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https://apnews.com/article/doge-musk-trump-gsa-fired-employees-ce18553b281fbf5816ec2fd491d79b78
Elon Musk needs to be in prison for a multitude of different reasons. But especially for the lie he sold of efficiency. The amount of money this one individual and his grando's ideals have cost the United States taxpayer will be studied for decades, presuming we last that long.
https://apnews.com/article/doge-musk-trump-gsa-fired-employees-ce18553b281fbf5816ec2fd491d79b78
Everyonesfavorite
Send elon to cecot
beerkrump
It's almost like Musk didn't know what he was doing.
Jeentbrain
I think it is important to remember they gave him this much power after he threw double nazi salutes at a presidential inauguration.
DJOldguy
DOGE was a big con, right from the start. The first, and hardest, hit, were those agencies that were investigating Musk and all his companies for illegal actions. When he got those investigations shut down he got out and made a fuck ton of money. Everything after that was windowdressing and they fucked it all up big time.
Ardback
TACO
SmashySashimi
It'd be a hilarious display of the incompetence of the people at the top, if it hadn't screwed over so many people below them.
SavageDrums
How many of the ones who were investigating Apartheid Trust Fund baby?
eion85
VitaminJay
Mr. Spock, you're half human. I assure you at least a 'go to heck' is appropriate.
Targe0
The best I can do for you, Captain, is 'Go'.
eion85
fattymcfattzz
Leon needs to be deported and stripped of his wealth, giant fucking scum bag piece of shit human being
DeadeicPrints
Elon is (one of) the dumbest people on ever and doesnt know whats actually efficient!?
usernamesarenotcomments
Now if they just could also reinstate the rule of law
LordHelmetTheThird
Just so that no one misunderstands what this was all about: the firings were a red herring, smoke cover. The actual target was to gain access to the systems, install presumably backdoors and/or other similar things, and suck as much sensitive data about Americans as possible.
Now, imagine if some at, say, Palantir had access to each Americans health, tax, voting, etc records, as well as all teleoperator data, social media handles, all device ID's... what could these guys do with data like that?
Onebigcanuck
And now they are already threatening to fire people again in the event of a shut down.
blubberingbastard
this just in: party of small government needs bigger government to function properly
UnattendedDeviant
That series of events probably cost a few million.
Hevach
The monthly Federal deficit is up 19% over last year. This is costing multiple billions *per month*.
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
According to GSA sources, the average salary is ~128k. So divide by 12, multiply by 7 to get average pay over lay off period is...~75k. Around 200k were laid off/retrenched....so $15 mill on wages alone....foregone building rent will be magnitudes greater
Wholivesinapineappleunderthetree
Almost like Doge was a smokescreen for a dat heist
bertchstudio
They were looking for something I built and can't find it, AND making being nachos with our data more efficient
AI can't work because we permanently fkd up the data collection forever, a couple decades ago
Wholivesinapineappleunderthetree
How so? What did you build. Your not Harold Finch by any chance?
bertchstudio
A very simple website that I kept alive for 20 years and then handed to the resistance (I say handed like it was that simple)
Effectively I built a dark web meme page that we can also communicate with. And then moved it about 5000 times. And it's switched owners at least 10 times in those 20 years.
Because I learned how to build the internet at the beginning of the internet and they didn't realize anyone Indigenous was here
Wholivesinapineappleunderthetree
So you are a native. Was the AI code corrupted deliberately?ect
SleepyHollowAppleTree
"Oh fuck, you mean the government needs employees to function? Why didn't anybody tell me?"
smurftheweb
"Alexa, why didn't you tell me the government needs employees to work?" "I'm sorry Elon, I don't know that one"
Targe0
"Because you fired the person whose job that was last month."
ChiLLeCheeze
Maybe if the 5 things they reported were good enough for me to read, I would have kept them.
Targe0
“But you never took their meetings, they never had a chance to report anything to you”
Targe0
Because federal jobs are things that have to be done.
So while firing workers gets you a quick saving from the lack of wages, it means that critical work will simply not get done.
And without that, the systems of Government and a nation stop.
So they either end up re-hiring them, or they hire contract workers to do the same work but for 4 times the price.
Civil servants are the cheapest way to run a Government, cost-cutting firings simply doesn't work when it comes to this stuff.
johnvictor
It's like corporate thinking doesn't work in the system that requires things actually be done.
Lutki
Most of those firings didn't even save money because the government was still required to pay out their contracts.
Poppypoppoppop
So I hope these federal workers got to renegotiate for hire wage before agreeing to come back
bronx72a
You are generous. As I see it, they are not trying to run a government, so none of that is a problem at all for them. The firings/re-hirings are just to cause chaos and to frighten and demoralize people. Which IS what they are trying to do.
Targe0
No, it's because they don't understand how these things function.
They assume it can only be done by a couple interns.
They don't understand how Government works. And how much man power it needs to make it work.
They just think if you say something should be done, it will just get done.
BarryTheCyborg
"wHy aRe prOjEcTs bEhiNd sChEdUle aNd oVeR bUdGeT?!" Because we pay private contractors to do the work instead of employing a full DOT team to handle it themselves.
The only private company I want to see take over a government agency would be if we sold Amtrak to Japan rail.
Targe0
See Australia tried that for it's Victorian rail system.
Nothing really changed much.
Because what makes Japan Rail work isn't really the company.
It's the work ethic of the Japanese workers.
So the company without the workers isn't really much different because you basically end up with the same workers who were doing the job before doing it under the new management. They are the only locals qualified to do it.
spazztastic
And none of those demanded a much nicer wage in catching orange stain in a pickle?
Targe0
The ones that do that are the ones who return as contractors and charge a premium for it.
DVSBSTrD
But please, call Schumer a coward for trying to avoid a government shutdown instead of "standing up to Trump".
Targe0
Schumer's biggest issue is that he's trying to operate as if things were normal.
That the GOP was the way it was in the 80s and 90s.
He's holding onto the norms, all the while the MAGA Republicans are walking all over those norms.
And it will take new approaches to push back against them politically. So he's not a coward, he's just an old man who is out of his depth in a rapidly changing world.
DVSBSTrD
Yeah, its not like he's worried they'll try to have him killed. Again.
SalmonTheWise
His biggest issue is that for every decision he's consulting the opinion of imaginary people who, in his fantasy, didn't vote for his party. He literally tries to please the voters of his opponents instead of his own base.
Targe0
Because they used to be his voters.
That's the issue and why I said he's out of his depth.
He hasn't adjusted with the changes in the demographics over time.
He's still acting off of how things used to be, not how they currently are.
He's an old dog, who's all out of tricks.
cabalin
“The systems of government and the nation stop”. Yes, but this is their plan.
Targe0
It's not, they want to have things run how they want.
But they don't understand how Governments work enough for that to happen.
For example, Trump wants every nation to give the US better trade deals.
But they fired everyone whose job it was to negotiate those deals, and they never hired replacements.
They only staffed the top level people, which is why work on trade deals has been so slow and ineffective. Because they don't have a large enough team to work on more than one deal at a time.
meme2zombie
Oh gosh gee turns out you can't run a government like a business (though this also doesn't work out long term in a business either, it's just a way to game the stock prices), who could have possibly predicted this!
(sarcasm pointed at them not you)
Targe0
Generation expertise and knowledge is a vital resource for any government or business.
But they are the first things lost when these kinds of firings happen.
Because it is information held by the senior members of staff who have been working there the longest, but they also tend to cost the most and get fired first and replaced with young and under qualified people.
TsukariYoshi
See also: The reason every video game launches with the same fucking problems that were solved in the previous release - because institutional knowledge is really fucking important but companies don't want to pay for it. True of private business and true of a government that's trying to find money to funnel to rich people.
Prometheusblu
It’s what’s happens when you start believing your own propaganda. Government HAS to be ineffective, it HAS to be worse then private industry. In reality capitalism and socialism aren’t enemies they are different tools in a societies belt. And if you socialize something that should be private or privatize something that should be socialist you end up having a bad time.
Targe0
No system is inherently bad, it's the people who operate it and their intentions and beliefs that will determine if the people prosper or suffer under the system.
If a system is run by greedy and selfish people, then the system will be made to serve the greedy and selfish.
If it is run by selfless and empathetic people, they will cause the system to be more caring and supportive. It's the leadership the defines the system's trajectory.
Prometheusblu
I think depending on the good/service being provided a system can be inherently bad. A for profit health insurance system that often tied to one’s employer is not a system that has much chance of being successful. All the incentives are mismatched. Conversely, imagine if every video game company was government owned and ran. Every game would be bland, safe, perfunctory, educational, and decidedly uncritical of the political establishment. An inherently bad system (for that application).
Targe0
A for-profit health insurance system can be made to work, as long as the ones running it don't push for excessive profits.
It's their greed for more and more money that breaks it.
Whereas if they only put on a 1% profit margin on the process.
It would be mostly functional without many issues, the issue is most are run for greed, so the mark-up can be exponentially higher.
And many Governments have funded video games that aren't bland. Kingdoms of Amalure was mostly funded by State subsides. ->
NChomsky
Ugh, this pilled-up junkie again?
bertchstudio
Drug use is the coolest thing about him. If he just did drugs at work, there'd be no real reason to hate him tbh
NChomsky
There's a difference between recreational drug use, and being a pilled up junkie such that your already trash decisions about everything become magnified by the fact your brain looks like fucking Swiss cheese.
bertchstudio
Yeah I'm telling you, trauma is what makes a brain swiss cheese, the drugs are an attempt to cope with that
I hate the man, I hate him so much I helped everyone else hate him, but carrying on the drug war and abusing drug users is just not something we're gonna do even to the rich who maybe deserve it
Because it's more important to our immediate community that we unlearn drug war bs
This is a closer to a homeless addict yourself than anywhere he can hear your insult
NChomsky
Fair enough. Surprise I'm actually a proponent of legalizing the majority of drugs on the condition they do it JUST like Portugal did with great success... But I'm not gonna go any easier on Muskrat because he's in a position where the LAST thing he should be doing is pilling up all the god damn time. Especially not while he's on national television like people can't see he's higher than a fucking giraffes nut sack. HARD DRUGS DO NOT MIX with making decisions that affect the public!
bertchstudio
Agreed!