Sam Lowry said:
BearlySpeaking said:
Sam Lowry said:
BearlySpeaking said:
Sam Lowry said:
BearlySpeaking said:
Sam Lowry said:
I've probably been talking about USAID longer than anyone else in this forum. I'd be delighted to see it go. But there's a right and a wrong way to do things. The ends don't justify the means. I'm surprised that this is such a difficult concept.
It's becoming clearer to me that Trump is engaged in a massive executive power grab. It's greater than anything else we've seen in our lifetimes. If a Democrat did the same, you'd be losing your **** and crying fascism all day long. At least I'm trying to give the president the benefit of the doubt as much as I can.
That's better than accusing judges of treason (a capital offense) just for doing their jobs. They haven't even got to the substance of the issues yet, and Trump already has you foaming at the mouth. How will you feel when Democrats exercise the vast powers that Trump is claiming?
You're being manipulated, friend.
There is no way I can see myself protesting Biden or Obama (or Bush or Clinton for that matter) acting on this magnitude of waste, if they were revealing the same type and amount of waste on this scale. I don't understand why you think we would be angry at any president of any party who brought the receipts that billions of dollars were going to terrorist-aligned organizations, foreign DEI boondoggles, immigrant assistance NGOs, sex positivity campaigns in Central Asia, postal workers with a $1.5 million salary to "watch mail circulation flows", etc., etc., and said they were going to cut it. I was on board with anyone doing this when the national debt hit around $12-13 trillion dollars.
I'm sitting here thinking and I can't imagine any world where I would be protesting a president doing this. Of the few things I supported Obama on, if he had done what has been done on the last 3 weeks and had another election coming up, I very likely would have voted for him if he followed through on this. Overhauling spending overseen by the executive branch is not "fascism" and it will never be "fascism." The power grab is a district judge in one of the states telling the President and his appointed agency heads that they not only cannot manage the agencies under their purview, they can't even look at/analyze the spending happening on their watch.
NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.
THAT INCLUDES THE JUDGES.
The concern is with the MANNER in which it is done.
I don't know what you would say if this were Biden, but I can tell you what 90% of the posters here would say. They would point out that DOGE is acting with little or no oversight from Congress. Its personnel aren't subject to the usual vetting processes. No one knows about safeguards against conflict of interest (and Musk's potential conflicts are many). No one even knows how these people are being paid.
That means there's an obvious danger that someone like Musk will act in his own interest and pursue his own enrichment while gutting programs that are useful and necessary to the public. Just like there's an obvious danger that corrupt bureaucrats who are being audited will kick and scream and do whatever it takes to hold onto their funding, whether justified or not.
Any reasonably objective person should be cognizant of both these hazards. If there's truly no way you can imagine Trump abusing his power, I guess that just shows how far gone the cult is.
Can you point out how he has abused his power up to this point? Can you point out what Musk has done that is corrupt or enriching himself? Where did the court address that? You really think an agency head has no right to look at the spreadsheets of his own agency? Really?
Congress abdicated its responsibility for tracking spending it has authorized. How are they going to do anything when they have made it clear they don't want the job? Have you thought about why this legislative institution that you have so much faith in has made it clear they don't want the responsibility?
I'm fully onboard what the President is doing here. The idea is to use AI programs to track money flows and find out where it is actually going, to find unauthorized expenditures, so that we can finally pinpoint where the money is actually going and make much better informed decisions on what to cut. The whole point of this plan is to bypass the corrupt bureaucrats and get the actual routes and destinations of allocated funds before they can throw up the roadblocks like they always have in the past. It's a great idea, and if implemented well has an outside chance of actually starting to get our debt in control before we become another Argentina. Bringing the receipts of actual paths taken by funds to the public and Congress is the only way we have any chance to get Congress to act.
You have it completely backwards. Going to Congress with hat in hand asking for ambiguous "spending cuts" before we have the specifics laid out for everyone to see is not only going to fail miserably, but even if it did result in token "spending cuts," there is no guarantee it wouldn't be wasted on the same useless programs and cutting instead what actually needs to be funded by a government. The bureaucracy is already corrupt and some of its members have already stated they are going to oppose any administration cutting their money flow.
I'm always amazed fellow Americans like you aren't scared to death with we are heading. Our only saving grace is that we are the richest nation in the world history in absolute terms, but you should have been starting to worry about the debt trend around $15-20 trillion dollars ago. It can't continue going on forever.
Your idea that we can shut down the detailed analysis/tracking of expenditures the computer scientists under Musk has shown they can do and instead go beg Congress for a "spending cut" is precious. You are so far gone in your cultic worship of the bureaucracy and its enablers in Congress to think that this is an effective plan. Everything is going great with a $20 - 30 - 40 - 50 trillion national debt until one day it isn't.
This has almost nothing to do with what I said. I'm not talking about asking Congress for spending cuts. The courts haven't yet addressed the issue of corruption in DOGE. That's what I've been trying to explain. What's got you all panicked is the possibility that they might address it.
Maybe using AI to track funds is a great idea. Maybe using it to fight our wars is a great idea too, until something goes horribly wrong. Who's designing the applications, and with what safeguards? Who stands to benefit, and how? The devil is in the details.
That is not for a district judge in Rhode Island to decide what the national executive officer can do with his own agencies. It's an overstepping of the separation of powers. There is your power grab. Let Congress defend its own legislative authority instead of farming out the responsibility to a Rhode Island District Court judge.
We know who is designing and using the applications. They are employees of the DOGE executive agency, hired by Elon Musk, who was appointed the agency head by the United States President. If someone "stands to benefit" in a way that is illegal then they can be fired like FBI Director Andrew McCabe or convicted and sent to prison like Senator Menendez. That you think DOGE is some nefarious plot to implement fascism while you have no concerns that we are finding out how the bureaucracy has "safeguards" for ensuring that funds are sent to terrorist-aligned organizations is funny. You have not expressed any concern about bureaucrats already established in their government positions with 'access to our data' may "stand to benefit" from their position.
Your concern about "safeguards" and "standing to benefit" is restricted to a very, very narrow focus that makes its sincerity not believable.
No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.
Musk was not appointed as an agency head. He was made a "special government employee," i.e. a temporary advisor who is exempt from disclosure requirements. The organization itself is exempt from FOIA requests and public disclosure of its activities. Because it was organized as an Executive Office of the President subject to the Presidential Records Act, it could easily hide or destroy records without anyone knowing except the national archivist (Trump just fired the national archivist, by the way, which is a historical first).
No challenge has been raised to the jurisdiction of the courts as far as I know. There's nothing unusual about a district judge hearing lawsuits such as these.
Again, if someone "stands to benefit" in a way that is illegal then they can be fired like FBI Director Andrew McCabe or convicted and sent to prison like Senator Menendez. You're being manipulated by the media and Democrat politicians into thinking there is corruption here when you cannot cite any evidence for it. You have expressed no concerns about corruption in any other area of the government.
The district courts telling the President he cannot manage his own agencies is a breach of the separation of powers. If Congress has a problem with how the President runs his Executive branch, then they can cut funding for the areas they don't want funded. That is Congress' job with its control of the purse strings and saying that because the courts have been used this way before does not make such use legitimate.
So if the President's actions are so terrible, why isn't Congress doing that?
Is it okay for US government funds to be sent to terrorist organizations? Is it okay for a district court to order the President to stop blocking the transfer of those funds to a terrorist organization?
