DOGE Catch-All

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altmin said:
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.
www.wired.com www.wired.com

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.​

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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.​

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It is abundantly clear that this administration has no idea what it is doing.
 

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.” …”
 
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.
 
nycfan said:

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.” …”
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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.”
 
heelinhell said:
Does that mean president Musk has no authority to fire workers, or does it mean that president Musk has to instruct cabinet members to fire workers on behalf of co-president Trump ?
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Latter I am sure, but Trump’s related tweet about using a scalpel instead of a hatchet for personnel cuts suggests he is getting a lot of behind the scenes pressure from the GOP about the way DOGE is running amok.
 
nycfan said:
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The DOJ has been arguing in court that Elon is not in charge, then Trump said in his fake SOTU that Elon was indeed in charge, so a flurry of briefs were filed by plaintiffs. This is trying to backstop the damage I guess.
 
These decisions are being made so fast that I don’t know how anyone with a rational mind thinks they make sense. Maybe everyone of them is intelligent but you’d never know after less than 50 days. Any CEO in America would be removed immediately for this type of nonsense. Not for adjusting costs….but just doing it all so haphazardly.
 
Milk and Cookies said:
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.
Click to expand...
Wait a minute. You mean merely buying a domain on the internet and then posting a number doesn’t make it true?
I was going to buy a domain called chilegisrich.com, post that I am worth $100M and then retire. I guess shit doesn’t actually work that way, huh?
 
dcphx said:
Musk has disclosed at a Morgan Stanley conference that he believes both the Post Office and Amtrak should be privatized. Along with any other departments that can be.

amp.cnn.com

Elon Musk wants to privatize the Postal Service and Amtrak | CNN Business

Elon Musk says that he believes the US Postal Service and Amtrak need to privatized and that “we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”
amp.cnn.com amp.cnn.com
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Of course. And then people like Musk can move in and profit. That's what a good chunk of this is about - privatizing public programs so they can buy them up and profit from them while the people they helped suffer and have to pay more for their services.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
Of course. And then people like Musk can move in and profit. That's what a good chunk of this is about - privatizing public programs so they can buy them up and profit from them while the people they helped suffer and have to pay more for their services.
Click to expand...
If the Russians did it, this regime will try it, and/or endorse it. I continue to suspect it’ll get violent before any hope of sane governance returns to the US. It’s already highly suspicious what Don meant by “Elon is good with the computers and voting machines” and “we have our little secret, don’t we Mike?”, and now they are running roughshod over law left and right, and subsuming the USPS, ie the source of a massive percentage of democratic votes.
 
www.nytimes.com

Marshals Escort DOGE Team Into African Aid Agency

A day earlier, U.S. African Development Foundation workers had refused entry to Department of Government Efficiency workers and the State Department official in charge of foreign aid.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

IMG_5412.jpeg

“… Thursday’s takeover of the small foundation, which has about 55 employees and an annual budget of about $45 million, came after a weekslong standoff between administration officials and the foundation’s leaders. The leaders refused to succumb to the efforts of Mr. Marocco and the Department of Government of Efficiency team, overseen by Elon Musk, to assume control of their functions, dismiss staff members and install Mr. Marocco as the acting leader.

… The White House disputed the accusation that it had done anything unlawful, insisting that President Trump had ordered the staff to be reduced to a statutory minimum and appointed Mr. Marocco to be the acting chairman of the board.

“Entitled, rogue bureaucrats have no authority to defy executive orders by the president of the United States or physically bar his representatives from entering the agencies they run,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman.

… Before it became a target of the Trump administration, the U.S. African Development Foundation distributed federal grants of up to $250,000 directly to grass-roots enterprises and social entrepreneurs in Africa. But on Feb. 19, President Trump issued an executive orderspecifically naming the foundation as one of a handful of entities he had decided were “unnecessary” — prompting Mr. Musk’s team to begin trying to cull the bulk of its programs, over the objections of the staff and the board.

Mr. Brehm’s suit accuses officials working with Mr. Musk of initially trying to enter the foundation under false pretenses and flout statutory requirements preventing them from liquidating the board and slashing the foundation’s funding.

Mr. Brehm and other members of the board refused to defer to their authority, according to the complaint, even reinstalling Mr. Brehm as the foundation’s president after Mr. Marocco appointed himself to the role in an acting capacity.

… The standoff on Wednesday lasted about an hour, according to media reports. On Thursday, it appeared that DOGE representatives were still in the foundation’s offices several hours after they arrived.“
 
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