BlooVooDoo
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This is dumb.
DOGE Catch-All | DOGE ledger “riddled with errors”
- Thread starter nycfan
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gtyellowjacket
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Agreed. This is a mistake.
ChileG
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Stock up on bleach and horse dewormer.
Callatoroy
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Why? According to trump, China, with 1.4 billion people pays $39 million and the US with 325 million people pays $500 million. If true do you think that’s equitable?
Callatoroy
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He will rejoin it after paying less than China
Callatoroy
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How did it work out for us last time. WHO rolled over to kiss china’s ass
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You believe a lot of bullshit
Wait. So now we are doing this based on population rather than GDP? But for NATO we need to base it on GDP for it to be fair? Pick a lane.
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“… The subject line of the email to federal employees was “Fork in the Road,” the same subject line of an ultimatum message Elon Musk sent to his employees at Twitter in 2022.
On the campaign trail, Musk frequently talked about downsizing the federal government. He has played an integral part in the rollout of the federal government buyout, an official told CNN, through his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration.
“We will reduce a lot of government headcount, but we’re going to give very long severances,” Musk told a Philadelphia rally in October. “Like two years, or something like that.”…”
On the campaign trail, Musk frequently talked about downsizing the federal government. He has played an integral part in the rollout of the federal government buyout, an official told CNN, through his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration.
“We will reduce a lot of government headcount, but we’re going to give very long severances,” Musk told a Philadelphia rally in October. “Like two years, or something like that.”…”
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Musk team’s push to gut federal workforce bypassed key Trump officials
Billionaire Elon Musk has worked behind the scenes on an initiative aimed at depleting the civil service, prompting questions about its legality.“Billionaire Elon Musk’s influence over a traditionally nonpartisan agency that oversees the federal workforce culminated in the government’s stunning proposal Tuesday offering employees an inducement to resign, according to four people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal talks.
The proposal, emailed late in the day to many of the nation’s 2.3 million federal workers, blindsided some advisers to President Donald Trump, including officials in the budget office and agencies that typically would be consulted in advance of such monumental changes to personnel and spending policies, the people said.
Since Trump took office, Musk has moved quickly to exert control over the Office of Personnel Management, the small independent agency that acts as a kind of human resources department for the federal government, issuing policy for agencies to implement.
Musk personally visited the OPM’s offices Friday, and several of his longtime surrogates — including Anthony Armstrong, who helped Musk buy Twitter; Brian Bjelde, who ran human resources for Musk’s firm SpaceX; and Amanda Scales, who worked at Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, xAI — have been installed in senior leadership roles at its offices in downtown Washington, the people said. …”
ChileG
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For those who support Trump because, “he would run government like a business.”
This is absolutely not how to run a successful business. And anyone being honest would agree.
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A BIG mistake.
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“… We’re getting clearer indications now that the effort to bamboozle, frighten and entice federal workers into resigning their positions in exchange for non-existent “buy outs” was very much a product of the Elon Musk/DOGE cabal now wilding through and embedding itself within the federal government.
We don’t need a lot of confirmation: they left a slew of meme Easter eggs scattered through the process more or less announcing it.
What’s notable is that the White House is now going out of its way to tell reporters that it definitely wasn’t them. They were, in that well-worn phrase, out of the loop, etc.
I suspect this is true, as far as it goes. But that understates — straight up ignores, really — the degree to which Donald Trump and his top advisors have, entirely by design and intentionally, spun up a series of independent fiefdoms, with Musk’s being the largest, to move fast and break things and push every boundary in the interest of a number of overlapping but distinct ideological agendas. In other words, they probably did “bypass key Trump officials.”
But that’s pretty much the idea when you wind up guys like Elon Musk and Russell Vought with “let’s be legends” gusto and give them the keys.
…
The news, linked above, that the resignation emails were Team Elon’s idea and didn’t have the okay of the White House comes from a Washington Post article. But we get pretty much the same story in an Ashley Parker article published overnight in The Atlantic, only this time about the across-the-board federal spending freeze and the “memo” that kicked it off Monday. That one was Vought’s team — if not Vought himself, who has yet to be confirmed — at OMB. White House officials told Parker that the memo “was released without going through the usual White House approval processes.”
So the White House is saying they were out of the loop, caught as off guard as everyone else, by the two big conflagrations that have roiled the federal government over the course of this week and led to what is now universally conceded to be a fairly epic face plant little more than a week into the administration. It’s not exonerating. It’s by design.
But I suspect that in this narrow sense it’s true. Because that’s how these folks operate. Trump remains entirely a transactional creature. Ideology, in any articulate sense, is entirely alien to him.
He wants to be loved, which in his mind means total power and total subservience. Amidst the raging bureaucratic storm and planes tumbling out of the sky after two decades-plus of near-perfect safety in U.S. airspace, we learned yesterday afternoon that Trump told Mark Zuckerberg last November that the price of being “brought into the [Trump] tent” was arranging a $25 million bribe in the form of settling a meritless lawsuit from 2020 which had no hope of success. …”
We don’t need a lot of confirmation: they left a slew of meme Easter eggs scattered through the process more or less announcing it.
What’s notable is that the White House is now going out of its way to tell reporters that it definitely wasn’t them. They were, in that well-worn phrase, out of the loop, etc.
I suspect this is true, as far as it goes. But that understates — straight up ignores, really — the degree to which Donald Trump and his top advisors have, entirely by design and intentionally, spun up a series of independent fiefdoms, with Musk’s being the largest, to move fast and break things and push every boundary in the interest of a number of overlapping but distinct ideological agendas. In other words, they probably did “bypass key Trump officials.”
But that’s pretty much the idea when you wind up guys like Elon Musk and Russell Vought with “let’s be legends” gusto and give them the keys.
…
The news, linked above, that the resignation emails were Team Elon’s idea and didn’t have the okay of the White House comes from a Washington Post article. But we get pretty much the same story in an Ashley Parker article published overnight in The Atlantic, only this time about the across-the-board federal spending freeze and the “memo” that kicked it off Monday. That one was Vought’s team — if not Vought himself, who has yet to be confirmed — at OMB. White House officials told Parker that the memo “was released without going through the usual White House approval processes.”
So the White House is saying they were out of the loop, caught as off guard as everyone else, by the two big conflagrations that have roiled the federal government over the course of this week and led to what is now universally conceded to be a fairly epic face plant little more than a week into the administration. It’s not exonerating. It’s by design.
But I suspect that in this narrow sense it’s true. Because that’s how these folks operate. Trump remains entirely a transactional creature. Ideology, in any articulate sense, is entirely alien to him.
He wants to be loved, which in his mind means total power and total subservience. Amidst the raging bureaucratic storm and planes tumbling out of the sky after two decades-plus of near-perfect safety in U.S. airspace, we learned yesterday afternoon that Trump told Mark Zuckerberg last November that the price of being “brought into the [Trump] tent” was arranging a $25 million bribe in the form of settling a meritless lawsuit from 2020 which had no hope of success. …”
White House Says We Were Out of the Loop—ON EVERYTHING
We’re getting clearer indications now that the effort to bamboozle, frighten and...
talkingpointsmemo.com
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“… David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, is expected to leave the agency soon, the people said. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
… Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
… Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.
… Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations. …”
——
It would be hard to overstate how much mischief could be done by someone of bad faith (or merely misguided or incompetent) getting access to this system.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
… Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
… Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.
… Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations. …”
——
It would be hard to overstate how much mischief could be done by someone of bad faith (or merely misguided or incompetent) getting access to this system.
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- 13,787
Continued
“…
In the 2023 fiscal year, the payment systems processed nearly 1.3 billion payments, accounting for about $5.4 trillion, nearly 97 percent made electronically, according to the Treasury Department. Every payment was made on time.
Lebryk’s departure is expected to be a shock to Treasury personnel, among whom he enjoys a sterling reputation. The lifelong bureaucrat joined the department as an intern in 1989 and spent three decades at the agency under 11 different treasury secretaries, serving as acting director of the U.S. Mint and commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, among other roles.
Michael Faulkender, whom Trump nominated as deputy U.S. treasury secretary in December, praised Lebryk’s work in 2023. …”
“…
In the 2023 fiscal year, the payment systems processed nearly 1.3 billion payments, accounting for about $5.4 trillion, nearly 97 percent made electronically, according to the Treasury Department. Every payment was made on time.
Lebryk’s departure is expected to be a shock to Treasury personnel, among whom he enjoys a sterling reputation. The lifelong bureaucrat joined the department as an intern in 1989 and spent three decades at the agency under 11 different treasury secretaries, serving as acting director of the U.S. Mint and commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, among other roles.
Michael Faulkender, whom Trump nominated as deputy U.S. treasury secretary in December, praised Lebryk’s work in 2023. …”