Summary
Elon Musk’s DOGE faces mounting pressure to show achievements amid criticism. Staffers, under pressure from Trump administration officials, seek public relations wins to counter negative headlines.
Cuts to federal offices led to mass layoffs, and efforts to modernize government services have been chaotic. DOGE prioritizes speed over security and protecting sensitive information.
Trump has distanced himself, stating agency chiefs, not Musk, control department cuts, preferring a “scalpel” over a “hatchet” approach. Public opinion has turned against DOGE, with 48% disapproving versus 34% approving, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.
With limited time before their tenure ends, DOGE officials are desperate to show results.
Someone should send them an email l to summarize their work from the past week
Taking drugs and fucking shit up are my strengths but I’m not to shabby at sexual harrasment or cheeky wanks at my desk either.
Sounds like a perfect candidate to keep!
/s
Sounds like you’ve got executive level potential.
Turns out the federal government is actually pretty efficient. Who would’ve thought!
Efficient and complicated. Not that these dipshits would understand that.
And super fucking important
I wouldn’t call it “efficient” but I would call it optimal given the complexity.
“Optimal given the complexity” fits the definition of efficient.
I think it certainly can, since humans are involved, and humans are messy.
A lot of government stuff should be automated in software, but that takes an immense amount of time to develop. Like… why are taxes so hard when the IRS always has all my data?
Efficient? Not as much as it should be. But good luck wrangling that many people’s needs at once.
I mean, simple file should already be a thing, and the IRS would prefer it be easier for everyone to file. But h&r block and turbotax have lobbied heavily against it because they’d lose money with easier filing. One way to make things more streamlined and efficient would be to get rid of middle men and focus on making internal systems better.
But this administration wants the internal systems to be broken and needlessly complex so that they can outsource it to their preferred middle men so that they all make a lot more money.
Yeah a lot of government inefficiencies can be explained by the private sector blocking their abilities and influencing sellout politicians. If lawmakers truly worked for the interests of the masses you’d see a lot better systems/procedures. You think long voting lines are because the government can’t run elections properly? Nah it’s from lawmakers purposefully making things worse to better themselves
And they were spamming everyday to one of my emails, when Trump won. When before they dint since I haven’t used their (free now defunct filing) since 2023
Taxes are so hard because Tax Return Companies spend a lot of money to lobby the government to make it harder. The IRS could do it all in-house for “free” but there’s too much money in making us go through 3rd parties to file our taxes. Private business always finds a way to add more inefficiency to processes to make us pay more so they can nickel and dime us. “Want that efficient service? Well, you got to pay more.” It’s a scam.
There is a lot of stuff, sure, that could be automated in software, but that’s mostly admin work, like processing invoices and things like that. But then, no one ever wants to spend money on things. For instance, I work for a state DOT. It’s a battle to get the state legislature to properly fund maintenance. They’d rather spend their money on new shiny things they can show off to get elected.
The real inefficiency in government is almost always directly related to the elected official’s decisions. Take graffiti, they don’t want to spend money, and we don’t have the budget to keep up with graffiti and provide road maintenance. But then a big sports event or famous band comes to town for a huge event, and next thing you know graffiti is our number one priority.
Another thing, is if tax filing is too easy the IRS would have more time and money to go after rich people and corporations, they can’t have that.
Shit’s so silly. Especially with taxes. It’s an example of exactly what’s wrong with this country.
As far as graffiti goes, I think we should just let people go at it. The city belongs to the people, let them paint it. If someone scrawls “I floss my teeth with ass hair” across a wall, a better artist will come put something cool over it.
Like… why are taxes so hard when the IRS always has all my data?
In some European countries, the government automatically does the taxes and just sends a letter showing the result of the calculation so you have a chance to review the result.
They have all the numbers already…
A lot of government ‘redundancy’ is the auditing/oversight process where people check other people’s work. Plus ensuring there is adequate staffing for the busy times, like tax season!
But a lot of the things like not having taxes automatically calculated for the vast majority of the population or similar complex systems is the fault of the legislature. They wrote the laws that kept the IRS from building the system that lets people confirm their taxes are right and add exemptions.
That’s the real problem… Human social norms can’t be codified. We can’t do it in legalese, we can’t do it in code, but we can do it naturally
It’s why I find anarchy appealing - if your being a dick head, you should have everyone turn their backs on you. If you’re hoarding resources, you should be made to watch as they pin you down and take it. If you’re sociopath who abuses power, you should fall to torches and pitchforks
We know what justice is in a way we can’t put into words. You know it when you see it, when you feel it… It just doesn’t translate into words exactly
Yeah, because they have to account to Republican and Democratic administrations repeatedly. Other than defense spending, which is just allowed to literally not add up…
I’d say it’s predictable … Had it been a success I think Trump would be shouting “One of my master moves, this is the mother of all my moves” Now we get to read “Trump has distanced himself” meaning it’s failing and Musk is gonna be sacrificed without a thought “I don’t know what Musk did, he acted like a loose cannon but I fired him for his incompetence”
The people Trump fired this way in the past didn’t pay for his campaign.
Trump works for Musk, not the other way around.
True, but what does musk have left to give to trump? If he’s no longer useful, trump will have no problem dumping him and moving on. As soon as he thinks it’s more beneficial to turn on musk than it is to suck his dick, he will. Loyalty is one way for him.
I think its a game of “who owns the zeitgeist?” Its why “Rumble” exists; why fascists sought their own media ecosystems; its why Elon bought twitter.
There is some threshold where another billion buys you no more power, or at least, significantly less than your last billion. Hence buying a the worlds largest microphone, twitter, for what seemed like an overpriced market value.
So if Elon controls Trumps access; or even more threateningly, if Elon captures the zeitgeist, and Trump is no longer in control of narratives, or Elon is able to create and inject his own, thats a real material threat.
Trump is going to die soon; whoever inherits this cult is the real threat.
Do cults inherit well?
The leadership of the DPRK transitioned across generations, but there was plenty of institutional alignment and wheel greasing.
Trump will be trying to negotiate with the reaper for six months after he’s dead. I can’t imagine he considers his mortality, let alone in the context of anything that has to survive after his departure. There will be a free for all to grab his mantle.
Elon has said he will spend the money to drive out any Republican that votes against Trump. Elon controls Congress.
I read that somewhere, both Elon and Trump are in a codependent relationship financially and socially.
I’m pretty sure musk is still the richest man in the world (at least on paper, who knows what people like Putin have hidden away). Until that changes there is a .00001% chance of trump and musk’s relationship deteriorating
If you think Trump cares if people did things for him, even Musk, maybe you should talk to one of the dozens of contractors Trump has stiffed over the years.
Oh, one can dream.
I thought destroying the government and setting up racism was the win?
I want DOGE to be put to sleep.
imagine this sentence 10 years ago!
rip Kabosu, your alias was not meant to be stained in such a way :(
Dicks out… Er wait.
Nah we can do it for both les go
Or maybe just move to a farm upstate where they can run and play through the fields all day. No one to say “bad doge”, no one to stop from digging homes or chasing squirrels, no one to care when they play on the mud
48% disapproving.
He’s destroying our entire government and 52% of Americans think ‘yeah, this is fine’ or ‘yeah, who cares?’
They don’t understand what the people being fired do. There’s no marketing or awareness campaigns for the GSA clerks that keep every government office in the country stocked with chairs; or the mental health nurses that pick up the phone at 2 in the morning.
People think it’s some white guy just golfing while they collect checks.
That’s… an ironic image, to say the least.
It’s okay if little d fucks off and doesn’t really work. He’s rich and therefore, better than you. Worthington’s Law.
There’s still time to die a hero Elon. All you have to do is commit hari-kari and I will build you a statue.
Will the statue be a dual flush model?
I will make sure it’s very attractive to pigeons. It’s what Elon would have wanted RIP
Will the statue look like this?
Like all his others companies.
- SpaceX has exploding star ships
- StarLink comes with so many ties, that alternatives are highly sought after
- Neural link might already be defunct, I don’t know
- His stake in OpenAI is too complicated to follow
- Tesla has 3 models you could buy, none of them is FSD yet, one is the Cyberstuck, no truck, no robots.
- Boring company was just fluff and BS, since a tunnel that’s only 1 lane wide is a safety nightmare and hyperloop is like the simpisons “monorail” Episode
Maybe at some point in his mid 50ties he should have focused on one thing.
You don’t have to pretend space x is bad to hate musk. Spacex has done massive leaps for space tech
SpaceX is not some virtue of musk, he also pollutes heavily, and ignore safety standards to launch all those in texas
No, it’s not. But that’s not contrary to my statement
They have 95% success rate for landing boosters in a relatively new technology, saving loads in terms of trash and pollution (if that’s even a metric somebody is remotely interested in for space travel).
This is a huge leap. Probably not worth giving Musk credit for, but still.
@Fredthefishlord @QuarkVsOdo all his companies basically exist to siphon off government funding that should be going to something more worthy. In the case of SpaceX, look what’s happening to NASA now. And with the Hyperloop, he openly said he promoted that to take attention and money to prevent the development of high speed rail
Yes and no. The engines and upright landing is very good… designing&Testing unbound by yearly grant applications but with “fuck you money” really propelled the industry forward.
But they cut so many corners.
Agreed, I despise Musk as much as any sane person does now, but I just can’t get on board with this prevalent behaviour of indiscriminately trashing everything about a person who you don’t like.
Just be honest! He clearly has played a big part in achieving some spectacular results: Whether you think that was in engineering, or by cunning manipulation all the way up; the fact is SpaceX have achieved feats nobody else has, and I don’t believe it would have happened without Musk.
None of that changes the fact he is a cunt, but dishonesty in criticism only weakens it.
I like this place. If this was in reddit, you giving even a little bit of credit to the man would leave you with -200 and probably banned.
It’s almost like the world is nuanced and not just red vs blue…
So much of the criticism focuses on Starship, specifically. Starship has never claimed to be anything other than a test program. Look back into the history of NASA test programs and you’ll fine lots of exploded pieces of rockets. Starship is also moving along a whole lot better than the SLS at a comparable stage of the development track. People bleating about this clearly don’t have a lot of knowledge about rockets and their history.
Safety is somewhat valid. Obviously, exploding rockets over the Gulf of Mexico is not a good thing, but the chances of debris actually hitting a plane are minuscule. See Big Sky Theory, which is the basis for a lot of air traffic policy. It’s just that the aviation industry has extremely tight safety standards, and so they divert planes.
Falcon 9 also exists, and now has a better track record than Soyuz (the previous gold standard). People making these arguments seem to conveniently leave that out.
Now, environmental standards, how Musk is trying to gut NASA and the FAA, and how the company never would have survived without government subsidies? Yes, absolutely focus on those. Also, the fact that SpaceX employees are mostly insulated from their idiot CEO. They’re the real heroes of the company.
In a different Administration, I think SpaceX should be nationalized and run something like the USPS or Amtrak. NASA shouldn’t make their own rockets anymore. They’re really bad at making anything close to cost effective.
Maybe at some point in his mid 50ties he should have focused on one thing.
He seems to be focused on twitter posting.
yeah don’t follow that
“X marks the Rot”
Find the student loan records and erase them!
I mean to say… "Don’t find the student loans records and don’t erase them! Migrants hate that soon much! "
And the trans. Definitely…the trans would haaaaaate that.
More trans people should come out as loan repayment lovers. It would be such a shame to just erase those loans away. And migrant families love paying the loans. Imagine if they had no loans to repay! What would their purpose in life be then with so much money just hanging around all the time.
The fall-out between Trump and Musk is going to be explosive! And it will come. Sooner than we think, I’d guess.
If Canadian and European movie theatres want to boost attendance, they might want to think about screening the whole thing.
When Trump inevitably threatens to have him deported, it’s going to be the comedy event of the year. Oscar worthy.
This would make my year. I hope you’re right
Next: Elon Musk will try to fake one and will pull a full on Eric-Cartman-style “screw you guys, I’m going home” when his incompetence is inevitably revealed…
I don’t think it will even matter if it’s fake. They keep talking about that $8 billion cut they made when it was immediately uncovered that it was actually $8 million. Like a week later they’re still saying it was billions.
I mean… If it’s about efficiency, wouldn’t the military be the first place to audit?
This is a common misconception. The military isn’t designed to be efficient on the back end. It’s designed to win wars efficiently, which is an entirely different thing. The last time they tried to be “efficient” with the military the 101st ended up doing the world’s fastest ground and air assault on rations because they didn’t have enough food and water. And entire battalions got extremely sick from using local water when they absolutely had to.
The last time they tried to be “efficient”
Thus sounds like a cherry picked example.
It also happens to be the last time we actually fought on a full scale level. We haven’t done anything like 2003 since.
When was the last time the US won a war?
Iraq
I’m not sure what that proves except that whoever tried it last time sounds like a moron.
George W Bush in 2003. And no, it wasn’t just that he was a moron. There were very smart logistics officers working on the problem. It’s an inherent problem. The military normally would much rather over supply an area and write it off after the fighting. Because that means there’s always a pallet of whatever you need and a plane or helicopter to transport it. Trying to meet the exact needs means that when something gets blown up, it’s replacement isn’t even in the right region of the planet.
So to be efficient at blowing shit up you have to accept inefficiency in the back end.
With limited time before their tenure ends, DOGE officials are desperate to show results.
Uh first I’m hearing of this
What is this limited time thing?
When they were selling DOGE during the campaign, the pitch was they’d have a year or something to do their thing. The EO might have it spelled out can’t recall. But they also said they would just be an advisory group? Not insider threat hackers and political commissars at the top of every agency. Not sure why they are sweating a time limit since they dont care about any other law, regulation or protocol. I guess if they don’t deliver enough, Trump won’t do another EO extending their presence? They’re literally reworking agency stuff so that the DOGE staff have to sign off on commissioners actions, hiring etc so are they just going to revert that once the clock strikes midnight for DOGE?
I suppose the idea is that the admin wants to lock in all the creepy shit from project 2025 prior to mid terms since they know that all of it will end up being wildly unpopular and will result in republican losses in congress and potentially gridlock from that point forward… but again, their playbook essentially calls for the end of democracy, so why are they sweating something like the midterms…
In the end, DOGE financial waste will be bigger than any “savings” they produced, but the real costs of their action will be much, much bigger in the end.
Just think of the people who will get killed by hurricanes without a warning because they dismantle NOAA.
