Report: IT officials who fought DOGE access put on leave and under investigation.
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DOGE accesses federal payroll system and punishes employees who objected
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I just finished listening to an insightful two-parter on Elon Musk on the Know Your Enemy podcast. Toward the end of the second episode they touch on what kind of people work for him given the stresses he puts them under. One suggestion is that these people see themselves as akin to heroes in an RPG working to save the world. To them, the rest of us normies who just want to work 9-5 and go back to our boring lives are basically NPCs. It doesn't matter if our lives get fucked up by their actions on their path to building their lore and saving the world.
Some members of this community would know people who worked like this, or have been there. Does this ring any bells?
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The judge didn't rule it shouldn't be reported or transparent. The ruling was there wasn't a compelling reason to allow certain discovery ... yet. One concept that the courts refer to is "Can't unring the bell." Once something is turned over in discovery, you can't truly unring that bell. And judges don't like to rush. So they often make rulings that can be changed later rather than make a ruling early on they can't undo.
What is likely to happen is the States get the discovery they are entitled to, look at it, then make the argument that additional discovery is necessary. The judge will expand discovery some. Parts will come with restrictions on who can see it. Rinse and repeat.
The real take away isn't the denial in this case. It's all that has been granted so far by the courts. When a judge grants a party's motion quickly, it's because there are compelling facts and law that some stupid s**t is going on that needs to be dealt with immediately.
When that happens, the other party is well and truly going to get their asses kicked. So don't take rulings that seem to support Trump as actual victories for him. But do take all these injunctions and rulings as pretty good indications of on how thin the ice he is skating on.
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I wonder if some ancient Roman citizens felt the same way as the Roman Empire fell apart. I fear we're in for another round of dark ages if we're lucky or total annihilation by the wars Trump is chomping at the bit to start.
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This shouldn't be too surprising, the opposite happens as well in underfunded local health departments all over this country: a bunch of competent people working together making a broken system work when it genuinely shouldn't.
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These are the worst people to work with. Also known as assholes.
There’s never anymore more tedious than having to fix the work of an asshole, because they never stop shitting more.
Work ethic means nothing if you’re doing it wrong. Working harder just means the hole is deeper
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at the one or two persistent downvoters that downvote every post that criticizes Elmo, Dog•e or MAGA affiliated. Almost like truth hurts
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Sure! Once the herd is dead, the forest burned, and the fields salted, cannibalism shall ensue.
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This is my feeling as well. There have been a LOT of things wrong with America throughout its history. But in general, we managed to get by on people being too embarrassed to violate a lot of norms that weren't buttressed by law. And of course even with laws, you have to have people willing to execute them on at least one branch.
Barring major change - a thing which it turns out is pretty hard, especially when people aren't being hit with drastic changes very quickly - I don't think this genie is going back in the bottle.
I have already started encouraging my children to look outside of the US for school and future work so they can get eventual citizenship elsewhere.
(And to go back a bit further, we never recovered from the Civil War. What's happening today is rooted in that as well.)
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Prediction: next year the Trump administration will insist GDP in all its forms are not the right way to measure an economy.
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Only 14 states? Wow.
Reminder: if you’re reading about it here, it’s far, far too late.
Reminder: if you’re reading about it here, it’s far, far too late.
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or key files and credentials just in some schlub's personal GitHub repo or shared Dropbox folder because it's the easiest way to move the files around.
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It is so much easier to destroy than create. A house that took six months to erect can be ashes in an afternoon.
I don't know what the end result here is going to be, but it feels highly likely it won't be pretty for nearly everyone.
I don't know what the end result here is going to be, but it feels highly likely it won't be pretty for nearly everyone.
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You doubt it's deliberate?
Well ... I mean ... If you're into conspiracy theories, word has it that Musk, Thiel, Bezos, et al subscribe to the Dark Enlightenment theory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
If I had read that shit a couple of years ago, I would have made fun it of, and asked if it also included a pedophile ring run out of the basement of a pizza joint in Washington.
Nowadays... I mean... I don't know WHAT to freakin' believe anymore. :-/
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I meant that setting Musk up to be the scapegoat when the government stops paying a whole lot of people is probably not a deliberate long-term plan by Trump to eventually make Musk's popularity so low that Trump has an excuse to push him away and let Musk take a lot of blame with him.
It's just that Trump has a crude sense of that sort of populist politics.
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Watching from the Canadian side of the border, I really can't figure out why some doxing campaigns have not launched against the various DOGE minions that are causing such chaos: I mean, as a simple educational exercise in providing some experience in FAFO, wouldn't such activities be a patriotic duty?
I mean, its not like Elon's security is protecting the DOGE minions?
I mean, its not like Elon's security is protecting the DOGE minions?
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Go read this: https://therevelator.org/china-sparrow-campaign/
TL;DR: putting a massive narcissist in charge and giving him unfettered power led to the death of at least 15 million people (possibly as many as 75 million). Punishing the objectors was a key part of the campaign.
TL;DR: putting a massive narcissist in charge and giving him unfettered power led to the death of at least 15 million people (possibly as many as 75 million). Punishing the objectors was a key part of the campaign.
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Very Very very much so: which is why I would applaud some 'normies' or 'NPC's perhaps providing a bit of a taste of reality to a few DOGE staff... And I promise I'm not proud of saying any of this: but it seems like we're already past the point of "have you any sense of decency". I think decency is long past in the rear view mirror at this point.
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There hasn’t been one criminal charge originating from the billions of dollars in fraud DOGE claims to have found.
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Every Republican needs to go up against the wall, and all the pearl clutchers who have been whining about how it's just alarmism we should just be polite can go second.
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When Elon sent that email to all federal employees asking for 5 bullet points on what they'd done, I'm surprised no-one gave the address to non-employees to play with. That could cause some havoc. Still could with these DOGE morons.
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I wish they would all start wearing snappy Hugo Boss uniforms and save us all the suspense..
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My oldest won't be returning to the states. They went to school in Canada, and it was cheaper to pay International Tuition than for me to pay in state California tuition. When they graduate soon, as a US citizen with a Canadian diploma, they can get a job, then apply for a work visa after.
They had already changed their plans. Their original plan had been to get a masters in Canada, then go to University of Texas for a PhD. UT is the highest ranked in their field. The kid is LGBQT+, and realized that Texas wasn't a good fit for them. So it looks like they're staying in Canada with their Canadian partner.
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I believe in Estonia they have a system in which you biometric ID card is needed to give access to government databses all of which are kept separate. They learned the lesson of the Soviet Union.
So did Trump: "I shall be like Stalin and my loyal friend Elon will be my Beria."
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or a dump of unencrypted PII and personal records of citizens or of government employees stuffed into an s3 bucket or something
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Does anyone think that DOGE is NOT cross-referencing the personnel records against social media posts and will soon be firing anyone who has ever posted anything negative about Trump or Musk?
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Musk looks like a Klingon to me. Also like a clingon I have to be careful to wipe.
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Curiously, they're targeting the Federal Payroll systems. If they were really attempting to improve efficiency in regards to spending, they might want to start with the agency that has NEVER passed an audit in their entire history.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-fails-audit-sixth-year-row-2023-11-16/
https://econofact.org/factbrief/has-the-pentagon-failed-its-7th-audit-in-a-row
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-fails-audit-sixth-year-row-2023-11-16/
https://econofact.org/factbrief/has-the-pentagon-failed-its-7th-audit-in-a-row
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The only valid measures of an economy are the wealth of its billionaires and corporate profits.
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One of the chief people involved in poking around where they weren't supposed to in the Treasury code was "doxed", in that they were very publicly named. And it was shown they had a long and recent twitter history of posting things like "Normalize Indian hate" and "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool." They were fired. Then Elon said they should be brought back and Trump dittoed and now they're back.
Shaming only works when there is anyone to feel shame. This is the genie that can't go back into the bottle. Another post said the US has been through worse. The US has done worse. But with few exceptions all that was done under the normal functioning of the branches of government. We're at a point where one branch just publicly say "nah, I'll do what I want" and the other branches manage to do nothing.
That's not something that's easy to reverse. Government is made up of humans. It's only as effective as long as humans agree to act properly. You may say that voting will be the solution to removing that kind of behavior. This is why those groups of people are actively working to restrict voting to a small subset of the population that backs them. Once you've accomplished that (and they've been well on their way for decades, law by law), there's not much short of revolution in the streets that can change things.
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You don't start massive layoffs in a department where the employees all have guns and know how to use them.
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I almost mentioned this in the SSA COBOL thread but in a recent episode of the Ezra Klein show, there was a discussion of Musk's conviction that are too many people between him and "the computers" which are "the real truth of the system" or whatever, and that it's just so ridiculous he has to talk to people to talk to people to know what's in The Computer™, which is the Great and Holy Source of All Information.
And Ezra noted that one would presumably want to actually consult the people who entered/understand that information to better grasp the intent and the "Why" of it all.
But it was one of dozens of things that has led me to conclude that, while a sliver of me might hold out self-doubt and perceive him as a Machiavellian pretender, he's really just dumber than a box of rocks but no one can convince him of this fact, given how many people are convinced of how great he is.
It just seems like any time I see him speak, it is—as others have said—like he read a wiki article and decided he was not only "an expert", but THE expert, who is betterer and smarterer than anyone who ever experted before.
And it's so miserable that such a dipshit is still perceived as a brilliant 5d chess player, and not someone screaming at the other player for not following the rules of checkers that he's the total master of.
And not even playing correctly under its own rules.
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How else can you streamline it like Starlink, Amazon, and other big-tech support where the best hope you have is arguing with an AI or phone-tree that informs you that your problem isn't a problem....
I can't wait until the US Government is run that way...it'll be like when I've been trying to fix an Amazon return since January that Amazon demands I send back some faulty automotive fuel parts that are contaminated with gasoline but UPS refuses as "HAZMAT", and the Amazon support just keeps running in circles with the computers re-billing me and demanding I return it via the carrier who refused the shipment...
And good luck reaching a human, just do what the computer says and it'll be fine!
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