Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tycho | Hacker News Reader

But it is a partisan issue. All these people on fat NGO salaries, all these federal workers not pulling their weight, all the welfare abuse, all these aid payments - which party do you think is keen to keep the spigot flowing? Of course, it would be a shame if they didn’t audit the Pentagon as well, definitely massive graft happening there.

View on HN

Allegedly, the Pentagon sees the writing on the wall and is trying to get a head start on DOGE

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/doge-departme...

It’s just wild to me that an attempt to tally up whats in the community grain store and where it’s allocated out to is even considered a bipartisan issue.

The problem is the person doing the tallying is doing it behind closed doors, has routinely been shown to lie to further his interests and has already been caught lying with the tallies he's released.

The GOP controls both houses and the POTUS. They could absolutely do a top to bottom audit with full transparency and make cuts where needed. But that's not what this is about.

Is that totally true, though? Maybe they have pulled wool over my eyes, but it seems like we've seen more transparency in the last few weeks than the last 40 years.

Just poke around a bit: https://doge.gov/savings

And please even try to explain how this sort of thing is even remotely in America's best interest:

https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA865018C7886_970...

> ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD)

Then there's the basic accounting 101 things like improper categorization, 150 year old people getting social security, etc. Why should the US government be held to a lower standard than a publicly traded company?

Do you have a third party audit that this is true or have those datasets all been removed? Musk has shown himself unknowledgeable at best and purposely lying at worse so many DOGE findings are hard to take at face value.

https://apnews.com/article/usaid-funding-trump-musk-misinfor...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/02/10/elon-mus...

Did you even read those articles? Full of BS excuses and justifications. None of them pass the sniff test by any honest person with above room temperature IQ.

People are just angry at Musk for turning their safe space into a free speech platform then switching sides. And that he’s now taking away their sides unlimited slush fund.

You clearly don't want to read anything outside of Twitter/Musk, but another error, fixed/hidden in order to keep showing incorrect data that looks better for DOGE.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...

The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.

So much honesty and transparency out of this group.

Man people can’t stand that Elon turned Twitter into a free speech platform. Anyways, I'm more of a long-form article, book, podcast and travel guy when it comes to informing my opinion.

This ASED and LSD, aren’t they services to help the state counteract an information warfare attack? Just guessing, but it sounds like a legitimate thing where they’d want capacity to uncover/expose such activities, which I’m sure adversaries would consider.

Yes, the contract was for researching defenses against deception, was first awarded under Trump and also on public record, visible for many years, not "revealed" by anyone, especially not those DOGE masterminds. But what's even the point now? I think we're past discussing any facts here, because OP has a "sniff test" instead (see answer below).

Sure, sure. Pentagon money going to the western press, USAID (a literal terrorist organization) funding both sides of the narrative, what could go wrong?

There was a time liberals screamed at the top of their lungs over this type of threat to democracy, now they embrace and endorse it because they’ve fully merged with the primacy neocons.

Yeah, thanks for proving my point. Have a nice day.

> USAID (a literal terrorist organization)

Maybe get your news from somewhere other than Twitter.

Maybe you could recommend some western news sources that haven't been infected by USAIDS?

I don't know any voters who want fraud to continue, but most do accept that fraud is just a part of any system designed and implemented by humans.

I personally would like to see the end of the "find gravy train, keep that gravy flowing at all costs" methodology of capitalism, because it's primary focus is money instead of the service provided. Whether it's pentagon contractors, business subsidies, or the heinous medicare and medical insurance fraud. But I don't want to cut SNAP even if someone buys a goddamn coke once in a while.

The current method seems to be brain surgery with a monkey wrench. Slash and burn with little thought given to the effects upon humans, especially those who don't have other options. Kagi gave me a figure of between 9.2 to 15.2 percent of welfare being fraudulent. Yes that's too high, yes I'd like to fix that, but I want that change to be considered, studied, and planned with caution.

Tbh I think “move fast and break things” is what’s needed. The government bureaucracy has ossified over many years, and any attempt to change it gets bogged down in “committees” and “inquiries”. The only thing that will work is shock and awe, and if something important does get broken, it’s east enough to fix when its criticality becomes evident.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com