DOGE is a complete fraud and scam

[Elixir]

Is it free speech to buy an election?

Some people here have surprised me by answering that with an affirmative.
Elections are not for sale under free and fair representative government.

 

[southernhybrid]

Is it free speech to buy an election?

Some people here have surprised me by answering that with an affirmative.
Elections are not for sale under free and fair representative government.

I saw some of those posts in the there thread, which was partly what influence me to share the article. Yeah! Citizens United has equated money with speech. WTF!

 

[ZiprHead]

A Rant Against Efficiency

Striving for efficiency is all very well, but it leaves no time to live | Eva Wiseman

Efficiency slices and barges its way through delicate structures, leaving the most vulnerable flailing

www.theguardian.com

One problem is that it feels increasingly as if efficiency is seen as valuable for its own sake, rather than as its intended means to an end. It has become a performance of presence, aggression, speed, but many today mistake the action for the results. Among those laid off by Doge were the Acting Chief of Defence Nuclear Safety and other “emergency personnel” – in pursuit of efficiency, Musk has risked getting rid of things that are not only required for a stable government, but quite possibly the safety of the planet. One benefit of inefficiency is, it offers time. And time is essential for debate, for conversation, for realising mistakes, for starting again – time is essential if you are a human person, an inefficient organism prone to both creativity and the common cold.

By striving exclusively for efficiency we’re not just losing people or projects (and potentially, lives), we’re sacrificing something less tangible too, which is a kind of faith, and curiosity, and acceptance. The messaging from Labour, with their hard push to get people with disabilities into work, is that those who aren’t contributing to the economy – those who aren’t constantly optimising, improving, bloodily striving – are less deserving of a decent life.

The messaging from the US is (among other horrors) that the only worthwhile pursuit is profit, and anything Trump doesn’t immediately understand is superfluous. It’s the same impulse that has led in the UK to cuts and contempt for the arts – last week a letter to the Times signed by 700 creatives explained how creative subjects have disappeared from state schools since 2010, making access to art, dance, design, drama and music education the “preserve of the wealthy”. The Tories chopped it at both ends – getting rid of arts education and welfare payments that historically allowed artists to thrive means there will be, in theory, no need for expensive theatres or libraries. Efficiency!

It’s worth noting that, while governments certainly have an obsession with efficiency, it’s still limited solely to cost-cutting. There seems to be little interest in, for instance, making access to welfare payments more efficient, or healthcare, or childcare, as any parent who has battled on their laptop deep into the night trying to conquer the tax-free childcare scheme knows. No, efficiency is only important when attempting to immediately maximise profit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fragilego Mussolini is using the power of the federal government to exact revenge on anyone he feels has ever wronged him. We are so fucked.

Until someone with better aim decides to do something about it.

Won't work. Assassinating him would do no good at this point. The only path to sanity is if federal law enforcement acts in an organized fashion, or if the military pulls a coup. I do not think either are likely.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A Rant Against Efficiency

Striving for efficiency is all very well, but it leaves no time to live | Eva Wiseman

Efficiency slices and barges its way through delicate structures, leaving the most vulnerable flailing

www.theguardian.com

One problem is that it feels increasingly as if efficiency is seen as valuable for its own sake, rather than as its intended means to an end. It has become a performance of presence, aggression, speed, but many today mistake the action for the results. Among those laid off by Doge were the Acting Chief of Defence Nuclear Safety and other “emergency personnel” – in pursuit of efficiency, Musk has risked getting rid of things that are not only required for a stable government, but quite possibly the safety of the planet. One benefit of inefficiency is, it offers time. And time is essential for debate, for conversation, for realising mistakes, for starting again – time is essential if you are a human person, an inefficient organism prone to both creativity and the common cold.

By striving exclusively for efficiency we’re not just losing people or projects (and potentially, lives), we’re sacrificing something less tangible too, which is a kind of faith, and curiosity, and acceptance. The messaging from Labour, with their hard push to get people with disabilities into work, is that those who aren’t contributing to the economy – those who aren’t constantly optimising, improving, bloodily striving – are less deserving of a decent life.

The messaging from the US is (among other horrors) that the only worthwhile pursuit is profit, and anything Trump doesn’t immediately understand is superfluous. It’s the same impulse that has led in the UK to cuts and contempt for the arts – last week a letter to the Times signed by 700 creatives explained how creative subjects have disappeared from state schools since 2010, making access to art, dance, design, drama and music education the “preserve of the wealthy”. The Tories chopped it at both ends – getting rid of arts education and welfare payments that historically allowed artists to thrive means there will be, in theory, no need for expensive theatres or libraries. Efficiency!

It’s worth noting that, while governments certainly have an obsession with efficiency, it’s still limited solely to cost-cutting. There seems to be little interest in, for instance, making access to welfare payments more efficient, or healthcare, or childcare, as any parent who has battled on their laptop deep into the night trying to conquer the tax-free childcare scheme knows. No, efficiency is only important when attempting to immediately maximise profit.

Yup. Don't run at 100%. If you're already firewalled you have no reserve to react to problems with and any glitch is prone to turning into a cascade of failure. 100% is an eternal lure of the right wing, it usually takes getting burnt to learn otherwise. (See 1929--fundamentally, the market allowed too much leverage, turning a blip into a cascade failure. We "learned" but found new ways around the limits--got burnt again in the housing collapse when the derivatives crashed. They were fundamentally a way to repackage risk so as to increase the leverage and the same thing happened.)

My former employer tried cutting down on the slack. Oops, failures were much more prone to propagate and that alone ate up the advantage even before you considered that many of our contracts had things like $1000/day penalties for causing a schedule slip. (An error that made it to the field didn't always cause a slip. If we could install the cabinet and then come back later with the door there was no penalty beyond having to make two trips.)

 

[robnisch]

One thing I learned when I was a machinist, if you focus too much on speed of production errors created more waste.
It was a matter of finding the balance between the two.

 

[starwater]

I would like to know if there is anyway to measure the amount of savings of DODGE versus the amount spent on litigating everything they have been doing. Would there be any savings?

 

[Politesse]

I would like to know if there is anyway to measure the amount of savings of DODGE versus the amount spent on litigating everything they have been doing. Would there be any savings?

There is no "savings", they can't legally touch the actual budget, only how it is distributed. Presumably they embezzlibg the remainder of whatever they have freed up.

 

[ZiprHead]

I would like to know if there is anyway to measure the amount of savings of DODGE versus the amount spent on litigating everything they have been doing. Would there be any savings?

There is no DOGE savings. Their cuts at the IRS have already lost us a half trillion of revenue.

 

[Swammerdami]

A Rant Against Efficiency

I have ranted against "Hyper-efficiency" in the past.
Examples of excess efficiency which can cause trouble are

• Wall Street devices like high frequency trading and complex derivatives. The alleged value to society of such devices is to shave a few pennies off of a bid-ask spread. But the dangers are liquidity failures and bad gambles that can cause financial crises.
• High-tech "improvements" to agriculture: GMO's, poisons, dependence on special nutrients, sacrifice of diversity. These are necessary to sustain an over-sized human population, but can lead to habitat destruction and extinctions.
• Specialized manufacturing and "just in time" scheduling. This can lead to supply disruptions.
• Other examples?

One problem is that it feels increasingly as if efficiency is seen as valuable for its own sake, rather than as its intended means to an end. It has become a performance of presence, aggression, speed, but many today mistake the action for the results.

... But I don't think DOGE had anything to do with Efficiency. Just the opposite: Deliberate sabotage -- "Starving the beast" to make citizens increasingly hate government -- is the only explanation for the Musk/DOGE lunacies. Whatever one thinks of Musk, he is no moron and only a moron (e.g. DJT) could imagine the firings he made would help efficiency. Most clear-cut are the firings at IRS. Tax collection is a huge profit center for USA government; tax examiners are "worth their weight in gold"! Laying off IRS officers to "save money" is too laughably stupid for even the most deranged Trump-licker to swallow.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I would like to know if there is anyway to measure the amount of savings of DODGE versus the amount spent on litigating everything they have been doing. Would there be any savings?

There is no "savings", they can't legally touch the actual budget, only how it is distributed. Presumably they embezzlibg the remainder of whatever they have freed up.

In general, I'd agree with that. The impounded funds are simply unused. Of course, with all of the savings,... it still isn't much more than a few drops in the bucket. It isn't quite a rounding error low... but only if you use high precision. If you rounded to the nearest tenth of a trillion, DOGE never even happened.

 

[James Brown]

Automobiles would be more 'efficient' if we removed their heavy and expensive braking systems. Same for seat belts and air bags.

But then no one would ever drive cars.

 

[Elixir]

A Rant Against Efficiency

I have ranted against "Hyper-efficiency" in the past.
Examples of excess efficiency which can cause trouble are

• Wall Street devices like high frequency trading and complex derivatives. The alleged value to society of such devices is to shave a few pennies off of a bid-ask spread. But the dangers are liquidity failures and bad gambles that can cause financial crises.
• High-tech "improvements" to agriculture: GMO's, poisons, dependence on special nutrients, sacrifice of diversity. These are necessary to sustain an over-sized human population, but can lead to habitat destruction and extinctions.
• Specialized manufacturing and "just in time" scheduling. This can lead to supply disruptions.
• Other examples?

One problem is that it feels increasingly as if efficiency is seen as valuable for its own sake, rather than as its intended means to an end. It has become a performance of presence, aggression, speed, but many today mistake the action for the results.

... But I don't think DOGE had anything to do with Efficiency. Just the opposite: Deliberate sabotage -- "Starving the beast" to make citizens increasingly hate government -- is the only explanation for the Musk/DOGE lunacies. Whatever one thinks of Musk, he is no moron and only a moron (e.g. DJT) could imagine the firings he made would help efficiency. Most clear-cut are the firings at IRS. Tax collection is a huge profit center for USA government; tax examiners are "worth their weight in gold"! Laying off IRS officers to "save money" is too laughably stupid for even the most deranged Trump-licker to swallow.

IMHO the whole charade was dual purposed as straightforward payback for the quarter billion plus that Musk spent buying the presidency, and for Putin in thanks for keeping him out of jail.
FOr Musk, it let him check out all his competitors contracts, cancel them capriciously if he thought it propitious, and cause all kinds of confusion and destruction. That destruction also served a double purpose for benefiting Musk and Putin. It's a smokescreen for getting Musk the tariffs he NEEDS to keep BYD's battery technology out "his" US EV market and enable him to sell his obsolete tech.
"Freeing up" money that could then be hooved up by Trump and his buddies, was just a side effect of the confusion/destruction that Trump desired, to keep himself in the good graces of Uncle Vlad.

 

[Swammerdami]

Laying off IRS officers to "save money" is too laughably stupid for even the most deranged Trump-licker to swallow.

@RVonse -- rereading this made me think of you. Do you agree with Trump and Musk that layoffs at the IRS were an intelligent way to cut the deficit?

 

[Elixir]

Laying off IRS officers to "save money" is too laughably stupid for even the most deranged Trump-licker to swallow.

@RVonse -- rereading this made me think of you. Do you agree with Trump and Musk that layoffs at the IRS were an intelligent way to cut the deficit?

"An additional $1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile yields more than $12 in revenue, while audits of below-median income taxpayers yield $5."

But none of that yield goes into the pockets of Trumpsucking billionaires. In fact it comes straight out of those pockets. So, yeah - very good idea to fire the auditors.

 

[James Brown]

I thought we were against the slogan "Defund the Police". We were told that eliminating police would only encourage crime.

So why are we de-funding the IRS' policing force--its auditors?

 

[Elixir]

We were told that eliminating police would only encourage crime.

And...?
If we didn't want to encourage crime we wouldn't have elected a fucking criminal.

 

[Swammerdami]

Laying off IRS officers to "save money" is too laughably stupid for even the most deranged Trump-licker to swallow.

@RVonse -- rereading this made me think of you. Do you agree with Trump and Musk that layoffs at the IRS were an intelligent way to cut the deficit?

"An additional $1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile yields more than $12 in revenue, while audits of below-median income taxpayers yield $5."

But none of that yield goes into the pockets of Trumpsucking billionaires. In fact it comes straight out of those pockets. So, yeah - very good idea to fire the auditors.

Or -- and this is quite in line with the morality that the Trump regime is already demonstrating -- smartest for the Trump-controlled IRS is to just audit Democrats and other enemies. Databases that DOGE has already stolen will facilitate the identification of probable "enemies."

 

[Axulus]

It should also be noted that Trump's tariffs increased bond yields, meaning that the increased interest on the debt will wipe out all of these claimed savings as a result. Not to mention that the proposed GOP defense budget increase is $150 billion.

In addition, the cuts to the IRS will significantly reduce tax revenue as tax cheats breathe a sigh of relief at the cuts to enforcement/audits.

Combined with the tax cuts for billionaires, the end result will be a big blowup in the size of the deficit.

 

[Elixir]

Trump's tariffs increased bond yields, meaning that the increased interest on the debt will wipe out all of these claimed savings

Let’s not forget- those paltry “savings” come at a COST of over $6TRILLION+ in lost equity. And that’s BEFORE the inflation, supply chain interruption and empty shelves pain that will begin to be felt this summer.

THANKS A HEAP, TRUMPSUCKERS.