Emperor of Mars: The Official Elon Musk Thread

[SGR]

Thanks for the detailed info about Cabinets past and present - though I'm not so happy at your use of a term like "pulling away the government trough" as if you've bought into the propaganda that Federal workers are getting fat on a diet of waste, fraud and tax-payer dollars. Are there any stats about waste and fraud ? The cuts I hear about (park rangers, FAA, NOAA, etc.) will surely have the effect of making ordinary US lives less pleasant/safe, cranking up unemployment and perhaps triggering an economic recession - all those side effects suggesting that they weren't waste or fraud after all, but were valuable supports to the quality of life in the USA. Actually, the process of cutting away useful, even essential services, then trying to reinstate them has been the only waste of govt funds that I've heard about recently.

In a general sense, I do support the elimination of wasteful or unnecessary government spending subsidized by our tax dollars. I see how you could read the phraseology I used about a government trough negatively in context against federal workers as that's what the Trump quote appears to have been talking about specifically. My mistake, I didn't mean it that way, as I don't think federal workers are really the problem. I used that term because I know there is wasteful government spending more generally, there has been for years, and almost certainly there will be after Trump and Elon are gone. We saw it very recently with COVID relief (and this is something both the Trump and Biden admin should carry the blame for):

The Great Grift: How billions in COVID-19 relief aid was stolen or wasted

Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren't cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.

Criminals and gangs grabbed the money. But so did a U.S. soldier in Georgia, the pastors of a defunct church in Texas, a former state lawmaker in Missouri and a roofing contractor in Montana.

All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history, with thieves plundering billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall.

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.

That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.

And if we're talking about Musk leaving his post prematurely (nudge nudge, wink wink), one possibility for that is if he and Trump gather the will and intestinal fortitude to audit and make cuts at the Pentagon. There are some hints that certain actions might be taken, but I highly doubt it will be anything significant. Ever since the Pentagon became required to undergo yearly audits in 2018, it has failed the audits every time (meaning: "Aw shucks, we dunno where that money coulda gone") - it failed it's seventh audit in a row last November. This whole ordeal, and much of what DOGE has pointed out thus far really reinforces a different point about government finances and accounting - it is highly layered and complex, and very difficult to trace (RealClearInvestigations had a good article about this recently). The accounting is like a maze, and there is suggestion that this is by design as no one person benefits from it being simple and straightforward. If someone were to tell you: "Oh yeah, in Pennsylvania, there are over 700 government workers operating 230 feet underground in an old limestone mine to process thousands of federal retirement claims by hand and paper, storing them in manilla envelopes. You gotta use an old mine shaft elevator to bring them the retirement claims", you might think: "Come off it, that can't be true", but turns out it is. Certainly not the most efficient or cost-effective way to achieve this task, I'd imagine.

Part of the question, as you point out, is what truly is wasteful/unnecessary spending and what is not. And what's more, what Elon/DOGE have claimed as savings have been somewhat of a shifting goal post (certain line items on the DOGE site have appeared, but then subsequently disappeared - possibly because either the numbers needed to be recalculated, or the cancellation of the funding/contract/etc. that was originally planned was ultimately cancelled).

I'm not suggesting fraud either, as to my knowledge, nothing truly fraudulent has been proved out by DOGE. If you remember, we discussed Musk's claims about social security 'fraud' in some or other thread, and I provided a rather long-winded explanation for why I believed that he/DOGE completely missed the mark in terms of the 'evidence' they were trying to use to bolster their claims. I don't think everything Musk/DOGE identify/cut will truly be 'wasteful spending' either, as a simple matter of statistical likelihood - inversely, I don't think that the government is so well run and straight-laced that Musk/DOGE won't be able to find wasteful spending to cut. To your point though, they're somewhat lacking a big keystone accomplishment thus far - as much of the savings are from contract cancellations and employee firings. One could argue some wasteful spending was stopped with the gutting of USAID - but if you view USAID as a utility for international soft power, instead of simply a benevolent charity outreach, you could argue that most of it was not wasteful.

I'm also not entirely happy about your reading of those popularity statistics:
If we read from the top, enthusiastic, "a lot" line of the table, the 56 there is actually 56 votes out of 200, which is really 28%
For the sake of my argument, it suits me to leave aside the fudgey "some/not much" lines and focus on:-
The bottom, "none" line of the table, which shows 60 votes out of 200, or  30%
So my take away from those stats is that the legally non-existent DOGE and the unelected Musk are already not particularly popular, even though the full impact of their cuts has barely begun to hit America.

Well yeah, if you ignore half the quartiles of the data and then focus on one of them, it obviously would suit your argument better.  But I don't think that's a very fair reading of the data. My 56% didn't just come from combining the top line either. It came from the top two lines, as I mentioned - "some" or "a lot":

(17 + 39) + (14 + 42) = 112
112/200 = 0.56 / 56%

Call it 'fudgey' if you will, but there are a lot of people who think Elon/DOGE serve a useful purpose, but want their influence on gov't spending to find a comfortable middle ground. So 56% overall who either tepidly or fully support it.

As you mention though, the future is uncertain. It doesn't feel like it, but we're only a little over a month into Trump 2/DOGE. Those numbers can (and likely will) look quite different in a year from now when we'll be only 3 months away from the planned termination point for DOGE (assuming it lasts that long). He could, as you say, cut things that make average Americans feel the pain and the numbers will dip. Or, he could get that keystone accomplishment and find some big example of wasteful gov't spending to cut, and the numbers could climb. I guess we'll see.

[Lisnaholic]

Thanks for your long, measured and prompt reply, SGR

I used that term because I know there is wasteful government spending more generally, there has been for years, and almost certainly there will be after Trump and Elon are gone. We saw it very recently with COVID relief (and this is something both the Trump and Biden admin should carry the blame for):

^ I appreciate that piece of realism about government spending - that it is so vast that it is all but impossible to avoid waste and fraud. The case of the covid benefits paid out is enough to make a tax-payer weep I imagine. In mitigation, it was an unprecedented, hastily put together scheme that required implementation really fast. Even so, a little more cross-checking of claimants could've been built into the system of payouts I imagine.

As for those federal workers underground in Pennsylvania, that's a curious story which is enough to raise anybody's eyebrows. Thanks for sharing it. Unfortunately, I don't have a specific detail to recount, but it reminded me of mis-spent funds (UK and USA) during WWII: eye-watering mismanagement of men and materials, or elaborate contingency plans that were put in place but never needed - something unavoidable given the unpredictability of how a war, or even a battle, might unfold.

Part of the question, as you point out, is what truly is wasteful/unnecessary spending and what is not. And what's more, what Elon/DOGE have claimed as savings have been somewhat of a shifting goal post (certain line items on the DOGE site have appeared, but then subsequently disappeared - possibly because either the numbers needed to be recalculated, or the cancellation of the funding/contract/etc. that was originally planned was ultimately cancelled).

I'm not suggesting fraud either, as to my knowledge, nothing truly fraudulent has been proved out by DOGE. If you remember, we discussed Musk's claims about social security 'fraud' in some or other thread, and I provided a rather long-winded explanation for why I believed that he/DOGE completely missed the mark in terms of the 'evidence' they were trying to use to bolster their claims. I don't think everything Musk/DOGE identify/cut will truly be 'wasteful spending' either, as a simple matter of statistical likelihood - inversely, I don't think that the government is so well run and straight-laced that Musk/DOGE won't be able to find wasteful spending to cut. To your point though, they're somewhat lacking a big keystone accomplishment thus far - as much of the savings are from contract cancellations and employee firings. One could argue some wasteful spending was stopped with the gutting of USAID - but if you view USAID as a utility for international soft power, instead of simply a benevolent charity outreach, you could argue that most of it was not wasteful.

^ Yep, you explain my misgivings about DOGE better than I could myself ! Copying what I've heard on mainstream media, DOGE should have been using a scalpel, not a chainsaw - and another disastrous mistake was for Musk to pre-announce how they would save $2 trillion before they even started. How does someone with supposed business acumen make such a hard-to-achieve claim in advance?!

Oh, wait a minute, Musk did it about his supposedly bullet-proof Cybertruck too! Oh well, bullet-proof or not, the US govt has plans to buy $400 million pounds' worth of "armored" Cybertrucks, so I guess that's their problem now:  https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5305269/tesla-state-department-elon-musk-trump
...and that's one potential piece of govt waste that DOGE will not be axing, I suspect.

Well yeah, if you ignore half the quartiles of the data and then focus on one of them, it obviously would suit your argument better.  But I don't think that's a very fair reading of the data. My 56% didn't just come from combining the top line either. It came from the top two lines, as I mentioned - "some" or "a lot":

(17 + 39) + (14 + 42) = 112
112/200 = 0.56 / 56%

Call it 'fudgey' if you will, but there are a lot of people who think Elon/DOGE serve a useful purpose, but want their influence on gov't spending to find a comfortable middle ground. So 56% overall who either tepidly or fully support it.

^ Yes, I must apologize for how I tried to manipulate those numbers, making it look like you made a mistake when you hadn't. Thanks for not taking offense. You are quite right when you say, at the end of your post, that the best policy is to wait and see how the popularity figures look in a year's time. 

[QuantumSync]

[Trollheart]

Just want to point out, as I know it was simply a slip of the typing finger, Lexi identifies as she/her/hers, @Lisnaholic but you accidentally referred to her idea as "his". I'm sure she understands, but given how delicate everything is with her now, I'm not saying she'd take offence (she wouldn't; too nice for that and she knows you) but correcting the pronoun would be a nice gesture.