DOGE Catch-All

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nycfan said:
🎁 —> The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food

“… Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on the high-energy biscuits, one current and one former employee at the agency told me. The biscuits, which cram in the nutritional needs of a child under 5, are a stopgap measure, often used in scenarios where people have lost their homes in a natural disaster or fled a war faster than aid groups could set up a kitchen to receive them. They were stored in a Dubai warehouse and intended to go to the children this year.

Since January, when the Trump administration issued an executive order that halted virtually all American foreign assistance, federal workers have sent the new political leaders of USAID repeated requests to ship the biscuits while they were useful, according to the two USAID employees. USAID bought the biscuits intending to have the World Food Programme distribute them, and under previous circumstances, career staff could have handed off the biscuits to the United Nations agency on their own. But since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency disbanded USAID and the State Department subsumed the agency, no money or aid items can move without the approval of the new heads of American foreign assistance, several current and former USAID employees told me.

… Over the coming weeks, the food will be destroyed at a cost of $130,000 to American taxpayers (on top of the $800,000 used to purchase the biscuits), according to current and former federal aid workers I spoke with. One current USAID staffer told me he’d never seen anywhere near this many biscuits trashed over his decades working in American foreign aid. Sometimes food isn’t stored properly in warehouses, or a flood or a terrorist group complicates deliveries; that might result in, at most, a few dozen tons of fortified foods being lost in a given year. But several of the aid workers I spoke with reiterated that they have never before seen the U.S. government simply give up on food that could have been put to good use.“
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Sorry, I screwed up the original attempt to share the gift link. Think I’ve got it fixed now.

www.theatlantic.com

The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food

Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
lawtig02 said:
This is infuriating, but unless I'm mistaken, we've been paying red state farmers billions of dollars per year for decades now for product that we've subsequently destroyed. I'm more than happy to pay a substantial subsidy to remain relatively food independent. But for fuck's sake, can't we figure out a way to put our agricultural surplus to use rather than letting it rot in the barn???
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They don't usually destroy the food. It's usually just not grown thereby artificially suppressing supply.
 

DOGE-flation: DOGE’s actual savings are a fraction of what it claims​

A POLITICO analysis of DOGE data reveals the organization saved less than 5 percent of its claimed savings from nearly 10,100 contract terminations.


“…Through July, DOGE said it has saved taxpayers $52.8 billion by canceling contracts, but of the $32.7 billion in actual claimed contract savings that POLITICO could verify, DOGE’s savings over that period were closer to $1.4 billion.

Despite the administration’s claims, not a single one of those 1.4 billion dollars will lower the federal deficit unless Congress steps in. Instead, the money has been returned to agencies mandated by law to spend it.…”
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Are you sure? The way you typed Mr Yellow Jacket earlier makes me think you really aren't that interested.
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I can handle the truth. ;)

If you have evidence for a different take on whether food is destroyed when there's a surplus, I'd like to know. I honestly have no idea.
 
federalnewsnetwork.com

IRS plans to rescind hundreds of deferred resignation offers to ‘fill critical vacancies’

Critics of Direct File say it competes with software from tax-preparation companies, and that the IRS spent tens of millions of dollars to launch the platform.
federalnewsnetwork.com federalnewsnetwork.com

Acting IRS Human Capital Officer David Traynor and acting Deputy IRS Chief Human Capital Officer David Allen told employees, in an email obtained by Federal News Network, that the agency plans to rescind some deferred resignation offers “to fill critical vacancies.”​
​
“IRS has identified areas where staffing reductions created a potential gap in mission-critical expertise. As a result, IRS will utilize all available tools – including details, reassignments, DRP/TDRP receissions, external hiring – to identify resources to fulfill the mission-critical skill sets,” they wrote.​
...​
An IRS employee told Federal News Network that they were told by management in a recent town hall that the agency “let too many people go.”​
 
Gee, no one could have predicted this…

DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says​

DOGE team members uploaded a database with the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server, according to the agency’s chief data officer.

www.nytimes.com

DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says

DOGE team members uploaded a database with the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server, according to the agency’s chief data officer.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
BlooVooDoo said:
Gee, no one could have predicted this…

DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says​

DOGE team members uploaded a database with the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server, according to the agency’s chief data officer.

www.nytimes.com

DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says

DOGE team members uploaded a database with the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server, according to the agency’s chief data officer.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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"The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information."

...

The complaint includes documents showing that DOGE leaders sought to upload the data despite warnings that they could be exposing Americans’ personal information. The documents do not reveal why DOGE pushed for the project, although Mr. Borges said he was later told that the reason was to improve the way the agency exchanged data with other parts of government.

“I have determined the business need is higher than the security risk associated with this implementation and I accept all risks,” wrote Aram Moghaddassi, who worked at two of Mr. Musk’s companies, X and Neuralink, before becoming Social Security’s chief information officer, in a July 15 memo.
 


“… For all the controversy DOGE has generated, its time at the Social Security Administration has not amounted to looming armageddon, as some Democrats warn.

What it’s been, as much as anything, is a missed opportunity, according to interviews with more than 35 current or recently departed Social Security officials and staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mostly out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, and a review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, emails and court records.

The DOGE team, and Bisignano, have prioritized scoring quick wins that allow them to post triumphant tweets and press releases — especially, in the early months, about an essentially nonexistent form of fraud — while squandering the chance for systemic change at an agency that genuinely needs it.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year.

They did none of these things.…”
 
nycfan said:


“… For all the controversy DOGE has generated, its time at the Social Security Administration has not amounted to looming armageddon, as some Democrats warn.

What it’s been, as much as anything, is a missed opportunity, according to interviews with more than 35 current or recently departed Social Security officials and staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mostly out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, and a review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, emails and court records.

The DOGE team, and Bisignano, have prioritized scoring quick wins that allow them to post triumphant tweets and press releases — especially, in the early months, about an essentially nonexistent form of fraud — while squandering the chance for systemic change at an agency that genuinely needs it.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year.

They did none of these things.…”
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Because DOGE was never about actually saving money or improving efficiency or the other things they claimed. It was about a taking a meat cleaver to welfare programs and other agencies that conservatives have despised for decades (environmental regulation agencies, education agencies, regulatory agencies) and gutting them so they are either abolished or no longer capable of doing their jobs. DOGE was there to carry out Project 2025, not to make the government work better or save money. Ironically, they wasted a good deal of money while cutting programs. And sadly, they were quite successful in their brief reign of terror. And even though DOGE may be out of favor, the gutting of the government continues, it's just by different Trumpers now.
 
nycfan said:


“… For all the controversy DOGE has generated, its time at the Social Security Administration has not amounted to looming armageddon, as some Democrats warn.

What it’s been, as much as anything, is a missed opportunity, according to interviews with more than 35 current or recently departed Social Security officials and staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mostly out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, and a review of hundreds of pages of internal documents, emails and court records.

The DOGE team, and Bisignano, have prioritized scoring quick wins that allow them to post triumphant tweets and press releases — especially, in the early months, about an essentially nonexistent form of fraud — while squandering the chance for systemic change at an agency that genuinely needs it.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year.

They did none of these things.…”
Click to expand...

“… He [SSA Commissioner Bisignano, who was confirmed in May] has repeatedly told staff that Social Security should be run more like Amazon, with AI handling more customer interactions. But disability claims are more complicated than ordering toothpaste, according to SSA officials and experts, and Social Security’s customer base is older and more likely to have an intellectual disability than the average Amazon Prime member.

Bisignano has also fixated on how much time it takes to reach an agent on the SSA’s 800 number. In a July press release, he claimed that the average was down to six minutes, an 80% reduction from 2024. He achieved this in part by reassigning 1,000 field office employees to phone duty. That means initial calls are getting answered faster, but there are significantly fewer staff members available to handle complex, in-person cases.

And “reaching an agent” turns out to mean speaking to a human being — or an AI bot. Internal SSA statistics obtained by ProPublica reveal that Bisignano’s estimate treats cases in which beneficiaries interact with a chatbot and opt for a callback as “zero-minute” waits, skewing the average.

If you actually stay on the line, USA Today has found, it often takes over an hour to reach a live representative….”
 
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