DOGE Catch-All
- Thread starter nycfan
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“… Hungary recently escalated its efforts to stamp out pro-democracy groups and media organizations that rely on foreign funding by naming a government minister to investigate USAID’s activities.
Today, that minister, András László, was received in Washington by Peter Marocco, the top American official disassembling the agency from the inside. The meeting, which was confirmed to me by a U.S. official and another person familiar with the gathering, reflects the convergence of interests between Budapest and Washington.
Like the Trump administration, the Hungarian government has giddily embraced the idea that U.S. aid programs are not only wasteful and unnecessary but also criminal.
… “The Hungarian government has decided to closely follow the politically corrupt USAID funding scandal revealed by DOGE and Elon Musk,” László, a member of the European Parliament from Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, wrote on social media last week.
He added, “American and European patriots should work together to dismantle the globalist networks operated by Democrats.”
… The goals of the Hungarian investigation, now furthered by U.S. officials, are wide-ranging. It aims to reveal the recipients of U.S. funds and, according to Hungarian right-wing media, “dismantle what officials describe as a deeply embedded international corruption network.”
… Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance have scolded and spurned traditional European allies. For solidarity, they have looked instead to Hungary, which has embraced its role as Europe’s enfant terrible, seeking closer ties to Russia and flouting European Union rules (it recently refused to pay a 200-million-euro fine for failing to comply with the bloc’s asylum policies).
… USAID has supported a wide range of independent media and literacy programs in countries worldwide. In 2023, the agency funded training and other support for 6,200 journalists and aided 707 nonstate media outlets, according to Reporters Without Borders, a press-advocacy group based in New York. The 2025 foreign-aid budget allocated $268.4 million for “independent media and the free flow of information.” Among the media organizations in Hungary that relied on USAID funding is the investigative news website Átlátszó, which received up to 15 percent of its budget from USAID, according to the Financial Times. …”
ChileG
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aka the Unknown Hinson voice
Carolina Fever
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Trump admin takes down list of 443 federal buildings targeted for sale after backlash
Trump admin takes down list of 443 federal buildings targeted for sale after backlash
The Trump administration Wednesday removed a directory of 443 federal buildings it had planned to list for sale the previous day.
www.usatoday.com
" The Trump administration Wednesday abruptly removed an inventory of 443 federal properties highlighted by some of the federal government's most iconic buildings that had been listed for potential sale the previous day.
The online list was initially attached to a news release Tuesday outlining plans for "decisive action to dispose of non-core assets" and singling out federal buildings that had become "functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce"
But on Wednesday, the General Services Administration's "non-core property list" was blank, with a new headline that read, "coming soon."
"We are identifying buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations, or non-core properties, for disposal," the updated page reads.
... Many buildings previously identified by the GSA across the nation are on the National Register of Historic Places or have recently undergone massive renovations. The list included the headquarters of nearly every major federal agency including the Robert F. Kennedy building in Washington, which houses the Department of Justice. Occupants of some facilities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, have waited for years for congressional approval for a suitable replacement for their headquarters.
Democrats in Congress demanded an immediate explanation from the GSA this week about how the buildings were selected and why the agency didn't follow its own process of seeking public input about what the loss of a federal building would mean for the community and announcing a plan to mitigate any harm before announcing the buildings were for sale. ..."
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hope it's ok to post this here...
'Veterans will die': Critics attack Trump's new move to cut more than 80,000 VA staff
President Donald Trump's administration announced that it would cut over 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs. “At the end of the day, it’s about getting us back to work, focused on the mission and that mission is the Veteran,” new VA Secretary Doug Collins said last week...
www.rawstory.com
MOUNTAINH33L
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Crickets from the MAGA cult.
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this article doesn't even mention CIA holdings, which were not publically listed as CIA buildings, but now are publically known as CIA holdings.
www.wired.com
...
Here's a Map of the For-Sale Government Properties the GSA Pulled From Its Website
The General Services Administration plans to sell hundreds of government buildings, including FBI headquarters. Use our interactive tools to see where they are—and the congressional districts they're in.
On Tuesday, the General Services Administration (GSA) published a list of more than 400 federal buildings and properties to be sold, including the FBI headquarters, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice, and other key federal facilities. Hours later, 123 buildings, including high-profile sites like the J. Edgar Hoover Building and Veterans Administration buildings in Washington, DC, were removed from the list. By Wednesday, the entire list had disappeared from the GSA website.
...
Among those originally denoted as for sale are historically significant properties like Chicago’s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe≠designed John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and the Custom House, an Art Deco building taking up a city block in Philadelphia’s Old City. Less prominent but still notable buildings include the Martinsburg Computing Center in Kearneysville, West Virginia, which houses what the IRS describes as its “individual and corporate tax administration master file data base,” and the Central Heating Plant in Washington, DC, which provides heated and chilled water to government buildings, museums, and national monuments.
ChileG
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It is abundantly clear that this administration has no idea what it is doing.this article doesn't even mention CIA holdings, which were not publically listed as CIA buildings, but now are publically known as CIA holdings.
Here's a Map of the For-Sale Government Properties the GSA Pulled From Its Website
The General Services Administration plans to sell hundreds of government buildings, including FBI headquarters. Use our interactive tools to see where they are—and the congressional districts they're in.On Tuesday, the General Services Administration (GSA) published a list of more than 400 federal buildings and properties to be sold, including the FBI headquarters, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice, and other key federal facilities. Hours later, 123 buildings, including high-profile sites like the J. Edgar Hoover Building and Veterans Administration buildings in Washington, DC, were removed from the list. By Wednesday, the entire list had disappeared from the GSA website.
...
Among those originally denoted as for sale are historically significant properties like Chicago’s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe≠designed John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and the Custom House, an Art Deco building taking up a city block in Philadelphia’s Old City. Less prominent but still notable buildings include the Martinsburg Computing Center in Kearneysville, West Virginia, which houses what the IRS describes as its “individual and corporate tax administration master file data base,” and the Central Heating Plant in Washington, DC, which provides heated and chilled water to government buildings, museums, and national monuments.
lawtig02
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I hope that’s the case.
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DOGE is driving Social Security cuts and will make mistakes, acting head says privately
The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner said members of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team are outsiders who are unfamiliar with the nuances of the agency’s programs.“… Yet it’s still not clear what Trump and Musk have in mind as an endgame for Social Security, which has long been a political third rail in Washington.
The president has made multiple promises that “we’re not touching Social Security,” even as DOGE races to shrink the government. About a dozen Musk-aligned tech engineers have gained access to multiple databases containing reams of taxpayer information, and the cost-cutting goal appears to overlap with an urgency to find fraud.
… After Musk’s claim that vast numbers of centenarians were fraudulently receiving retirement benefits was debunked, Trump doubled down Tuesday night in his address to a joint session of Congress. “We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors,” Trump falsely stated.
… Musk’s attacks last week on Social Security — he described it as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” — have further heightened alarm and uncertainty for lawmakers, policymakers and the public about whether Americans’ earned benefits will end up as collateral damage.
“They’re alleging that they’re uncovering massive fraud in the system,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“But where are they going with this? There’s very little fraud in the retirement system. Since they’re mispresenting the data in such extreme ways, it’s hard to know.” …”
Milk and Cookies
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Not sure if it has been mentioned yet but The Daily had a podcast episode on how “DOGE has a math problem”.
The key findings:
- While the big number posted on their website (at the time of reporting) was $65 billion, the “wall of receipts” that showed over 2,000 cancelled contracts only totaled $16 billion
- About 40% of contracts on the wall had $0 savings
- The #1 largest saver was an $8b contract for a vendor supporting ICE. The entire ICE budget is $8b, so obviously that number is fake. Upon quick review, it was a savings of $8m not $8b but they counted it as billions. That represented HALF of the posted “savings“ right there.
- Numbers 2, 3 and 4 for largest savings were all the same contract duplicated.
- One of the largest “savings” of over $1b was from the Treasury Dept…from a cut they made last year during Biden.
- There were cancelled contracts posted that had been cancelled in 2005
As The Daily summarized, while these very ridiculous errors (lies) are troubling, they represent a very small net impact on the federal budget. The bigger issue is that they provide a window into how DOGE is operating. They don’t know what they’re doing and they’re quick to lie to misrepresent their work.
The key findings:
- While the big number posted on their website (at the time of reporting) was $65 billion, the “wall of receipts” that showed over 2,000 cancelled contracts only totaled $16 billion
- About 40% of contracts on the wall had $0 savings
- The #1 largest saver was an $8b contract for a vendor supporting ICE. The entire ICE budget is $8b, so obviously that number is fake. Upon quick review, it was a savings of $8m not $8b but they counted it as billions. That represented HALF of the posted “savings“ right there.
- Numbers 2, 3 and 4 for largest savings were all the same contract duplicated.
- One of the largest “savings” of over $1b was from the Treasury Dept…from a cut they made last year during Biden.
- There were cancelled contracts posted that had been cancelled in 2005
As The Daily summarized, while these very ridiculous errors (lies) are troubling, they represent a very small net impact on the federal budget. The bigger issue is that they provide a window into how DOGE is operating. They don’t know what they’re doing and they’re quick to lie to misrepresent their work.
I hate when media or anyone refers to what Trump, Musk, DOGE, or Project 2025 is doing as “cutting spending” or “cost-cutting.”
What they’re doing is creating chaos and destroying the government. The goal is a broken government.
“See, we told you that government doesn’t work. We’re going to have to privatize to fix everything. Also, Biden and the corrupt Democrats and the Deep State have stolen so much that Social Security and Medicare have to be cut until we fix them. It’ll take longer than we expected because Biden screwed things up more than we thought AND left us a broken economy.”
