Trump Admin dismantling Dept. of Education — mass firings underway

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gtyellowjacket said:
Is he claiming he wants to cut Social Security? I haven't heard that. I'm going to have egg on my face if he has but it seems like it would be a pretty big story if he did.
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That’s how these things work gt. I think you’re smart enough to realize this.

This is the same line Republicans have used for decades and decades. They can’t come right out and say they want to cut social security as you point out. So what they say is there is some kind of fraud going on. Dubya did the same exact thing. It is a pretext to cut benefits. They trot out the same language about Medicaid.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I have not. I'm sure there are better ways to structure it to make it more searchable but people are finding things to criticize. Before he put that information out there, there were plenty of programs somewhat shielded by federal government bureaucracy. Which would you rather have? A bad database or no database at all?
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I'd rather have Elon Fucking Musk shipped to Siberia and not touching any dollars or data that I fund.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
How do you know that? You don't think any entities are getting payments from the government that they shouldn't have based on social securities incorrect database? Seems pretty plausible to me.
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Lol...and Elon operating in good faith also seems plausible to you so there's that.

The man literally has ALL the data from every organization and is cross referencing all of it in real time. If those payments associated with those SSNs existed, it would already be plastered by Elon and you know it.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Just imagine it wasn't a very popular government program.
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Social Security benefits represent about 31% of the income of people over age 65. Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive 50% or more of their income from Social Security. Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.
Getting rid of Soc Sec woud be ridiculous. "Fixing it "would be fairly easy-but congress is not interested in doing any work that might offend high earners
 
Paine said:
That’s how these things work gt. I think you’re smart enough to realize this.

This is the same line Republicans have used for decades and decades. They can’t come right out and say they want to cut social security as you point out. So what they say is there is some kind of fraud going on. Dubya did the same exact thing. It is a pretext to cut benefits. They trot out the same language about Medicaid.
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So the strategy has failed for decades and decades but now it's going to work? I guess I'm just not connecting how a program that is extremely popular with a very large voting block would be in danger because folks are pointing out fraud and working to correct it.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
So the strategy has failed for decades and decades but now it's going to work? I guess I'm just not connecting how a program that is extremely popular with a very large voting block would be in danger because folks are pointing out fraud and working to correct it.
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It’d about pretext and undermining trust. You undermine trust in social security, get enough people who aren’t currently receiving benefits to not care or think there’s fraud or whatever, and then you cut the program/privatize.

This is the natural outcome of undermining trust in one of the most trusted and cherished programs the government offers. We’ve seen it happen time and time again with other programs.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
How do you know that? You don't think any entities are getting payments from the government that they shouldn't have based on social securities incorrect database? Seems pretty plausible to me.
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He's literally killing people with some of these cuts that are unwarranted. I don't mind rooting out fraud but not at the cost of people's lives.
 
Paine said:
It’d about pretext and undermining trust. You undermine trust in social security, get enough people who aren’t currently receiving benefits to not care or think there’s fraud or whatever, and then you cut the program/privatize.

This is the natural outcome of undermining trust in one of the most trusted and cherished programs the government offers. We’ve seen it happen time and time again with other programs.
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If that is their plan, let me know how that works out for them. At this point, we can only know for sure what has happened over the last few decades.

I think we should also remember what Elon has said. Rogan asked him if dead people are receiving Social Security benefits. He said he didn't think so. He said other programs might be providing incorrect payments based on the Social Security database. That doesn't sound like he wants to undermine the trust in the social security program which again is extremely popular with a very important voting block. It sounds like he wants to undermine trust in a social security database which to me seems pretty fixable.
 
"I don't understand why Elon finding and pointing out fraud or just incompetence necessarily prevents your fix, any other fixes, or would lead to a dismantling of the program." -gt

Not sure there's a post that better encapsulates the gtroll game. Make a facile claim; have facile claim exposed; make vague and broad values-based statement; have vague and broad statements exposed as nonsense and/or historically nonviable; return to facile claim; rinse, repeat.
 
wmheel1287 said:
Nothing associated with Musk or what he's doing has anything to do with Democracy. He was not a candidate. He has not been vetted or congressionally approved. Everything he is doing is contrary to precedent, statute, and every other check we have in our governance.
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Well that's working its way through the courts but there are plenty of government employees and unpaid concerned American citizens that were not candidates, were not vetted, and were not congressionally approved. I don't think that really proves your point.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
If that is their plan, let me know how that works out for them. At this point, we can only know for sure what has happened over the last few decades.

I think we should also remember what Elon has said. Rogan asked him if dead people are receiving Social Security benefits. He said he didn't think so. He said other programs might be providing incorrect payments based on the Social Security database. That doesn't sound like he wants to undermine the trust in the social security program which again is extremely popular with a very important voting block. It sounds like he wants to undermine trust in a social security database which to me seems pretty fixable.
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Sure...labeling the entire system as a Ponzi scheme in the very same interview was not meant to engender distrust.

Yep, makes total sense.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Well that's working its way through the courts but there are plenty of government employees and unpaid concerned American citizens that were not candidates, were not vetted, and were not congressionally approved. I don't think that really proves your point.
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Name one person in the history of the United States of America afforded the control, power, and access that Elon Musk currently has without either election, vetting, or congressional approval. Just one.

Heck, name one with 5% of the level that Musk currently has.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Regarding the Social Security fraud, he did talk about that in a Joe Rogan interview. Rogan asked him directly if dead people were receiving Social Security benefits and Musk said he didn't think so. He said where the fraud is occurring is that other Federal departments use the Social Security database to determine if someone is alive or not. Since just about everybody has Social Security, I'm sure that was an expedient way to determine that. So the fraud occurs when a different department or agency looks at the social security database and says yes, this person is still alive, and should be getting whatever benefit.

Musk also pointed out that it may be fraud or it may be waste or a bit of both. Say a large nursing home business is getting a check for a deceased resident. They haven't requested that payment but they also haven't confirmed that the resident is alive or gone out of their way to tell the government they shouldn't be getting the check. Is that fraud or waste or a bit of both?
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When a person dies, SS is notified by the funeral home that handles the funeral and payments cease. Also, SS takes back the payment the person received for the month they died. My mom died in 2022 and my dad in 2023. The funeral home notified SS if their deaths. There is no way huge numbers of dead people are still receiving payments. And in any event, you find fraud by doing audits. Not by making massive indiscriminate cuts. You might have some blind dumb luck and eliminate some fraud, but what you really are going to do is hurt millions of people who are receiving benefits they are entitled to. This not only hurts them, but it would have a devastating effect on our economy. If musk is serious about eliminating fraud, he needs to strengthen the auditing function in each department and perform audits. It would be a slow process, but it’s the only way to find and eliminate fraud in government.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
If that is their plan, let me know how that works out for them. At this point, we can only know for sure what has happened over the last few decades.

I think we should also remember what Elon has said. Rogan asked him if dead people are receiving Social Security benefits. He said he didn't think so. He said other programs might be providing incorrect payments based on the Social Security database. That doesn't sound like he wants to undermine the trust in the social security program which again is extremely popular with a very important voting block. It sounds like he wants to undermine trust in a social security database which to me seems pretty fixable.
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Rogan asked the question because that is the natural implication of highlighting people aged 120, 130, 140 in the social security database. That’s the same reason Trump highlighted these numbers in his speech. The natural reaction to that is: there are dead people receiving benefits. The implication is that the government is allowing this fraud to take place.

We’ll see what happens.
 
Patb78 said:
When a person dies, SS is notified by the funeral home that handles the funeral and payments cease. Also, SS takes back the payment the person received for the month they died. My mom died in 2022 and my dad in 2023. The funeral home notified SS if their deaths. There is no way huge numbers of dead people are still receiving payments. And in any event, you find fraud by doing audits. Not by making massive indiscriminate cuts. You might have some blind dumb luck and eliminate some fraud, but what you really are going to do is hurt millions of people who are receiving benefits they are entitled to. This not only hurts them, but it would have a devastating effect on our economy. If musk is serious about eliminating fraud, he needs to strengthen the auditing function in each department and perform audits. It would be a slow process, but it’s the only way to find and eliminate fraud in government.
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Yeah. Again. Elon Musk also doesn't think that people flagged as alive but clearly dead are receiving payments from Social Security. He does think those people, or entities tied to those people, are receiving payments from other government agencies.
 
Paine said:
It’d about pretext and undermining trust. You undermine trust in social security, get enough people who aren’t currently receiving benefits to not care or think there’s fraud or whatever, and then you cut the program/privatize.

This is the natural outcome of undermining trust in one of the most trusted and cherished programs the government offers. We’ve seen it happen time and time again with other programs.
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A good analogy is all elections are fixed-they of course are not. but half the country thinks they were fixed in 2020. Now Elon/trump are convincing half the country that all of govt is just a fraud . And it is not
 
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