This isn't a payments crisis; this is an auditing crisis. There's no way to ensure proper accounting procedures are being followed. At this point, Congress' continued inaction is bordering on criminal.
Doing an audit starting with the treasury department seems like the right first step. Every outflow of money ultimately has to start there. It's the root node of the Sankey diagram. Then you follow the money outwards from there.
okay then...how many billions are completely unaudited?
If you're not fine with that, how do we suggest we even fix this?
The USAID literally financed the development of a virus that killed tens of millions of people worldwide. And then it greased many wheels to try to make people believe it couldn't possibly have been a lab-leak.
Trump just asked an audit of all the US donations that have been made to Ukraine: this looked like one of the biggest operation of money laundering in a long time.
Why are you even against trying to fix things?
The problem is agencies that haven't been audited in a decade. The agencies literally don't report how much money they get, their current balances, or where it goes.
Here's the DOD proudly announcing that they now have clean audits for 11 of their 28 departments: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/39.... Surely nothing bad is happening in the other 17.
But pretending that Musk and co are doing an audit by accessing treasury records and payment systems or that it will help with government waste in any way is laughable.
Again, literally no one would be able to make any kind of credible department spending audit out of the bank records of a mid-sized company.
This is the US government’s treasury we’re talking about here! This is several orders of magnitude bigger and more complicated!
Not to mention an audit would not require any write access.
If only they had a standing list of more than 5000 such improvement opportunities...
Welcome to the Government Accountability Office!
Might be the first data you secure though.
> a top DOGE employee, 25 year old former SpaceX employee Marko Elez, has not only read but write access to BFS servers
> One senior IT source can see Mark retrieving “close to a thousand rows of data” but they can’t see the content because the system is “top secret” even to them. No source I have has knowledge of what DOGE is doing with the data they are retrieving
You think the treasury doesn’t have a metric ton of procedures, and laws, on data management, integrity, access, backup and retention?
Breaking these protocols by giving unfettered write access to this data to ridiculously inexperienced and ignorant goons exponentially increases the risk of data tampering and corruption…
It makes any kind of audit LESS likely to be accurate.
But they’re very obviously not doing any kind of credible audit. As mentioned, that’s literally impossible and nonsensical to do this way.
Its in the first article of the constitution.
For now, they are just pausing payments.
If they find serious issues they can likely go to congress and have them canceled outright. If not, they need to distribute the funds during the fiscal year.
I don’t understand the pearl clutching. The government shuts down often due to spending issues. Payments pause when this happens. Moreover, everybody has known for decades that nobody is reading these 50,000 page appropriations bills.
I’m willing to give musk and his guys some time to sort this out.
The president has asked them to do this. If they go against his wishes there is no reason they will not be thrown under the bus. If he pardons them for obvious malfeasance it will make big political waves and likely change the outcome of the midterm elections, where a congress could begin impeachment.
uhh, no they can't. Those are also government elected representatives. Checks and balances. To "cancel congress", you need the courts to charge and convict them. You're going to find it very hard to do that from treasury records alone (AKA, how the executive branch spends the money allocated).
>I don’t understand the pearl clutching. The government shuts down often due to spending issues.
With that dismissal, you're not opening yourself up to understanding. Maybe there's wrongdoing; The answer isn't to charge into the treasury and hack it.
That's the stupid part: Musk doesn't need to. He's clearly not TSI/TS clearance level, so he just needs trump to go in and look. Or have trump hire someone with that clearance to look in on his orders. Remember, this is the executive branch; Trump has all access powers here (within reason).
>I’m willing to give musk and his guys some time to sort this out.
I'm not. I didn't vote for him. You didn't. He was not approved by Senate, as is executive apointee tradition. He does not have clearance. "Asking" isn't enough. Where's this willingness coming from? Even if you just like the guy, you really want the man who laid off 80% of his staff to handle your money?
>If they go against his wishes there is no reason they will not be thrown under the bus
I can think of 8 or 9 figures why he wouldn't.
He might be due to SpaceX government contracts.
Edit: someone linked below confirmation he does have top secret clearance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942848
Elon Musk was hand picked by the president to do this job. Clearly you do not like the president nor Elon but that is a personal view not held by a majority of voters in the last election.
To me it’s more like mom gave me money to pay the rent but my landlord is likely violating laws so in the meantime I am putting the rent in escrow while we sort out the facts.
Remember when Musk built the submarine to save the kids in the cave, was absolutely useless, even actively obstructed others from saving them, and finally resorted to denigrate the diver saving them as a pedophile? That's exactly the same thing he is doing right now.
Yes he is.
> He was asked by the president to do a job and he’s doing it.
1. And he did it in an illegal way, yes. If you wanna go back to Mom, you can go to the grocery but you cannot throw a bank heist and lock all employees out of the store so you can grab some bread
2. He doesn't have access to the store. Mom sent him to Costo without her card. You can't just storm into Costco. Go back to mom and get her card, if possible.
Nobody stormed anything. They just filed a dispute with their credit card company. Costco will get the funds if they win the dispute. If there is malfeasance at Costco don’t you want to know? What exactly are you afraid of?
Which is stupid because you Uncle Orange has access to the spending records.
Man, March is going to be bloody.
America is no longer a nation of laws. Period. We are a nation ruled by Trump and Musk.
We are in fact a nation of laws and we ought to demand enforcement.
It's just that as far as I can recall no one has ever really tried to spend less in the government.
EDIT: I was mistaken, please look up Impoundment of appropriated funds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5281438/understanding-t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu...
No, they cannot. Trump was impeached during his first term over this very issue. Congress had appropriated funding for the Ukraine, Trump didn't want to provide it without obtaining concessions from Zelenski. Just like Trump doesn't want to provide California any FEMA money for the LA fires without concessions. Trump has been through this before, he knows it's illegal, but he doesn't care. It's kinda funny that people expect a felon to care about the law.
When asked about the news on Oct. 5 that new border wall construction would indeed commence under his administration, Biden told reporters: “The border wall — the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get to them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”
Trump intended to build the wall with no environmental assessments or permits and congress wrote in a waiver since the border was “an emergency” but Biden chose to rescind the emergency declaration and follow the long-established federal construction process instead of using the waivers which does indeed slow things down.
That’s nothing like what is happening with Musk “deleting” entire departments or unilaterally stopping funding because he doesn’t like the phrasing of the grants.
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/10/bidens-border-wall-explain...
Biden tried to get congress to re-appropriate the funds. They wouldn't, so he spent it as he was obligated.
I'll just be in good faith and believe you wholesale. Yes, that is one way to fight the spending. Make the government argue until a deadline is hit and then they either shut down or compromise. Happens much too often.
But that's the point: the budget wasn't made yet. Trump wants to argue over funding that was already in place. If he wanted this chaos legally, he'd have been stalling out the March funding next quarter. But once it's finalized, it's finalized and many challenges over the centuries were shot down.
Sad thing is no one is really talking about this in any branch, so it's just theory crafting until then.
if you want to change that you need a huge voter base that is anti-partisan. Given that we can barely mobilize within parties to protest properly: good luck.
To do otherwise the executive has to pick and choose what to fund.
The topic usually gets raised every time we get close to a debt limit. If we truly broached the limit it’s possible the Biden and Obama administrations would have just ignored the limit since the consequences of the full faith and credit of the US failing are so dire and there’s a solid argument it’s the least bad option Constitutionally.
He can' (but shouldn't). But there's no word that was granted to Musk. Since, he didn't name them. He probably doesn't though, because he should not have been stopped at USAID with the right credentials. Unless...
>Hope they did some vetting...
we both know he didn't. If he does have clearance, his interns definitely don't. Hence the kerfluffle at USAID.
It is an administrative step. It might undergo review but access does not need to be prevent until the review happens. It is all about who is granting the access.
The commander in chief has considerable authority to provide access.
There seem to be a lot of misconceptions flying around about what "government access" entails.
For the sake of timeliness and being able to move quickly, some people in government are authorized to make a judgment about the risk/benefit tradeoff when someone doesn't have an active clearance. It isn't a case of waiting for a background check process, you don't even need to apply. Some organizations will do an informal check of their own in the background if they don't already know who you are. Sure, they would prefer if you already had formal clearance, but it isn't strictly necessary.
It's like people thinking that the President can't declassify a document or make foreign policy decisions without the NSC's advice or consent.
If these are federal statues they can be pardoned by the President (like the January 6 folks were).
Arrested by who? The executive branch who ordered his actions? Americans voted for this, and now we have to live with it.
Yknow… the branch that’s supposed to check the power of the executive branch…
Arrests need probable cause. They can either be done on a warrant or without a warrant (in the latter case, in the federal system, a complaint must be filed and the arrested person must be brought before a magistrate for a hearing on probable cause within 72 hours after arrest.)
The president can replace them.
The judiciary has zero enforcement power. They make the laws which the executive is meant to enforce. If the executive fails to enforce a law, congress can impeach. That's not happening.
The current executive branch will not enforce laws against itself, and nobody else is legally allowed to enforce the laws, so all the courts & congress can do is write strongly worded letters.
The executive branch runs the country.
The legislative branch makes the laws.
The judicial branch enforces them…
Also, trump was impeached last time because he tried to shut down funding approved by congress. So, if you’re surprised it’s happening again, I suppose you can’t be helped
Do I really have to explain how much of his 100+ EO's come from Project 2025?
Trump said Elon would get to run a new department called "department of government efficiency". if you know what he did at Twitter, you can easily join the dots.
Let's see: Trump appointed it the day after he won:
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/12/g-s1-33972/trump-elon-musk-vi...
And Musk announced DOGE on September 2024:
https://news.bitcoin.com/elon-musk-agrees-to-head-donald-tru...
So yes, this was not some secret. If you (royal you) trusted that photo in the 2nd link to make america efficient, I have no words.
That said, DOGE was well announced and widely publicized prior to the election, by Musk and the media. Musk was up on the stage with Trump quite a bit.
Those who did not know this was going to happen are either easily fooled or were paying no attention.
When the 49ers lost the 2024 Super Bowl, the second and third string players didn't go around saying they didn't really lose because they never hit the field. No, they lost.
Yes, if the Electoral College wasn't a thing.
But you'd also be surprised how many non-swings could swing if they had enough non-voters vote.
People believed the wolf when he said he wasn't going to hurt the sheep.
If they didn't vote they voted for the winner. America (including me, because voting wasn't enough) earned this 100%.
In the long term yes, in the short term, no. That's the check and balance of the Judicial branch. In theory they should be insulated from the politics of the world and properly interpret laws based on various cases.
So you can't just, say, repeal the first amendment just because all your voters suddenly became anti-1A. They need to work to make a represenative base that can eventually vote in that new amendment. And that all takes time (in terms of culture and the bill proposal).
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
In 1933, right after getting power, Jews were excluded from civil service, their numbers in schools were limited and a year later they could not be actors. The restrictions came in quick and were felt a lot by their targets.
So, this extract kind of underplays the beginning of it all. It was violent from the start.
https://apnews.com/article/deportation-flights-military-indi...
Twitter -- the community -- is dead and rotting.
Maybe that's influenced by me blocking a lot of garbage ads? IDK.
Not truly dead but a shell of it's former self.
When it didn’t fall apart in days, the goalposts were moved to “technical issues won’t become obvious right away, give it a few months”.
It’s been over 2 years and on a technical level running better than ever. You can disagree with the content and users all you wish, but pretending it’s dying because you hate the bad orange and mars man is delusional.
Isn't it also simply doing less? Weren't some APIs shut off or reduced? My limited memory is having me think they reduced or shut down some functionality altogether, which would also help something run smoother. Fewer things running means fewer things can break.
They just closed a single API which was also abused by botfarms. Closing the API immediately improved the site from a spam perspective and was welcome by most actual users, likely all users who understood the impact.
This is pure cope - the site is doing a TON more than it used to, and more stable than ever.
Also arguing that a site that is designed to scrape and re-represent a website without ads or other stuff 'was likely a huge load' is a very weird argument to try and claim the site is no longer being used.
I can say anecdotally I used to use nitter, and while it didn't work for a few days I switched to the regular site. Now I would never go back. The actual site works better now, I have no need. On old twitter 1.0, nitter worked better.
Thats a black eye on Dorsey twitter, not the new twitter (or X or whatever you prefer)
Ask the worker's how they are doing, and then maybe I'll be convinced that it's "running better". When you grind 10x the users into the dirt, you can make up for cutting 90% of your staff. For a while. Especially in a crap economy like this where job hopping is harder.
I also agree that most of the cuts may have been managerial and logistics. It's probably a clown circus trying to do anything more than maintain.
I agree only on a surface level that it looks better. But old tech dies very hard. Digg is technically still up today. Myspace is technically still up today. hell, 4chan is still arguably bustling.
And I'll never understand why. There's a lot of partisan issues but I thought "not fucking around with our money" was as bipartisan as a plutocracy could get?
At the moment though, what they're doing is very much illegal. They just have a bunch of collaborators in the DOJ who won't bring charges or arrest anyone, because they're co-conspirators.
The problem with simplistic narratives where you give stuff names is it masks what's actually happening: the Executive is near enough to a dictatorship - power and authority is deliberate vested in one person. This makes it very different to Congress, which only wields power by the collective decision making of hundreds via majority or even super-majority vote.
So "Congress" doesn't really exist as an entity: because there is no guiding consciousness or collective in it which is deliberately trying to seize more power, and the story of its power is the exact opposite: it keeps giving it away (because the individual members of Congress can only retain that position and it's local benefits by staying in Congress, best accomplished by deliberately avoiding responsibility of any kind).
If you've ever tried to get 4 people to decide what to get for dinner, the guy who simply says "Let's get tacos" usually gets his way because everyone else keeps deferring.
[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2024/11/pentagon-fails-7th-audit...
SOX is a specific law with the motivation of giving markets more confidence in public stocks (for example must hire external auditors, certain board member rules, how certain assets must be valued, etc).
The SOX audit is to make sure that law is followed.
One criticism of SOX is that encouraged many startups and other businesses to remain private.
So long story short, no. Our government does not resemble a public stock corporation and these things don’t have an analog.
These measures are universal to running any payment platform, not a public/private issue.
*No, I'm not thinking of PCI, but that is also a valid measure here. There are recent updates to SOX in the past few years covering these aspects of payment operations. Some old-school SOX experts may not be familiar and the strictness on these aspects of the audit varies by auditor in my experience. I recently helped a client navigate these developing and responding to a very strict audit process covering their entire IT landscape including process flows, deployment planning and user/role management.
> I specifically meant
You didn’t leave the comment. Was that your alt account?
If that is a criticism of SOX for private companies, then it would mean that it should be a baseline for national accounting, no?
What does this mean? Let me repeat. SOX is not a method of accounting, its rules about roles and reporting for public corporations
> It sounds like you think SOX auditing means “super secure and careful accounting”.
I don't know what you think you are implying with the "super secure and careful" comment, we are looking for the roles that ensure the accountability of SOX.
Your complaint is that SOX "nationalizes" companies because apparently it becomes so transparent, or something? If that's what you mean by "nationalize" shouldn't that be used for our nation's accounting?
Please correct me If I'm wrong.
> The Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter that SpaceX lawyers recommended that the company's leadership not pursue a higher security clearance for Musk because he would have been asked about contacts with foreign officials as well as his prior drug use.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/why-elon-musk-doesnt-ha...
(Didn't link WSJ article due to paywall.)
> Musk holds a "top secret" clearance that gives him access to some of SpaceX's sensitive programs.