarethese wrote:
| The goalposts will be moved until our country is a husk
| of its former self. Thats literally how constitutional
| republics die.
| varjag wrote:
| Quite the opposite, it's a lot of history in the making.
| But most likely it is the undignified end of Pax
| Americana.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| *Unmaking. But yes. Some real collapse of the republic
| scale shit, take over by Orban style autocratic political
| men. Pax Americana & our influence in the world abroad
| for sure.
|
| This is potentially falling of the Soviet Union bad. Not
| that we will dissolve the union (still hopefully a very
| low chance) but that the system of government collapses &
| the various business-mafias squabble to claim what they
| can in the power vacuum that follows; a loss of national
| integrity.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _A lot of people are acting like the end of history is
| here._
|
| Would you rather:
|
| * 'over react' about the end of history, and be wrong
| (i.e. things turn out fine), or
|
| * 'under react' and end up with a bunch of thugs in
| charge?
|
| It's possible this is a situation where you're crying
| "wolf" when there isn't one, but given Trump's erratic
| mind, and the stated plans of the political right
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
|
| which side to you want to err of?
|
| And with regards to "over reacting" and nothing
| happening: a lot of folks said Y2K was an over reaction
| because nothing happened, but nothing happened _because_
| people did a much reacting. That nothing burger was a
| success, not a sign of over reaction.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _And extrapolating to the next few months I 'd say the
| next administration will likely have an obligation to
| attempt to send anyone associated with DOGE to prison for
| the rest of their lives._
|
| If they get pre-emptive Presidential pardons, nothing can
| be done (unless you go with state-level charges).
| Shekelphile wrote:
| They're directly attacking government infrastructure, including
| our intelligence apparatuses.
|
| Even if they escape legal consequences they could become
| targeted for extrajudicial killings by intelligence agencies of
| the US and allies.
| Vecr wrote:
| I assume these are US citizens. The US constitution isn't set
| up to protect intelligence agencies if they attempt that kind
| of thing on US soil.
| electriclove wrote:
| What attack?? They are working for our government.
| ck2 wrote:
| Musk could not get US Security Clearance
|
| He cannot enter certain facilities or meetings at SpaceX because
| of that.
|
| Yet now he is bypassing that requirement.
|
| None of these people are elected or confirmed by the Senate and
| they are doing extremely sensitive things to the government
|
| That's not how any of this is supposed to work by law.
| rbanffy wrote:
| National secrets shouldn't have been kept in a bathroom in Mar-
| a-Lago and, yet, here we are.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Nor in a garage, nor in unsecured university offices
| logifail wrote:
| Q: Why are there (still) classified documents at USAID?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/15/when-is-
| for...:
|
| "U.S.A.I.D. was created in 1961 to help the United States win
| the "hearts and minds" of citizens in poor countries through
| civic action, economic aid and humanitarian assistance. As a
| cold war policy tool, the agency was, at times, used as a
| front for C.I.A. operations and operatives. Among the most
| infamous examples was the Office of Public Safety, a
| U.S.A.I.D. police training program in the Southern Cone that
| also trained torturers."
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| An actual answer (linking to archive.org since usaid.gov
| has been taken down): https://web.archive.org/web/202501172
| 21701/https://www.usaid...
|
| > The information about USAID's development and
| humanitarian assistance programs is intentionally open and
| public; to perform the agency's mission, USAID employees
| work directly with non-government organizations,
| contractors, United Nations organizations and host country
| governments. However, in order for USAID employees to
| effectively and efficiently carry out the agency's
| programs, they often must have access to sensitive and
| sometimes classified information provided by other federal
| departments and agencies. Such information may pertain to
| U.S. foreign policy and relations as well as security
| conditions and threat data.
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| https://doge.gov does not say anything about what the DOGE plan
| is, and https://www.usds.gov/ is not apparently up to date wrt
| DOGE. Is there something other than the Executive Order [0] that
| lays out concretely what DOGE intends to do? This group of
| engineers is doubtless skilled, but I don't seem them as the
| decision makers and planners here.
|
| [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/01/esta...
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| We went through something similar in the 1960s with the Whiz
| Kids, young college graduates from the RAND corporation with no
| experience in government or the military. _' But you have to
| obey us because we're so much smarter than you.'_
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...
| LastTrain wrote:
| That wasn't even remotely similar to what is happening now.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The Whiz Kids, for all their flaws, were duly and lawfully
| appointed. It wasn't this.
| ck2 wrote:
| Are they skilled? Or just arrogant and drunk on power?
|
| Some of them most certainly could not pass US security
| clearance.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/jsweetli.bsky.social/post/3lh7nii7y...
| zzzeek wrote:
| the plan is more specifically this right wing crypto idea
| called "the network state" - using technological means to bring
| down the Democratic state and replace it with a crypto-based
| oligarchy that serves big tech interests only:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo
| throw0101c wrote:
| See perhaps "The bro-ligarchs have a vision for the new Trump
| term":
|
| > _All of these men see themselves as the heroes or
| protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of
| being a "technological superman" -- or ubermensch, as the
| German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say -- is that
| you're above the law. Common-sense morality doesn't apply to
| you because you're a superior being on a superior mission.
| Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his
| is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher's work._
|
| > _The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs'
| disturbing gender politics. "The 'bro' part of broligarch is
| not incidental to this -- it's built on this idea that not
| only are these guys superior, they are superior because
| they're guys," Harrington said._
|
| [...]
|
| > _The so-called network state is "a fancy name for tech
| authoritarianism," journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the
| past year reporting on these building projects, told me. "The
| idea is to build power over the long term by controlling
| money, politics, technology, and land."_
|
| * https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-
| inauguration...
|
| Also maybe "Why big tech turned right":
|
| * https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-
| bezo...
|
| General right-wing plan:
|
| * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
| zzzeek wrote:
| here's Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan on X: "Whoever made the
| original graphic (of these kids that Musk told to hack into
| the machines) doesn't understand the scale and speed of
| smart high IQ people who can program, and what they can do
| in a moment when intelligence now on infinite tap using
| LLMs"
|
| https://x.com/garrytan/status/1886283334466302201
|
| as though "dont worry everyone, these kids are really good
| coders!" has anything to do with it
|
| the tech oligarchs know nothing about wisdom, integrity,
| rule of law, it's all a big joke beneath their superior
| brains
| h197BQcV wrote:
| That is why they only take from other people (music,
| PDFs, code, literature, papers) without ever creating
| anything themselves.
|
| Musk is an exception in that he at least popularized and
| scaled production of the original Tesla inventors from
| whom he bought the company. SpaceX seems to be run by
| Gwynne Shotwell.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Don't need rule of law when you have LLMs!
|
| /s
| Cornbilly wrote:
| These tech goofs trying to convince "the plebs" that
| they're wizards that can cast magic.
|
| It'd be more funny if people didn't actually believe
| them.
| mkoryak wrote:
| Nice, the $ logo is a 22.5kb 375x372 avif file resized to
| 48x48. That is efficient!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Only top engineers at work there. Pahhaha!
| kelnos wrote:
| Of course not. Getting all of this done requires overwhelming
| amounts of surprise. Trump signing a flood of executive orders
| is a part of this: it takes time to figure out what's going on
| with each one, and how to combat it. And in that time, the
| damage can already be done.
|
| Musk and his coup team aren't really accountable to anyone but
| Trump, and have no direct legal authority. The way that they
| get things done is by threatening and steamrolling people, and
| gaining control of important functions (like the ability to put
| people on leave or fire them). All of this requires some amount
| of secrecy and chaos in order to pull off. If they were posting
| detailed plans on their website, it would make those plans
| harder to execute.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Didn't they already do exactly that with Project 2025?
| mrkeen wrote:
| [https://doge.gov/] Sorry, you have been
| blocked You are unable to access doge.gov
|
| Feels like the Twitter transition again.
|
| Hey remember when there was concern that he might not have time
| to effectively run Tesla and SpaceX. And then Twitter. And 12
| kids. Or popping ketamine and playing Diablo 4 all night.
|
| I guess he's got time to run the country too.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/QYBhK
| twochillin wrote:
| why was this flagged?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Having the word "Elon" seems to bring out the worst in us. I
| still believe we can have civil discussions about topics that
| might be considered taboo.
| medler wrote:
| Elon fanboys game the flagging system to remove any articles
| critical of Elon
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| [flagged]
| chairmansteve wrote:
| And yet..... almost all your recent are related to Musk...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If you look at only one page of my posting history, that's
| likely true.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Given who is involved this is as relevant as it gets here.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > Yeah, we know, tech is bleeding over into politics, but...
| how many Musk stories do we need in one day?
|
| You should Ask Musk to cool down then. We didn't vote him in.
| We didn't ask him to break the law and compromise american
| security. We didn't grant him access to the US treasury. "We"
| voted this in. Those who didn't want this are 3 months too
| late.
|
| And I see this excuse on every platform. I see a story I
| don't want to engage with... I just move on. Maybe you browse
| new, but I've never seen politics be "the dominant topic on
| HN".
| computerthings wrote:
| > Some of us are sick of politics all over HN all the time.
|
| That was never the situation.
|
| > how many Musk stories do we need in one day? However many
| the number is, we're past it.
|
| So the number is zero. Having one story for each major
| separate event is one story too many. This is still what it
| is. The longer the rationalizations for it get, the more sad
| it gets.
| breadwinner wrote:
| > _So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of
| governments by the richest man in the world._
|
| ... and there 's nothing anyone can do about it. Checks and
| balances have been neutralized.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Checks and balances were never tried in the first place. There
| must have been some assumption of decorum and decency, so
| strong that whatever loopholes are, have been left wide open.
|
| Without a competent or impartial FBI and AG, there's literally
| zero chance these people will be investigated.
|
| With a house and senate that fears the president, there will be
| no impeachment.
|
| And even if they successfully manage to impeach the president,
| I'm 100% sure Trump will challenge it.
|
| Yeah, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Gonna be 4 very, very long
| years.
| breadwinner wrote:
| 4 years? Trump has been talking about a third term.
|
| "It would be my greatest honor to serve not once but twice,"
| Mr. Trump told an audience on Saturday. "Maybe three times."
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/us/politics/trump-
| boundar...
| sv123 wrote:
| I didn't think he would live this long, but he certainly
| couldn't survive another 8 years, right?... right?
| breadwinner wrote:
| So basically we are down to relying on the cycle of life
| as the ultimate check and balance. Hopefully he won't
| appoint one of his sons as his successor like in North
| Korea.
| nailer wrote:
| > Checks and balances have been neutralized.
|
| That seems somewhat inverted - the elected government is
| creating checks and balances on unelected bureaucrats.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Elon Musk was elected? News to me.
| binary_slinger wrote:
| Trump was elected, and Elon was appointed by Trump?
| breadwinner wrote:
| Given the unprecedented power he is wielding he should
| have been confirmed by congress.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| So Musk is one of those unelected bureaucrats you're
| railing against?
| binary_slinger wrote:
| This is proof that people will downvote to silence things
| they don't like. This is a gross abuse of the spirit of
| HN. The statement above was factual.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| A radical improvement in the national debt at the hands of
| the world's most competent entrepeneur? I think many people
| were voting _specifically_ for this. Things are going
| exactly as advertised.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| You are assuming that there will be a radical
| improvement. That is yet to be seen. I personally doubt
| it.
| justin66 wrote:
| "Checks and balances" is a phrase that applies to the ability
| of the three coequal branches of government to hold one
| another in check.
| triceratops wrote:
| By sending in their own unelected bureaucrats
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Can't believe this is flagged.
| relaxing wrote:
| Honest question: how do things get unflagged? Do users at some
| level gain vouch privileges?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| They 99.99999% of the time don't. I think only dang has that
| ability and he won't really step in unless there are some
| truly rouge actors.
| dang wrote:
| > unless there are some truly rouge actors
|
| It's more a question of the article. What we're looking for
| includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent
| discussions? does it contain significant new information?
| is there a reasonable chance that it could support a
| substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too
| flamebaity/provocative? that kind of thing.
|
| Here's a subthread from yesterday where I went into this in
| depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011. Past
| explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&
| prefix=true&que....
|
| If anyone has a question that isn't answered at those
| links, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
| archagon wrote:
| Can you tell if there's a concerted effort to flag Musk
| and DOGE related threads? I've seen threads go from
| nothing to [flagged][dead] in the course of 30 seconds
| after being up for 40 minutes, suggesting very spiky
| flagging behavior. This has come up a few times recently,
| for example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904148
|
| (Of course, I could just be misunderstanding how flagging
| works on the site... maybe the state machine has to
| transition in order from regular -> [flagged][dead] ->
| [flagged] after vouching?)
| dang wrote:
| I haven't looked specifically at DOGE stories but from my
| general perspective, this is the same as what we see with
| all the hottest/most divisive topics--that is, it's the
| same with Musk in general, Trump in general, and
| Israel/Gaza, to name perhaps the 3 most in-that-category
| topics.
| justin66 wrote:
| If you use the vouch feature much, eventually they take it
| away from you. Same with upvoting and downvoting, but it all
| happens silently so most people don't notice.
| relaxing wrote:
| That's funny, I thought at one point I saw vouch link for
| comments, but no longer. I doubt I used it more than once.
| Does that mean it got taken away?
| justin66 wrote:
| I couldn't say for sure but... I think so? It's the same
| for me, I used to have it and now I don't.
| dang wrote:
| In your case that was true. General explanation here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902318.
|
| I didn't see much misuse of vouching in your recent
| history so I've removed that penalty from your account
| now. But please make sure that the comments you're
| vouching for are respecting the site guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
| zfg wrote:
| Why don't you make such things transparent and clear on a
| user's account so they can see what you've done?
|
| You're keen on reviewing a user's recent history, but
| provide no corresponding transparency to the user on what
| you've done.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| I have been trying to bring Musk and DOGE topics to light
| all week and have lost the ability to vouch as a
| consequence.
| dang wrote:
| You haven't lost the ability to vouch.
| freedomben wrote:
| Meta note, but seriously thank you for being so
| transparent about this! It's a big part of why I love and
| trust HN
| dang wrote:
| It didn't get taken away. Not sure why you didn't see it
| where you expected to but there's no issue with your
| account.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| You have to go to the specific comment (click on the
| timestamp) and vouch is available there.
| minimaxir wrote:
| If a post is flagged-but-you-can-still-comment, then it can't
| be vouched.
|
| If a post is flagkilled w/ comments disabled, then you can
| typically vouch.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's possible to vouch for stories and comments.
|
| You can also email moderators at hn@ycombintor.com to request
| unflagging. I do that occasionally, with mixed results. (I've
| come to know which are long shots, and typically concede the
| point, but at least make the attempt.)
| bathtub365 wrote:
| It looks like there are people flagging literally every story
| related to DOGE.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I'm not. Pretty sure at this point that anything about Musk
| that doesn't involve Tesla or SpaceX is just being impulsed
| flagged.
| ddalex wrote:
| Time to flag SpaceX and Tesla too...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| SpaceX would be a shame, but it's not like any tesla news
| these days makes did productive discussion.
| latexr wrote:
| Not sure that's necessary. I don't recall the last Tesla
| story I saw that was positive.
| camillomiller wrote:
| All stories about Musk's coup are. Disgusting. Where is dang?
| segasaturn wrote:
| Of course it's flagged, this site is an altar to worship at the
| feet of the American oligarchy. It's as rotten as the rest of
| Silicon Valley.
|
| As JWZ put it:
|
| "A venture capital company's fan club, finance-obsessed
| manchildren making the world worse"
|
| Slightly NSFW source: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png
| dang wrote:
| I turned the flags off on this story 24 minutes before you
| posted this.
|
| Care to revise your view?
| fragmede wrote:
| that's not gonna salve their persecution complex,
| unfortunately
| segasaturn wrote:
| Was anything in my comment untrue?
| fragmede wrote:
| was anything in mine untrue?
| segasaturn wrote:
| No, you might even be right that I have a "victim
| complex", given that my country is currently being
| victimized by the current US administration's pointless
| desire for a trade war. I'm especially hot under the
| collar at the moment.
|
| But I would still maintain that this site's culture
| reflects the Silicon Valley finance culture it came from,
| and it's not a pretty culture.
| segasaturn wrote:
| Thanks for unflagging it Dang, I wish I could have seen it
| yesterday.
| dang wrote:
| I didn't see it yesterday either, otherwise I would have
| turned the flags off sooner.
|
| But thanks for the kind reply--I confess I was expecting
| something else!
|
| Edit: incidentally, (and not directing this at you
| personally!), if even one of the commenters spending
| their time complaining about flags on HN had let us know
| about this submission at hn@ycombinator.com, this would
| probably have happened earlier. I say "probably" because
| I haven't processed all the emails from the last 12 hours
| yet.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| For those sending emails:
|
| - Include the post item in your _subject_ line. That
| would be "42922647" for this particular story.
|
| - Include some idea of what the _problem_ is. For
| example, for a flagged story I 'd have "vouch" as the
| first word of my subject, followed by the article title.
|
| - I typically include the full article link (in body) and
| title (in subject) as insurance against my own fat-
| finger-fumbling.
|
| - A _brief_ description of the problem. E.g., "I'd like
| to vouch for this article".
|
| My own typical emails are for titles (frequent), link
| indirection, preferred sources, and occasional mentions
| of flagrant violations of HN comment guidelines (flagging
| tends to pick those up most of the time).
|
| For the latter, you can use the "replies" endpoint to see
| if a mod has previously responded to a given userID,
| e.g.:
|
| For dang replying to me: <https://news.ycombinator.com/re
| plies?id=dredmorbius&by=dang>
|
| (Yes, there's an admonishment in there if you dig back
| far enough, and I remember it.)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| dang, for my clarification, _why_ are you so clearly in
| favor of this being unflagged?
|
| I haven't been flagging these topics, but I have defended
| those who do, on the grounds of "not politics" and "leads
| to flamewar discussions". On the politics front, you have
| deliberately allowed more politics recently (or at least
| that's my perception) when you thought it was of general
| interest, or of tech interest. But the discussions are,
| perhaps less flame-full than expected, still somewhat
| incindiary (not least the discussions around flagging,
| with accusations up to being full-on fascists aimed at
| those who just don't want HN to be overrun by this).
|
| So: What made it clear to you that this was something
| that should _not_ be flagged?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Flags are applied by users in virtually all cases, not mods.
|
| Contentious topics, regardless of how merited a discussion
| might be, tend to draw flags inordinately. But again, you
| generally can't blame mods for this.
|
| (HN _does_ systemically penalise, or outright ban, numerous
| sites. I strongly doubt _Wired_ is in either category, though
| if you want to know for certain, you can email mods. For a
| number of fairly evident reasons the full list isn 't
| publicly disclosed, though pg provided some lists and
| extracts early in HN's histoyry, notably
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044> and
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984095>. There were
| 38,719 banned sites as of the end of 2012, a number which has
| doubtless increased.)
| segasaturn wrote:
| I didn't even mention mods in my (admittedly flamey)
| comment, I actually don't think the moderation of HN is a
| problem as much as the larger culture that comes with being
| tied to a SV finance company. But thanks for the info.
| nailer wrote:
| Why? The article is provably false - these are demonstrably not
| inexperienced engineers.
| andyg_blog wrote:
| Please elaborate? I define experience in terms of mostly
| "time" spent on something. And I consider any engineer with
| less than 5 yrs of experience as "inexperienced" regardless
| of whether they are talented or not. I've met many talented,
| but inexperienced engineers who still needed redirecting.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Pure political posts are usually flagged. Go to Reddit.
| Whatarethese wrote:
| They are adults. They work for the federal government. They
| deserve no privacy protections.
| electriclove wrote:
| I keep seeing a contradiction that I'm having a hard time
| explaining. On one hand, there are numerous comments saying
| that what these individuals are doing is illegal. On the other
| hand, there are comments saying they work for the federal
| government and so doxxing them is fair game.
|
| If they work for the government, how is what they are doing
| illegal?
| kelnos wrote:
| They don't actually work for the federal government. That's a
| big part of the problem. Trump has just given them access.
| electriclove wrote:
| I don't doubt what you are saying about Trump giving them
| access. Do we know how he did that? I guess I'd like to
| understand how we know if it was legal or not.
| kelnos wrote:
| It's the other way around. It's not legal unless these
| people are under an executive branch department or
| agency, with department heads appointed by the president,
| and confirmed by the Senate.
|
| These people have not all been vetted, hired, and granted
| security clearances appropriate to the level of access
| they've obtained.
|
| All of this is illegal.
| twen_ty wrote:
| Why is this flagged?
| fzliu wrote:
| I don't understand why the editors allowed the engineers' names
| to be made public. What did they hope to gain by doing this other
| than making them magnets for harassment and possibly threats?
| minimaxir wrote:
| The identities of the engineers are now unambigiously in the
| public interest as they now have an impact on the government.
| These aren't scrappy hackers trolling on internet forums.
| rozap wrote:
| They're public servants. Most public servants have their name,
| position, level, salary, etc listed in public datasets. There
| is no "doxxing" of public servants. This isn't a usenet.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Now do @libsoftiktok.
|
| Or Musk himself:
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858916546338590740
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858914228624924963
| fullshark wrote:
| The American people deserve to know what is happening in their
| government.
| tgv wrote:
| Isn't it free speech? Yes, that is a comment in style against
| the guidelines of this forum, but you've got to admire the
| irony.
| xnx wrote:
| Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of
| the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant
| since after WWII.
|
| Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right
| by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why
| those fences might be there.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Some people in the us government are _very_ afraid of China.
|
| Whether that fear is _justified_ is a totally different topic
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Why yes, let's let a totalitarian state become a superpower
| and start dictating the international order. I'm sure Xi
| Jinping will prove to be just as cuddly as Winnie the Pooh;
| nothing to worry about here.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| Should we become a totalitarian state in order to compete
| with another? That feels like McCarthyism/Cold War/
| "authoritarianism is fine as long as it isn't communism"
| vibes.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I can see why one would think that; China is very
| successful in the world market (or, getting there)
| despite it not having a free market as such (although it
| has freed up a lot); despite, or is it because, it being
| a totalitarian state it is quickly catching up to the US,
| being the 2nd economy of the world; they still have like
| $10 trillion to go, but charts like
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070632/gross-
| domestic-p... predict China will overtake the US by 2030
| at the current rate.
|
| And there's nothing the US can do. Cutting government
| spending and starting trade wars with neighbours is not
| going to stop it. Building up a totalitarian state with
| deep government influence into businesses is not going to
| work and will be actively resisted, since Big Government
| is so against the principles of the current regime's
| voters - and China has been working on this for decades
| now. Free market won't work either, as it's already very
| free in the US itself - but the aggression of US
| companies in their sales practices, tax dodging, and
| privacy violations have caused their foreign customers
| like Europe to raise the defenses.
|
| TL;DR, while I can see how totalitarianism can in theory
| create a strong economy, it isn't going to fly / work in
| the US.
| HotPotato787 wrote:
| I bet you're from the USA, so this may be hard for you to
| understand given your context, but as someone from LATAM,
| let me tell you: China can try really hard to be evil -
| they will have a LOT of work to be worse than the US.
| dekhn wrote:
| That's mainly because the USA's flaws have been covered
| in far more detail, and has also played a bigger role in
| Latin America. Once those countries start to deal with
| China more you may find your observations were biased.
| Daishiman wrote:
| How many democratically-elected democracies has China
| overthrown through bloody dictatorships?
| gowld wrote:
| CCP's dictatorship bloodily conquered China, population
| 1.4B, 20% of the entire planet's people.
|
| USA has also rescued hundreds of millions of people
| (including China!) from bloody conquerers, as in WW II.
| dekhn wrote:
| You're arguing with folks who just want to be angry, not
| listen to facts or sage observations.
|
| (it's not like the US is innocent; we have made a huge
| number of terrible mistakes attempting to maintain the
| Pax Americana. I fully acknowledge while being fairly
| sure that China could and would do far, far worse than
| the US)
| Daishiman wrote:
| This speculation that China could do far worse is totally
| unfounded given that they've had plenty of time to push
| buttons militarily that the US and the Soviet Union had
| already pushed with much less military power.
| greatpatton wrote:
| What democratic government did they overthrew? Because
| the ROC was no more democratic than the CCP... and Taiwan
| didn't have real election till the 1990.
| HotPotato787 wrote:
| You're right, but that's not the point. Being afraid that
| another state will become the leading superpower and
| "dictate the international order" when your oligarchical
| country has been doing the same thing for the past 70~
| years, and not in a "cuddly as Mickey Mouse" way, is
| HILARIOUS. The doublethink is off the charts! hahahaha.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| America has been truly 'oligarchal' for approximately the
| past one month, whereas China has been a totalitarian
| state for the better part of a century.
|
| Why not compare the Allies with the Axis next? The US was
| segregated, right, so... hey, same difference! /s
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| If this kind of take is what I missed by never installing
| TikTok, I don't regret it.
|
| Also, China did try it only a few decades ago. Murder,
| starvation, horrific torture, reeducation camps,
| brainwashed children denouncing their parents...
| impressively evil. Not that Tiananmen Square or Uyghur
| ethnic cleansing or kidnappings of expat dissidents are
| so much better.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| How many wars has china started in the past 100 years,
| knucklehead?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| No, they are not. This is a bizarre and highly illegal coup by
| Musk simply because he can, and who's going to enforce the law?
| Trump's corrupt DOJ?
| electriclove wrote:
| Can you explain what is illegal? Aren't the people that Wired
| doxxed actually being paid by the government?
| jeffgreco wrote:
| No, they are not actually part of the government,
| authorized by any act of Congress, nor paid by it.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| Yes they are. If they are part of DOGE then they are part
| of the executive office of the President, which would be
| considered a part of government
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/01/esta...
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| There is no such thing as DOGE. Any new "construct" and
| its directives need to be created and funded by Congress.
| Musk isn't even legally an employee of the federal
| government.
|
| The President can hire him and Congress could direct him
| to do what he's doing, but that step has been skipped.
|
| That's why this is massively illegal
| gowld wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_DOGE_Service
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Ef
| fic...
|
| It's not a legal Department.
|
| Trump's team is claiming that anything computerized falls
| under USDS purview, hence the parasitic hijacking of the
| US Digital Service.
| adunsulag wrote:
| They renamed the US Digital Services agency to be DOGE. I
| don't know if they can rename a branch of government but
| that's how they are doing it. Musk has then gotten Trump
| to appoint members of his initial DOGE as representatives
| in each of the departments (Treasury, Commerce, etc) so
| they can have acting authority.
|
| Trump's delegated Musk as a Special Government Operative
| and signed executive orders granting him and all his
| recommended employees security clearances w/o the
| requisite background checks that normally would be
| required.
|
| So they are acting within the government, they are
| employees, and they've been granted special waivers by
| Trump to do all this craziness.
|
| I think its going to come down more to the courts looking
| at whether these 'newly appointed employees' are breaking
| all kinds of laws passed by congress.
| __loam wrote:
| They're accessing extremely sensitive government systems
| that do things like disburse trillions of dollars in
| federal funding and trying to shut down agencies like
| USAID. I highly doubt they have the right clearances for
| that. Additionally, congress controls the purse, not the
| executive branch. Even if DOGE was an above board agency
| approved by congress, withholding money that congress
| approved is incredibly illegal and may lead to a real
| constitutional crisis.
| DannyBee wrote:
| I'll add to the other good reply - in our constitutional
| system, branches are not allowed to delegate significant
| amounts of their power to other entities.
|
| So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to
| some other entity. The courts, for example, cannot give
| their judicial power to others.
|
| Similarly, the president can't delegate significant
| executive authority to others.
|
| Where are the limits of this?
|
| It's usually about delegating significant amounts of power
| or functions that the constitution explicit calls out as
| being owned.
|
| But the limits are not tested often, so not tons of cases.
|
| In the case of agencies, the executive branch also has no
| power in the first place to either set up, or disband,
| agencies. This is a power that congress owns. They can't,
| per above, delegate it, even if they wanted to.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| > So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws
| to some other entity
|
| But this is standard practice, no? The US system is
| rather unusual compared to Parliamentary systems in that
| Congress delegates precisely this power to the executive
| all the time.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's muddy but the Executive isn't making laws it makes
| regulations constrained by and implementing the laws
| passed by Congress. It's all nominally rooted in some law
| the Congress passed and instead of just making those
| interpretations known when they sue you because you're
| using a financial instrument to defraud people there's a
| whole process of making it known how the Executive
| believe the old laws relate to new situations. Congress
| has neither the bandwidth nor the knowledge to keep
| abreast of every novel maneuver around the law so they
| say this type of thing is illegal and this agency is in
| charge of saying what type new things are.
|
| A great example of that are with various toxins and
| pollutants, there's no system in which we can go through
| the whole process of making a new law every time we
| discover that some miracle chemical is giving people
| giga-cancer. Instead Congress tasks an agency full of
| experts to decide what safe levels of the giga-cancer
| causing chemical is and makes sure we only ingest
| slightly below the LD50 of that so we can statistically
| live.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Yeah, but it's a distinction without a difference because
| some of the "fill in the blanks" stuff Congress does is
| so vague that executive agencies in practice write plenty
| of new laws from scratch. It's not just adding specific
| items to lists.
|
| And then there's also plenty of cases where the
| constitution is just ignored without consequence. The CDC
| unilaterally announced payments to landlords were
| suspended during COVID, something it had no power to do.
| It didn't cause much of a fuss.
| srv02 wrote:
| I was reading https://apnews.com/article/usaid-foreign-
| aid-freeze-trump-pe... this morning and that article
| noted that USAID was apparently established by JFK.
| Wikipedia confirms that ("... USAID was subsequently
| established by the executive order of President John F.
| Kennedy ..."), and although USAID website is down right
| now, https://web.archive.org/web/20241229151048/https://w
| ww.usaid... seems to confirm that too.
|
| I asked ChatGPT and it said many other agencies were
| established by EOs (e.g. FEMA, NSA, NASA, EPA). Quote
| from ChatGPT: "Many agencies later received congressional
| authorization, but their initial formation or
| restructuring was often directed by executive orders." So
| it seems like the last paragraph is incorrect.
| DannyBee wrote:
| It's not wrong, it just depends on what you consider an
| "agency".
|
| If you mean "any organized entity that contains federal
| employees", by that definition, sure lots of "agencies"
| exist that are created by the different branches.
|
| If you mean "something that can create binding
| regulations that interpret or implement law" - no, those
| have to be authorized by congress in some fashion. Even
| if they are run by the executive later, which is also
| somewhat muddy.
|
| etc
|
| Traditionally, they agencies are the things that have
| officers who are nominated by the president and approved
| by the senate, and have useful power as a result :)
|
| I'll also point out - even the ones that are entirely
| created by other branches (executive, judicial) have to
| be funded by congress one way or the other.
|
| This includes all the ones you listed.
|
| They cannot legally spend money otherwise - ""no money
| shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
| Appropriations made by law".
|
| Sometimes they are _created_ with a small, more general
| emergency appropriation or something, but again, if they
| want to spend money, that also requires them to be
| authorized and appropriated by congress.
|
| Some of the more interesting questions that we have
| thankfully never had to answer for real (outside of
| blustering) is around various branches using their power
| to deliberately interfere with the basic functioning of
| other branches (except as authorized by the constitution,
| which, for example, says congress can set the
| jurisdiction of courts except for the supreme court.
| Where we've come close to it has mostly been around
| appropriations designed to force another branch to do or
| not do a certain thing. We may come a lot closer the next
| few years depending on what happens.
|
| The constitutional limit is easy (none of them is more
| powerful than the other, and may not interfere with the
| basic sovereignty of each other), but the lines are not.
| jeffgreco wrote:
| Not sure why this is being downvoted as Musk & co's actions
| are clearly bizarre and illegal.
| Cornbilly wrote:
| The downvotes are because Musk has a large personality
| cult, especially on tech oriented sites like HN.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Also because they can easily afford to completely change
| the voting system on these sites lol
| nomel wrote:
| Do you have a reference for "clearly", from case law or a
| lawyer/judges perspective? IANAL, and I don't see any
| commenting here.
| skywhopper wrote:
| What do you think is going on exactly that there's any
| remote chance that someone who isn't a political
| appointee or employee of the government can be given the
| power to stop all payments to federal contractors or
| abolish Congressionally established agencies? The
| President doesn't have those powers, much less Elon Musk.
| nomel wrote:
| I already said I'm not a lawyer. My perspective and
| opinion aren't relevant.
| dekhn wrote:
| You don't have to be a lawyer to have perspective or
| opinion on the law. It just means you're probably less
| technically educated than most lawyers.
| affinepplan wrote:
| that's a little self-flagellatory. I don't think it takes
| a whole lot of legal education to recognize that what is
| happening is not legal.
|
| most lawyers aren't constitutional scholars either. do
| you really think an expertise in personal injury law in
| Rhode Island makes one more qualified to recognize that
| an unelected billionaire shutting down organizations
| without any Congressional approval or appointment is
| illegal?
| bende511 wrote:
| have you ever read the constitution, or thought about
| governance for even 5 minutes? do you have any
| understanding of the history of this country, or do we
| need to direct the nearest 1st grader to your location to
| explain it to you?
| fifilura wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I read this as unnecessary
| hyperbole to an honest question.
| bende511 wrote:
| its not an honest question. what is happening is so
| clearly and obviously illegal and unconstitutional that
| literal children understand it.
| raptorfactor wrote:
| Then why not just explain it? It would be far more
| persuasive than acting rabid.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't get how this could be a coup, Trump was duly elected,
| and he's delegated this power to Musk. It could certainly be
| bizarre and highly illegal, but to me, the essential piece of
| a coup is unseating the rightful leadership, and there's no
| element of that at present.
|
| Judging from his last term, at some point Trump is likely to
| get tired of Musk, kick him out of the administration,
| declare he always thought Musk was a bad guy, and pretend
| like he never listened to him. If Musk tries to stay in after
| that, it could be a coup.
| XorNot wrote:
| Hitler was duly elected. It took 54 days from the time he
| took power to end democracy in Germany.
| immibis wrote:
| I don't think you're allowed to say that on Hacker News.
| watwut wrote:
| This will be downvoted, but it is mostly true. Altrough
| that election was highly violent, there was large
| suppression going on.
| neogodless wrote:
| Seizing legislative power, which up until about 7 days ago
| included all control over federal funding, for the
| executive branch is a coup.
| skywhopper wrote:
| This isn't Trump's power to delegate. Congress dictates
| spending, not the President. Usurping that power from
| Congress is the coup.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| Separation of powers, checks and balances. The executive
| branch taking powers from the legislative branch with the
| judicial branch approving can be seen as a coup.
| watwut wrote:
| If it is illegal, then it can be coup. You are elected to
| act within the law.
|
| Democracy becomes non democracy by illegal acta, typically.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_coup
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Don't forget that Trump is approaching 80. I don't know how
| well he will be able to keep up.
| dekhn wrote:
| I would use the term 'purge' for what's happened so far,
| along with 'seizure'. the coup would come after the purge,
| once musk has full control of the monetary system and the
| republican congressional leadership and the courts have
| made it clear they won't do anything to stop Trump.
| kelnos wrote:
| Trump cannot legally delegate his power to just anyone.
| Delegations of power are done through appointed positions
| that must be confirmed by the Senate.
| vkou wrote:
| He also doesn't have the power to just shut down a part
| of the government created and funded by an act of
| congress.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| It looks to me like this is the natural outcome of the
| executive branch deciding what mandates from congress it
| will uphold. I.E. deciding which laws to focus on
| enforcing and which one's to have lax/non-existent focus.
|
| Until Congress grows a spine and starts legislating
| again, the executive will continue to run rampant.
| stetrain wrote:
| I'm not sure how having Congress "start legislating
| again" would be effective if the executive branch can
| simply ignore that legislation under your interpretation.
| stetrain wrote:
| > A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from Spanish
| autogolpe) or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'etat
| in which a political leader, having come to power through
| legal means, stays in power through illegal means through
| the actions of themselves and/or their supporters.[1] The
| leader may dissolve or render powerless the national
| legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers.
| Other measures may include annulling the nation's
| constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head
| of government assume dictatorial powers.[2][3]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
|
| For a recent example see the events in South Korea with
| President Yoon.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| But which of those actually fits the present situation?
| Four years haven't passed. Congress is not dissolved.
| It's literally just a bunch of executive orders and
| firings within the executive branch, which, last time I
| checked Article II, is under the authority of the
| president.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| First the coup starts happening, then the coup happens
| stetrain wrote:
| I think "unlawfully assume extraordinary powers" may
| apply.
|
| It's certainly debatable, but shutting down agencies
| created and authorized by Congress and refusing to
| distribute funding legislated by Congress seems to be an
| overstep of executive power, and therefore an undermining
| of Congress's power.
|
| My main point was that ousting an incumbent or defying an
| election is not a requirement for something to be a coup,
| as the previous comment was suggesting. A legitimately
| elected official seizing more power than they are legally
| entitled to is a form of coup.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| There is certainly a transfer of power going on, but
| whether that's _unlawful_ will be for the courts to
| decide.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's so many laws they're breaking it's hard to name
| them all and that's part of the point, flood the zone with
| misbehavior and it becomes difficult to track and react to
| it all. The President is not a little tyrant able to do
| whatever he wants with the Executive Branch just because he
| was elected, the idea that he is and should be is a bizarre
| new reading ideologically motivated to allow someone like
| Trump to tear anything they don't like to shreds and only
| keep the parts they want.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| It's only democracy when _I_ like it.
| stetrain wrote:
| Conversely: It's only an overstep of constitutional power
| when _I_ don't like it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Whether Trump was duly (?) elected is still up for debate,
| after all he's a convicted felon, an insurrectionist,
| there's investigations into voter fraud, and foreign
| interference / propaganda that helped get him elected
| again.
|
| He can't just delegate power to an unelected civilian like
| this.
|
| To invoke Godwin's law, Hitler was democratically elected,
| Austria democratically voted to join the Reich, the people
| of the UK voted in favor of leaving Europe. Just because it
| doesn't technically meet your definition of a coup, doesn't
| mean it's a hostile takeover of the country's government
| and systems. But if you'd rather argue semantics that's
| fine too. If this keeps up, the US government will shut
| down by March and people will die - or, more will, as
| there's a link between the plane crashes and the Trump
| admin's cutting down on already understaffed air control
| staff.
| bende511 wrote:
| In a just world, these kids will end up in jail for a long
| time, and Musk for the rest of his life. In a less just
| world, well, I don't want to get banned
| afavour wrote:
| Never appropriate. The actions are entirely unconstitutional.
| If the US decided to disband USAID it would have to be an act
| of congress, unelected friends of the president don't come
| close to being able to make that call.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Doesn't matter if laws don't matter and aren't enforced.
| afavour wrote:
| OP asked "is it appropriate". Will they get away with it?
| Maybe. But that doesn't mean it's appropriate.
| mring33621 wrote:
| we keep having side debates about 'appropriate',
| 'ethical', 'traditional', 'conventional', 'legal',
| 'moral', whatever, but the fact remains that you can do
| whatever you want, until someone else stops you.
|
| No one is stopping the people at the top of the US
| Government from doing what they want. In fact, there is a
| whole apparatus in place, at this point, to protect their
| ability to continue to operate unchecked.
| jaggederest wrote:
| In a sensu stricto it's illegal, but practically and
| regrettably they are able to make that call, because though
| there are rules against it, unless the sergeant at arms of
| the senate goes out and handcuffs them, nobody is going to
| stop them. When the executive branch and the judiciary both
| decide to ignore the legislative branch, what is the
| legislative branch going to do?
| jghn wrote:
| Not to mention the majority of the legislative branch is at
| a minimum going to pretend they're all for it
| ethagnawl wrote:
| > going to pretend they're all for it
|
| ... right up until they pretend they're not and never
| were when the political winds shift again. Though, maybe
| the winds no longer shift in these parts ...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Send the US Capitol Police? Might makes right apparently,
| so why would you not act as such?
| jaggederest wrote:
| Who controls the US Capitol Police? I remind you that
| they obeyed Trump during the January 6th insurrection.
|
| And of course, the executive branch has everyone from the
| FBI on down, you're not going to win a shooting (or
| shoving) war with them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Well, we are in a very volatile place if members of
| Congress can successfully be barred from government
| property by Elon Musk.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/newsguy.bsky.social/post/3lhcadi
| 7oy...
| cle wrote:
| This seems like an inevitable outcome of indefinite
| growth in executive power.
|
| > If there are no consequences, the law is immaterial.
|
| That is exactly what I mean by "growth in executive
| power".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I disagree. This is the outcome of someone who doesn't
| believe in the law acting accordingly. If there are no
| consequences, the law is immaterial. If the law is to
| remain intact, show up with force and enforce it. Checks
| and balances within the branches of federal government.
|
| Edit: _DOJ Says Administration Doesnt Have to Follow
| Court Order Halting Funding Freeze_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923302
|
| So much for checks and balances I suppose.
| vkou wrote:
| It's the inevitable outcome of a judiciary packed with
| lifetime appointments who put the traitor who appointed
| them over country.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| It's called a coup.
|
| How long until Elon dismisses Trump? Let that sink in...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Musk is a convenient fool for the trump administration.
|
| He will be cast aside and scapegoated in less than
| 6months.
|
| He might end up in jail in 2-4 years.
| beAbU wrote:
| The Musk-Trump breakup will truly be the breakup of the
| century.
| modriano wrote:
| > He might end up in jail in 2-4 years.
|
| You think the Trump administration is going to prosecute
| the wealthiest person on earth? Attention and wealth are
| the currencies of Trumpian politics, and I would be
| shocked to see Trump try to fight someone with such a
| massive ability to direct attention (via control over
| twitter and through having hundreds of billions of
| dollars).
| zombiwoof wrote:
| If Trump can make money on it, he will put anyone in
| jail. Musk is such an easy target, Trump could take him
| down in a heartbeat , freeze his assets and put ownership
| of his companies in his control. And let me state this as
| clear as I can: this would all be perfectly legal
| "official acts"
| jaggederest wrote:
| > we are in a very volatile place
|
| Understatement of (this) century at least.
| gortok wrote:
| > Who controls the US Capitol Police? I remind you that
| they obeyed Trump during the January 6th insurrection.
|
| [Citation Needed]. Seriously. Heck, even a cursory read
| of the Wikipedia article would tell you they are
| controlled by the Legislative branch.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_Polic
| e
|
| > The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal
| law enforcement agency in the United States with
| nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the
| United States Congress within the District of Columbia
| and throughout the United States and its territories. It
| answers to the Capitol Police Board and is the only full-
| service federal law enforcement agency appointed by the
| legislative branch of the federal government of the
| United States.
|
| Misinformation is infectious.
| immibis wrote:
| The legislative branch can recall both the president and
| the judges, but it won't do that because it is happy with
| what they are doing.
|
| Even a Democrat landslide in two years wouldn't change it,
| because almost all Democratic politicians are unwilling to
| cause a fuss (or they are secretly happy with what the
| other branches are doing).
|
| But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it
| really ethical to intervene in that?
| afavour wrote:
| > But the people are getting what they voted for
|
| I think that's extremely debatable. Last I checked
| "unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer
| information" was not an election topic.
|
| This is true on all sides of course, folks who voted for
| Obama didn't vote for drone strikes against US citizens
| either. Winning a presidential election does not mean
| four years of dictatorship and silencing of criticism.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| We (supposedly) elected a king. He's exempt from all rule
| of law save spineless congressmen.
|
| Whether most of the people doing so were smart enough to
| understand it is a good question, but the fact is we put
| a Peron-like figure into office, and only age will likely
| make him leave.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| FWIW, people thought that when Obama ran around saying
| "these extrajudicial drone strikes are illegal" they
| assumed that he would end them rather than do what he
| actually did - make them legal.
|
| Power Wars by Charlie Savage covers this rhetorical zig
| zag.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _I think that's extremely debatable. Last I checked
| "unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer
| information" was not an election topic_
|
| Gee, I'm shocked, _shocked_ , that a guy who stole large
| numbers of classified documents on his way out the door
| and stuffed them in unused bathrooms in his house(s)
| would fail to safeguard confidential taxpayer
| information.
|
| You're right, it wasn't an election topic. Nobody who had
| any power cared to make it one, nobody who cared had the
| power... and nobody else was paying attention.
| _petronius wrote:
| > But the people are getting what they voted for, so is
| it really ethical to intervene in that?
|
| No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear
| mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes
| unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or
| constitutional.
|
| Whether anyone with the relevant power chooses to punish
| these violations, is a different matter. The choice since
| January 2020 has been to repeatedly do nothing in the
| face of illegal action, but winning elections doesn't
| make criminal action magically non-criminal.
| avmich wrote:
| > No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear
| mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes
| unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or
| constitutional.
|
| Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this,
| right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?
|
| The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Why are they operating illegally, then? If "the will of
| the people" is unified enough to change the Constitution,
| why not... do that?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Why go through all the trouble of amending the
| Constitution when you can just do whatever you want
| because nobody's going to stop you? Suppose Trump
| declared himself king tomorrow. Who with any power is
| going to push back? It doesn't matter if it's against the
| law if nobody cares about the law.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I was responding to this:
|
| _> Playing devil 's advocate - but the people asked for
| this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution
| then?_
|
| _> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn 't it?_
| dekhn wrote:
| Amendments require approval of 3/4 of states and there
| are still enough states to vote against. Also what
| amendment, specifically? That Trump can be president more
| times? Exert more power? Eliminate opposing political
| parties? Legislate pi to be 3?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yes, that is my point.
| beAbU wrote:
| Is constitutional referendums also managed on a FPTP
| electoral system?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You're saying that elected officials may operate as kings
| ordained by the will of the people. But they were willed
| into office, not willed into supreme power.
|
| There are still laws. But you make a case for "might is
| right"
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| That's only the case in a pure direct democracy, which
| isn't what the US is.
|
| There's a process for amending the constitution. If they
| want to amend the constitution, follow the process. Even
| if they only follow it once to change the constitutional
| requirements and reduce the threshold going forward.
|
| We are (theoretically) a nation that is governed by laws,
| with equal protection for all under those laws. This
| creates stability and predictability, which encourages
| commerce and development.
|
| When you go all Calvinball with government, you destroy
| that stability and predictability, and investment drops.
| jaggederest wrote:
| One team follows the rules, the other team doesn't care
| about rules and doesn't follow them. Guess which one
| struggles to achieve their goals.
|
| This is the predictable outcome of the last 50 years of
| US politics, of the subversion of the rule of law and
| decency. The southern strategy, the 1994 Newt Gingrich
| legislative session, the failure of the supreme court to
| allow recounts in Bush V Gore, the teaparty, september
| 11th. All of it has only served to entrench and reward
| conservative opposition to the rule of law.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > the people asked for this, right?
|
| No, not by sufficient margin.
|
| Even assuming every state would decide this direct
| question the same way as they did the Presidency this
| past election, a Constitutional amendment requires
| ratification by 38 states.
|
| > The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
|
| Ultimately it has to be, but not always in the moment.
| The bar to Constitutional amendment is high for a reason.
| vkou wrote:
| 1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has
| plenty of shills to advocate for him.
|
| 2. 49.8% of the popular vote is enough to elect an
| executive, but not enough to overturn the constitution,
| which places clear limits on the power of that executive.
| The more radical the change, the larger the consensus
| that it requires. In order for the executive to legally
| receive this power, you need a supermajority of states.
|
| But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your
| side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
| ikrenji wrote:
| constitution is deliberately a law that is hard to
| change. it's not meant to be amended every election cycle
| tyre wrote:
| > they are secretly happy with what the other branches
| are doing
|
| Knowing people in democratic politics, this isn't true.
| The root of the problem is that they don't understand or
| prioritize power.
|
| They have overwhelming support for every major issue:
| abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes,
| healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of
| them. And yet they lose. Minority on the Supreme Court,
| house, senate, presidency.
|
| Think about Obama's first presidency. Sixty senators.
| What happens if they:
|
| 1. Make DC a state. That's two senators. I don't think
| they could get Puerto Rico.
|
| 2. Make Election Day a federal holiday. That spikes
| turnout, which benefits democrats (see: advantage in
| every major issue.)
|
| That's the type of thinking that gives and maintains
| power. But they don't think that way until it's panic
| time and already over.
| avmich wrote:
| Having power for the purpose of having power isn't too
| meaningful. In democracies parties (already questionable
| concept) should ideally not worry about power, but worry
| about reaching useful goals.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's hard to reach a useful goal without power to do so.
|
| Also, think game-theoretically (or practically). If you
| don't dedicate at least some effort to gain and retain
| power, you will be displaced by those who do. The first
| priority of a pilot is to stay in the air, the second is
| flying in the right direction.
| smallerfish wrote:
| https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-
| oba...
| telotortium wrote:
| > They have overwhelming support for every major issue
|
| Obviously not, or they wouldn't have lost.
|
| From a purely power-based standpoint, Obama probably
| should have pushed more in 2008. But that's the only time
| he could have done it - even passing ACA got the
| Democrats severely punished in the 2010 Congressional
| elections.
| felixgallo wrote:
| you may be undervaluing the effect of conservative
| billionaires owning every conceivable propaganda outlet
| and mashing on the fear, racism, and division buttons
| like they were going out of style.
| roenxi wrote:
| The major issues [0] included things like the economy,
| foreign policy, violent crime and immigration. Which
| generally favour Trump & the right wing. I don't
| understand the lack of strategic empathy among some on
| the left for being realistic about what people are
| focusing on. The election was close to a coin flip,
| obviously the democrats didn't have a big advantage.
|
| Climate change might not even be a major issue any more,
| people are cooling to it.
|
| [0]
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-
| and-t...
| modriano wrote:
| > Obviously not, or they wouldn't have lost.
|
| That doesn't follow. It would be true if everyone voted
| on a correct and comprehensive understanding of the
| issues and where candidates actually stood on issues, but
| a massive proportion of the population just votes on
| vibes and is completely ignorant of actual policies or
| issues. Trump is objectively more responsible for the
| overturning of Roe v Wade than any other person, but ask
| a swing voter and it's pretty likely they won't know how
| Trump has anything to do with Roe v Wade and think he's
| pretty tolerant of abortion.
|
| People don't vote on actual policy. They vote on vibes
| and other heuristics.
| CPLX wrote:
| When you ask yourself why the Democratic Party doesn't in
| fact do things that you think would be obvious ways to
| further it's goals and purpose, over and over again, for
| generations, you might want to start pondering this
| concept:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_
| wha...
| mring33621 wrote:
| the evidence is in front of us
|
| the Dem leadership has done nothing substantial about
| their supposedly spotlight issues for 50 years.
|
| there is a reason for this
| jghn wrote:
| > They have overwhelming support for every major issue
|
| The problem is for a lot of these this only becomes
| apparent when pollsters remove all context and political
| baggage. For instance, ask people if they like
| Obamacare/ACA and results are mixed. But go down the line
| and ask about the constituent pieces of it all and you'll
| see positive support.
|
| The Democrats have completely and utterly failed at
| packaging these things up with a message that resonates
| with the people. Instead they've allowed their opponents
| to demonize their stances. And that's how we wind up with
| people holding signs that say things like "Keep
| government out of Medicare"
| gowld wrote:
| The truth is fighting with one hand behind its back when
| it is fighting lies.
|
| Creation is harder than destruction.
| intended wrote:
| Stop blaming the dems.
|
| The Repubs found an infinite money/PR glitch.
|
| 1) They create an issue at Fox. 2) Sell it breathlessly
| 3) congress person brings it up in the legislature,
| points to news reports as proof 4) pass a new bill, or
| stall another 5) Refer to these actions on Fox, showing
| it as proof. 6) go to the polls after creating the arena
| you want to fight in.
|
| Add in the internet and the media advertising incentives,
| and you have escalating sensationalism and extremism.
|
| Post watergate, the Republican strategists decided to win
| at all costs. There is no messaging that is "nice", and
| if dems are aggressive they get penalized for it. Because
| many people didn't believe this was true. It was too
| outlandish.
| jghn wrote:
| I understand why things are the way they are. And the
| dems are pretty fucked now. Whining about it doesn't help
| though, and it won't get them out of this mess. But
| neither will just saying "we have better ideas".
|
| They need to come up with a solution that'll actually
| work. Instead they seem to keep punching themselves in
| the face.
| jandrese wrote:
| To be fair, the Democrats message extensively about
| things like the Affordable Care Act, but most people
| don't see those messages because the liberal media only
| wants to talk about migrant caravans, egg prices
| (sometimes), and immigrants committing crimes.
| nine_k wrote:
| During these elections, Dems lost even the support of the
| precariate, the least wealthy who traditionally voted for
| left wing. No wonder actually, because they largely
| stopped to represent the the interests of these groups.
| When I see a black worker in a small grocery store
| wearing a MAGA hat, I understand that Dems have failed
| miserably. All the DEI boards did not represent interests
| of that guy.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > They have overwhelming support for every major issue:
| abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes,
| healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of
| them. And yet they lose.
|
| The dems spent this last election cycle distancing,
| downplaying, and reversing each of these issues. Is it
| any wonder why they are losing? Rather than play to their
| strengths and party positions they endlessly and
| relentlessly try and shift right.
|
| Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't
| really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala
| was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun
| owner.
|
| The Kamala/Biden campaign took painstaking measures to
| try and quash every single one of these issues rather
| than centering it in the discussion. Instead, they wasted
| an entire campaign talking about how much Liz Cheney
| loves them.
|
| Even now, Schumer is saying "let's just sit back and let
| people watch what's happening" rather than pressing his
| advantage and Jeffries is saying "It's not great, but God
| is in control".
|
| Dems desperately hate their base. That's why they lose.
| They simply transparent in the fact that the only thing
| that matters is corporate campaign contributions.
| xienze wrote:
| > How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk
| about how she's a proud gun owner.
|
| On the contrary, they very much want to "control" guns
| out of existence. But they know during election season
| they have to tone down the rhetoric in the hopes that
| people forget everything they've said about guns during
| the last three years.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I do not believe US policy makers and thought leaders
| think FGM is a good thing in the US
|
| This may not occur to you, you assume other people are
| like yourself. That they work in an office and perform a
| similar job as your own. Given that scenario, if the
| turnout of Democrats is lower than you expect, the only
| reasonable conclusion is that some bosses are less
| reasonable than your own, and ducking out for 40 minutes
| to go vote at 2pm just isn't allowed! And therefor if it
| was a federal holiday, their office jobs would just call
| it off for that whole day, they'd vote, and the
| Republicans would never win an election ever again.
|
| However, the people who would vote for Democrats don't
| have such jobs. The jobs they have are menial, they are
| working all hours of the day and night, _someone_ has to
| cover that shift on election day, and if somehow one or
| another of them does have an office job, there 's no
| guarantee that it will be a paid holiday at that
| employer. My own employer ignores several federal
| holidays and instead gives us off days for Easter (Good
| Friday) and some other Christian holidays.
|
| Your political opponents would hoof it through a warzone
| to cast their ballot. Having to vote early (or late, or
| apply for a mail-in) isn't why your numbers are down.
| modriano wrote:
| > But the people are getting what they voted for, so is
| it really ethical to intervene in that?
|
| Did people vote for this? I thought people were voting on
| the price of eggs. Trump dishonestly disavowed the
| Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ghostbuster
| containment system of horrible policies when people
| started becoming aware of the horrors that were in there.
| Sure, Trump is releasing those demons on us now, but a
| lot of voters claimed to believe Trump's dishonest
| disavowals.
|
| Trump wouldn't have won if he had been honest about what
| he would do. Voters didn't choose *this*.
| _petronius wrote:
| Impeach! That's the prerogative, and the enforcement
| mechanism, of the legislative branch.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Trump has already been impeached a couple of times. That
| definitely isn't happening with a conservative majority
| in both houses of congress.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Dems should bring up articles of impeachment yet again.
| It will fail in the house and if it doesn't the senate
| won't convict. But that's really not the point right now.
| The dems need to get off their asses and actually message
| that "hey, this isn't right or normal" and make the
| republicans defend the behavior.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Why? To what end? How will any of that have any effect in
| the next two years, at least? Nobody elected Elon or any
| of the DOGE people.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah. Frankly driving a wedge between Trump and Elon
| would be the more effective political strategy, since it
| wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of them to
| spectacularly fall out, and Trump couldn't care less if
| DOGE exists or not as long as he's getting praise from
| the right quarters
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It's inevitable that the two will break up, but it'll be
| _after_ trump has used him to do all the deeply unpopular
| hacking apart of social safety nets that he wants to do.
| He 's a useful idiot. A _very rich_ useful idiot.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| What a convenient scapegoat to have when we eventually
| feel the ruinous effects of these decisions. "I trusted
| ELLEN and he couldn't get the job done, THATS why I FIRED
| him"
| 20after4 wrote:
| I'm not convinced that the democrats (most of them
| anyway) are actually apposed to what is happening. Both
| parties seem to have largely the same goals just
| preferring to use different tactics in order to achieve
| them.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Waste of time and really achieves nothing other than
| theatrics. I don't doubt they'll do it though. Theatrics
| is really all the Dems ever do these days.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.
|
| They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't
| get legislation to the floor; they can't call
| investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers.
| All they can do is make a case against the ruling party.
| And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear
| it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them _not_
| to be theatrical.
|
| All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for
| the destruction they are bringing to the country and the
| world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other
| levers they can pull.
| intended wrote:
| The dems have been doing that forever, and people are
| tired of hearing it.
|
| Plus this is what a good chunk of voters _want_. They
| want the system gutted, 'inefficiency' removed, the swamp
| drained. If it costs lives, well so be it. It's a
| sacrifice we have to make to make america great again.
|
| People in SV are championing this outcome. Stopping this
| is reactionary, an alternate path will be found.
| Sharlin wrote:
| In case anyone needed even more reasons to despise
| "people in SV".
| dgfitz wrote:
| Nah, heh, nobody needed any additional reasons.
| reissbaker wrote:
| How exactly are Democrats going to do that considering
| they don't control the House or the Senate? All that's
| required to block impeachment is a simple majority to
| kill the resolution. The Republicans control a House
| majority and can schedule those kill votes whenever they
| want. They don't need to defend anything, they can just
| vote to kill the measure.
|
| Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it
| past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled
| by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have
| no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the
| midterms.
|
| Elections have consequences.
| brookst wrote:
| Too simplistic.
|
| Democrats can't force an impeachment, but they can try to
| find a handful of Republicans who still care about the
| rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day,
| every day.
|
| Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can
| ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just
| how authoritarian the US has become.
| reissbaker wrote:
| America is a democracy, and the Trump won the election,
| and the Republicans won the majority of elections in the
| House and the Senate, and by virtue of those elections
| they also control the Judiciary Committee by a wide
| margin which can block attempts at impeachment. Trump is
| not going to be impeached less than a month into his term
| for doing exactly the kind of things he said he was going
| to do during his campaign. The best bet for Democrats is
| to focus on winning the midterms. Impeachment is not a
| serious option.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Okay, another nitpick, but it's not because the majority
| is _conservative_, is it? If they truly voted from
| conservative principles, _some_ possible actions of the
| administration could offend them enough to impeach. It's
| probably more correct to say that it definitely isn't
| happening with a loyalist (MAGA) majority?
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| In the US, "conservative" is synonymous with "Republican"
| and "Republican" is (so far, at least) synonymous with
| "MAGA loyalist", so it's really splitting hairs to call
| out the alleged difference.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| This is what US Conservatism looks like. You get with
| Trump's program or you get primaried out. Simple as that.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I mean you could impeach him again. But that's doesn't
| really do anything other than wave a finger at him and
| says "Naughty naughty".
|
| Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected
| office again after being impeached a few times during his
| previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his
| impeachment to force him out of office and that requires
| a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could
| kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get
| impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress
| defending his actions that he would still be president. I
| mean he's already a convicted criminal.
|
| That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going
| crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At
| worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he
| already proved that nothing can stop him.
| ornornor wrote:
| It's fascinating to watch, from a distance. If I was a US
| resident, or worse: US citizen, I'd be terrified.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Your politicians are watching from a distance too, and
| taking note of what works.
| bigiain wrote:
| Fiveeyes resident here, and not quite "terrified", but at
| least "deeply concerned".
|
| "The rest of the world" will not carry on unscathed if
| the worse end of the range of possible outcomes for the
| US happen.
|
| (I'm deeply curious about how fiveeyes intelligence
| operations with Canada are going right now.)
| iancmceachern wrote:
| We are
| efitz wrote:
| I'm a US citizen, and I am thrilled and delighted. I am
| WAY less terrified at the dismantling of the bureaucracy
| than I was of the manifold abuses that it has carried on
| for decades, and in particular, I am now WAY less
| terrified that the bureaucracy will be weaponized against
| people whose only crime was to disagree with the party in
| power.
| lubujackson wrote:
| ...except for that funny little bill making it illegal to
| vote against Trump's whims: https://www.snopes.com/fact-
| check/trump-tennessee-voting-fel...
|
| This is a direct escalation and weaponization against
| "people whose only crime was to disagree with the party
| in power," is it not?
|
| Or have you been so "abused" by the pronoun mafia you can
| no longer see straight?
| efitz wrote:
| What does a mixed-truth Snopes article about a dumb law
| proposed in Tennessee have to do with anything? The law
| sounds dumb and I would be wary of anyone proposing or
| voting for such a law, but I'm not a citizen of Tennessee
| so ???
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > I am now WAY less terrified that the bureaucracy will
| be weaponized against people whose only crime was to
| disagree with the party in power.
|
| As a bisexual queer lefty computer programmer I wish I
| shared that confidence, as does ever queer or trans
| person I know.
| proggy wrote:
| Giving up the power to do the one thing you are
| constitutionally permitted to do, just because it doesn't
| work for one particularly teflon-coated individual, is
| incredibly short-sighted.
|
| Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up
| on impeachment would cede _even more_ power to the
| executive branch.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The Senate didn't find guilt last time. If they do find
| guilt, the office is stripped. I don't think it's
| happening anytime soon, but the failed impeachment
| doesn't really speak to the consequences of a successful
| one.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| He'll wear an impeachment as a badge of honor. The rule
| of law is a mostly self-supporting system. When nearly
| the entire edifice of government stops being concerned
| with it, the system breaks irreparably. We're looking at
| nothing less than the fall of the Roman empire in speed
| run, in my opinion.
| epgui wrote:
| RIP rule of law.
| namaria wrote:
| The rule of law is always contingent on the good will of
| the powerful. RIP USA. They are dismantling the country,
| not an abstract concept. Godspeed my American friends, I
| hope you live in a strong state, can get to one, or have
| a second nationality.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| It doesn't take much for a successful coup. Really just
| the right amount of people to sit on their hands and
| think that maybe someone else will do something to stop
| it.
| namaria wrote:
| Real. Essa galerinha vai estilhacar os EUA, vagabundo....
| nwatson wrote:
| Ore por nos, nesta hora da nossa estupidez. Na verdade,
| foram muitas outras horas de estupidez, mas o sofrer
| comeca agora.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Apt sentiment. Translation:
|
| Pray for us in this hour of our stupidity. In truth,
| there have been many other hours of stupidity, but the
| suffering begins now.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Translation, for convenience:
|
| Real. This bunch is going to tear the US apart, Vagabundo
| vlan0 wrote:
| At some point the military needs to remember their oath to
| the constitution. And act accordingly
| p3rls wrote:
| Typically you use uprising/insurrection against the right
| and you coup the left as the military is usually more
| right than the average citizen.
| vlan0 wrote:
| Typically yes. But I don't know what about this is
| typical. Trump will throw military under the bus just as
| fast. It's up to them to realize that.
| roywashere wrote:
| In turkey this has been the other way around! Us does not
| look so much different now
| reissbaker wrote:
| Why do you think it's illegal? USAID was established by an
| executive order by JFK, not by Congress; Congress only
| mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it
| specifically be USAID. Closing it _and not replacing it
| with anything_ would be illegal, but closing it doesn 't
| seem obviously illegal.
|
| Edit: not only that, but they didn't close USAID entirely:
| they just closed the USAID headquarters, and installed
| Marco Rubio as the new head of USAID. While this may or may
| not be desirable, I don't see how this is actually illegal.
| The specific organization of USAID was established by
| executive order; this is one of the many consequences of
| the Republicans winning control of the executive branch of
| government.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| They're not replacing it with anything. They're defunding
| it.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Any plays on who is gonna win the Super Bowl? If I were
| you I'd find a betting market and put ALL my money on
| your claim.
| brookst wrote:
| Interesting take. I think it applies to every agency?
| Shutter NASA, and any congressional act merely specifies
| _an_ agency for aeronautics and space, not necessarily
| this exact one? As long as it's eventually reconstituted,
| no foul.
|
| I'm suspicious, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised
| we've hit the "one simple trick" era of governing.
| reissbaker wrote:
| No, NASA was specifically created by the "National
| Aeronautics and Space Act" [1], not by an executive
| order. USAID was created by executive order by JFK. [2]
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and
| _Space...
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for
| _Inter...
| afavour wrote:
| And USAID was then formalized as an independent agency by
| Congress in 1998:
|
| https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prel
| im&...
| mjburgess wrote:
| That's not correct. Acts of congress specifically created
| the agency after JFK's XO.
|
| Regardless, the agency is a party to contracts which it
| is currently breaking. The actions of DOGE are causing
| the US to break contracts, which is illegal.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should
| exist, not that it specifically be USAID_
|
| That was true in 1961, but not in the 63 years since
| then. The Foreign Assistance Act has been amended many
| times with specific requirements since written for the by
| then already existing United States Agency for
| International Development[1]
|
| [1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1071/pdf/CO
| MPS-107...
| reissbaker wrote:
| Nothing in that bill says that USAID needs a specific
| headquarters to be open, or that it can't be run by Marco
| Rubio. How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to
| run USAID illegal?
| magicalist wrote:
| > _How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run
| USAID illegal?_
|
| This framing seems disingenuous given the already far
| reaching effects of the frozen funding, the layoffs, the
| shut down of communications, the shuttered offices, and,
| apparently, giving non government employees unfettered
| access to its computer systems.
|
| But yes, shutting down the USAID or trying to muddy the
| waters by saying it'll totally still exist, they'll just
| somehow run it out of the state department and not fund
| anything should indeed not be possible without an act of
| congress.
| tmaly wrote:
| Are there any LLMs that can explain all the amendments to
| the layperson?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This seems like a stretch. If I close Wal-Mart
| headquarters does Walmart still exist? For a little
| while, maybe. Warehouses will probably run on autopilot,
| people will still get paid for a bit, etc, but the
| company is walking dead. What they've done is effectively
| decapitate an agency without the consent of the
| legislature.
| efitz wrote:
| Our legislative branch is unable to even minimally fulfill
| its Constitutional duties.
|
| We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a
| number of them.
|
| The Congressional budget process is fundamentally broken
| and increasingly nondemocratic - the leadership of both
| parties get "continuing resolutions" passed while they
| draft a mountainous "omnibus" bill that includes all their
| pork and graft, then they whip the members of the majority
| party to pass it without reading it.
|
| The Congressional oversight committees are usually captured
| by the industries and/or agencies they oversee.
|
| Congressional hearings are not used to inform Congress or
| the people; they're nakedly partisan acting gigs for
| committee members.
|
| Congress has unconstitutionally delegated much of its
| authority to a bureaucracy run by the executive branch,
| intending to have it operate independently of the
| president. Now we have a president who is choosing to
| exercise his authority over the executive branch.
|
| Of course, it is illegal and unconstitutional for the
| president to eliminate programs that are established by
| law. But remember the executive branch bureaucracy ONLY
| exists to allow the president to implement the laws passed
| by Congress. If the laws aren't explicit or delegate to an
| executive branch agency HOW they law/program will be
| implemented, then the president has enormous authority over
| how to implement it, and there is nothing Constitutionally
| wrong with that. So if the president says "we don't need
| 10000 people to implement CFR 1.2.3 section 4, we only need
| 10", and he can implement the law/program as passed by
| Congress with 10 people, then he's allowed to do that.
|
| The big problem is that Congress MUST depend on the
| executive branch to, er, execute. Whatever is required to
| implement the law, that isn't specified in the law, is up
| to the executive branch, and the President is the head of
| that branch.
|
| And all this BS about "classification" again only exists to
| enable the president to do his job. If the president says
| someone can have access to something, that is non-
| negotiable, as two USAID folks found out over the weekend.
| The bureaucracy has for decades used classification to make
| a currency out of secrets and to try to avoid oversight.
| Looks like that ride has ended.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| And yet all of the inefficiency of Congress and the
| Courts is better than the alternative, which is
| dictatorship with no guardrails. We've seen what this
| looks like in many countries, and nothing you say, do, or
| own will be safe.
| tmountain wrote:
| Right, the crusty 236 year old government is showing it's
| age and has problems but has also resulted in an
| exceptionally successful country, so the logical solution
| would be to incrementally improve it, but instead, the
| voting populace just decided to burn it to ash; although,
| many are too politically ignorant to even understand the
| consequences of their decision.
| tmountain wrote:
| So, America has been dovetailing towards being a monarchy
| because Congress won't do their jobs, and it was
| inevitable that a President would eventually arrive who
| would wield that power? If nobody is willing to enforce
| the law, and the majority willingly hand the keys to the
| democracy to a single individual with dubious intentions,
| is it best to just accept this as the "natural order of
| things"? The institutions that my generation was raised
| to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to
| hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing
| left to do is just stand by to see what happens. I
| preemptively left the country last year and won't be back
| anytime soon, so as sad as I am to see this day, I'm also
| strategically working to insulate myself from as much of
| the fallout as I can.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| The electoral college was created to prevent a majority
| from doing such things, but having the electoral college
| override the will of the people creates all sorts of
| problems (and possible tit-for-tat in future elections).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> is the legislative branch going to do?
|
| Impeach. Subpoena. Then arrest if subpoena ignored. Pass
| laws (supermajority to bypass veto). Cut funding to
| executive office. Then go nuclear with things like
| amendment putting the armed forces under legislative
| control. Lots options. All require a united front.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > All require a united front.
|
| Which requires Republicans to honor their oath to uphold
| the Constitution. So it's a non-starter.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > what is the legislative branch going to do?
|
| What did Parliament do during the English Civil War?
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is silly. USAID was established by executive order.
| While the president's drinking buddies aren't allowed to
| close it down, the president himself can do it on a whim. So
| if the president decided to shut it down because his
| hairdresser advised him to, it's up to him.
|
| > The actions are entirely unconstitutional.
|
| It would be bizarre if an executive agency could be
| established by executive order, but then couldn't be closed
| down by the executive without permission from Congress.
|
| That's not how US government works, at least. Maybe that
| would work in a parliamentary system where the separation
| between the executive and legislative isn't so sharp.
|
| edit: why is the level of discussion about anything Trump-
| related always so low? If you want to defend USAID, defend
| USAID. If you can't defend USAID, make an entirely specious
| process argument.
| johnobrien1010 wrote:
| USAID was established by an executive order and then also
| created by law by Congress: https://uscode.house.gov/view.x
| html?path=/prelim@title22/cha...
| pessimizer wrote:
| The opposite happened. Congress said that an agency
| should manage aid, and then USAID was created by
| executive order. Trump could just create another agency.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Congress passed a law in 1998 itself to establish US AID,
| 37 years after the EO. The EO was made with authority
| that had been granted by another law.
|
| That 1998 law does not permit the President to abolish it
| or name a different organization:
|
| _> Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan
| submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as
| provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within
| the Executive branch of Government the United States
| Agency for International Development as an entity
| described in section 104 of title 5._
|
| - 22 U.S.C. SS6563
| 762236 wrote:
| He can at least fire everyone in USAID, as he should.
| stetrain wrote:
| USAID as the specific agency was established by executive
| order, in response to legislation (the Foreign Assistance
| Act) passed by Congress requiring such an agency to exist,
| and other legislation that continues to fund its operation.
|
| If the goal is reorganization then it could be argued that
| the president has the power to do so provided it still
| meets the requirements of the legislation passed by
| Congress.
|
| If the goal is to simply delete the agency with no
| replacement and let the funding stop indefinitely, that is
| not so clearly within the president's power and has
| precedent against it.
| afavour wrote:
| > make an entirely specious process argument
|
| That's an absolutely absurd response. Even if your argument
| were correct (it isn't) there _is no executive order
| shutting down USAID_. It isn't "specious" to want actions
| like the shutting down of entire government agencies to be
| done legally.
|
| _Of course_ process matters.
| msarvar wrote:
| Based on some googling sounds like you're partially right,
| it was established as EO by JFK in 1961. But it was
| established as an agency via Congress in 1998. So the
| assertion that President can't dissolve USAID without
| Congress is in fact true. At least as of 1998.
| stetrain wrote:
| > edit: why is the level of discussion about anything
| Trump-related always so low? If you want to defend USAID,
| defend USAID. If you can't defend USAID, make an entirely
| specious process argument.
|
| Who is making specious arguments? Your comment was about
| process, while omitting congress's role in that process,
| and people are responding accordingly.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| USAID is entirely unconstitutional.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| How so?
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > The actions are entirely unconstitutional.
|
| For all the fetishization of the constitution popular media
| has led me to believe Americans engage in, when push comes to
| shove it doesn't seem to be worth the paper it's written on.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the
| USAID organization under the Secretary of State is
| unconstitutional.
|
| If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress
| to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there
| is a problem, but not until September 30th
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| You are correct. USAID is an executive agency.
| ineptech wrote:
| That doesn't mean it's subject to the whims of the
| president. When Congress creates independent agencies,
| they lay out exactly how the president has oversight
| (usually by hiring and firing the director and/or board).
|
| I remember you pushing this idea (that the independence
| of independent executive agencies are unconstitutional,
| or unaccountable, or similar) heavily in a thread a
| couple days ago. Where is it coming from? AFAIK virtually
| everyone on both sides has agreed that the independence
| of these agencies was a Really Good Thing for the last
| hundred years.
| ipython wrote:
| Eliminating birthright citizenship is cut and dry an
| attempt at unconstitutional rescindment of the 14th
| amendment of the constitution.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just
| cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their
| pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth
| is absurd. The 14th amendment was added to solve a
| specific problem, the disenfranchisement of slaves who
| had truly been born here without their say or that of
| their parents, for generations, and with the leave of the
| United States government when that was occurring. Nor can
| an overly permissive reading be justified on moral
| grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does
| not honor the concept of jus soli.
|
| Besides _all of that_ , there is the danger that if
| Democrats try to play the 14th card against him, Trump
| will declare the immigrants enemy combatants. At which
| point they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the
| United States at all, and he can do more than simply
| deport them. The left has been out-maneuvered at every
| step here, it's unlikely that this is the point at which
| they start winning.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just
| cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their
| pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth
| is absurd.
|
| But that's not true. Only their offspring gains US
| citizenship, not them.
| ipython wrote:
| Most of Europe and the world don't have as wide ranging
| protections for free speech or bearing arms as we do,
| either. So using that as an argument is not relevant,
| regardless of any spiffy smart sounding Latin phrases.
|
| The text of the 14th amendment follows:
|
| All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
| subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
| United States and of the State wherein they reside. No
| State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
| the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
| States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life,
| liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
| deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
| protection of the laws.
|
| For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any
| exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of
| late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
|
| Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply
| being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me,
| and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential
| enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news
| right now?
| bombcar wrote:
| The _jus soil_ argument is an interesting solution to a
| problem that even the Founders recognized, which is the
| tendency for a democracy /republic to create a second,
| lower class of "not-quite citizens" (famously, Rome).
|
| It means that even if _your_ citizenship never gets
| worked out, your descendants will be handled.
|
| Having it so extreme as to be "anyone born on the soil
| (except diplomat kids)" is a novelty. Not necessarily a
| bad one, but also not obviously what the 14th was
| attempting.
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| > Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on
| moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world)
| does not honor the concept of jus soli.
|
| It is extremely common in the Americas though. I think
| only Colombia and a few island countries don't have
| birthright citizenship here. I think it is a good concept
| for us, the US has historically been a nation of
| immigrants and our country has a culture that is shaped
| (and IMO strengthened) by people from all over the world.
| beAbU wrote:
| Does the US have a constitutional court?
|
| In some constitutional democracies there is a court that
| sits above the apex court, and they rule on constitutional
| matters _only_. I feel this is is an effective check
| /balance, as it makes the interpretation of the
| constitution completely unambiguous.
| chasd00 wrote:
| you're talking about the US Supreme Court but it has been
| politicized over the years and leans to one party or the
| other instead of strictly interpreting the constitution.
| For example, many people believe it leans heavily to the
| right side these days.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| IANAL, but my understanding is that that effectively is
| what SCOTUS does most of the time, i.e. very few issues
| make it to SCOTUS that aren't constitutional questions.
| In any case, there is not any higher court like you're
| describing.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The US Supreme Court is the original constitutional
| court. It invented the idea that courts can rule on the
| constitutionality of laws and governmental actions (in
| Marbury v. Madison, 1803).
|
| Some more recent constitutions have established a
| separate court that only rules on constitutional issues,
| but the US doesn't have that.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| nit: it's actually written on parchment
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Strict constitutionalists would call many of these programs
| unconstitutional.
|
| This is a problem for the left and for neo-cons; they flouted
| the constitution for so long, that now that someone else
| (Trump) is doing it to them, the left/neocons don't really
| have a base that responds well to cries of
| "Unconstitutional!".
| eightman wrote:
| Strict constitutionalists would only apply the 2nd
| Amendment to barrel loading smooth bore muskets.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I guess you're agreeing with me?
| salawat wrote:
| Constitution says nothing about barrel loading, smooth
| bore muskets. It says "arms". It's a fairly timeless
| umbrella term for "weapons or objects usable as such".
| The only people who have trouble understanding this are
| generally those who approve of the Machine gun registry
| being closed by having the federal expenditure to
| maintain it set to $0, and don't that as being an example
| of "infringement" of a Constitutionally granted right.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Love your answer, totally agree! But please don't feed
| the trolls!
| billfor wrote:
| Totally appropriate. Everytime congress would ask USAID for
| information on their spending or audit what they were doing,
| they would just ignore the requests and say they were
| apolitical. They're not apolitical. The state department is
| by definition political, and responsible for the US
| interests. Totally reasonable to roll it under the state
| department where they will have to answer questions and not
| refuse audits. It's not going away it's just going to be
| accountable to the public that pays its budget (the US
| taxpayer).
| jimmydddd wrote:
| US National Debt Adds $1 Trillion Every 100 Days.
| skywhopper wrote:
| What is your point?
| snapcaster wrote:
| Their point (i assume because had same convo with my dad)
| is that the debt is such an emergency we should toss the
| rule of law
| intalentive wrote:
| Sometimes following rules leads to an unrecoverable
| state, and then you have no choice but to reboot.
| Compound interest leads to either stagnation and decline,
| or else to jubilee. It's an inherently unstable system
| that has felled many civilizations before ours. Debt
| grows exponentially while real economies saturate in an
| S-curve. Eventually something has to give.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This is not that situation, you're been told so so you
| can give up what little power you have left out of
| stupidity.
| intalentive wrote:
| Interest payments are the largest item of the federal
| budget. Give it time and they will consume the whole
| thing.
| mc32 wrote:
| Stop unaudited government spending? Ukraine says it's
| received only about half of what the Biden admin said it
| gave it.
|
| It's looking like this was at least larping as a 40+
| billion dollar slush fund. There may have been some
| legitimate (useful) spending, and they will find out after
| auditing the system, but it also looks like there was lots
| of waste and once-removed (one degree of separation) self-
| dealing.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This doesn't mean what you think.
| skywhopper wrote:
| How exactly is this approach an improvement over the
| status quo? Elon is not auditing spending. He's pursuing
| political grudges and generating chaos for its own sake.
| The outcome will _not_ be less government waste and
| fraud.
| tyre wrote:
| Yes and it is fine. That's a scary number with zero context,
| but given the borrowing rate and the investments we're making
| in future GDP, this is good borrowing!
|
| it isn't good when a group of people tries to destroy the
| entity that's making those investments. These shitheads are
| basically corporate raiders coming in to tear things apart
| for personal gain.
|
| Ironically, it is the "fiscally responsible", "WhY nOt RuN
| gOvErNmEnT lIkE a BuSiNeSs" gang who want to destroy any
| fiscally responsible investment.
|
| If they want to reduce spending meaningfully, they need to
| cut defense, social security, and Medicare. They won't,
| because it's political suicide.
| schnable wrote:
| Which investments in future GDP do you mean?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| The billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations. That
| kind of investment.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Provably false, if you bother to get out of your echo
| chamber
|
| https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/pete-buttigieg-did-
| not-sp...
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I'm curious if you read the fact check?
|
| The _most_ charitable interpretation is 243 Chargers.
|
| According to the AP[0] it's 214
|
| [0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-electric-
| vehicle-charg...
| thecopy wrote:
| Education, health, infrastrucure, science.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| If a balanced budget led to a flat or negative GDP, reduced
| the USA's power and influence globally, and/or lowered
| standards of living, then would it still be desirable? What
| exactly is the argument against a deficit besides that it
| might be giving some groups leverage over the USA, which is
| dubious?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The argument is that it inevitably gets you to a state like
| Argentina was in, where the government repeatedly defaults
| until eventually you're forced to crash the economy for
| years to escape the loop. I'd rather have a flat GDP than
| 95% annual inflation.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| I'm not advocating for war but one thing this deficit
| pays for is being a military superpower, which is the
| main way our debt is "guaranteed". As in, call in the
| debt at your own peril.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| US government debt doesn't exist as a line-of-credit
| agreement that someone could choose whether or not to
| "call in". It's primarily represented by Treasury bonds,
| securities which represent a promise by the US government
| to pay a specific amount of money at a specific point in
| time. It's true that the US can decide one day to default
| on these promises, but this doesn't have anything to do
| with military strength, nor can military strength
| mitigate the negative consequences for the (mostly
| domestic) investors.
| caspper69 wrote:
| Who holds the vast majority of the debt of the government of
| the United States?
|
| Hint: it's not China, the UK or any other foreign government.
|
| It's us silly. We owe ourselves. :)
| atq2119 wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| The only potential problem here is that "we owe ourselves"
| simplifies things given that some individuals are owed much
| more than others, i.e. there's inequality. Other than that?
| The whole debt charade is just political groups weaponizing
| (and perpetuating) the lack of fairly basic macro-economic
| understanding in the population.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's the elderly who are holding that debt and enslaving
| the youth and the unborn with that wicked scheme. Any and
| all national debts should be defaulted on. If you lended
| money to the government, knowing fully well that your
| interest is paid by oppressive taxes, then you don't
| deserve your money back.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| There is a reason why third world countries choose IMF
| funding even with the strings attached even though
| default is always an option. It turns out having credit
| is very valuable to stability and progress and therefore
| defaulting is a very bad thing.
| caspper69 wrote:
| Truth be told, it's institutional money.
|
| Turns out that having a 100% guaranteed return is
| attractive to a lot of large-scale investors, even if the
| yields don't make the money machine go brrr.
|
| This is one thing that worries me about the current
| administration. A lot of trust is built on the fact that
| the US gov't has never defaulted on a debt in its
| history. I feel like some people don't place enough
| weight into what that really means for both ourselves and
| the world.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's institutions who are investing on behalf of their
| elderly clients (for example pension funds and such).
|
| That 100% return is guaranteed by the whip that the
| government so willingly cracks over the backs of
| productive young people. Why would it be in the interest
| of the non-entitled to have a government which keeps
| swinging that whip? To guarantee the investments of the
| elderly who only have bottomless hate towards the young?
| mindcandy wrote:
| 76 of those days are social security, medicare/medicaid, vet
| benefits, income security for the poorest citizens and
| interest payments.
|
| 15 of those days are national defense.
|
| 9 of those days are what Elon hopes to cut in half.
|
| https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/feder...
|
| The deficit is a huge problem. I don't know how to fix it.
| But, what DOGE has done so far is exactly the opposite of
| what makes sense.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I agree with your numbers. If we're seeing this much
| resistance to cutting down mostly foreign-focused programs,
| would you really be making this comment if Elon/Trump were
| trying to cut social security, medicare/aid, etc?
| jensensbutton wrote:
| I think it's primarily the "how" that people are
| resisting. I'm not sure why that's being dismissed.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Maybe elsewhere, but this specific thread (i.e. the
| parents I responded to) appears to focus on the actions,
| not the "how".
| mindcandy wrote:
| I would be 10X as concerned and so would everyone else
| because mishandling those programs could absolutely wreck
| the lives of tens of millions of people.
|
| My point is that a lot of people seem to be in an "ends
| justify the means" mindset here where it's OK to rubber-
| stamp over laws, security, any sort of requirements for
| competence, or even basic understanding of what's being
| destroyed because in the end, this is chaos is going to
| have such a tremendous impact.
|
| But, it's not. It mathematically can't. Even if it all
| turns out amazing it will be a small dent in the problem
| it's claiming to solve.
|
| So, in the end, all of this is actually just chaos for
| sake of chaos. In the process, a whole lot of real people
| will be hurt in real ways. It's not bad at the same scale
| that "Turn off Medicare until we understand how it works"
| would be. But, it's nonsensically destructive in exactly
| the same way.
| wyager wrote:
| Have to start somewhere. Pork barrel patronage slush funds
| are an easier jumping point than welfare benefits.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Or we could repeal the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the
| wealthy and corporations, that are largely responsible
| for the deficit exploding in the first place?
|
| https://www.google.com/search?&q=trump+tax+cuts+defecit
| mindcandy wrote:
| I applaud the goal of rooting out the pork. But, "We have
| to do something. This is something." doesn't excuse how
| it's being done.
|
| Turning off the entire flow of money is unnecessary, even
| counter-productive, to understanding how the money is
| flowing. Even if half of the money is waste, turning off
| the other half is causing tremendous real harm for no
| reason.
|
| It is completely unnecessary and horrific to rubber stamp
| around national security protocol for something as
| incomprehensibly impactful as the federal payments
| system.
|
| And, in the end, what are we going to get out of all of
| it? What I'm seeing out of Elon is propaganda about
| programs like "studying shrimp on treadmills" which was
| an microscopic piece of a very sensible study on marine
| safety and security. That's exactly the kind of work the
| government is supposed to be doing. But, if you frame it
| badly enough, you can destroy it for everyone and claim
| it as a victory.
| mempko wrote:
| To put it another way, the private sector gets an income of
| $1 trillion every 100 days. Now suppose you stop that income.
| What happens to the private sector?
| timeon wrote:
| So US is trying Germany's austerity?
| nomel wrote:
| > Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state
| of the US?
|
| With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a _trillion
| dollars_ in interest per year, nearing $6k /year per working
| individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort,
| whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago.
|
| I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems
| within the government: it doesn't like to hurt itself. Trying
| to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for
| anyone in government. Accountability requires a true
| adversary/"outsider". Should that be DOGE, or its current
| implementation? Probably not. Should the adversarial _concept_
| of DOGE exist? I would enjoy seeing arguments _against_ the
| concept. It seems like it 's _severely_ needed.
| skywhopper wrote:
| You are way underreacting to what's going on here. This is
| not about saving money, or trying to cut waste or fraud. Elon
| Musk has been posting wild conspiracies on X to justify what
| he's doing. But the actual changes are reactionary and
| political. Accountability is long gone if someone like Elon
| is in direct charge of what bills get paid. Fraud and waste
| will skyrocket in these conditions.
| preters wrote:
| I am not a fan of Elon, but his companies are run very
| capital efficient. So why would "fraud and waste" skyrocket
| under him?
| macintux wrote:
| Corruption skyrockets when:
|
| - Safety checks are dismantled
|
| - Decisions are made at the whim of an executive
|
| - Executives surround themselves with sycophants
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| We have a worldwide internet service now.
|
| We have electric vehicles (something that would not have
| happened without TSLA)
|
| On the other side, the corruption is obvious with
| billions spent on 8 EV chargers.
| arolihas wrote:
| Why lie?
|
| https://x.com/SecretaryPete/status/1861214037435900357
| svnt wrote:
| Incredibly precarious world we live in where only one man
| could have enabled humanity to have EVs. Tell me more
| about this planet.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| They mean that he will divert or protect payments and
| credits going to his own businesses or partners. His
| interest in capital efficiency exists to generate profit
| for himself, not as a blessing for other orgs he provides
| as a gift. He did it with Twitter/X after he became owner
| of its profits.
|
| If treasury money is diverted to his private interests,
| that is waste and perhaps fraud. But to him it achieves
| the same end (personal profit) as capital efficiency of
| orgs under his own ownership, not just his control
| stetrain wrote:
| You don't see the conflict of interest in one person both
| controlling how public funds are spent, and running
| private companies that may have those funds directed to
| benefit them?
|
| When Elon runs his companies, he is beholden to
| shareholders to use the company's resources effectively
| to generate and maintain value.
|
| Who is Elon beholden to when managing public funding and
| programs as an unelected non-official? Who will vote him
| out when he wasn't voted in? Who will revoke his
| confirmation when he was never confirmed?
| kennyloginz wrote:
| Look at the Boring company.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| JFC, he named a quasi-governmental agency "DOGE"! He may
| as well have called it "The Department of Pump"
|
| And his buddy the president is happily sending the
| currency and stock markets up and down with his every
| idiotic tariff announcement. I wonder if the top man at
| DOGE is on the list of people who Trump tips off?
|
| Musk, Trump and half this administration are off-the-
| charts corrupt.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > So why would "fraud and waste" skyrocket under him?
|
| TSLA doubled in value in the month after the election,
| despite the financials of the company going down. The
| only reason for the increase in share price is because
| the market _expects_ Musk to benefit from Trump 's
| corruption, in the form of less oversight and more
| government subsidies.
| trilobyte wrote:
| That's a very valid argument. Both SpaceX and Tesla are
| quite capital efficient. Maybe another angle to consider
| is what's being optimized for? What outcomes would be
| considered successful for these federal agencies? That's
| probably going to tell us more about whether the
| austerity measures that seem likely result in more
| efficient use of resources to create successful outcomes.
|
| One thing that seems worth think through more is whether
| the stated outcomes of those agencies is what's actually
| be optimized for, or whether those are suborned for
| personal gain by a few parties.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| > Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career
| suicide for anyone in government
|
| US Government Accountability Office already existed to do
| this, without it being career suicide for those involved (at
| least until Trump began attempting to end it despite being
| nonpartisan)
| nomel wrote:
| They exist to report an ever increasing number and list of
| actions each year. The GAO needs more teeth to be
| effective.
| bdangubic wrote:
| start with the "defense" budget first, cut that by 95% and go
| from there... oh wait, that money is going to... :)
| watwut wrote:
| There is about zero chance Trump and Musk will make debt
| smaller.
| XajniN wrote:
| Why?
| stouset wrote:
| Look at the growth of the national debt during the last
| Trump presidency.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-
| say...
|
| https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-
| federal-go...
|
| You would have to cut entitlements if you're relying on
| cuts alone, and those require Congressional action to
| change. It's absolutely wild people actually believed
| Musk without spending a few minutes understanding the
| issue.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| They would have to reverse the deficit to start reducing
| debt and that is unlikely with a cost cutting approach.
| xnx wrote:
| Actual debt won't get smaller, but reported debt can get
| smaller when they fire whoever is responsible for reporting
| that.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Firing is what is needed, but it won't happen for people
| that report spending, it will happen for those that hide
| it.
| derektank wrote:
| US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off
| our debt) has basically remained static since COVID. I agree
| that the US requires a serious debate about our fiscal
| priorities and the appropriate levels of spending and
| taxation, particularly with automatic social security cuts
| looming. But it is nowhere near an emergency and fiscal
| decisions are the responsibility of Congress, not the
| executive.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Surely taxes/fees represent our ability to pay off debt,
| not GDP?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| We have a fiat currency. The only real limit to the
| ability is its effect on inflation.
| roenxi wrote:
| You're upgrading from a crisis that impoverishes a bunch
| of people to ... a crisis that impoverishes everyone.
| Unclear what the improvement was. And potentially
| literally how you get Hitlers running the government,
| inflation is one of those effects that breeds political
| instability.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I did not recommend an action. You are projecting.
| roenxi wrote:
| You said we - possibly there is a flaw in my grammer. How
| should I be referring to this "we"? Isn't the "I" to "We"
| transform applied to "you" still "you"? I thought "you"
| could be plural for groups.
|
| I don't think going from "we" to "they" would be
| appropriate although in hindsight it might have been a
| better choice.
| roenxi wrote:
| "Since COVID" is a bad baseline, I would draw a parallel
| with someone who'd condition "stayed stable since they
| entered the hospital a few days ago". It is too recent and
| the situation pre-COVID was quite bad. The US is the most
| indebted entity [0] in history. But it is not obviously the
| most productive; since that title may sit with China now.
| It is a precarious position.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investm
| ent_p...
| cheald wrote:
| Another way to look at that time series is that US debt as
| a percentage of GDP has _doubled_ from 62% to 121% since
| 2007.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
| derektank wrote:
| My point is that our debt only grows unsustainably in
| response to severe crises (the great financial crisis,
| COVID). Our deficit is otherwise sustainable during
| "normal" times as our economy grows alongside it. We of
| course should want our debt to GDP ratio to be declining
| during periods of peace and prosperity (and it is
| evidence of political malfeasance that we haven't seen
| that happen since the late 90s). But our current spending
| is not a crisis in it's own right.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| Our national debt is directly related to the 45 years of
| regressive tax policy.
| mc32 wrote:
| What was the national debt to GDP ratio before income taxes
| were instituted? It wasn't even 10% between 1890 and 1910
| --that's without the income tax.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Are you saying income taxes lead to an increase in the
| national debt?
| mc32 wrote:
| You know how people borrow on future income?
| Aloisius wrote:
| We were doing that before income taxes.
|
| Hell, we were borrowing before we had states.
| miltonlost wrote:
| And life SUCKED then. Absolutely no labor rights, food
| filled with sawdust, income inequality, bank runs
| constantly, no retirement.
|
| The national debt increased because we increased the
| amount of the federal government does, it the income tax.
| greatpatton wrote:
| No healthcare, no public research to today's extent, no
| military etc. etc. Yes when your government is doing
| nothing normally it doesn't cost that much.
| wyager wrote:
| > And life SUCKED then
|
| More than 100% of the net improvement is from tech and
| medical R&D, not the bloated military-welfare apparatus.
| rurp wrote:
| Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have
| to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare,
| and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new
| taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely
| uninterested in doing any of those things, and are in fact
| going to make them worse.
|
| Indiscriminately firing federal workers whose salaries will
| collectively make up maybe one tenth of one percent of the
| budget is not at all about reducing debt, that's just the
| thin justification they are using the destroy any
| independence and competence within the government that might
| get in the way of their looting and corruption.
|
| Anyone who thinks that Trump and Musk are serious about
| reducing the federal debt at this point aren't likely to be
| swayed by anything I say. But for anyone who genuinely
| believes that I hope you will look at what the national debt
| and deficit are right now, and then to check on them in a few
| years when both are dramatically worse. You will find that
| two of the most prominent bullshitters in the world are in
| fact bullshitting on this topic as well.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Fast tracking into Banana Republic, Canada and Uruguay will
| remain as the last bastions of Democracy in the americas.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Easiest thing to do IMO is fund anyone that is over 18 that
| has paid into Social Security. Anyone younger - simple,
| reduce taxes to not include it. Phase that fucker out. Get
| rid of all but 10% of federal income tax.
|
| Also, make all black budget projects that involve
| underground alien bases public and move it all private, so
| Elon and other people can just directly invest in those
| instead of coming out of our taxes through the DOD.
| kristjansson wrote:
| You're describing the independent Inspectors General. That
| were summarily fired. Could they have had more power and
| independence? Sure. But there were real independent offices
| doing what you describe.
|
| The problem is EM and DOGE are equating "fraud and waste" to
| "I think it's wasteful", which is a judgement the adversarial
| auditor should not be allowed to make.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| And guess whose fault that deficit is? Answer: Bush and
| Trump.
|
| https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-
| primar...
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-
| tax...
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
|
| https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extend.
| ..
|
| He campaigned (first time) to reduce the national debt and
| instead exploded it by giving massive tax cuts to
| corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-plan-boosts-
| bud...
|
| Something something promises something kept?
| derangedHorse wrote:
| By what metric do you think the U.S. is as "economically
| dominant" as it was in the period after WWII?
| immibis wrote:
| Most of the world's currency is backed by the currency they
| print? The USA has to spend a few cents to gain a hundred
| dollar bill, but any other country has to exchange a hundred
| dollars of actual goods and services (to the USA!). Losing
| this privilege would be devastating.
| curt15 wrote:
| The economic power of the US is also largely due to its
| reputation for rule of law
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5zaImTF92g) when
| contrasted with other regimes like the CCP. Once that image
| goes out the window, it becomes no more attractive to
| foreign investment than any other banana republic run by
| thugs.
| watwut wrote:
| It does not matter. If republican party voters cared about
| appropriateness, they would not picked up Trump and Musk. They
| picked them because they wanted to see maximal harm and they
| see lack of ethics/morals as strength.
| riskable wrote:
| You said it! How long before a lot of small countries start
| leaving treaties like the Berne Convention? Why would they
| bother protecting other big countries copyrights when they're
| no longer getting support through programs like USAID and
| there's no longer any guarantee that the US will protect them
| in any way.
|
| The first country to pull out has the chance to make like $100
| billion by creating the next TikTok competitor that _never_
| takes down content for violating anyone 's copyright. It'll be
| like Edison moving to Hollywood all over again! Let the gold
| rush begin!
| nine_k wrote:
| I don't think these fences are being torn down by inexperienced
| engineers by their own initiative. They have a mandate (or so
| they think), a direction, and maybe specific orders from much
| more experienced folks, AFAICT.
| huijzer wrote:
| > The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since
| after WWII.
|
| Where do you base that on? China's GDP is huge. It overtook the
| whole EU's GDP.
| tehjoker wrote:
| What are you talking about? The whole reason this is happening
| is because US economic dominance is being eclipsed and
| dedollarization is occurring at a rapid pace. This is a freak
| out and reorganization of foreign policy and the economy to
| cope with that situation.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Is there any data you can share that backs that up?
| tehjoker wrote:
| US GDP growth is slow, China's is high and BRICS is
| coalescing.
|
| In not too long, China's GDP will eclipse ours and their
| cooperative foreign policy as opposed to our full spectrum
| dominance policy will yield major benefits. Dedollarization
| is proceeding apace, and it accelerates with each sanction
| and aggressive and arbitrary move by the US. Other
| countries used to have no choice, but now choices are
| opening up. The end of dollar dominance ends the most
| powerful tool of U.S. hegemony and turns us into a mere
| great power, not the lord of the world.
|
| https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-
| research/currencies...
|
| Trump's policy is about corruption yes, but also likely
| about wringing more efficiency out of American industry by
| reducing worker protections and reducing middle management
| positions. They are trying different methods to juice
| growth. I don't think it will work for very long.
| ikiris wrote:
| If by cope you mean ensure it happens by running our economic
| power into a trade war iceberg.
| bende511 wrote:
| what are you talking about? this statement of yours does not
| match reality in any way
| screye wrote:
| Sure, a cold war has started and China is the enemy. But why
| make enemies out of your closest allies?
|
| The US tried tariffs during Japan's rise as an automobile
| powerhouse. Look where that's left the American auto
| industry.
|
| Sanctions have their place as a carrot and stick mechanism.
| But Trump offers no carrots. Only stick.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| The US is tethering on the brink of hyperinflation due to not
| just the last 4 but the last 40 years. Interest on the debt is
| insurmountable.
|
| You can argue whether the chosen approach is right, but no
| matter what, a _drastically_ different course is needed as
| 'business as usual' is a sure way to disaster.
|
| I for one hope the US get their act together at home rather
| than dragging the world into WWIII.
| czzr wrote:
| Your model for the economy is just utterly wrong. The US is
| in zero danger of hyperinflation, and probably has the
| smallest debt issues of any country (certainly of any major
| country).
|
| Now, the problem is - what to do about how badly informed you
| and millions of Americans are. That you cheer for the
| destruction of valuable and painfully built state capacity
| for completely spurious reasons. It's almost funny, except
| for all the innocent people who get hurt along the way.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Please substantiate your claims. I am not 'cheering'. I am
| 100% prepared to be converted.
|
| As I see it that debt counter is compounding _fast_ , and
| with BRICS gaining steam your abilities to keep shoving it
| onto the rest of the planet are diminishing.
| czzr wrote:
| The US has debt denominated in its own currency, a large
| and growing economy, vast natural and human resources, no
| prospect of a foreign invasion and debt declining
| relative to GDP the last few years (this last point is
| not even that important but just for the record).
|
| I can't even begin to tell you how far the US is from
| hyperinflation or any major debt issues - the only real
| risk the US faces is internal stupidity (I don't only
| mean the current situation, idiocies like the ongoing
| debt ceiling nonsense apply too).
|
| Look, prudence is not a bad thing, and it's worthwhile to
| have sensible management. But talk of hyperinflation is
| either severe mis-calibration of risks, deep
| misunderstanding of how economies work, or intentional
| propaganda.
| jjallen wrote:
| Is economic dominance the right metric to be looking at?
|
| Yes, the US is the biggest economy. This doesn't mean its
| ability to pay liabilities is infinite. Every amount of income
| has a particular amount of debt and interest that it is able to
| pay.
|
| Take the largest company. It would not be able to service
| infinite debt. Apple could not service $5 trillion in debt,
| just like the US could not service 300 trillion.
|
| I get why some people are concerned about the US's liabilities
| and its global police status.
|
| Also stopping giving many other countries billions of dollars a
| year after might be drastic. But I see why some people may not
| like this. Individuals can give to charities instead if this is
| really such a problem for them.
|
| Now cutting research and other things is really dumb. Glad they
| reversed that quickly. Also needlessly licking fights with our
| neighbors is also really dumb.
|
| Now only if we can reduce our military spending as well.
| starspangled wrote:
| > Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state
| of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically
| dominant since after WWII.
|
| Why is USAID needed most in times when the US is very
| "economically dominant"?
| vkou wrote:
| Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up
| international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it
| takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.
|
| Look at how that turned out for Bismark's Germany after he
| was gone. His successors were high on their own supply, and
| in pursuit of short-term wins, destroyed the careful network
| of relationships and alliances that he curated.
|
| Beijing is, no doubt, finding this entire folly amusing.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| US dominance was built on hard power (war machine). Ditto
| for Bismarck. Nothing works without the hard power part.
| kazen44 wrote:
| if you are talking about the formation of germany, That
| was also a lot of soft power and politics to keep
| socialists from gaining any real political power and a
| lot of soft power to get all other german states to form
| into germany.
|
| there where two major wars during that time which
| mattered for the formation of germany, (the franco
| prussian war and the austro-prussian war, which was an
| extent of the politicals about who should form the german
| state).
| intended wrote:
| So should the world read your comment as a ditching of
| soft power to use hard power? Is america going to war?
|
| Is that why you made that statement in the context of
| everything that was built on that hard power being
| demolished?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're asking. I think you're trying to
| make a point, but it is going over my head.
|
| The world should read "less carrot, more stick" from the
| Trump admin.
| OvidNaso wrote:
| But what stick? The stick doesn't work when they know you
| aren't going to use it
| starspangled wrote:
| Soft power seems like mostly wishful thinking at best and
| a fraud on the taxpayer at worst. I don't think the noble
| savages feel forever indebted to their kind and wise
| master for throwing them a few scraps. Countries align
| with what interests them. Look how quickly countries all
| over Africa, South America, Middle East, the subcontinent
| turn to China and Russia. All the vaccines and condoms in
| the world aren't going to stop people and countries
| wanting to get the best price for the things they buy and
| sell.
|
| USAID also has a fairly sketchy record in funding regime
| change efforts, so countries cooperate with it on a
| purely transactional basis, "trust" is zero.
| starspangled wrote:
| > Because it takes decades of investment and work to build
| up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out,
| it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.
|
| I was asking specifically about how US economic dominance
| is a factor. Why is USAID more important when US economic
| dominance is high.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young
| and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be
| there.
|
| So you're saying they hired a bunch of undistinguished Berkeley
| drop-outs just because they're libertarians? A sort of
| affirmative action for libertarians?
|
| It's always projection with these guys.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Is this really a drastic action? As others in this thread have
| pointed out, these programs are a single-digit percentage of
| the Federal budget. We could delete these completely and still
| have a budget that is 90% the same as last year.
| intended wrote:
| Wow. That's a refreshing take on the reducing the corruption
| angle.
|
| If these programs are so small, why aren't they going after
| the real grift? It's too hard? Why the small, more relevant
| to citizens programs get cut first?
|
| Because its easy to avoid the military spending and the black
| box that represents.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| My guess is a few things.
|
| First, these are symbolic, it is very hard to concretely
| argue that these programs are good for Americans, since
| even proponents of these programs say it's about "soft
| power". Corollary to this is that cutting something like
| social security is seen as cutting benefits to Americans
| (ditto with Defense)
|
| Second, these programs are seen as funding "professional
| democrats" in a way that social security or defense are
| not. So this is also about cutting out their opponents
| support structures.
|
| If these programs are so small, why do you care so much?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Military spending didn't explode the deficit. Bush and
| Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations did.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=trump+
| t...
| screye wrote:
| USD as reserve currency is a hen that lays golden eggs.
|
| The US maintains monopoly on this free money cheat through
| goodwill driven manufactured consent, diplomacy, financial
| bullying and military might. Each subsequent tool being more
| heavy handed & less preferred than the last. Heavy handed tools
| while effective, break more than they fix. This prudence
| sustains Pax Americana.
|
| In 2025 America, good will is at an all-time-low. Mechanisms
| for classical diplomacy are being actively dismantled by Elon-
| Trump. Financial bullying is now the cudgel of choice. Pax
| Americana is under threat.
|
| Post-WW2 peace is among mankind's most remarkable
| civilizational achievements. It isn't self-evident and it
| definitely isn't the historic norm. How long until nations
| start questioning the deal ? How many decades of work is being
| dismantled within days ?
|
| May be hyperbole, but the locks on Chesterton-Pandora's box are
| being opened. It might work out, but Elon's aggressiveness
| seems so unnecessary at a time when the American economy is
| doing exceedingly well.
| diob wrote:
| I'm honestly terrified that they'll turn my savings to some
| sort of nothing by fucking over our currency.
|
| I don't know how anyone isn't.
| akkad33 wrote:
| That sounds improbable. If US currency falls every western
| economy falls with it
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Closing USAID is idiotic from a foreign policy perspective.
| Gives China a huge opportunity to fill the void in countries
| and grow its global influence. It's already done so in Africa
| due to US being so preoccupied with the "war on terror". Not to
| mention that aiding developing countries - reduces chances of
| instability/conflicts/etc which otherwise end up costing much
| more. Plus it's about access to raw materials (why do you think
| China cares about Africa?). Idiotic no matter how you look at
| it.
| bitsage wrote:
| That's an interesting thought because I saw Trump, and many
| other elections, as a conservative reaction. A main complaint I
| see is people thinking the country is going backwards, rather
| than into uncharted territory.
| naravara wrote:
| The young and incurious have been targeted, recruited, and
| brainwashed into this by tech moguls for just this reason. A
| steady diet of calcified resentments against vague, post-
| modernist buzzword nonsense like "woke" and "DEI" has created a
| whole political movement around getting unreasonably angry over
| feeling slighted about symbolic representation in pop culture
| to the point where they're going to bring the whole country
| down it's insane.
|
| But of course, that's exactly what would be oligarchs want.
| gauravphoenix wrote:
| >The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since
| after WWII.
|
| now look at the deficits.
| niceice wrote:
| Yes. It's corrupt beyond belief.
|
| Just today Zelensky said Ukraine only received $75 billion of
| the $177 billion in aid that was sent from the US.
|
| The World Bank "misplaced" $41 BILLION in climate change funds
| and no public records detailing where the money is has been
| found by investigators in October.
|
| USAID literally set up fake AIDS prevention workshops to topple
| foreign governments
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/0...
|
| Most governments don't want USAID funds flowing into their
| countries because they understand where much of that money
| actually ends up.
|
| While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human
| rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into
| opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and
| destabilizing movements.
|
| At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help
| people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to
| fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations
| that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.
|
| Cutting this so-called aid isn't just beneficial for the United
| States; it's also a big win for the rest of the world.
| tyrrvk wrote:
| [flagged]
| ctrlp wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site
| guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| euroderf wrote:
| Speaking of which, do these DOGE-drones go thru drug testing ?
| Does Elon ?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attacks on Hacker News.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| of course Musk recruits young ambitious kiddos - they work hard,
| for not much money, and don't question authority (because they're
| blinded by their ambition)
|
| it's only when you get older that you see how rife this is for
| abuse. as a simple example, if DOGE knows influential Treasury
| recipients, then they could find ways to extort them. help us and
| you'll get your money on time. oppose us, and...
|
| heck, I'm a treasury recipient (albeit a very small one), so if I
| take to X and start criticizing Trump or Musk, is my money at
| risk? Maybe not today but maybe within his term. Scary times.
| ctrlp wrote:
| It's also only when you get older that you see how rife the
| _existing_ system is for "abuse" (if you want to call it
| that). Maybe the young upstarts have other motives for
| dismantling the existing system than simply blind ambition,
| especially if the existing system is set up with entrenched
| patronage networks that are basically inaccessible to the
| "young ambition kiddos".
|
| Your example is pretty unpersuasive. It is already that case
| that "influential Treasury recipients" are called upon to
| "help" those in power. How else can you explain the various
| volte face moves by seemingly apolitical economic actors. I
| think the kiddos might finally be getting wise to how the game
| is played and how it is rigged.
| __loam wrote:
| These "kiddos" are committing crimes.
| bdangubic wrote:
| so were some folk that did some bad things on Jan 6... :)
| ctrlp wrote:
| That's so naive. "Show me the man, I'll show you the
| crime."
| juujian wrote:
| Who knows. If you happen to mention any words that are on the
| CDC's new forbidden words list, maybe you will fall victim to
| the next Ctrl+f search these guys run.
| llsf wrote:
| Everyone likes to throw the "1st amendment" in the
| conversation, when it suites them... but I agree given the
| recent retaliatory tendencies, it is difficult to criticize the
| current administration, and effectively leaving it in its own
| echo chamber.
|
| I am wondering if that partially explains how Musk radicalized
| himself lately. While I like the idea of absolute free speech,
| it kinda falls when the powerful are retaliatory... and kinda
| loose with the rule of law.
|
| While I get the idea of "the bureaucracy" having its own life
| sometimes getting in a way of change, and the President willing
| to get more done, faster. But the fact that the bureaucrats do
| not carring on sometimes is because they follow a due process.
|
| Now with those young men taking the control of the $6T/yr, this
| is a tremendous power. Even unintentionally, a mistake could
| have dire consequences.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Dictators always liked to exploit the idealism of young people.
| The Nazis had the Hitler youth, China had the Red Guards, most
| prison guards for the Khmer Rogue were teenagers. They happily
| did the dirty work and could be discarded easily once not
| useful anymore.
|
| I would all be for scrutinizing what government does but you
| can't just go around and cut everything you don't understand
| within 15 minutes. And I bet they will keep the moon and Mars
| programs going.
| thrance wrote:
| For sure, Musk and his friends will keep their billions of
| dollars government contracts. No inefficiency there,
| surprisingly.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Re that scroll
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-21-year-old-u...
|
| It seems to me like it really appropriate background...
| vitajex wrote:
| Experienced enough to win this though:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261861
| Xelynega wrote:
| Since when did winning competitions require experience
| optimizing costs across various industries?
|
| I don't think anybody is doubting they're smart, just that they
| have no experience doing this kind of work and are now being
| trusted by the highest level of government to do it.
| ShrimpHawk wrote:
| > who have little to no government experience
|
| Decoding ancient scrolls has no relevance to government
| procedures.
| vitajex wrote:
| What he did to win the scroll competition had to do with data
| analysis, not ancient history, so of course it could be
| relevant. But none of us, including the author of the
| article, knows what they're specifically doing, so it's not
| possible to say how relevant it is. It's a pity the reporter
| didn't do some reporting about that, instead of writing a hit
| piece calling them "lackeys".
| mbesto wrote:
| That's impressive! Now how does that experience translate into
| financial accounting systems?
|
| A SAP FICO consultant in Moldova is better qualified than these
| young men.
| roboror wrote:
| That would be relevant if our governmental budgets were printed
| on ancient scrolls. What was the point of posting this?
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I came in first place in my college CTF. Where do I sign up to
| decide which parts of the government should be shut down?
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| Found it. For anyone else interested
| https://neuralink.com/careers/apply/
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I think Musk asked for applications on twitter.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Some context for USAID
|
| https://youtu.be/qe47hTyUh5g?feature=shared
| strangeloops85 wrote:
| Have Elon Musk and all these engineers sworn oaths as required to
| be a federal employee?
| https://federalnewsnetwork.com/commentary/2019/10/the-oath-o...
| If Elon is "just advising", under what statute or directive does
| he have specific authority?
|
| If they are accessing TS/SCI information and places like SCIFs
| have they filled out their SF-86? Are any of them dual nationals
| and do they have any ties or vulnerabilities to hostile foreign
| states?
|
| Basic questions given the enormous access they are being given,
| far beyond frankly any handful of people have generally had in US
| government history.
|
| Also, they have apparently plugged in their own private server at
| OPM. Has this already been compromised by Chinese/ Russian
| agents? Has the NSA had a look?
| jeffgreco wrote:
| There are class action lawsuits being organized on behalf of
| federal workers against this egregious data breach and let's
| hope to god they succeed.
| ansmithz42 wrote:
| Simple answer: No.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _If they are accessing TS /SCI information and places like
| SCIFs have they filled out their SF-86?_
|
| Did the Mar-a-Lago workers who moved boxes fill out those
| forms?
|
| * https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
| security/2023/05/25/...
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2023/jul/06/surveillance...
| yesco wrote:
| Would contractors need to do any of this? Is DOGE using federal
| funds?
|
| I'm not exactly clear on the situation but if they are just
| doing this for free and don't have access to confidential
| information, I could see that potentially being the key
| loophole here.
| ian_d wrote:
| Elon is also now claiming to have "deleted" 18F
| (https://18f.gsa.gov/):
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520
| paulgb wrote:
| This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal
| government that is/was good at making software! (login.gov is a
| good example of craft you don't generally see in commercial
| enterprise software, let alone government software)
|
| According to that tweet they were apparently "far left" because
| they also worked on Direct File, which sought to cut out the
| middleman (TurboTax et al.) and let Americans file taxes
| directly. Regardless of where you stand on the political
| spectrum, unless you're in bed with Intuit, this seems pretty
| hard to argue against!
| jf wrote:
| login.gov is amazing software. Highly tested. Expertly
| implemented. It might be the most tested IdP available today.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Then why did it send me to id.me to send my photo ID to
| some low cost outsourcer?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Because someone lobbied their bosses.
| emchammer wrote:
| I would rather show up at the local post office in order
| to verify my identity. Such a matter common in another
| country where I have lived.
| eadler wrote:
| This is starting to happen. I had to do this for NIH
| recently.
|
| Or it would be happening absent the recent chaos.
| jf wrote:
| This is exactly right. The capability to do identity
| proofing via the USPS is in the code and available on
| GitHub for you to browse.
| freitasm wrote:
| > this seems pretty hard to argue against!
|
| Removing consumer protection would be something hard to argue
| against too, but yet, here we are:
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-
| cfp...
|
| "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide
| variety of operations inside the Consumer Financial
| Protection Bureau in his new role as acting director."
|
| Nothing of this makes sense in that all these actions don't
| seem to make life easier or better for citizens in particular
| or the world in general.
| munificent wrote:
| It makes perfect sense.
|
| The goal of Trump, Musk and co. is to make life better for
| the rich.
|
| Rich people don't need to rely on the CFPB because they
| have enough invidual power to get what they want. They are
| often the owners of businesses doing the kinds of things
| that get them smacked down by the CFPB.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Everything about it makes perfect sense because pesky
| things like consumer protection and occupational safety cut
| into the profits of the owning class.
| justin66 wrote:
| > This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal
| government that is/was good at making software!
|
| Hopefully it's obvious at this point: Musk and friends not
| there to do anything but enrich themselves, and destroy.
| chinathrow wrote:
| At this point, Elon is doing only damage while he thinks he
| cleans up. Someone will have to cleanup after the cleanup aka
| damage doen though, and it won't be pretty.
| ianburrell wrote:
| My brother works for 18F.
|
| 18F might also be "far-left" cause it was created by Obama
| folks. I also wonder if it is also bad in his mind cause
| conflicts with taken over Digital Service.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| >far-left
|
| >Obama folks
|
| Obama was not in any way "far left"
| ianburrell wrote:
| I added air quotes to make irony obvious.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Ironically, one of the founders of DOGE(nee USDS), Mikey
| Dickerson, was caught colluding with billionaire Reid
| Hoffman to spread misinformation ahead of a 2017 election
| in Alabama in favor of Democrats.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-
| jon...
| hondo77 wrote:
| The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has deleted a
| group that was devoted solely to making the government more
| efficient. Makes perfect sense, in Trumpistan logic.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| By your logic, having 100 of these groups must be even more
| "efficient".
| hondo77 wrote:
| By your logic, having one small group would be most
| efficient. Which makes perfect sense, given the tiny size
| of the US government, in Trumpistan logic.
| Cornbilly wrote:
| Given his tech record, he probably dragged a file named 18F to
| the Recycle Bin.
|
| This is the same guy that nearly tanked PayPal because he was
| obsessed with rewriting their entire system for Windows.
| hinkley wrote:
| I had a coworker who turned beet red when I put Musk and
| PayPal in the same sentence. You know that feeling when your
| parents didn't yell and you wished they would? I was too
| afraid to ask for the full story.
|
| His PR makes him sound like a founder but he was not.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| Looking at the quoted post, what do they have against Direct
| File? It is really hard to keep track of their positions which
| I believe is intentional.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Many in the GOP are generally opposed to federally-funded
| free tax return filing:
| https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/irs-direct-
| file...
|
| > In December, however, Kelly and 28 House Republican
| colleagues wrote to President-elect Donald Trump to ask him
| to end the program: "We write to urge you to take immediate
| action, including but not limited to a day-one executive
| order, to end the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS)
| unauthorized and wasteful Direct File pilot program. The
| program's creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to
| taxpayers' freedom from government overreach, and its rollout
| and structural flaws have already come at a steep price."
| kelnos wrote:
| Direct File competes with Intuit and other tax prep
| companies. Of course they're against it; DF threatens
| corporate profits.
| _factor wrote:
| Isn't it wonderful when they make rules stating you must
| pay taxes, then they make it so convoluted and obscure that
| you're forced to spend extra money to file them?
|
| It seems almost like corruption.
| seangrogg wrote:
| DirectFile makes it such that anyone with a simple tax
| situation (some W-2s, some dependents, etc) can easily
| file their federal taxes online. Free. Straight to the
| IRS. My only gripe with DirectFile is that it doesn't yet
| cover more complex cases (but let's not have perfect be
| the enemy of good; it's probably good enough for 75% of
| citizens) and you still have to find a way to do state
| filings based on your state.
| concordDance wrote:
| Unrelated corporations are not natural allies. In fact they
| often compete.
| BryantD wrote:
| It's referred to as Elizabeth Warren's Direct File project.
| Blackcatmaxy wrote:
| related thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922543#42922953
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Corrected link:
| https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520
| pityJuke wrote:
| He got rid of 18F, a group within the Govt to improve usage of
| tech (and hopefully therefore efficiency), because of a tweet.
|
| A tweet about IRS Direct File, a group that replicates the
| basic automatic taxation program of other advanced economies?
|
| Over a fear that the Government would take over deciding what
| taxes people pay, despite a fact that such a program doesn't
| necessarily block you from manually filing your own taxes
| (don't know if the American implementation has that, but the UK
| one certainly allows you to override PAYE).
|
| Yes HN commenters, this is the genius behind Government reform.
|
| EDIT: Jesus Christ someone is going to convince him FedNow is a
| conspiracy and kill another basic system other countries have
| easily managed.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| He clearly wants to replace the US government technology
| platforms with X/XPay/etc
| h197BQcV wrote:
| They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI,
| SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI.
|
| It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic
| (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential
| and critical production system.
|
| Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect
| privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on
| this.
|
| Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any
| opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is
| making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Democrats can oppose, but they don't have any votes. All 3
| branches of government are controlled by Republicans.
|
| So, yeah. I guess we got the government we voted for? And since
| it's a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the
| government we deserve?
|
| Maybe it gets better later in the administration? That's my
| hope anyway.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I guess we got the government we voted for? And since it's
| a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the
| government we deserve?
|
| Well, we voted based on the only two options that were shoved
| down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people
| on the planet. I don't personally think we deserve this, why
| would we? That said, if we don't do something, it won't get
| better.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _we voted based on the only two options that were shoved
| down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people
| on the planet_
|
| Well, we should have made a system that didn't allow the
| wealthiest people on the planet to do that.
|
| Not trying to be flip, I'm just trying to point out that it
| still all comes back to us in the end. We just have to hope
| for the best at this point. Buyer's remorse is not gonna
| change the actions these people are likely to take.
|
| I do agree with you when you say, something needs to be
| done. If these pres-vice pres pairings are the best the
| current system could come up with, then obviously there is
| a need to add some new aspects to the system that might
| encourage more competence in the candidates it produces.
| spencerflem wrote:
| We didn't make the system, some slavers hundreds of years
| ago did.
|
| It seems like we won't have to worry about the current
| system much longer though
| philjohn wrote:
| No, but enough people voted for the party that put the
| supreme court justices in place who ruled on citizens
| united over the years.
|
| Voting isn't a one time thing, it has repercussions that
| can be felt decades later (see shortages of ATC because
| of the actions of Reagan in the 80's).
| spencerflem wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I also don't see how that's a
| contradiction
| gameman144 wrote:
| > Well, we should have made a system that didn't allow
| the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.
|
| This feels correct- _ish_ , but also pretty unrealistic.
| If you're born into a system where you have to choose
| between getting slapped and getting stabbed, then
| obviously the system _shouldn 't_ have been made that way
| -- that doesn't change the fact that it _is_ that way,
| and you have to act within that system regardless of what
| ought to be the system instead.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The filibuster in the Senate is powerful but it basically
| only blocks new laws from going in you can't really touch all
| the things Trump is doing via EO through Congressional
| obstruction the main avenue for blocking that is through the
| courts which ultimately have limited enforcement power.
| PhunkyPhil wrote:
| I guess Elon believes that long wait times for government
| services is because of an O(n^3) function somewhere...
|
| > Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any
| opposition
|
| I think because this is so unprecedented the structures to
| oversee simply don't exist. The article mentions that congress
| has no mechanisms for oversight, and Elon is moving too quickly
| in this area for any checks to take place.
| lukev wrote:
| The courts are just now beginning to order injuctions and
| restraining orders, for the stuff that happened last week.
| The process seems to lag by 2-3 business days. So hopefully
| we'll be seeing a lot more this week.
|
| How the administration responds to those is going to define
| how this constitutional crisis unfolds. And it _is_ a
| constitutional crisis: congress unambiguously has the power
| of the purse, not the executive.
|
| If Trump gets away with this, it isn't clear that Congress
| has any power at all.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| Maybe the strategy is to let it play out until there is enough
| of a case that the other branches can't look away? Let Elon
| show himself out by inevitably crossing Trump and going the way
| of so many other advisors?
| xmprt wrote:
| Democrats have bigger fish to fry and DOGE isn't a real
| department so it doesn't have a whole lot of authority to do
| things on its own. It can only advise the government so in the
| end, until an executive order is signed or some other action is
| taken, there's nothing to be done.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| You have no real handle on the scale of damage being done and
| DOGE is a real department as it was merged into the US
| Digital Service through executive order.
| affinepplan wrote:
| I'm not sure what could possibly be a bigger fish right now.
| This is, quite literally, the dismantling of our entire
| government and its public services unfolding before our eyes.
| XajniN wrote:
| It sound bad when you say it like that.
| computerthings wrote:
| https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-
| operation...
|
| > I try to keep emotion out of this newsletter. I have
| always tried to write Notes on the Crises in a calm,
| detached tone so that the information I highlight shines
| through. However, I must be honest with readers: I'm
| absolutely terrified. When I first read the Washington
| Post's reporting I subsequently had a panic attack. I am
| not subject to those. I didn't have one during the start
| of Covid-19 when I started writing about the full health,
| economic, and political consequences in March 2020 and
| knew before many, many people that millions would die.
| Nor at any time subsequently did I have one. Even as
| someone who has spent an unusual amount of time thinking
| about the Treasury's internal payments system for a
| person who has never been in government, I find grasping
| the full implications of Elon Musk and his apparatchiks
| reaching into and trying to exert full control over the
| Treasury's payment system mind-boggling.
|
| > There is nothing more important on the entire planet
| than getting Elon Musk and DOGE out of the Bureau of the
| Fiscal Service and allowing career civil service
| employees to run the Treasury's internal payments system
| without capricious and self-serving interference from
| billionaires and their allies. This effort must fail if
| we are to safeguard any semblance of due process and
| lawfulness in the executive branch. A vague anonymous
| promise that DOGE only has "read only" access is not
| enough. They need to be rooted out so that we can return
| to the slower moving, less dangerous, "five alarm fire"
| constitutional crisis we were having as of Friday
| morning.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Democrats don't have a frypan.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Like Democratic elected officials? They lost. They have no
| power. They don't control any branch of government.
|
| They have as much ability to pass laws as you or I personally
| do. They have as much ability to hand down a Supreme Court or
| direct law enforcement as you or I personally do. None. Where
| are we? Complaining on social media I guess.
|
| I'm quite frustrated why my elected officials as well but it is
| kind of hard to blame them when we don't give them any actual
| power to wield.
| maximilianburke wrote:
| Sure, but there's other things they can do. They can all stop
| trying to achieve bipartisan support on things, as the
| republicans do when they're in the minority. Senators can
| withdraw their unanimous consent. They can vote against
| everything. They can drag a bunch of reporters over to
| Treasury and start loudly asking questions
|
| It sounds like some are finding a clue, like the ones who
| stomped down to USAID with reporters in tow today. They need
| to do more of this.
|
| Just because they can't pass legislation doesn't mean they
| are out of ideas.
|
| What you can do is write to or call them. Ask them to vote no
| on every senate confirmation. Ask them to not provide
| unanimous consent. Ask them to make a scene. Demand answers!
| daedrdev wrote:
| The democrats have effectively no power. They control neither
| the house, senate, or presidency, the courts have become more
| conservative, etc. They can only talk. The filibuster will
| prevent new laws, but that isn't much when the federal
| government acts according to the presidency, and the filibuster
| does not prevent government appointments
| cma wrote:
| I doubt they will maintain the filibuster
| dml2135 wrote:
| And the filibuster is nothing more than a polite restriction
| that the majority of the senate places on themselves -- they
| are free to remove it if they wish.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| The democrats were there on Election Day. They were shown the
| door.
| freitasm wrote:
| > Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any
| opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is
| making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.
|
| You mean the same Democrats who were not given a majority on
| neither legislative houses, nor the Presidency?
|
| Some people voted against their best interests. Consequences.
| gadders wrote:
| They should try coming up with some popular policies and
| winning elections.
| chihuahua wrote:
| No, they must talk about nothing but identity politics for
| the next 4 years, surely that is the best way to gain
| majorities in the Senate and House.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| > Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any
| opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is
| making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.
|
| This is the kind of thing that someone who's on TikTok a lot
| says. The line being fed to people by the Chinese government to
| make the Democrats look bad as well. But the truth is the
| Democrats have no power. None. They can't do anything to stop
| this. Elizabeth Warren and AOC have just as much power as I do
| to stop Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
| hashishen wrote:
| I would look to c-span for some accurate real time reactions
| from dems
|
| https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/congressional...
| bb88 wrote:
| > Where are the Democrats in all of this?
|
| I think there's a fear they'll end up on the Kash Patel FBI
| enemies list:
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemie...
| energy123 wrote:
| > * Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) "Elon Musk, you may have illegally
| seized power over the financial payments systems of the
| Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American
| people. The US Congress does that under Article 1 of the
| Constitution ... we don't have a fourth branch of government
| called 'Elon Musk"
|
| > * Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) "This is a constitutional crisis
| that we are in today. Let's call it what it is." -And- "Let's
| not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk
| makes billions off of his business with China. And China is
| cheering at this action today. There is no question that the
| billionaire class trying to take over our govt right now is
| doing it based on self-interest."
|
| > * Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) "It is a matter for Congress to
| deal with, not an unelected billionaire oligarchy named Elon
| Musk. And Elon, if you want to run USAID, get nominated by
| Trump and go to the Senate and good luck in getting confirmed."
|
| > * Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) "We asked to enter the Aid building,
| really on behalf of the American people, but to talk to Aid
| employees, because ... there's been a gag order imposed on Aid
| employees. So we wanted to learn first-hand what's happening.
| We were denied entry based on the order that they received from
| Elon Musk and Doge, which just goes to show that this was an
| illegal power grab by someone who contributed $267bn to the
| Trump effort in these elections."
|
| Estimated crowd of 100 protesters (reported). Other attendees
| and speeches made by Congressmen Beyer, Raskin, Connolly, Omar,
| Olzewski, Senator Van Hollen (seems like more maybe there not
| much coverage to confirm)
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Given how useful USAID has been for the CIA, if the "deep state"
| was a real thing, Elon would have at best a few more days to
| live.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| As someone from the developing world where USAID regularly
| funded organizations that were often divisive and insidiously
| subversive, can't say that I'll be unhappy to see this thing
| dismantled.
| lukev wrote:
| But that has to be an act of congress. Congress creates and
| funds government departments. The president can't just
| dismantle them by fiat.
|
| That he's (apparently) tasking people to do so who don't even
| have the requisite experience or clearances is just adding
| insult to injury.
| ljsprague wrote:
| But don't you get it? From his point of view, the
| Constitution is upholding bad things; he couldn't care less
| about it.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It seems more like a CIA civil war to me, CIA cut outs on both
| sides.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| The recent events should finally put to rest all the JFK
| conspiracies. Messing up with the government at this scale
| should indeed put you into some 3-letter agency hitlist.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > if the "deep state" was a real thing
|
| If it wasn't, he made it real. Elon _is_ the deep state. An
| unelected individual who has set up a no-oversight machinery
| with hands on the levers of state power, and using them to his
| own ends, independent of public benefit. Every accusation is a
| confession.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| At least he's doing things out in the open and posting about
| it live rather than quietly hiding in the shadows as the rest
| of the deep state has done for decades. Strange to see
| progressives defend the worst of the military industrial
| complex...
| tines wrote:
| And how much did you pay for the bridges?
| m463 wrote:
| Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are
| doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively
| without understanding.
|
| But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're
| pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer
| without political rhetoric.
| blfr wrote:
| They're cutting their opponents' access to federal funds.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Why those funds were allocated to their ops and not equally
| to everybody? If those government organisations were serving
| only one side of the political spectrum than something is
| inherently wrong with it.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > If those government organisations were serving only one
| side of the political spectrum than something is inherently
| wrong with it.
|
| Is there? I feel like there are many cases where this is
| not true. Supporting disenfranchised groups for one. If you
| are funding protection for a group of people you don't need
| to be funding their attackers as well to make it "fair",
| the funding of the disenfranchised groups is literally you
| putting your thumb on the scale to try and even things out.
|
| "one side of the political spectrum" is pretty loaded and
| it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. If we are
| talking about "funding democrats" then sure, that's not
| good but if we are talking about "funding women's health"
| then no, I'm not going to play "both sides" games. The sad
| thing is we live in a country where a large number of
| people think that "funding women's health" _is_ "serving
| only one side of the political spectrum".
| moduspol wrote:
| Welcome to the club of "right wing extremists."
| auntienomen wrote:
| They were allocated equally. The goal is to change that.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Also correct. These programs are seen as funding professional
| democrats who then vote for more funding
| tyre wrote:
| The goal is to dismantle as much of the government as possible.
| Where possible, they can replace the existing people with their
| own people, then steer government contracts to themselves.
| riskable wrote:
| The way they're going there might not _be_ a government much
| longer. I really do believe they 're that stupid.
|
| The entire stock market is premised on the stability of the
| US government. Without it all their wealth would disappear
| overnight. All the luxuries they love would cease being
| produced. They wouldn't be able to fly their private jets
| anywhere.
|
| In the past the rich could stockpile easily-tradable goods
| like gold in order to maintain a luxurious life even if their
| government collapsed. When it comes to billionaires that's
| not possible. The logistics of keeping and moving that much
| physical currency/gold/etc don't work out in their favor.
|
| If they keep this up they're going to lose almost all of
| their wealth as the world destabilizes. They're also setting
| themselves and their families up to be assassination targets
| for the rest of their lives (far, far beyond what they are
| already). There's people _everywhere_ that will be severely
| impacted by their actions. There will be nowhere for them to
| go because the US really _is_ the pillar of the world 's
| economies.
| disqard wrote:
| They can operate this demolition op from the safety of
| their bunkers in NZ.
|
| All they need is a way to send messages to their "useful
| idiot" new college grad minions.
|
| True, instigating a global collapse might eventually get to
| them, but AFAICT, they just want to personally profit from
| US dysfunction. Plus, it seems like the rest of the world
| will simply bypass the US and say "you're not dependable
| any more, so we're just gonna pretend you don't exist".
| Ostracism (of the US) seems more likely than the entire
| world destabilizing.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Slightly shaky start to the market today but it largely
| recovered and is just as high as it was 10 days ago. Seems
| the markets are divided between worried and cautiously
| optimistic.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The markets only care about what'll make them money. The
| markets responded to the tarrifs, then the same-day
| (temporary) rollback of them.
|
| Sometimes they put their finger on the scale a bit, too.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
| Grollicus wrote:
| Why would they do anything else? Last Trump Presidency
| caused incredible inflation that for a huge part went
| into the stock market, because where else can it go?
| novia wrote:
| The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The
| goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and
| effective at improving the lives of Americans while not
| prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations.
| The view is that the government of those other nations should
| be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal
| is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out in
| the future, and to bring the fraudsters to justice. Overall,
| the goal is to do a thorough accounting of where exactly US tax
| dollars are going to, and to use that information to decide if
| they should keep going to those recipients in the future, to
| put it to a vote using congress to decide.
|
| [Political bias report: I'm a liberal who has read Rand and who
| does not agree with The Republican Party's views in the vast
| majority of cases. I have been listening to Musk and Ramaswamy
| talking about DOGE on X. I also follow conservative meme sites
| to keep up to date with the way they are thinking about
| things.]
| avs733 wrote:
| >The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat.
| The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and
| effective at improving the lives of Americans while not
| prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other
| nations.
|
| Lets be clear, that is not the goal - that is what they say
| the goal is and reality shows it is not. The goal is grift
| and theft adn destruction. Properly naming things is going to
| continue to matter more and more. Because no matter your bias
| or perspective, repeating propaganda is an act of propaganda.
| novia wrote:
| The question I was answering was
|
| > Maybe what goal do they think they're pursuing?
|
| and I was answering that to the best of my ability. I'm not
| just repeating propaganda, I'm distilling down the intent
| of the actors to the best of my understanding. No one can
| ever know someone's true intent, but I've done the best I
| can with the information I have.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You _are_ repeating propaganda though. You 're describing
| the _stated_ intentions of this group, on their terms, as
| they have defined them. There 's no particular reason to
| presume those statements are sincere, and in fact there
| have been other, previous statements that directly
| contradict them.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > I'm not just repeating propaganda
|
| You literally are, though
| sanderjd wrote:
| With all due respect, I don't think you have done the
| best you can with the information you have. The only
| source of information your answer reflects is the stated
| intention of the people in question. But you don't seem
| to have made an effort to use information about the
| behavior of those people in order to evaluate whether to
| take their stated intentions at face value. You need to
| do that part to have done your best here.
|
| It's fine if you don't want to do this, you're under no
| obligations here, but I just don't think "I've done the
| best I can with the information I have" is accurate.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Right, I can't wait for the announcement that they cut down
| x in spending and will use some percentage of the "savings"
| to do y (Mars via Elons proxy Jared Isaacman, AI
| infrastructure via Oracle/FAANGs) and then claim it will
| benefit the whole world.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't believe Musk or Trum cares about "improving the lives
| of Americans". They would try to protect Americans if that
| was their goal. Their first targets are consumer protection,
| environmental protection and such.
|
| they don't care about fraud either. Both are fraudsters
| themselves, both will enrich themselves and their families.
| They both surround themselves with fraudsters.
|
| What I give to Musk is that the staggering nepotism you see
| with Trump is not there as much.
| novia wrote:
| They are currently in the process of tearing down USAID,
| which provides money to other countries to help with things
| like disease eradication.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-
| usaid-c0c7799be0b2fa7c...
| watwut wrote:
| It is not the only thing they do. So, no. There are 0
| signs of any care for Americans. And there were zero
| signs of any such care from either of the gentlemen,
| ever.
|
| We don't have to pretend naivity.
| 9dev wrote:
| Which sounds kind of useful, considering these diseases
| a) carry over to the USA, b) diminish the buying power of
| those the USA exports goods to, and c) helps these
| countries to improve their economies, leading to a bigger
| market for American products.
|
| Does the Republican Party have any humans with brains
| left, or is it all slime molds now??
| justin66 wrote:
| > What I give to Musk is that the staggering nepotism you
| see with Trump is not there as much.
|
| Hiring a bunch of guys who work at companies he or Thiel
| owns definitely counts as nepotism.
| concordDance wrote:
| The vast majority of Americans care about improving the
| lives of Americans. Trump and Musk are likely no exception.
|
| They might care about other things more than that though...
| kelnos wrote:
| If that actually was the goal, and if this function were
| being executed by a legally formed executive branch agency,
| with non-partisan career employees that have been properly
| vetted, hired, and granted security clearances, I might be
| behind this effort.
|
| But that's not what's happening.
|
| It's clear to me their goal is to dismantle as many "leftist"
| agencies as possible, like environmental protection, labor
| rights protection, securities laws enforcement, humanitarian
| aid, etc., and replace them with people who will enrich their
| friends and families and allow corporations to run roughshod
| over the rights of regular people.
|
| It is bizarre to me that anyone could lack the critical
| thinking skills such that they'd accept DOGE's stated goals
| at face value.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Some people are about to learn about soft power, how
| important it is, how fast it's lost, how quickly alternatives
| fill the gaps
| Trasmatta wrote:
| None of that is the goal. That's the propaganda.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Those may be the stated goals but I don't see any reason to
| believe those are the goals. Trust is earned.
| tpm wrote:
| It's a plutocratic coup, a takeover of the country by a small
| group of unelected men. The goal is to own and exercise power
| without opposition and without any rules.
| racktash wrote:
| Since it worked so well for Russia in the 90s onwards, why
| not America?
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| I would guess that part of it is to tear down what's there so
| they can rebuild in their own vision. I think this is a desire
| that any engineer can understand- and also understand that it
| often has to be suppressed because it's a common blunder.
|
| How many engineers have walked into a legacy project and their
| first instinct is to rebuild? Of course this is sometimes
| warranted, but almost always costs way more than anyone expects
| and doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome.
|
| Edit: I'll also add that this mentality is more common in
| younger / junior folks, which fits the context here.
| disqard wrote:
| I think the word you're looking for is "immaturity".
|
| It is not exclusively found in young people, as one can
| plainly see with the plutocrats in charge today.
|
| FWIW, even when it is justified in a software context, we
| understand that there will be a (usually large) business
| cost.
|
| When implementing this in a political context, there's no way
| to skim over the fact that there will be a huge human cost.
| But here we are anyway.
| CPLX wrote:
| When reality doesn't agree with logic, question your
| assumptions.
|
| Why does an alcoholic crash their car and ruin all their
| personal relationships?
|
| Why does someone with impulse control problems make a self
| destructive statement?
|
| Why does a tech billionaire who is clearly intoxicated by his
| own power and a cocktail of legal and illegal drugs behaving
| erratically?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Isn't this just the Dark Enlightenment that Curtis Yarvin has
| espoused and Thiel, Musk, and JD Vance have also endorsed?
| TL;DR - Dictatorships are superior to democracy, and quick
| executive actions that replace legislative responsibilities
| with the tacit endorsement of judicial and legislative branches
| are functionally the same. The foundations for this were laid
| when Trump got so many Federalist judges approved last term and
| the Supreme Court endorsed the anything goes if President does
| it theory.
|
| https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-2...
| khold_stare wrote:
| This will sound like a conspiracy theory, but this is the
| playbook of Curtis Yarvin, specifically the "RAGE" step -
| Retire All Government Employees. Some references:
|
| Watch the whole video (posted months ago predicting all these
| actions), but here is the relevant section:
| https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?t=1201
|
| NYT interview:
| https://www.nytimes.com/video/podcasts/100000009910862/curti...
|
| Gil Duran did a lot of the reporting on this.
| https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happe...
| bende511 wrote:
| They are looking for The Cathedral.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| The goal is to overturn the system. The electorate is mad that
| nothing changes regardless of Dem or GOP in charge. They want
| something to change. They've wanted it for so long that at this
| point they're okay seeing it burn down.
| philjohn wrote:
| Until it directly impacts them ... and then it's "I didn't
| think the leopards would eat MY face!".
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| this is irrelevant to the GP's question
| sanderjd wrote:
| I don't think it's possible to answer this apolitically because
| their goals are political in nature.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| The right is at present a coalition of conservatives,
| nationalist patriot types and globalist libertarians. DOGE
| seems to be a mix of two goals:
|
| 1. They think that the civil service has become not just openly
| hostile but outright dangerous to any form of Republican
| government, and therefore that taking direct control of the
| civil service infrastructure at high speed is essential to
| avoid being kneecapped by rogue federal employees again. They
| think that this happened during Trump's first term, and that if
| they don't get this problem under control then America has
| effectively become a Democrat dictatorship that does whatever
| the left wants regardless of who wins elections. They have a
| good reasons to believe this is a real problem they need to
| solve and fast, see Sherk for some egregious examples [1] but
| there are many more you could cite.
|
| 2. A genuine belief that the government is very inefficient and
| in particular that a lot of the waste is basically just funding
| the Democrats via various 'laundered' routes like allied NGOs
| that pretend to be politically neutral charities but aren't.
| Doing something about that is a good way to get libertarians
| like Musk and his allies on board. Everyone is in favour of
| government efficiency in principle so letting the libertarian
| types go cut waste is an easy way to build that coalition even
| if the other parts don't care about fiscal efficiency much
| itself.
|
| These two are interlocked. Poor performance and efficiency
| improvements are one of the legal justifications for laying off
| civil servants, so it's much easier to get the civil service
| under control if #resistance results in being one of the ones
| "optimized out" of a job. That's doubly true if the sort of
| NGOs that would hire them if they were fired are being defunded
| simultaneously.
|
| [1]
| https://americafirstpolicy.com/assets/uploads/files/Tales_fr...
| ranger207 wrote:
| There's two parts to it. First, there's the reasonable position
| that the government is inefficient or has too much bureaucracy
| or regulation. If that's the case, how do you improve that?
| Chesterton's Fence says that all those regulations are in place
| for a reason, but it's reasonably to believe that some of those
| reasons may not be relevant anymore, or could be better written
| to allow for more efficiency. However, sitting down to figure
| out why existing regulations exist and how to get rid of them
| without allowing whatever bad outcome they were created in
| response to is difficult. If you have the general feel that a
| regulation is bad, why not just get rid of it? Or an office you
| don't like, or a committee that likes to say you're doing
| things wrong? If you've got the vibe that "this thing is bad",
| why do you need to prove it before getting rid of it? So it's
| taking things that are legitimate problems and trying to fix
| them based on vibes rather than data. Which, if some of the
| problems you're annoyed with are "it takes too long to build a
| building because the EPA wants data to see if there's
| environmental impacts", is it really a surprise you'd want to
| take that out without data?
|
| Second is the dismantling of the deep state. The deep state
| exists, but it's not a conscious effort in general. Instead,
| it's the typical aspects of institutional inertia, multiplied
| by the fact that the kinds of people wanting to work in
| government favor inertia more than in most private businesses.
| Of course the low level government bureaucrat at your local
| post office or whatever is going to want to slow-roll things
| and keep things from changing as much as possible; that's just
| the kind of person that typically looks for a government job
| and gets hired. Of course they're going to resist rapid changes
| from people that want things to be fixed yesterday. If your
| conception of the government is as an agent to execute orders,
| rather than as an agent to steadily administer regulations,
| then you're going to resent the people who don't respond
| instantly to the executive's desires
|
| FWIW I voted for Kamela because I think that the process of
| governance is just as important as the governance itself, and
| did not want Trump to remove the existing processes in this
| way. I can definitely see why people would want to change
| processes, and given the historical ineffectual attempts at
| changed processes I can see why people would vote for someone
| who promised to tear it all down, but I don't think tearing it
| all down is the best option. Although, I didn't vote _for_
| Harris as much as I voted for the most effective way to
| _prevent_ Trump, but given the American first-past-the-post
| voting system that was the best I could do.
| https://ncase.me/ballot/
| tonymet wrote:
| Between Elon's stated goals, the systems under scope and my
| personal experience from state & local finance, they are
| performing a strategic efficacy audit of treasury spending. The
| US Treasury normally doesn't audit transactions -- they execute
| requests for transfers from other agencies and defer governance
| to congressional oversight.
|
| The GAO doesn't even audit in the intuitive sense. They audit
| that spending is being recorded properly, and for many agencies
| even that low bar isn't met. In other words GAO is okay with
| you dumping money into a hole as long as you count how much.
|
| DOGE is doing a practical audit of the spending. i.e. taking
| high-level spending principals from trump and identifying
| specific budget items to eliminate.
| tonymet wrote:
| It's worth noting the difference between Budget & expenses
| since families normally blur the two. Budgets are the plans
| developed by the President and approved by Congress, and
| expenses are what actually get spent during the year-- and
| they vary widely.
|
| DOGE's unique approach is to use the Treasury as the
| "chokepoint" for telemetry so they can cluster and classify
| all of the transactions .
|
| Imagine a massive microservices platform with 10k services
| and you want to know which ones are viable ( cost/benefit).
| Rather than survey all 10k, you would surveil a router or LB
| chokepoint to measure the input & output of all 10k services.
| That seems to be their approach with the treasury.
| flaque wrote:
| This seems broadly good. If you told me a democratic admin had
| recruited these people, I would think "wow! what a positive
| signal for the current admin!"
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| How could you not trust a 19 year old who goes by bigballs?
|
| I for one trust Mr.BigBalls to make smart and effective cuts to
| get our government back on track!
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You should probably pay more attention to what people do rather
| than their credentials as it's a more powerful signal.
| danso wrote:
| The Obama admin created the US Digital Service -- i.e. the unit
| that "DOGE" has now reappropriated -- which attracted and hired
| folks like Google's Matt Cutts [0]. The USDS did not, as far as
| we know, try to sneak in fresh-out-of-college-grads by
| bypassing the normal hiring process.
|
| [0] https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/the-next-
| chapter-...
| yapyap wrote:
| its just who will metaphorically meatride him the most, he'd hire
| Ian Miles Chong on a h1b if he could
| charlescearl wrote:
| Ruth Wilson Gilmore's In the Shadow of the Shadow State, which
| discusses the concept of the anti-state state.
|
| https://sfonline.barnard.edu/ruth-wilson-gilmore-in-the-shad...
| billiam wrote:
| Why shouldn't a 19 year old college dropout have the power to
| fire any government employee responsible for national security or
| live-saving services by looking at their code for 5 minutes?
| Makes perfect sense.
| disqard wrote:
| Obviously
| tenpies wrote:
| The Founding Fathers had 18, 20, 21 and 25 year olds in much
| more important positions.
|
| And just like DOGE, they were working in a team with older
| people too, but that sort of rational framing just doesn't get
| clicks.
|
| See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United...
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Thank you! I was looking to see if anyone made this point.
|
| You are exactly right. "Inexperience" just means someone
| younger than you.
|
| (Note I am middle-aged)
| Svoka wrote:
| It is very strange idea to equate life experiences gained
| before 18 of people born in 21st century in 18th century.
|
| Also, as outsider, I would never understand US fascination
| with "Founding Fathers". Some folks born about 300 years ago
| and somehow having answers to all the questions for all the
| times. Back than this country was a backwater colony which
| barely started industrialization. Overwhelming majority of
| population lived out of sustenance farming and majority of
| trade goods were products of slave labour. I mean, it is what
| it is, but where this yearning for glorious past which never
| existed comes from? Like, life in USA became more or less
| good only several generations ago, after the country became
| giant economical winner of WW2. And it did it by investing
| heavily into helping allies, not building isolationist
| policies.
| tines wrote:
| > I would never understand US fascination with "Founding
| Fathers"
|
| Have you read any of their writing? A lot of it is
| timelessly insightful and they were very intelligent men.
|
| > having answers to all the questions for all the times
|
| This gives away that you haven't read them, because they
| themselves explicitly denied having answers for all time,
| and stated that the government needed to evolve with the
| governed.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I'm no expert in US history but just looking at the signers
| list, 3/4 of them were >30yo.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The Founding Fathers were responsible for a population of...
| just under 3 million though, as opposed to the US' current
| ~350 million.
| bende511 wrote:
| No way a 19 year old could be tricked by a pretty woman into
| giving her secrets and access codes. Real level-headed and
| clear-eyed age
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah I mean Zucc was only 20 when he started Facebook and
| popularised the adage "work fast and break things", which was a
| great strategy for Facebook and its burnt out staff (or those
| that couldn't hack it) so of course it'll work for the biggest
| economy in the world too, it's basically the same as a startup,
| right?
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| The amount of corruption and thieving that has been going on
| using these agencies is over. I hope the FBI gets involved after
| the cuts are made. Someone rightfully commented "turns out we had
| UBI this entire time, but only for one side". Somehow all these
| democrats (and even some R's!) reach into these services. It's
| out outright theft, but job guarantees and such, which is
| practically the same thing.
| emagdnim2100 wrote:
| disappointing to see so many "hacker" news comments complaining
| about lack of credentials or system-specific expertise.
|
| yes, existing government systems are insanely complex - that's
| part of the problem! the essential complexity is not higher than
| that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.
|
| we don't even know what these kids' mandate is (also
| disappointing). but if your general premise is "smart outsiders
| who are good at engineering are always the wrong people to rework
| complex, inefficient systems," i'd like to think you're on the
| wrong site.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| The problem with these types of comments is your filtering
| reality through some sort of weird hero-complex you're clinging
| to. It's not realistic and it's harmful.
|
| The people involved in this are not qualified or capable in
| _any_ manner to be doing what they're doing. They are
| sycophants.
|
| Worse, it's putting an entire nation in jeopardy.
|
| This isn't "smart, young spirits defy all odds and save the
| day!" it's really "hitler youth comes in and starts thrashing
| about until daddy gets his way."
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Considering Musk's recent actions, Hitler youth is probably
| not too far off. Can't make it much clearer than Musk on
| which side of history he stands.
| vzqx wrote:
| I'm open to outsiders improving inefficiencies. The concern is
| that these are kids, barely out of college. They don't have the
| domain-specific knowledge required to rework these complex
| systems, no matter how smart they are. Plus, given Musk's track
| record, they were likely chosen more for their loyalty to Musk
| than for their technical acumen.
| tgv wrote:
| > the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-
| computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.
|
| Sorry, but that's such an absurd comment. These kids don't even
| know anything about rocket building, let alone they're able to
| build a rocket from first principles. Second, the US government
| is much more complex than a rocket; it cannot be understood by
| a single person. Third, you can waste rockets, but a whole
| nation depends on one goverment. You can't just experiment with
| it. Fourth, there are lives at stake. It's not just a payload,
| or one or two astronauts who know what they signed up for, that
| are at their mercy.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > yes, existing government systems are insanely complex -
| that's part of the problem! the essential complexity is not
| higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an
| interplanetary rocket.
|
| Yeah, and why don't we build concentration camps again? They're
| super efficient in term of work per unit of food. Colonies are
| also super nice, lots of free stuff!
|
| Some people should open history books, life isn't about
| refactoring everything, making things as simple as possible,
| &c. It would be comical if it wasn't the very first thing you
| learn as an engineer
|
| If you think a rocket is more complex than hundreds of years of
| infinitely complex people making decisions and compromises
| through democracy you're completely out of touch with reality,
| and if you genuinely think we can just burn it all down because
| some nerd unilaterally thinks he found a better way to do it
| you're just plain dumb.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| We are watching a coup in real time.
|
| There's no two ways about it.
|
| Sigh...
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| It's democracy when I like it but a coup when I don't.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Oh, no, that's not it. This is a coup. Full stop.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Why? A majority of voters asked for this. It was pretty
| explicit they were going to do some serious trimming of the
| fat. The campaign promises were no secret. Now, if Trump
| tried to fire him but he somehow still maintained his power
| within the government then _that_ would be a coup.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| A majority did not. And the ones who voted for Trump
| didn't ask for someone to illegally access the systems
| that Elon has access to. This is the kind of stuff they
| voted to fix.
|
| > Now, if Trump tried to fire him but he somehow still
| maintained his power within the government then that
| would be a coup.
|
| I still think this is what will happen.
| tines wrote:
| > I still think this is what will happen.
|
| Agreed, but we won't hear about it, a failure of that
| kind would never make it to the public's awareness.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Trump isn't exactly subtle when he expresses his
| disappointment in one of his hires. We'll definitely hear
| about it _if_ it happens. The idea that Musk is somehow
| acting against Trump 's direction is ridiculous though.
| racktash wrote:
| I would love just one year of this decade to be uneventful /
| boring...
|
| I used to think people were over-doing it in their criticism of
| Trump - I thought he was dreadful, but ultimately a contained /
| containable force. I was even a little optimistic that he might
| be a disruptive force (inadvertent) that would make other
| politicians return their focus to everyday, working class
| concerns.
|
| I was naive and stupid. And many people are kidding themselves
| even now about what's going on. There's nothing normal or
| business as usual about what's happening in America right now.
| I'm not qualified to predict where this all ends, but I don't
| think any of it's good and I don't think this ends after Donald
| Trump's second term.
|
| To the people thinking DOGE is about cutting "wasteful
| spending", I can only shake my head. What will it take for
| people to see clearly what's right before them?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Each of us feels that we belong to some tribe. If your tribe
| supports what you see going on, you won't be alarmed by it.
| Reality is less important than the discourse's impact on your
| tribe.
|
| Besides, maybe everything is fine and the Muskovites are
| right.
| racktash wrote:
| One has to take in the broader picture. The DOGE events are
| one piece of the puzzle. It was only last week that far-
| right thugs were pardoned unconditionally by the President.
|
| Some people hold conservative views, some liberal and
| others a mix. People have "tribes", but that's not what
| this is about.
|
| What is happening is not good if you view rule of law and
| liberal democracy as being good things.
| user32489318 wrote:
| how is someone's age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who
| spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright
| 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire
| article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of
| American journalism
| PeeMcGee wrote:
| When they're as young as literally 19 years old, then it must
| be the case that they lack the appropriate experience.
| user32489318 wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you but let's ask the question
| "experience for what"? Is it making a couple of dashboards,
| extract data from legacy systems into something more
| queryable, or generating a couple of expense reports? Or will
| they be making actual significant decisions affecting
| millions? How likely would that be?
| PeeMcGee wrote:
| Regardless, they seemingly have access to tons of financial
| data that they are basing brash decisions on with zero
| context. That combined with the fact they are reporting to
| a manchild that is demonstrably stupid as shit when it
| comes to "improving" such systems (see Twitter and the play
| by play of his first days there).
|
| It takes tenure to know what sorts of discretion are
| required when reporting to such an extremely senior
| "leader", and to not get caught up in the hype of being
| involved in something.
|
| (edit: added last sentence)
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Experience is an important teacher and a 19 year old doesn't
| have it.
| kelnos wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that _any_ 19-22 year old would have
| the appropriate level of experience to handle this
| responsibility.
|
| Sure, a 55 year old also may not have the appropriate
| responsibility, but at least it's reasonable to expect that
| they _could_.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Pretty sure these whiz kids engineers are writing software to
| analyze things like where all the money goes.
|
| Decisions will ultimately be made and implemented by the
| appropriate authorities, of course.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Agree. It seems largely they are just writing code to make
| sense of the enormous amount of data and unravel the
| tangled mess that is the US federal budget.
| soared wrote:
| None of them have seemingly ever held more than 1 full time
| job. Age is discussed, but experience is clearly lacking. Your
| argument skips over that entirely.
| tgv wrote:
| 19 year olds are much more malleable. They can be fanatic, and
| follow orders easily. They aren't educated. They have a limited
| grasp of morality, and can't oversee the consequences of their
| actions. They have no other obligation in life than to this
| holy task.
|
| That's why it's relevant.
| grumple wrote:
| Experience - which comes with age - is absolutely critical in
| all intellectual pursuits, including programming, government,
| and just about everything else. Experts and lifetime learners
| learn more each day. A 20 year old simply has not had the time
| to be exposed to the same breadth or depth of ideas, or to
| critique them seriously. Younger people are also far more
| vulnerable to hormonal impulses, manipulation, and more likely
| to have been exposed to a much more limited world view.
|
| I can't imagine anyone but insufferably arrogant - and really
| fucking wrong - young people making an argument to the
| contrary. Not that there aren't benefits to youth - being
| unburdened by complexity, ignorant enough to be especially bold
| - but these aren't actually that useful. And we have good
| evidence to support that; older founders do better, for
| example:
| https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-old...
| thom wrote:
| I agree. Fascism is fascism whether it's a teenage Octavian,
| Agrippa or a groyper. Underestimate them at your peril.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| The age of one person isn't that relevant, you're right about
| that. The average age of an entire "agency"[0] is relevant
| though.
|
| [0]: DOGE may not technically be an "agency", but whatever the
| case, they have and are acting with power equal to that of an
| agency.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I think it is more about how Musk needs to surround himself
| with yound easily impressed and guilable minds, because anyone
| else would probably see through him all day. These young guys
| are probably afraid to speak out against him, or are sucking it
| aaaaall up as orderes by Musk. He will have chosen who gets to
| tag along.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| With age comes life experience and an appreciation that it's
| hard to make things better, and breaking them is rarely good.
|
| Similarly, it is easier to convince an impressionable 19yo to
| do reckless and possibly illegal things.
|
| It doesn't strike me as totally irrelevant.
| mrkeen wrote:
| 20yos with max 2 weeks of experience in the job - given the
| inauguration date.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Because there's a baseline age to have the necessary skills,
| experience, and cognitive development to be able to accomplish
| the task.
| eutropia wrote:
| There are people in this thread claiming that Wired "doxxed"
| these engineers working for Musk dismantling things they don't
| understand; however didn't Musk publicly mock individual federal
| employees on his twitter account, drawing the eyes of millions
| onto random government functionaries for no other reason than to
| capriciously taunt them about being fired?
|
| I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.
| sanderjd wrote:
| People who work at the highest levels of our government are
| public figures. It is the job of reporters to report on who
| they are and what they're up to.
| cgannett wrote:
| Well if they are working on those systems I think they count
| then right?
| mrkeen wrote:
| Sources:
|
| When Musk does it:
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858916546338590740
|
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858914228624924963
|
| When others do it:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/1igw3cs/elon_m...
| srid wrote:
| The X post in that last link is in response to a suspended
| account. Screenshot for those wondering is here:
|
| https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1886479301081522599
|
| (The names it includes are already in the Wired article)
| concordDance wrote:
| Both are quite bad. I expect better from Wired.
| fifilura wrote:
| Most Scandinavian countries are required to make any
| communication in public departments (including all coworkers
| emails) public on request by journalists or anyone interested.
|
| This is to make any doubts regarding e.g USAID public instead of
| making such drastic measures necessary.
|
| _But_ also make work of an entity such as Doge transparent. They
| are after all funded by my money (as a taxpayer).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_...
| vkou wrote:
| > instead of making such drastic measures necessary.
|
| These drastic measures are neither necessary[1] nor legal
| (Well, they are a necessary step in carrying out a self-
| coup...) But there's nobody left to prosecute or enforce the
| law.
|
| First they came for the judges and made sure that the courts
| were stacked... And then they could do what they want, because
| they have the police, the army, and the courts.
|
| [1] It's actually wild how people here are actively arguing for
| shredding the constitution because the country is carrying a
| _debt_. America truly is done.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Most Scandinavian countries are required to make any
| communication in public departments (including all coworkers
| emails) public on request by journalists or anyone interested._
|
| In the U.S., too. In fact, it was the United States that
| pioneered this in the modern age.
|
| But it's all happening so quickly that nobody can keep up with
| it. And the people who are supposed to take care of these
| things have been fired.
|
| Also bad, when requests are made by legitimate parties, they
| are being ignored or dismissed by the new regime.
|
| Let what's happening in the U.S. serve as a warning to you that
| no matter what laws you pass, electing lawless people brings
| lawlessness. And the law you passed cannot help you against
| people who don't respect the law.
| writebetterc wrote:
| > In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in
| the modern age.
|
| This was instituted in Sweden in the year 1766. Source:
| https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offentlighetsprincipen
|
| That's 10 years before the USA declared independence.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I guess we have different definitions of "modern" age.
| writebetterc wrote:
| >pioneer something when somebody pioneers something, they
| are one of the first people to do, discover or use
| something new.
| picafrost wrote:
| The attributes of young men have always made them convenient to
| put on the frontlines.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I'm concerned about my US bonds, as the way to access them is
| through a government website. Are these people going to block my
| access and steal my money?
|
| >> "We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress
| has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening
| because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this
| feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by
| the richest man in the world."
| justin66 wrote:
| They are going to make it easier to get your money by making it
| available via X!
| chasely wrote:
| I'm trying to download my 1099 forms from TreasuryDirect and
| it's coming back as unavailable. Probably unrelated to
| everything going on now, but the fact I thought that it could
| be related for a second is crazy.
|
| >>> TreasuryDirect is unavailable. >>> We apologize for the
| inconvenience and ask that you try again later.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Investors' faith in US bond and equity markets is,
| unironically, the most powerful immediate-term check on the
| current administration. The longer-term check is the midterm
| elections in 2026. If they really screw things up, as they
| appear to be doing, that's their deadline for fixing them.
| affinepplan wrote:
| "Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
|
| I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe.
| The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how
| did it happen?
|
| That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would
| be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets.
| People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for
| some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your
| finger on..."
|
| - The Handmaid's Tale
| zzzeek wrote:
| Fortunately we have an enemy this time, Elon Musk. He's it.
| He's also really bad at hiding what he's doing.
| pietrrrek wrote:
| I don't think that Elon Musk can be singled out as the source
| of these changes, he's didn't just magically appear lur of
| nowhere and start doing what he's doing.
| Thorentis wrote:
| The same people who love to quote this, also love to tell you
| to trust the mainstream media which, you guessed it, broadcasts
| on television.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I struggle to remember the last time that anyone who wasn't
| made of straw said to trust the mainstream media.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Well from a foreigner's perspective, US is finally getting its
| own version of Cultural Revolution.
| sockp0pp3t wrote:
| We already had our own version of the cultural revolution,
| persecuting people for their political beliefs and a Global
| Engagement Center who's business it was to stifle dissenting
| American opinions.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Are you referring to McCarthyism and the red scare?
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Think more recent than that
| spencerflem wrote:
| Oh! When people got iced out for opposing the global war
| on terror.
|
| My bad
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| More recent, but getting warmer.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Very recent then,
|
| You must be meaning the one the Democrats were part of
| then-
|
| Classifying any sort of Palestinian aid group as a
| terrorist organization to strip them of being nonprofits,
| pressuring schools to expel pro-palestinian protesters?
|
| Or the other one the democrats lead- When every occupy
| wall street leader was arrested and the protesters were
| gassed by the military?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| This subthread gives me hope that maybe the new
| management isn't so much worse after all.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Hey don't get it twisted-
|
| Every president is a villain but while Obama didn't care
| about the first or fourth amendment, the current admin
| doesn't seem to care about anything.
| ljsprague wrote:
| In that case they were "persecuting" communists; today they
| persecute patriots.
| bytematic wrote:
| nice account history
| wyager wrote:
| This is perhaps more analogous to an immune reaction to a(n
| attempted) Cultural Revolution.
| iamleppert wrote:
| The next four years are going to be a test of the US
| Constitution. But when they are up -- and they will be, and
| people are more angry at Trump than the last time around the
| pendulum swings wildly back again, as it always does, what is
| going to happen to Musk and the rest of them?
| vermilingua wrote:
| I expect we'll see more Italian plumbers coming out of the
| woodwork before 4 years is up.
| tines wrote:
| It's not a test of The Constitution, it's a test of our
| constitution, and we're being exposed as we speak.
| talldayo wrote:
| To be fair, I already knew that Hacker News was going to
| crumple like a wet paper towel at the first test of their
| principles. Seeing the long-overdue tech regulation in Europe
| get met with existential fear for the American job market was
| my first indication that HN has no realistic grip on what
| matters to the world and it's people.
|
| JWZ was right, we really are just finance-obsessed
| manchildren at the end of the day.
| duderific wrote:
| I think it is going to be much harder to get Trump to leave
| after these four years than the last time. I imagine there will
| be an amendment on the table soon to do away with the two-term
| limit, if there isn't already. Or, he may just say "come and
| get me" and if the military is on his side, he can just
| continue to rule as he sees fit.
| sirbutters wrote:
| Key word here is "cannot be _elected_ more than twice ". So
| as long as there is no official election, he is not
| technically violating the constitution by remaining in power.
| I'm playing devil's advocate here.
| louthy wrote:
| That assumes this will end.
| kappuchino wrote:
| From the outside (that is europen view) it looks like they're
| planning that this change in four years - or even two - will
| not happen. We'll see.
|
| A good read would be Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies
| of the Tech Billionaires.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I worry more about what will happen to the US then. The
| backlash is going to be _very_ tempted to fight fire with fire,
| to fight unconstitutionality with unconstitutionality.
|
| Can we get back to a functioning rule of law and a limited
| government at the end of this? I'm... hesitant.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the
| big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have
| medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an
| audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting
| what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for
| is effective.
|
| Of course to do that would require actual coalition building,
| hard choices that upset voters, and congressional approval.
| Instead they'll going to disrupt some of the highest ROI small-
| money grants like food or medicine to impoverished countries
| because they don't have any representation.
|
| It won't meaningfully reduce the deficit and means we we're
| signing up for warlords and global instability in the near
| future.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| He mentioned in an interview last night that they have evidence
| that there is fraud rings of people outside the US posing as
| citizens and collecting medicare and other welfare. Sounds like
| it'll be a big item they take on in the near future. Some
| evidence for this is that all manner of fraud ramped up during
| covid and since then the federal budget has ballooned from 4.5T
| to over 7T.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _they have evidence that there is fraud rings of people
| outside the US posing as citizens and collecting medicare and
| other welfare._
|
| They'll release that evidence right about the same time they
| release all the "evidence" that Giuliani had about election
| fraud. Which they've promised to release hundreds of times
| before. But never have. Because it doesn't exist.
|
| Are there people outside the U.S. gaming the system? Sure.
| Are they "rings" or "gangs" or whatever scary name they're
| using this week? Based on past performance, I have zero faith
| we'll see any evidence.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| > Are they "rings" or "gangs" or whatever scary name
| they're using this week?
|
| As someone who is very into the "scambaiting" hobby of
| hunting down identity thieves, phone call scams, etc I
| would imagine they would look something like these
| operations you see in India or Russia where you get have an
| office full of professional thieves calling elderly people
| and scamming them out of their bank accounts, harvesting
| data or getting them to sign up for useless subscriptions.
| In 2023 alone there was $43 billion lost from identity
| theft. There was $200 billion in fraud from the various
| covid hardship assistance programs. These programs are
| huuuge and they have ballooned beyond what is logical in
| the past few years. Even democrats talk frequently about
| medicare fraud.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| These kinds of vague rumours ("they have evidence" is weasel
| words) are used to legitimize the development of invasive
| programs (and software) that profile people; see for example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand.
| .. that affected tens of thousands of people (causing
| children to be removed from their parents, divorces,
| suicides, etc), mostly justified because of a small group of
| people defrauding the benefits scheme. The total cost of
| setting this right is in the billions and increasing, many
| times more than whatever they saved on fraud.
| solatic wrote:
| Catching Medicare fraud likely requires a level of automatic
| data anomaly analysis that's simply beyond all the participants
| involved, both in terms of getting access to the actual
| databases and in getting the qualified manpower to build such a
| system.
|
| If the DoD's auditors can't track down all the expenses, then
| why would DOGE be any more successful?
|
| Running after bullshit is the low-hanging fruit.
| rasz wrote:
| > should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or
| defense
|
| ok, but just after he fixed twitter bots like he promised, or
| ships working Autopilot.
| chrisgd wrote:
| Medicare fraud perpetuated by individuals is u likely to be
| that high. Overbilling by hospital corporations and medical
| device companies could be possible. But corporations aren't the
| target of DOGE.
| whalesalad wrote:
| "move fast and break things"
|
| just imagine how insecure and fucked up their solutions will be?
| waiting for the S3 bucket that has global read permissions on a
| literal "select * from usa_citizens" dump of data.
| gadders wrote:
| Government employees are doxing them on twitter and threatening
| to kill them.
|
| Looks like some far left employees are going to lose their job
| and their freedom.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Are they the cause of the rumored fire in a NIH server room?
| quantisan wrote:
| - Youth-Led Implementation - Bypassing Traditional Authority
| Structures - Loyalty-Based Appointments - Institutional
| Disruption - Limited Oversight - Information Control
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
| mythrwy wrote:
| Good. These guys, in addition to obviously being very smart, are
| young and don't have a lot of baggage in government or industry.
|
| I think they are perfect for tracing down what has been going on
| and finding where inefficiencies and/or corruption has been
| occurring. Anyone who has issue with rooting out corruption and
| inefficiency isn't in the right.
|
| Of course what is done with what they find will not be in their
| hands.
| varsketiz wrote:
| Curious european here. Do you think we will see some serious mass
| protests in big USA cities if this continues? By this I mean
| "reckless" action by Musk and Trump.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| The vast majority of Americans either voted for this, or don't
| care.
|
| Will there be some protests? Sure. Nothing will come of it,
| though. The only thing that will enact any real change is if
| big corporations start losing any profits due to all this
| upheaval, in which case they may put pressure to get things
| settled down.
| wyager wrote:
| This is exactly the type of thing that Trump said he wanted to
| do. Who is protesting that who wouldn't be unconditionally
| protesting Trump anyway? Plus, with the federal NGO money
| spigot cut off, a lot of the NGOs that organize protests are
| probably having operational problems.
| energy123 wrote:
| Only if there's inflation. If there's no inflation then people
| won't do anything. Most people don't know what's going on
| because they get their information from social media echo
| chambers. Truly a dystopia in the making.
| int_19h wrote:
| Maybe. The first test will be on February, 5, when there are
| scheduled protests in all state capitols. There's also
| https://generalstrikeus.com.
| msikora wrote:
| "between 19 and 24" - that would mean not even college educated?
|
| JFC, I was a complete dumbass in my 20s.
| Arubis wrote:
| That's a hell of a stain to have on your resume.
| masterclef wrote:
| Based patriots.
| tonymet wrote:
| Young people should be happy to see more representation in the
| federal govt. Among roles of authority it's probably 65+ .
| They're spending your & your grandkid's prosperity every minute.
|
| People under 55 should be happy about this situation.
| szundi wrote:
| All you guys whining about how US is broken but from here it
| seems to work pretty nice compared to my country.
|
| You fuck it up from the inside yourself with all this unsafisfied
| and selfish doomer attitude.
|
| Instead of starting to vote to a 3rd party or something.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Good. They're doing great work. Keep it up!
| srid wrote:
| I had to scroll a lot to get to the first positive comment! And
| it is heavily downvoted.
|
| Reminds me of this submission here (ironically) asking advice
| on dealing with negative comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42445820
| iAm25626 wrote:
| History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. Komsomol/Soviet, Red
| guards/China. Ideology fan the flame of youth into fanatic.
| Who/what is providing the necessary guardrail? God speed America.
| Future belong to the young. Make good/long term decision.
| hintymad wrote:
| "Bringing in young talent with new skills is literally 'what can
| be unburdened by what has been' if that's a thing anyone on the
| left still wants" -- Lulu Cheng Meservey
| macagain wrote:
| >https://archive.ph/QYBhK
|
| why is this redirecting to lifetips.it ? did archive.today get
| hacked?
| macagain wrote:
| This one is working:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250202235355/https://www.wired...
| mynameyeff wrote:
| I mean, these "kids" are rockstars. Why are they being
| juvenilized by the Wired writer?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Peter Theil is running America
| gradus_ad wrote:
| I applaud these guys and the work they're doing. Any bureaucracy,
| public or private, with access to a guaranteed income stream will
| grow like a tumor. The entire federal govt needs to be audited
| and gutted. The time for committees, reports and similar half
| measures is over.
| silexia wrote:
| HN has been taken over by the far left... Either LLM accounts or
| unaccountable angry government bureaucrats afraid of being found
| out.
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