Nobody voted for Musk to go in and manage the Govt spending. That was AFTER the election.GrowlTowel said:You are overlooking one key fact, the People voted for Musk and Vivek by electing Trump. Your time to *****, moan, and complain has past.FLBear5630 said:Rattled? No, confused. GAO puts out a report every year on all of this. There is no need for a "special department". With all your concern for the overspending have you ever looked at the GAO report on Duplication and Cost Savings? There are 12 of them, all submitted to Congress. We want to do it, let's do it. That is based on actual data and analysis, not some Gold Star Committee of people owning Companies getting Federal contracts.whiterock said:LOL you are really rattled!FLBear5630 said:whiterock said:You also completely ignore perhaps the most important reason Musk is involved with Trump at all - he was personally oppressed by federal regulators due to his political views. He purchased Twitter primarily because he was concerned about the obvious infringements of free speech....Twitter was all too willingly responding to directives from federal regulators to shut down speech in ways govt itself could not do. And when Musk announced his intended purchase...boom....he got investigated by alphabet soup of agencies. A clear intimidation tactic. I hope he made a trillion or three in profits off of Twitter. Dude deserves every penny for what he did.FLBear5630 said:Here we go again with the CIA misdirection campaign...whiterock said:again, you are literally parroting partisan claptrap not well connected to actual history.FLBear5630 said:Don't generalize and misdirect.whiterock said:so let's unpack this.FLBear5630 said:whiterock said:Musk has done much harder fixes than Twitter.FLBear5630 said:1 - You brought up twitter as an example of gutting a Company. I said the value is 75% then when he got it. He did what they are talking about for Govt, gutting for non-business reasons. He got rid of people for their believes and their disagreeing with him. Twitter is a private company, it is supposed to make money.Married A Horn said:FLBear5630 said:Married A Horn said:
Is the federal govt in the business of making a profit? Yeah, your points are completely off track and irrelevant.
Are you saying you think all those fat liberals at twitter that did nothing but collect paychecks should have kept their jobs? Tons and tons and tons of government needs to get cut. Yesterday. He needs to cut tons and tons and tons of government jobs, and if people lose services that are actually worth something, big deal - they can go find another way while we figure out how to get a handle of 35 trillion in debt.
Once we lose 'currency reserve status' - we're royally screwed. You don't want that. Everyone in the US will feel the pain for generations. I'd much much rather a handful of bureaucrats lose their jobs and agencies close down than for us to go through that. Your priorities are way out of line.
Your point about Musk getting subsidies is a whole other topic. However, let's discuss it: all the EV and 'Green' crap to save the planet (while elites fly around in their jets to global warming conferences in blizzards) was something he benefited from. All those green energy subsidies should not be given out at all. He should not be getting any...but leftists want to save the planet while on their private jets, so by giving him money for Tesla, they satisfy their need to virtue signal.
No, I'm not in any way for Tesla, Space X, Twitter, or any other non-national security companies to get subsidies.
Your priorities are out of line. A lot.
When did I mention making profit? There is a difference between generating revenue and profit. You ever actually been responsible for funding anything? You want the US value to decrease? You want currency to lose value? You want services to stop? Yeah, That is productive. The guy destroyed the company YOU are using as an example of Musks skill. The Company is a shell of itself.
So you are into destroying for the sake of destroying? No matter how productive, needed, or it's value. Just gut it. You are the one with F-ed up priorities. Damn sad...
1. You keep referring to Musk's profitability... smh
2. Not sure of your economic background, but if we get that budget under control the value of the dollar rises... signaling strength of the nation. Its financial security is where the currency's value is derived from - not by how much services they provide. Go to Argentina or Greece or basically anywhere to see what happens to a nation's currency when their services / social programs costs are too much.
3. The only 'revenue' for the US government is tax dollars. And that is not based on what they make for their goods and services, but the private sector's.
4. Twitter's expenses are a shell of itself under Musk... yet it does exactly the same thing it did a decade ago: let people tweet.
Yep. He overpaid for it. Then he gutted it to cut expenses. Then the left went after his ad revenues. Choked off most of it. And, still his sales are growing by double digits. And site traffic, the primary monetizable activity of the business, is exploding. And now that the election is over, you will see the ad revenue start trickling back in. So I'd reel in your take and revisit in 6 months.
2 - I agree with you here, the Debt has to get under control. I question the method being touted, firing 1/2 of the Federal workforce, especially when much of the debt was Trump spending. I am always against indiscriminate anything, you take actions for a reason. You get rid of unproductive positions and people, that requires analysis and data.
Talking about firing half of the workforce is good bull. Won't happen, but it will move the Overton Window to fire more than your position on this (nowhere to cut in the USG) could ever accomplish.
3 - Tax dollars are not the only revenue. Tariffs, fees, rent, investments, customs, go with a variety of taxes from different sources. We need to expand revenue to make a dent in this debt. The amounts you can cut are too small, you would need too many years and there is no way Politicians are that disciplined.
Trump is talking about all of that. And he will do more of it than you think possible. (pretty easy assessment to make, given that you think the USG is very lean at the moment).
4 - Twitter is a private company, you treat it like a Govt Agency. Lower expenses and same service works for Govt. Musks moves killed a healthy Company's value. That is not sound business.
Same for the USG fix.
All it takes is the will to tune out the naysayers and do it. Trump is a lame duck. He gots nothing to lose, and he's had 4 years to plan.
Name the great fixes that have not used Govt subsidies or Govt contracts? He is part of the problem. Same with Trump not only paying low taxes using tax credits, but he approved a lot of the debt.
He is as culpable as Biden.
Watch Musk net worth and SpaceX, Starlink govt contracts over next 4 years. I will bet mostly DOD and Intel which will be budgets not touched. The only thing cut will be social services and Medicare relied on by elderly and poor. Watch who carries the pain Musk is talking about, it won't be him or Vivek.
The private sector has never fixed anything without Govt help.
A private citizen using the law to his advantage is a bad thing.
Trump is going to cut social security.
Trump is going to cut Medicare.
That is leftist claptrap.
Who are you and what have you done to FLBear5630?
I said Musk has benefited from the things he is railing against as unsustainable. He has been a huge benefactor from the "Govt Spending". All his companies have benefited greatly from Govt spending. Spending that Trump approved just as much as Biden. So, pardon me if I just don't blanketly trust the rhetoric of two people that have a lifetime of using the Government trough for their personal benefit to save us from "wasteful spending".
How. How have those two individuals benefitted from government spending any more than any other business?
As I said, WHO is going to feel the pain? Those that benefited from the Trillions of dollars of subsidies and contracts? Or, the Ma and Pop citizens that do nothing but go to work each day? I will bet neither Musk nor Vivek feel one bit of pain and actually make out with a profit. What part do YOU have a problem with?
Again. Please show exactly how real estate tycoon Trump got trillions of dollars of government contracts. We would also be amused to hear the explanation for how PayPal, Musk's first company that generated his initial wealth, was a business model built on government contracts.
You seem very eager to just sign on because you like what they are saying and want to believe without really looking at the data behind who is saying it.
The data actually does not support your highly partisan assertions.
Not unusual with rhetoric as they are good at it and entertaining. A dangerous mix. Are we turning over the hen house to the foxes, hoping it all turns out well?
How are Musk & Trump any greater foxes than all the people Biden appointed? They all had political agendas, did they not? He appointed a bunch of people to portfolios over which they had zero prior experience, ideological hacks. Why would it be worse to appoint people who actually have experience in building and reforming large organizations, just because they turned a profit doing it?
1 - Who said "more than any other business" How is that relevant? No one said more, just that Musk has been a recipient of Billions in Government money. Actually, he is about #50 in terms of dollar value. He doesn't have to benefit more to benefit or have a conflict.
You singled him out. I'm adding perspective. He's the richest man in the world. You claimed it made it off of govt spending. Does that make sense? The #1 guy made it all on govt spending, yet is only #50 on the dollar value list? Quit repeating Democrat talking points! Dude is one of the most successful venture capitalists of all time.
2 - Once again, no one said trillions. Trump received millions in tax credits to build in specific areas of NY, NJ and the Nation. He took full advantage of Government money. Do a little reading on his developer life before he became a TV character. As for PayPal, PayPal has 1.2B in Government Contracts. Musk has billions of dollars in Government Contracts throughout multiple Companies.
Yeah, you did. look at the second paragraph in your post directly above ".....trillions of dollars of subsidies and contracts...." What contract has the USG issued to purchase Tesla products?
3 - Actually it does...
Uh, no. you're just spinning spin.
4 - Once again, the quantitative argument. They don't have to be "worse" than all the others. Musk is right there....
I give Vivek credit, he does not seem to have ties to Government spending, yet. He used the stock market and a drug IPO scheme that paid off. So, for all his ChatBod talk he may actually be more objective.
Neither does Trump, whom you lump in right along with Musk. How does a Manhattan real estate developer with substantial international holdings exploit federal contracts & subsidies? (He didn't.)
Don't be obtuse and act like Musk is an objective 3rd party with no personal or business interest in "restructuring" Govt spending and procurement. He stands to make billions more and more importantly get a free pass to do what he wants with out bothersome regulation (to me, that seems be his end game more than money).
We all have a personal interest in restructuring govt spending and procurement that is trillions of dollars greater than revenues!
you are reflexive establishmentarian. That's not a horrible thing. We need establishments. But we do not need them at any cost. And we most certainly do not need them to be used with partisan caprice. We need them to serve common good. And they are not doing that. How do we know they are not serving common good? Anti-establishmentarian candidates are getting elected. On both sides of the aisle. BECAUSE INSTITUTIONS ARE FAILING to serve common good.
Dude. We had a defacto Ministry of Truth formed up in the Biden federal bureaucracy. Trump and Musk have busted it up. Your blindness here is profound. You should be grateful, for yourself, your kids, your grandkids, etc... Things were wildly out of balance. A Republican presidential nominee was cancelled out of social media DURING an election in 2020. Outrageous. And the media establishments that did it have paid a price for it. As they should have.
Replaced by a Ministry of Efficiency to control spending? Run by someone with billions of contracts and subsidies There is a potential conflict. You don't see anything fishy about that, which I find just as strange. You are giving me **** for calling it out.
It's not a Ministry of Efficiency that will control spending. It's a private commission that will analyze regulations and spending and make recommendations for reductions. Reagan had the exact same initiative (the Grace Commission) during his admin. Why shouldn't Trump do the same? The Republic survived the Grace Commission, did it not?
2024 Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Billions of Dollars in Financial Benefits | U.S. GAO
Actually, I will make it easy for you.
GAO identified 112 new matters and recommendations in 42 new topic areas for Congress or federal agencies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government. For example:As of March 2024, Congress and agencies had fully addressed 1,341 (66 percent) of the 2,018 matters and recommendations GAO identified from 2011-2024 and partially addressed 139 (about 7 percent). This has resulted in financial and other benefits, such as improved interagency coordination and reduced mismanagement, fraud, waste, and abuse.
- The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency should ensure its working capital fund cash balance is within its operating range, potentially saving its federal customers hundreds of millions of dollars through reduced prices.
- Congress and the Internal Revenue Service should take action to improve sole proprietor tax compliance, which could increase revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
- Agencies could save one hundred million dollars or more by using predictive models to make investment decisions on deferred maintenance and repair for federal buildings and structures.
- Congress should consider taking action that could help the Armed Forces Retirement Home address financial shortfalls to reduce the risk of exhausting the trust fund that supports it and potentially generate revenue of one hundred million dollars or more over 10 years.
- Federal agencies need building utilization benchmarks to help them identify and reduce underutilized office space, which could save ten million dollars or more over 5 years.
- The Department of Defense should reduce the risk of overlapping management activities and potentially save ten million dollars or more over 5 years in medical facility management by continuing its efforts to reevaluate its market structure and establishing performance goals.
- Congress could close regulatory gaps and seven federal financial regulators should improve coordination to better manage fragmented efforts to identify and mitigate risks posed by blockchain applications in finance.
- The Office of Science and Technology Policy should facilitate the sharing of information about identifying foreign ownership of research entities to better manage fragmentation of federal efforts to help safeguard federally funded research from foreign threats.
As shown in the figure below, these efforts have cumulatively resulted in about $667 billion in financial benefits, an increase of about $71 billion from GAO's last report on this topic. These are rough estimates based on a variety of sources that considered different time periods and used different data sources, assumptions, and methodologies.
Total Financial Benefits of $667.5 Billion Identified in GAO's 2011-2024 Duplication and Cost Savings Annual Reports
There you go, no need for Musk or Vivek to fiddle with Government based on their whims or wants. Do it... Bet they don't. Bet you in is targeted to areas they make more money and have more control
What I find interesting is that I have said I can see Musks role as directing where we need tech investment to compete in the future. Doing it with little to no oversight, I can't see.
