DOGE Catch-All

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altmin said:
So a Russian assett is working inside DOGE - not too surprising. Helli, I wouldn't be surprised if Elon handed off the credentials himself.
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I would.

The notion that Elon has any actual day-to-day responsibility within DOGE is hard to square with is busy schedule of fighting child support, shitposting, and desperately seeking approval from terminally online CHUDs.
 

Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.

Yet Marocco’s abrupt termination, which has not been fully reported until now, was not an impulsive dismissal or a case of Rubio going rogue. This report was based on conversations with five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. Four of the people said Rubio fired Marocco. They gave varying explanations: one administration official said Rubio and others wanted Marocco out due to what they saw as his bulldozer operating style and failure to work effectively with colleagues; others pointed to substantive disagreements between Rubio and Marocco over how to dismantle USAID. Meanwhile, Marocco allies viewed Rubio and his team as insular, controlling and obstructionist to the DOGE agenda ordered by the president.


One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”
 
altmin said:

Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.

Yet Marocco’s abrupt termination, which has not been fully reported until now, was not an impulsive dismissal or a case of Rubio going rogue. This report was based on conversations with five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. Four of the people said Rubio fired Marocco. They gave varying explanations: one administration official said Rubio and others wanted Marocco out due to what they saw as his bulldozer operating style and failure to work effectively with colleagues; others pointed to substantive disagreements between Rubio and Marocco over how to dismantle USAID. Meanwhile, Marocco allies viewed Rubio and his team as insular, controlling and obstructionist to the DOGE agenda ordered by the president.


One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”
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Dave Chappelle Snl GIF by Saturday Night Live
 
altmin said:

Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.

Yet Marocco’s abrupt termination, which has not been fully reported until now, was not an impulsive dismissal or a case of Rubio going rogue. This report was based on conversations with five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. Four of the people said Rubio fired Marocco. They gave varying explanations: one administration official said Rubio and others wanted Marocco out due to what they saw as his bulldozer operating style and failure to work effectively with colleagues; others pointed to substantive disagreements between Rubio and Marocco over how to dismantle USAID. Meanwhile, Marocco allies viewed Rubio and his team as insular, controlling and obstructionist to the DOGE agenda ordered by the president.


One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”
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A MAGA civil war would be fun thing to watch ...

Jon Stewart Popcorn GIF
 

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has spent years boosting a federal program to support minority-owned businesses. President Donald Trump’s administration dismantled it in a matter of weeks.

Scott, along with other Republicans, was integral to congressional efforts to permanently authorize the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency, expand its services into rural areas and leverage the program to help minority-owned businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now, the program, which funds grants to business owners and provides technical assistance, support and mentorship, has had 100 percent of its staff, about 50 people, placed on administrative leave or redistributed within the Commerce Department, according to a Commerce employee and a Democratic staffer granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters.


For years, Scott has prioritized efforts to expand access to capital and economic mobility for underserved communities, like the one he says he grew up in, and minority businesses, like his own Main Street insurance agency. The MBDA dates back to the Nixon administration and was one outlet for this mission. But Scott has stayed silent publicly about the gutting of the agency.

“They are watching this happen, and they are doing nothing. That’s cowardice. And it cuts especially deep when the people you once believed were your champions turn their backs in silence,” the Commerce Department employee said of Scott’s and other Republicans’ silence on cuts to the program.
 
altmin said:

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has spent years boosting a federal program to support minority-owned businesses. President Donald Trump’s administration dismantled it in a matter of weeks.

Scott, along with other Republicans, was integral to congressional efforts to permanently authorize the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency, expand its services into rural areas and leverage the program to help minority-owned businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now, the program, which funds grants to business owners and provides technical assistance, support and mentorship, has had 100 percent of its staff, about 50 people, placed on administrative leave or redistributed within the Commerce Department, according to a Commerce employee and a Democratic staffer granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters.


For years, Scott has prioritized efforts to expand access to capital and economic mobility for underserved communities, like the one he says he grew up in, and minority businesses, like his own Main Street insurance agency. The MBDA dates back to the Nixon administration and was one outlet for this mission. But Scott has stayed silent publicly about the gutting of the agency.

“They are watching this happen, and they are doing nothing. That’s cowardice. And it cuts especially deep when the people you once believed were your champions turn their backs in silence,” the Commerce Department employee said of Scott’s and other Republicans’ silence on cuts to the program.
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Anyone who expected something else from Tim Scott is a fool.
 
www.nbcnewyork.com

Campgrounds and visitor centers at federal lakes are closing amid Trump's budget cuts

Campgrounds, boat ramps and other facilities in at least 30 locations at federal lakes and reservoirs in six states will be closed or have their hours curtailed as of mid-May. Those changes are coming as the Trump administration tries to rapidly shrink the U.S. government. Officials at the U.S...
www.nbcnewyork.com www.nbcnewyork.com

Campgrounds, boat ramps and other facilities in at least 30 locations at federal lakes and reservoirs in six states will be closed or have their hours curtailed as of mid-May as the Trump administration tries to rapidly shrink the U.S. government.

Officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the lakes and reservoirs and their amenities for boating, camping, hiking and sightseeing, said they are dealing with staffing shortages and other budgetary restrictions.

Corps spokesman Douglas Garman said concentrating staff at fewer recreational sites will allow those sites to keep the “full range of services” that visitors expect.

The Corps' district office in Omaha, Nebraska, which oversees facilities across a large swath of the Great Plains from western Iowa and Nebraska to Montana's border with Canada, said the changes also will protect hydropower and dam operations.

"Decisions to make operational changes at recreation areas are not made lightly, and we understand those decisions can be disruptive to the public’s travel plans," Garman said in an email to The Associated Press.
 

Peace Corps to undergo ‘significant’ cuts after Doge review​

Staff offered second ‘fork in the road’ buyout and are ‘strongly encouraged to consider this option’

www.theguardian.com

Peace Corps to undergo ‘significant’ cuts after Doge review

Staff offered second ‘fork in the road’ buyout and are ‘strongly encouraged to consider this option’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

“… Starting on 28 April and going through 6 May, direct hire and expert staff are being offered a second deferred resignation program, what Elon Musk’s Doge has referred to as a “fork in the road” buyout. Greene referred to this offer as “DRP 2.0”.

Eligible staff will hear from human resources and “are strongly encouraged to consider this option”, Greene wrote. The offer applies to employees both domestically and overseas.

Peace Corps will “continue to recruit, place, and train volunteers”, Greene said, indicating that the cuts are specifically for agency staff and will not affect volunteers.

A Peace Corps spokesperson confirmed that Doge began the cuts on Monday. …”
 
www.theguardian.com

Maga’s sinister obsession with IQ is leading us towards an inhuman future | Quinn Slobodian

A coalition fixated on intelligence is staking the US economy on AI – which will devalue the very skills the right fetishises, says author Quinn Slobodian
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

One thing that Donald Trump and his Silicon Valley partners share is an obsession with IQ. Being a “low-IQ individual” is a standard insult in the president’s repertoire, and being “high-IQ” is an equally standard form of praise for those on the tech right. Yet in the drive for US supremacy in artificial intelligence – signalled by the $500bn (£375bn) Stargate project announcement in the White House and an executive order to integrate AI into public education, beginning in kindergarten – there is a hidden irony. If their vision for our economic future is realised, IQ in the sense that they value will lose its meaning.

IQ testing arose at a time when the US and other industrialised nations were worried about the health of their populations. Recruitment campaigns for the Boer war in the UK, and then the first world war elsewhere, showed male populations that were unhealthier than their fathers’ generation. Industrial work seemed to be triggering what looked like a process of degeneration, with a fearful endpoint in the subterranean Morlocks of HG Wells’s classic novella, The Time Machine. Intelligence tests were a way to salvage the diamonds from the rough and find a new officer class – and later a new elite – to guide mass society from the slough of despond into a braver future.


When manufacturing still ruled in the US, IQ was valued as a way of measuring educational outcomes, but arguably it was not until the breakthrough of the information economy in the 1980s and 90s that knowledge workers became indisputably the vanguard of future prosperity. It is no coincidence that IQ talk surged in the 1990s, first through Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s infamous book, The Bell Curve, which suggested there were long-term and insurmountable gaps in IQ between racial groups, and second, more subtly through gifted and talented search programmes in the US that found kids and plucked them from public schools into supercharged summer programmes for the bright.

One such person was Curtis Yarvin, the middle-aged software engineer and amateur political theorist who has drawn attention for his techno-monarchist philosophy and whose work has been positively cited by the US vice-president, JD Vance. As a youngster, Yarvin was part of Julian Stanley’s Center for Talented Youth. From the early 2000s to the present, he has been a consistent advocate for the importance of IQ as a measure of human worth. In the late 2000s, as an exponent of what came to be called the Dark Enlightenment, or “neo-reaction”, he suggested IQ tests could be used to disqualify voters in post-apartheid South Africa.

Yarvin’s IQ fetishism was an organic outgrowth of the intellectual subculture of Silicon Valley. People who manipulated symbols and wrote code all day not surprisingly put special stock into the “general intelligence” measured by IQ, which gauged the proximity of minds to computers defined by logic, memory and processing speed.
 
DiehardHeelFan said:

A DOGE Aide Involved in Dismantling Consumer Bureau Owns Stock in Companies That Could Benefit From the Cuts​

www.propublica.org

A DOGE Aide Involved in Dismantling Consumer Bureau Owns Stock in Companies That Could Benefit From the Cuts

Gavin Kliger helped oversee mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while holding stock in companies that experts say likely stand to benefit from dismantling that agency — a potential violation of federal ethics laws.
www.propublica.org www.propublica.org
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Everything Trump and Musk has done has been for personal gain.
 
Not DOGE but just to go along with the theme of cutting government bureaucracy. I don't like a lot of what Trump does but when we are talking about cuts to government spending, I'd much rather we take a chainsaw to the defense budget vs social spending.

The plan is to cut down on the number of generals. The fear is that he is cutting people to get rid of Ttrump resistance in the Pentagon but frankly, the president can do that anyway via promotion and he has. This was the telling quote for me:

"During World War II", Hegseth said, "the U.S. military had 12 million troops and 17 four- and five-star generals. The Pentagon now oversees a force of about 2.1 million service members with 44 four-star generals and admirals."
 
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