Trump Admin dismantling Dept. of Education — mass firings underway

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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.
 
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
 
gtyellowjacket said:
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.
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Okay, he thinks that. But once again, you would have to perform audits to determine if that is happening. That’s the only way, and I don’t think he or Trump has the patience to do it the right way. Just to go in and make massive sweeping cuts is going to do way more harm than good. Also, it appears he will be the one making the decisions and I assure you he doesn’t know shit. Neither do any of his minions.
 
wmheel1287 said:
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.
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5%? Every president of the United States. Every inspector general of the United States. They might have to ask other people for certain information, but ultimately they have access to it. I don't understand why piercing that shroud of secrecy, which bureaucrats and fraudsters alike have hidden behind, is so upsetting for you.
 
Patb78 said:
Okay, he thinks that. But once again, you would have to perform audits to determine if that is happening. That’s the only way, and I don’t think he or Trump has the patience to do it the right way. Just to go in and make massive sweeping cuts is going to do way more harm than good. Also, it appears he will be the one making the decisions and I assure you he doesn’t know shit. Neither do any of his minions.
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Yeah. I could get behind that sort of thing but I guess it's ultimately on Trump and the judicial branch. If Trump gives Elon agency to slash programs Musk doesn't like, presumably with some direction from Trump on which programs should be cut, and the judiciary says it's okay, I guess we don't need no stinking audits or committees. And the voters can decide if they like that approach. I have a feeling they will like some of the decisions but on the whole, they won't like most of them.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
A bad database or no database at all?
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It’s not as simple as that. It’s not just a bad database, but the data are not trustworthy as evidenced by the weekly retractions of bullshit conclusions.

If sound, actionable conclusions are the goal, no data > bad data.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Yeah. I could get behind that sort of thing but I guess it's ultimately on Trump and the judicial branch. If Trump gives Elon agency to slash programs Musk doesn't like, presumably with some direction from Trump on which programs should be cut, and the judiciary says it's okay, I guess we don't need no stinking audits or committees. And the voters can decide if they like that approach. I have a feeling they will like some of the decisions but on the whole, they won't like most of them.
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I can't get behind raping the Constitution and Article I. Congress has to spell it out in the next budget, and they may.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
It’s not as simple as that. It’s not just a bad database, but the data are not trustworthy as evidenced by the weekly retractions of bullshit conclusions.

If sound, actionable conclusions are the goal, no data > bad data.
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Would you rather he just left them there and made no corrections? Would you rather he simply cut the programs and didn't tell you what he was cutting? Doge going to make mistakes. Musk has acknowledged that. But The majority of voters like the cuts for now. I'm one of them.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
It’s not as simple as that. It’s not just a bad database, but the data are not trustworthy as evidenced by the weekly retractions of bullshit conclusions.

If sound, actionable conclusions are the goal, no data > bad data.
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Garbage in. Garbage out with Musk. His algorithms and decision making are amateurish and beyond flawed. And executed by teen incels. What could possibly go wrong?
 
Duke Mu said:
I can't get behind raping the Constitution and Article I. Congress has to spell it out in the next budget, and they may.
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Maybe. And I'm guessing if it's a congressionally mandated program, the courts are going to clap back.

But if it is a situation where Congress, for example says we're going to give $2 billion to usaid to further democracy efforts, abdicating responsibility to the executive branch on what those specifics are, I think the proper role of the elected executive is to make those decisions and cut programs that are not benefiting the taxpayer.
 
nycfan said:
Why on earth would those be the only two choices?
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I think this becomes one of those the enemy the good is the perfect situation. A month ago we didn't have any database of cuts that were being made or not made, even a bad database. There was no place that listed any of the cuts. Was anyone out there criticizing the fact that there was no database? I'd rather have what we have now than what we had a month ago And I'd rather have an easily searchable database with more details than what we have today. But I don't want to wait for that better database. I'd rather have the bad one now.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Yeah. I could get behind that sort of thing but I guess it's ultimately on Trump and the judicial branch. If Trump gives Elon agency to slash programs Musk doesn't like, presumably with some direction from Trump on which programs should be cut, and the judiciary says it's okay, I guess we don't need no stinking audits or committees. And the voters can decide if they like that approach. I have a feeling they will like some of the decisions but on the whole, they won't like most of them.
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If they follow that path there will be a great deal of suffering. I am very familiar with how the government works with private agencies that provide health services to individuals under programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If they do what you say huge numbers of people are going to pay a heavy price for indiscriminate slashing of these programs. I hope no one you know is in a nursing home now, because the cuts to these programs will cause many to close.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Would you rather he just left them there and made no corrections? Would you rather he simply cut the programs and didn't tell you what he was cutting? Doge going to make mistakes. Musk has acknowledged that. But The majority of voters like the cuts for now. I'm one of them.
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I want the data to be the driver of sound decisions rather than a post hoc accounting of how big a fuck up some clowns committed.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
5%? Every president of the United States. Every inspector general of the United States. They might have to ask other people for certain information, but ultimately they have access to it. I don't understand why piercing that shroud of secrecy, which bureaucrats and fraudsters alike have hidden behind, is so upsetting for you.
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Apparently you did not read what I said or did not care to. I said to name a person who has not been through election, vetting, or congressional approval.

You proceeded to name only people who have been through those exact processes.

Do you see me bitching about Trump or RFK having that power and access? No. They at least went through Democratic processes as much as I hate where they are.

There is NO objection to piercing a veil. These folks you support are figuaritvely the Iron Curtain falling across our governmental systems. They are the polar opposite of transparency.
 
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