Florida resident indicted by NY DA

[StevensTechU]

I have a notice that I was quoted by "dd10" but just FYI, I can't see anything you write. Edit: or Phalanx. You're welcome to send me PMs.

[Phalanx]

I have a notice that I was quoted by "dd10" but just FYI, I can't see anything you write.

You are not only commenting in a thread he started, but you had to scroll down a bit to find it, since nobody had commented here for 7 months. And now you want to let the OP of this thread know you have him on ignore and are just here to deposit your MSNBC talking points, as if we haven't seen them repeated all over the media already? Incredible.

[Duck07]

Time to go read Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey while watching Back to the Future!

[dthomas=ddixon]

DOGE is far from unprecedented; previous administrations have created similar agencies via executive order, including USAID.

I have a really hard time taking seriously people who are more upset about DOGE than they are about unelected bureaucrats spending millions of tax payer dollars on things like arming paramilitary and terrorist organizations. Or “independent media” outlets and fact checking organizations.

“Did you hear we’ve been funding terrorists?”
“Ok but you know what really concerns me? The people who discovered this are only EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.”

All you have to do is listen to Mike Benz on any podcast. He uses documents, video clips, press releases, etc. from government websites to prove everything he talks about. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the stamp of approval from major media outlets and fact checkers like medibiasfactcheck.com.

[StevensTechU]

DOGE is far from unprecedented; previous administrations have created similar agencies via executive order, including USAID.

I have a really hard time taking seriously people who are more upset about DOGE than they are about unelected bureaucrats spending millions of tax payer dollars on things like arming paramilitary and terrorist organizations. Or “independent media” outlets and fact checking organizations.

“Did you hear we’ve been funding terrorists?”
“Ok but you know what really concerns me? The people who discovered this are only EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.”

All you have to do is listen to Mike Benz on any podcast. He uses documents, video clips, press releases, etc. from government websites to prove everything he talks about. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the stamp of approval from major media outlets and fact checkers like medibiasfactcheck.com.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but USAID didn't start because of an executive order. USAID was established by the 87th United States Congress and signed into law by JFK in 1961 as the Foreign Assistance Act. Feel free to read up on it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Assistance_Act

A very basic premise of the Constitution is that Congress is the only authority that can create and close agencies.

[StevensTechU]

DOGE is far from unprecedented; previous administrations have created similar agencies via executive order, including USAID.

I have a really hard time taking seriously people who are more upset about DOGE than they are about unelected bureaucrats spending millions of tax payer dollars on things like arming paramilitary and terrorist organizations. Or “independent media” outlets and fact checking organizations.

“Did you hear we’ve been funding terrorists?”
“Ok but you know what really concerns me? The people who discovered this are only EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.”

All you have to do is listen to Mike Benz on any podcast. He uses documents, video clips, press releases, etc. from government websites to prove everything he talks about. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the stamp of approval from major media outlets and fact checkers like medibiasfactcheck.com.

Separate from the above fact check, I'm more than happy to tell you why "DOGE" bothers people.

1) On its face, it is a farse. If you wanted to audit government spending, root out waste and corruption, you would hire an army of forensic accountants and auditors. The DOGE staff has exactly zero. This explains why they have found exactly zero fraud or abuse so far, and only things that they didn't like ideologically. This is an ideological exercise to usurp Congress' job of appropriating funds, not an audit.

2) There is effectively no oversight or transparency for the American people, so none of us have any idea what they're doing with all the government's and American citizen's data beyond sporadic tweets by Elon Musk that largely indicates he doesn't know what he's looking at (a reason having accountants would have been wiser than programmers), and a website that was hacked earlier this morning. Throw on top of it that there is zero oversight outside of the executive branch (Congress didn't agree to this position nor can they impeach it), and the fact that there are billions in annual conflicts of interest, then it bothers people who don't like corruption in government.

3) Lastly, the guy regularly calls people retards and gives Nazi salutes. Many people don't like Nazis running the government.

[UOducksTK1]

DOGE is far from unprecedented; previous administrations have created similar agencies via executive order, including USAID.

I have a really hard time taking seriously people who are more upset about DOGE than they are about unelected bureaucrats spending millions of tax payer dollars on things like arming paramilitary and terrorist organizations. Or “independent media” outlets and fact checking organizations.

“Did you hear we’ve been funding terrorists?”
“Ok but you know what really concerns me? The people who discovered this are only EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.”

All you have to do is listen to Mike Benz on any podcast. He uses documents, video clips, press releases, etc. from government websites to prove everything he talks about. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the stamp of approval from major media outlets and fact checkers like medibiasfactcheck.com.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but USAID didn't start because of an executive order. USAID was established by the 87th United States Congress and signed into law by JFK in 1961 as the Foreign Assistance Act. Feel free to read up on it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Assistance_Act

A very basic premise of the Constitution is that Congress is the only authority that can create and close agencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President ... 0occasions.
Presidential reorganization authority is a term used to refer to a major statutory power that has sometimes been temporarily extended by the United States Congress to the President of the United States. It permits the president to divide, consolidate, abolish, or create agencies of the U.S. federal government by presidential directive, subject to limited legislative oversight. First granted in 1932...

[jBeavertonduck]

DOGE is far from unprecedented; previous administrations have created similar agencies via executive order, including USAID.

I have a really hard time taking seriously people who are more upset about DOGE than they are about unelected bureaucrats spending millions of tax payer dollars on things like arming paramilitary and terrorist organizations. Or “independent media” outlets and fact checking organizations.

“Did you hear we’ve been funding terrorists?”
“Ok but you know what really concerns me? The people who discovered this are only EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.”

All you have to do is listen to Mike Benz on any podcast. He uses documents, video clips, press releases, etc. from government websites to prove everything he talks about. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the stamp of approval from major media outlets and fact checkers like medibiasfactcheck.com.

Separate from the above fact check, I'm more than happy to tell you why "DOGE" bothers people.

1) On its face, it is a farse. If you wanted to audit government spending, root out waste and corruption, you would hire an army of forensic accountants and auditors. The DOGE staff has exactly zero. This explains why they have found exactly zero fraud or abuse so far, and only things that they didn't like ideologically. This is an ideological exercise to usurp Congress' job of appropriating funds, not an audit.

2) There is effectively no oversight or transparency for the American people, so none of us have any idea what they're doing with all the government's and American citizen's data beyond sporadic tweets by Elon Musk that largely indicates he doesn't know what he's looking at (a reason having accountants would have been wiser than programmers), and a website that was hacked earlier this morning. Throw on top of it that there is zero oversight outside of the executive branch (Congress didn't agree to this position nor can they impeach it), and the fact that there are billions in annual conflicts of interest, then it bothers people who don't like corruption in government.

3) Lastly, the guy regularly calls people retards and gives Nazi salutes. Many people don't like Nazis running the government.

You lost me at "Nazi Salutes".

[StevensTechU]

DOGE is far from unprecedented; previous administrations have created similar agencies via executive order, including USAID.

I have a really hard time taking seriously people who are more upset about DOGE than they are about unelected bureaucrats spending millions of tax payer dollars on things like arming paramilitary and terrorist organizations. Or “independent media” outlets and fact checking organizations.

“Did you hear we’ve been funding terrorists?”
“Ok but you know what really concerns me? The people who discovered this are only EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD.”

All you have to do is listen to Mike Benz on any podcast. He uses documents, video clips, press releases, etc. from government websites to prove everything he talks about. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the stamp of approval from major media outlets and fact checkers like medibiasfactcheck.com.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but USAID didn't start because of an executive order. USAID was established by the 87th United States Congress and signed into law by JFK in 1961 as the Foreign Assistance Act. Feel free to read up on it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Assistance_Act

A very basic premise of the Constitution is that Congress is the only authority that can create and close agencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President ... 0occasions.
Presidential reorganization authority is a term used to refer to a major statutory power that has sometimes been temporarily extended by the United States Congress to the President of the United States. It permits the president to divide, consolidate, abolish, or create agencies of the U.S. federal government by presidential directive, subject to limited legislative oversight. First granted in 1932...

First and foremost, I appreciate a back and forth that rests on facts, so thanks for the cited statement. Secondly, though, it clearly has nothing to do with how USAID came into existence, as I cleared up in the post you quoted.

Lastly, Presidential Reorganization is granted by - as found in the Wikipedia link you sent - Congress. Congress has passed no bill giving the president authority right now to shut down agencies.

[Duck07]

From the very beginning, it was made clear that the US Digital Service, an Obama Era agency, was being renamed as the US D(OGE) Service and that a new agency had not in fact been created and that "DOGE" is clearly operating within the stated Mission of the USDS even.

On STU's points, #1 - calling exposing these things as not being fraudulent or wasteful seemingly ignores how people have responded to finding out that USAID isn't 95% Corn/Flour/Clean Water/Medicine and 5% overhead but 99% overhead and 1% corn/flour/clean water/medicine.

Here's a british man complaining that our tax dollars won't continue funding his wife's "foundation" after 19 years where she pays herself 125K/year to re-sell Afghan goods in the British market and requires 10M/year from us in order to do it or else it won't work. Asking for welfare is one thing when you're poor, when you're privileged and doing it you should be flogged publicly.

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That isn't an "ideological" issue to be upset about and it's certainly a drop in a much larger bucket of wasteful and unnecessary spending. I remember when the Royal Bank of Scotland got a 1 Billion from the Obama era Fed as part of their "billions for the banks" bailout package, wherein the US taxpayer pays the value of the dollar PLUS interest to the Federal Reserve. Everything is a literal scam.

Wikileaks is full of them frankly.

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#2 - That is on Congress and some of them don't know how to do their jobs because they've effectively done nothing for a long time. I could on about Wyden, but I'd recommend reading Barton Gellman's "Dark Mirror." When he asked James Clapper about spying on American citizens and he said "not wittingly" he knew that was a lie on his part and hasn't done anything about it. He did however let Clapper continue in the Intel Community while going bonkers about Tulsi. Wyden, Merkeley, Val Hoyle and many others aren't worth our votes but they keep getting them.

That's also where the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau comes into play and his attempt at neutering the agency has been stymied by a Judge for now. It also (to me at least) shows that when you always cry wolf with Despot Don, that when he does stupid and wrong things like the CPFB firings, it undermines the ability to focus on those real critiques, like when the social security payments and medicare benefits start going down "because our studies show inflation went down for the ultra rich!"

[StevensTechU]

I think I've said all that's needed, but to drive the point home of how inappropriate having completely unqualified twenty-something programmers and an investor with no government experience take on what would be a complex assignment for anybody, the DOGE team fired, then had to un-fire, the employees who oversee the nuclear arsenal. That's just shocking incompetence, and we'd all be howling at any other administration for such stupidity.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/climate/ ... index.html

While I'm here, I'll mention that they also posted classified information about America's intelligence agencies to their websites before realizing how monumentally stupid that was, as well.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-mus ... 3a8d767112

[Phalanx]

It sounds like civil service protections prevent firings of employees hired for longer than two years, so everyone short of that duration - on 'probationary status' are being let go at the suggestion of OPM and with authority from new department heads (not DOGE) and then those officials in each department will decide who needs to be hired back.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforc ... -deadline/

People who read stuff may recall that 'President Biden' made a massive hiring push last year in order to pad his employment numbers in reports heading into the election cycle.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USGOVT

Trump as the winner and bagholder, is now having to deal with this excess in personnel. Since no nuclear bombs went off in between the firings and re-hirings, I will assume the process is working. As for revealing classified info, it is nearly impossible at this point for anyone in government not to be guilty of this, since everything is classified now. I think most of us are desensitized to these accusations at the point - they are largely meaningless.

The squawking about reducing the size of government - and hopefully the corresponding budget - just demonstrates why nobody has had the courage to engage in such attempts before now. I am thankful that we have an administration willing to take this on, and I would expect a few issues along the way. Musk did a comparable thing at Twitter amid much consternation and derision from the media and the end result appears to be a more efficient and effective organization than previously. At least investors seem to think so; they are buying up X debt like hotcakes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/tech ... -sale.html

Meanwhile, the revelations of massive wastefulness and extreme ideological activity via USAID and other co-opted NGO's provide great reading material for those of us who choose not to cover our ears and yell, "lalalalala, not listening!!" like STU.

[dd10snoop28]

The problem with all of STU's posts is that they lack any sort of curiosity to look deeper than mainstream media headlines.

The supposed allegations of wrongdoing by DOGE have been sourced to HuffPost and CNN. And all from anonymous sources.

Anyone with an ounce of curiosity could look back to the time range between 2017-2019 where the same media outlets pushed the hoax that the former president colluded with Russia on a DAILY basis. Every single ounce of this narrative was based off a manufactured lie by his political enemies.

To demonstrate the point, here is a link to a list of 152 (one hundred and fifty two) false allegations/stories pushed by the Media against the current president.

https://sharylattkisson.com/2025/01/50- ... tive-list/

The Russian collusion and dossier hoax
Pee tape accusation
Obama’s CIA asked foreign intel agencies to spy on Trump campaign
Report from "indepdent orginzation" Hamilton 86 that lied about Russia's influence over the 2016 election
Alfa Bank ping hoax
"Fine people on both sides" hoax related to Charlottesville.
The “bloodbath” hoax
Putin is Trump's spy handler hoax and Trump has been an agent since the 1980s
Cassidy Hutchinson lying about Trump lunging for the steering wheel to take control of his limo from the Secret Service on January 6
Claims by various medical professionals that Trump is mentally ill
Hunter Biden laptop “Russian disinformation” hoax supported by Joe Biden
“51 intelligence authorities” ruse to help elect Joe Biden
Mainstream media's blackout of Hunter Biden laptop story
“Five police officers were killed” at the January 6 “insurrection” lie
FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago revealed Nuclear-related documents
Trump will “take revenge,” “demand retribution,” ensure a “bloodbath,” and “end democracy” (America’s last election if he wins)

[Phalanx]

By the way, I love STU parroting of the media saying that they are 'not finding much corruption, only differences in ideological priorities'. Right, USAID funding terrorist groups is just a different approach. Nothing to see here.

https://x.com/AfricaFactsZone/status/18 ... 9573496046

[jBeavertonduck]

I think I've said all that's needed, but to drive the point home of how inappropriate having completely unqualified twenty-something programmers and an investor with no government experience take on what would be a complex assignment for anybody, the DOGE team fired, then had to un-fire, the employees who oversee the nuclear arsenal. That's just shocking incompetence, and we'd all be howling at any other administration for such stupidity.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/climate/ ... index.html

While I'm here, I'll mention that they also posted classified information about America's intelligence agencies to their websites before realizing how monumentally stupid that was, as well.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-mus ... 3a8d767112

Why on earth would someone have to have government experience to gather data? I'm guessing that you have interviewed everyone involved and gauged their qualifications.

Based on your previous statement about a "Nazi Salute" I guess that the Canadian Government is run by a bunch of Nazi's, after all, they held a special session to honor an actual Nazi soldier who fought against the Russians in WWII.