Yes, when there's a MOT (major ongoing topic) [1], especially a MegaMOT like this one, we try to have the frontpage threads be about significant new information (SNI) [2], rather than opinion pieces. The latter tend to count as follow-ups [3], and those tend to be bad for HN because they're repetitive [4].
I have a proposal to increase government efficiency both at short-term and long-term:
- gov must stop subsidizing corporations
- gov must stop subsidizing rich people
Because if gov stop spending money with people and corporations that already have enough money to not need any help gov can spend the money with people who actually needs help.
> Or the 50 million USD for condoms. As Elon said, that's a lot of condoms.
Right. Which is why you'd think he might realize that it doesn't make sense and maybe look again and realize it's not $50 million being spent on condoms [1]. He and Trump are supposed to be savy businessmen. If I can look at this, do some quick math based on the cost of a condom, and conclude that can't be right, surely these experienced business leaders should have at least as good instincts, right? So either they are lying intentionally or are not half as competent as they claim.
What waste exactly? How do you know it's bad or will collapse the economy?
It might be real, but noting concrete is being pointed out. The attempts to do so have been outright lies, like the $50 million for condoms in Gaza. So far, "waste" is a boogieman used to justify purging suspected liberals from the federal workforce and contractor pool.
Well, my answer to that is that it's been made clear that he's an instrument of the One True Living God Jesus Christ of Nazareth to enact His Will. Disparaging a sinner as somehow unredeemable is a doctrine of demons, that they are unworthy of Christ, which is what you're suggesting. Donald Trump needs Christ as much as anyone else. He does confess Christ which a big step and is in submission to Him which is why he is blessed, as it's impossible for the unrighteous to even do that. For example, Sacred Scripture states the antichrist cannot and will not confess Christ as Our Lord and God. He's working for peace in the world as well, and scripture says blessed are the peacemakers.
In regards to his most egregious sins. The faith is not a sanctuary for saints, it's a hospital for sinners. He has saved countless unborn souls, protects our women and our children from irreversible mutilation by the children of Satan. I pray every night for President Trump at 10:30PM when I do the Liturgy of the Hours with the Hallow app. I invite you to invite the Holy Spirit of Christ to live within you, and into your home and turn your life over to Christ submitting your will to His Will. Scripture says He will give you a new heart. If you haven't already. Christianity is true. The Lord has saved his life twice, and while bullets cannot harm Donald Trump, it's all due to the Lord's love and will, and we need to pray for our President's continued protection as he builds the kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
Most people who are not a child of their father Satan wants to believe and trust in Christ. If anyone here has questions about the evidence that Christ is God and deeply wants to submit themselves to Him, reach out and I will happily send you the evidence that changed my life once I approached it with a truly open mind and heart. Wash the filth from your eyes, purify your thoughts. I see you to live forever, and join us in worship of the Triune God.
You can talk about achieving smaller government while also rejecting the corrupt billionaire looting the federal government for personal gain while throwing around literal Nazi salutes
I've heard so much about Hitler and Nazis for 10 years now. If there is an actual Nazi around, no one would care any more thanks to incessant crying wolf. Which is a shame. And it didn't win the election, so it's time to drop it.
I would agree with you if anyone else had gone in to look at the books at places like USAID and other departments before now. No one else did it, Elon is competent and if he ensures the other 99,999 of grifters are off the books that were bankrupting him, and he gains in some way that's still a huge win. It wouldn't bother me if him and Trump received some form of financial reward, if they clean up this mess for us. It has to be stopped going forward at all costs and no one else did anything for decades while the country went bankrupt.
One thing I've learned in life, never let perfect become the enemy of better. Support Trump, support Musk, even if both men are imperfect.
You say no one would care about a nazi... have you seen the recent German tesla sale numbers, or for the rest of europe? Just because you dont care, doesnt mean that others will turn a blind eye.
this would all make an inch of sense if they actually cared about what is bankrupting the country. of course they are not in any way, going after USAID is just entertainment for the gullible (won’t use worse adjectives here…) people eating this shit up. not to mention going after CFPB which costs $800m to run while bringing in $15bn in return.
if they really cared about this and were not in the entertainment business while stealing every penny they can they would start at the Department of Offense :)
I don't buy your narrative that contracts that never stop getting paid etc are not a problem, but they are going to look at the DoD as well. We'll see.
why start in places with least impact that will fuck up tens of thousands of lives (those are also all voters who come 2026 can bring all this to a crashing halt much like Trump’s previous term he angered so many people that he got crushed at midterms and then absolutely demolished in general election in 2020). if you was really after cutting government waste (he is not) you don’t start where you have absolutely least amount of impact other than fucking up A LOT of people (and many of them who voted for him). he doesn’t give two shits about government waste, he is just here to entertain you while he is doing shit behind this facade
We'll see, but we've heard so much crying of wolf from his detractors that even if they are somehow after 10 years correct finally... no one is listening. Only the ones already dead set against him. When you throw the Hitler jab at someone for 10 years and they become the President, you screwed up. I quit paying attention during the Mueller investigations, I knew that if they had something- they'd just charge him. But they never did because it was all a sham. He was growing on me and then the assassination attempts happened, where I lost the "just a rich man's son" impression I always had of him. He has true strength and character. I follow true strength and character. You can't fake his reaction. He's worthy of our support and we should stand behind him.
Basically I don't think anyone else was going to do anything better than he is. Trump is the best we have. He's definitely worthy to be our leader though, and his opposition has been proven over and over again to be absolutely pathetic. Liars, cheats, and pretty much everything they call him.
DOGE has also very specifically targeted the CFPB and, according to The Verge, the team within the organization specialized in understanding Big Tech’s entrance into financial products (Musk is supposedly about to launch X's banking services).
"The individuals unleashed on the Kwajalein Atoll are not rocket scientists — they lack the expertise, qualifications, and methodology required for real rocketry. At best, they’ve compiled a list of components that _might_ liftoff, but rocketry is a rigorous process requiring analysis, time, and, crucially, actual rocket scientists."
Anyone who has dabbled in KSP [1] knows that all it takes for lift-off is sufficient engine power and fuel storage plus enough struts to keep it all together until reaching orbit. If at first you don't succeed, add more engines and struts. If you don't succeed at all at least you'll have a spectacular explosion.
While clever, this is just flat out not true. Many (if not all) of the early SpaceX employees did indeed have backgrounds in aerospace and mechanical engineering.
I don't think it would be unpopular for me to say that most taxpayers believe there is huge waste in government, up to and including the government's spending.
While DOGE is not a good long-term solution, it's so far better than literally any other major effort by a US government entity to combat waste at the federal level - which is to say that it's literally the only one that I've ever heard about in my lifetime.
People certainly believe there is huge waste in government, but that doesn't make it true - people believe all sorts of incorrect things. Politicians have been running for years on plans to cut "waste, fraud, and abuse" in government spending, but I suspect there's a lot less fat than the average taxpayer thinks.
There is fat, but I'd venture not much on the CDC, FEMA or USAID. A big part of this mess is that fat is concentrated on areas that are very unpopular to cut, like military expenditure, or in legacy processes and systems that will take years and a lot of upfront investment to streamline (and that DOGE won't touch).
If you meet an average government worker in the US, you quickly realize how little they make and how understaffed their departments tend to be. People underestimate how complex government work is and how different it is from what you do at a regular business.
"which is to say that it's literally the only one that I've ever heard about in my lifetime"
^ That statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your general sentiment. And (not meaning this as a personal attack at all) it's a huge problem for our society as a whole if citizens are more in favour of large scale destruction of institutions based on a lack of understanding that has been pushed by the same economic class benefiting from the wholesale destruction of democratic institutions.
There are numerous entities that do good work in the government to combat waste. You just don't hear about them because it's not a sexy topic that the media gets clicks from. Unfortunately, those entities are being shut down by DOGE, so sadly, it's not a start of anything good.
Randomly destroying things without actually understanding why they are important is a very short term view on reducing waste. Fixing things if/when they go wrong is going to be expensive.
This is your lucky day, because you get to learn about the Government Accountability office! Formed literally over 100 years ago to literally provide professional and non-partisan audit and investigative services to the government! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi...
This is probably a good time to do some reflection on your current world view. You thought that it seemed possible, and possibly even likely that the largest and most powerful government in the world was operating completely without any sort of accounting checks as it worked with literal trillions of dollars a year, and that none of the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people who make up the workforce of this organization had any motive to try and responsibly carry out their duties and spend their money. They were all just irredeemably committed to flagrantly wasting your money and enriching themselves on your tax dollars, instead of taking seriously the responsibility they had.
As it turns out, this is just a completely ludicrous fantasy. There are already numerous mechanisms in place to combat fraud and waste, staffed by competent professionals who generally try their best to uphold the trust granted to them. Some of them might even be your friends or neighbors. They're people, just like you, and are generally trying to do a good job and move society forward.
In any multi-trillion dollar organization there is going to be waste and fraud. Like the battle against entropy it can never be fully won, its an ongoing battle that is fought each year. There will be scandals of misspent money, and victories of services delivered for good value on the dollar spent. Its not some sort of black and white, good vs evil struggle, and the fact you thought that literally no one had every thought to do this before should probably give you pause the next time you start to think about politics.
So instead of a department of Education for example, what should all that money go towards? Resegregation of schools under the title of school vouchers instead of Jim Crow?
So you'll use your money to fund scholarships for smart but poor students, fix the roads by my house, pay for basic scientific research that might not benefit you personally ever.?
Or just screw society if you're personally fine right now.
> I don't think it would be unpopular for me to say that most taxpayers believe there is huge waste in government, up to and including the government's spending.
No one wants wasteful spending. The difference is that DOGE proponents are totally okay with threatening the lives of over 20 million people.
> While DOGE is not a good long-term solution, it's so far better than literally any other major effort by a US government entity to combat waste at the federal level - which is to say that it's literally the only one that I've ever heard about in my lifetime.
Perhaps you're very young. Every few years there have been "Hoover-style" commissions that have resulted in bipartisan efficiency optimizations, without the mass disruptions (that will end up costing taxpayers even more money) and threats to safety of millions of people.
A major recent one was what DOGE is using as a vehicle. The DSGS was set up in the Obama administration to replace thousands of different IT departments with a single one.
Increasing government efficiency was a major Obama plank which he partly delivered on.
Not a US citizen but I know my fair share of bureaucratic processes from my home country Germany. That being said it’s one thing to start a process to limit overspending without simple budget cuts which can be more hurtful. That’s why you need an actual audit to figure out what is and what isn‘t waste or inefficient. Inefficient also doesn’t mean shutting things down. Maybe improving processes and leverage the people better etc.
Then comes the whole topic of who is in charge. It’s still baffling that an unelected person can conduct official government business. I understand how the system works in the US but one would think that in order to be granted this much power, that some checks have to fly by congress / senate (not that this would make a difference since there is only the party line no conscience voting) before this person can set out to dismantle US agencies.
For me that is not a start. Why not bring a person from big Pharma in to audit and reform the FDA. While at it let’s some Exxon guys evaluate the environment regulations etc etc. You can‘t let the wolf guard the sheep.
$15 million for condoms to the Taliban through USAID.
$446,700 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal through the State Department.
$1 million to boost French-speaking LGBTQ groups in West and Central Africa through the State Department.
$14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border through the State Department.
$20,600 for a drag show in Ecuador through the State Department.
$47,020 for a transgender opera in Colombia through the State Department.
$32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru through the State Department.
$55,750 for a climate change presentation warning about the impact of climate change in Argentina to be led by female and LGBT journalists through the StateDepartment.
$3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean” through USAID.
$7,071.58 for a BIPOC speaker series in Canada through the State Department.
$80,000 for an LGBTQ community center in Bratislava, Slovakia through the State Department.
$3.2 million to help Tunisian migrants readjust to life in Tunisia after deportation through the State Department.
$16,500 to foster a “united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society” through the State Department.
$10,000 to pressure Lithuanian corporations to promote “DEI values” through the State Department.
$8,000 to promote DEI among LGBTQ groups in Cyprus through the State Department.
$1.5 million to promote job opportunities for LGBTQ individuals in Serbia through USAID.
$70,884 to create a U.S.-Irish musical to promote DEI in Ireland through the State Department.
$39,652 to host seminars at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on gender identity and racial equality through the State Department.
$425,622 to help Indonesian coffee companies become more climate and gender friendly through USAID.
this post is a posterchild for everything that is wrong with the US society today. I truly hope you do not believe in what you wrote here and just trolling :)
