Government Efficiency (1 Viewer)

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    RobF

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    I think this topic deserves its own thread, both to discuss generally the topic of government efficiency, and specifically the so-called 'Department of Government Efficiency' and the incoming Trump administration's aims to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies".

    The announcements have been covered in the The Trump Cabinet and key post thread, but to recap, Trump has announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will work together on a not-actually-an-official-government-Department of Government Efficiency, which is intended to work with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to "drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before," with the 'Department' to conclude its work "no later than July 4, 2026."

    Musk has previously said that the federal budget could be reduced by "at least $2 trillion", and Ramaswarmy, during his presidential campaign, said he would fire more than 75% of the federal work force and disband agencies including the Department of Education and the FBI.
     
    Again, fork everyone who voted for this
    ===========================


    (CNN) — Stress and anxiety had been building for weeks in Monique Lockett, a 25-year veteran of the Social Security Administration, about the fate of her colleagues and the sensitive agency data she had vowed to protect, her sister Ksha told CNN.

    In February, amid sweeping changes to the federal workforce, Monique was five years from retirement but was facing one of the most uncertain periods of her career, according to Ksha.

    She was growing increasingly concerned about what Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency might do to the agency.

    “My sister had a lot of anxiety around the changes that were happening in other agencies and, inevitably, what would happen to Social Security,” Ksha told CNN.

    “She was concerned about the overall well-being of everybody that she worked with because it was stressful for a lot of people.”

    The Trump administration’s demolition of federal programs and jobs has sent waves of anxiety and depression through a government workforce that is experiencing anger, hopelessness and worries about people harming themselves, according to interviews with federal workers, their family members and mental health professionals who spoke to CNN.

    Since the beginning of the DOGE-led program cuts, falsehoods have proliferated online about alleged fraud and wasteful programs, fueling a caricature in some Americans’ minds of an inept or corrupt federal worker.

    Monique’s final days were spent in that climate of fear and stress while feeling devalued in the workplace, before dying on the job two months ago, according to her sister.

    “It was very upsetting to her to hear that what they did wasn’t valued, what they did wasn’t important and certainly that what they did was wasteful,” Ksha said………


     
    I can't say what federal building I work in, but I'll say this, there have been a lot of changes. They're somewhat subtle but real. They changed out all of the security cameras in our building over the weekend. It's a fairly large building. And I tend to go to the top floor because the phone only works in the top floor bathrooms. While standing at the elevators, three young guys with backpacks, looked like college kids, got off and headed to the IT offices.

    They had to be DOGE. They wore no IDs and it was a little weird seeing them walk into the area like it was no big deal. It just felt surreal and out of place. I'll say that the building I work in houses some of the most sensitive PII data we have. It's beyond disturbing.
     
    NEW YORK (AP) — The latest government waste touted by billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency is hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims it purportedly uncovered.

    One problem: Federal investigators already found what appears to be the same fraud, years earlier and on a far greater scale.

    In a post last week on X, the social media site Musk owns, DOGE announced “an initial survey of unemployment insurance claims since 2020” found 24,500 people over the age of 115 had claimed $59 million in benefits; 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5 collected $254 million; and 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future garnered $69 million from the government.

    The tweet drew a predictable party-line reaction of either skepticism or cheers, including from Musk himself, who said what his team found was “so crazy” he re-read it several times before it sank in.

    “Another incredible discovery,” marveled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who repeated DOGE’s findings to President Donald Trump in a Cabinet meeting last week.

    Chavez-DeRemer’s recounting of the alleged fraud, including claims of benefits filed by unborn children, drew laughter in the Cabinet room and a reaction from Trump himself.

    “Those numbers are really bad,” he said.

    But Chavez-DeRemer needn’t look further than her own department’s Office of the Inspector General to find such fraud had already been reported by the type of federal workers DOGE has demonized.

    “They’re trying to spin this narrative of, ‘Oh, government is inefficient and government is stupid and they’re catching these things that the government didn’t catch,’” says Michele Evermore, who worked on unemployment issues at the U.S. Department of Labor during the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They’re finding fraud that was marked as fraud and saying they found out it was fraud.”…………

     
    NEW YORK (AP) — The latest government waste touted by billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency is hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment claims it purportedly uncovered.

    One problem: Federal investigators already found what appears to be the same fraud, years earlier and on a far greater scale.

    In a post last week on X, the social media site Musk owns, DOGE announced “an initial survey of unemployment insurance claims since 2020” found 24,500 people over the age of 115 had claimed $59 million in benefits; 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5 collected $254 million; and 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future garnered $69 million from the government.

    The tweet drew a predictable party-line reaction of either skepticism or cheers, including from Musk himself, who said what his team found was “so crazy” he re-read it several times before it sank in.

    “Another incredible discovery,” marveled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who repeated DOGE’s findings to President Donald Trump in a Cabinet meeting last week.

    Chavez-DeRemer’s recounting of the alleged fraud, including claims of benefits filed by unborn children, drew laughter in the Cabinet room and a reaction from Trump himself.

    “Those numbers are really bad,” he said.

    But Chavez-DeRemer needn’t look further than her own department’s Office of the Inspector General to find such fraud had already been reported by the type of federal workers DOGE has demonized.

    “They’re trying to spin this narrative of, ‘Oh, government is inefficient and government is stupid and they’re catching these things that the government didn’t catch,’” says Michele Evermore, who worked on unemployment issues at the U.S. Department of Labor during the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They’re finding fraud that was marked as fraud and saying they found out it was fraud.”…………

    This is yet another classic case of DOGE and Musk taking credit for work done to uncover this. The reports and numbers they're relying on are hardly new.
     
    The Cafe in the building I work in is RIP as of last week. These are people I've grown to love over the last 5 years. One of the co-owners was a blind guy and really nice. Now they're gone. This sheet is touching...nay...hurting good people for no good reason. Fork everyone involved in getting this Administration to this point.
     
    Staff at Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) demanded to meet with an independent non-profit to discuss embedding a team within their organization, according to the non-profit, stating that refusal to take the meeting would mean a violation of Donald Trump’s executive order empowering Doge.

    Doge staff member Nate Cavanaugh emailed the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice reform non-profit that is independent from the government, on 11 April to demand the meeting, according to a copy of the email. Vera’s staff was confused by the request, as its government funding had been canceled a week prior, but agreed to a call which they said took place on Tuesday.

    The demand to meet with an independent non-profit organization and potentially embed its staffers there represents an expansion of Doge’s already sprawling reach and coincides with Musk issuing public attacks against non-governmental organizations. Doge has previously gutted government institutions such as USAID and congressionally funded non-profit USIP, but its meeting with Vera marks a new targeting of a wholly independent organization.

    “We have watched this administration try to kneecap academia, law firms, media, and now they are coming for the non-profit sector,” said Insha Rahman, Vera’s vice-president of advocacy and partnerships.


    Vera’s programs focus on a variety of criminal justice issues and improving conditions for incarcerated people, as well as supporting mental health and crisis services. Its annual budget of around $45m comes primarily from private donors – although as is common with non-profits, it has also received federal grants. Vera has also been a repeated target for rightwing media outlets that attack its approach to criminal justice reform, which Rahman believes is one of the reasons that Doge staffers may have targeted the organization.……

     
    More lies and horrible actions. How can anyone support this?

    “After Elon Musk made a public show of remedying an apparent error in DOGE’s massive cuts to foreign aid, the Trump administration has quietly doubled down on its decision to stop sending emergency food to millions of children who are starving in Bangladesh, Somalia, and other countries. Without urgent intervention, many of these children are likely to die within months, experts told me.”

     
    I don’t think treason is too strong a word for DOGE. A whistleblower provides testimony that DOGE exported sensitive data from government databases and DOGE credentials were used in a log-in attempt from a computer located in Russia.

     
    The Department of Government Efficiency’s website quietly removed nearly one billion dollars in what it claims to have “saved” through canceled contracts, grants or leases this past week.

    In the latest example of altering figures on the agency’s website, staffers at DOGE seemingly updated its claimed savings overnight on Tuesday, erasing approximately $962 million, according to NOTUS.

    The largest of the disappeared cuts made this week, identified using the Wayback Machine, appears to be a $1.1 billion contract with the Acacia Center for Justice. The group provided legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children who enter the U.S. DOGE initially claimed the termination would save $367 million, but now the contract isn’t listed at all.…….

     
    Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the Trump administrationhave spared the jobs of US Department of Transportation employees who provide support services for spacecraft launches by Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Starlink – a revelation that raises a new round of conflict of interest questions around Doge.

    In its most recent buyout announcement, the transportation department did not note that the positions spared supported Musk’s and others’ space operations.

    But the fiscal year 2025 transportation department budget reviewed by the Guardian details funding for positions in pipeline management, transportation management, air traffic control and cybersecurity that the document states are critical for commercial space operations, including SpaceX, Starlink and other entities.

    The decision to keep launch support staff employed while broadly cutting potentially thousands of other positions at the agency has raised fresh ethical questions about Musk and Doge’s aggressive assault on the federal workforce.


    While the administration and Doge have targeted hundreds of thousands of federal employees, critics say the decision shows Musk is willing to allow federal workers to remain employed if their work benefits him.

    Keeping these employees on the payroll is “showing Musk’s bias because cutting these people would create so many hindrances to him launching”, said a former congressional staffer and current space industry employee who requested anonymity.

    “It’s really weird those people were spared. If I had to read between the lines, I would say this is on purpose because Musk knows these positions support the space industry.”……..


     
    A tiny agency that coordinates homelessness policy across the federal government has been effectively shut down, with all its staff put on administrative leave.

    “The irony here is that the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness is designed for government efficiency,” said Jeff Olivet, the body’s most recent executive director under President Biden.

    Congress created it in 1987, he said, “to make sure that the federal response to homelessness is coordinated, is efficient, and reduces duplication across federal agencies.”

    There were fewer than 20 employees and a budget of just over $4 million. But President Trump included it in an executive order last month on whittling parts of the federal bureaucracy to the “maximum extent” allowed by law.

    Legally, the homeless agency’s authorization continues until 2028. But DOGE, the cost-cutting team overseen by Elon Musk, told its employees Monday that they’d be put on leave the next day, according to an email from one employee that was shared with NPR.…….


     

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