Yes he did. The Rhode Island District Court judge ordered the spending pause to be lifted, blocking executive oversight over an executive agency. USAID admitted in 2024 in a report to Congress they had problems with funds going to Hamas and other organizations. If Trump is lying about where the funds are going, then Congress has a wonderful opportunity to expose him in their current oversight hearings on DOGE. I'm looking forward to their evidence that he is lying. That is the proper role of Congress, not a Rhode Island District Court judge. You should write your Congressman and ask him to turn off funding of executive initiatives until DOGE is dismantled instead of trying to slow-roll the shut down of it through the courts, which is the stated goal of the litigants.Sam Lowry said:The judge has made no such ruling. It's not clear that funds are being distributed to terrorist organizations. It's been alleged, but that investigation is still ongoing…with judicial oversight.BearlySpeaking said:1. Then why was he blocked by a district judge from doing so.Sam Lowry said:1. Yes.BearlySpeaking said:
You didn't answer the last 2 questions. Does the President have the authority to block the distribution of funds to a terrorist organization?
Does a district judge have the authority to force him to distribute funds to a terrorist organization?
2. No, but he can limit data access to civil servants who have passed all background checks and security clearances.
2. That's irrelevant. The judge blocked the pausing of the funding flows, so he is doing the very thing you say he cannot. The President has the ultimate authority to grant or revoke security clearances. It's not a district judge's prerogative to declare the President's authority to do so is unconstitutional, and that you don't know this shows how you have been manipulated by the media and politicians opposed to the exposing of corruption in the bureaucracy.
Trump Shuts Down USAID
27,332 Views |
633 Replies |
Last: 7 hrs ago by Assassin
This is so ridiculously obvious and simple ... only TDS makes people think this is not true.Oldbear83 said:You need a refresher in the Constitution. USAID was set up by Executive Order and falls completely under the Executive Branch.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
And that is part of why things were so bad, Obama and Biden simply used USAID for partisan purposes, so Trump is fixing things now so abuses won't happen here in the future. Choices range from reorganizing USAID to shutting it down.
In any case, Trump has complete authority here, and the judges popping off injunctions are outside their jurisdiction.
USAID was originally set up by executive order but was brought under congressional authority by Bill Clinton in 1998.Oldbear83 said:You need a refresher in the Constitution. USAID was set up by Executive Order and falls completely under the Executive Branch.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
And that is part of why things were so bad, Obama and Biden simply used USAID for partisan purposes, so Trump is fixing things now so abuses won't happen here in the future. Choices range from reorganizing USAID to shutting it down.
In any case, Trump has complete authority here, and the judges popping off injunctions are outside their jurisdiction.
I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority. If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election.
I don't know that USAID ever admitted that. They admitted some problems with documenting their risk management decisions, but that's a long way from "distributing funds to a terrorist organization."BearlySpeaking said:Yes he did. The Rhode Island District Court judge ordered the spending pause to be lifted, blocking executive oversight over an executive agency. USAID admitted in 2024 in a report to Congress they had problems with funds going to Hamas and other organizations. If Trump is lying about where the funds are going, then Congress has a wonderful opportunity to expose him in their current oversight hearings on DOGE. I'm looking forward to their evidence that he is lying. That is the proper role of Congress, not a Rhode Island District Court judge. You should write your Congressman and ask him to turn off funding of executive initiatives until DOGE is dismantled instead of trying to slow-roll the shut down of it through the courts, which is the stated goal of the litigants.Sam Lowry said:The judge has made no such ruling. It's not clear that funds are being distributed to terrorist organizations. It's been alleged, but that investigation is still ongoing…with judicial oversight.BearlySpeaking said:1. Then why was he blocked by a district judge from doing so.Sam Lowry said:1. Yes.BearlySpeaking said:
You didn't answer the last 2 questions. Does the President have the authority to block the distribution of funds to a terrorist organization?
Does a district judge have the authority to force him to distribute funds to a terrorist organization?
2. No, but he can limit data access to civil servants who have passed all background checks and security clearances.
2. That's irrelevant. The judge blocked the pausing of the funding flows, so he is doing the very thing you say he cannot. The President has the ultimate authority to grant or revoke security clearances. It's not a district judge's prerogative to declare the President's authority to do so is unconstitutional, and that you don't know this shows how you have been manipulated by the media and politicians opposed to the exposing of corruption in the bureaucracy.
You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
Congress is conducting oversight hearings on DOGE. This is their opportunity to show that he is lying about this. They can put up or shut up.Sam Lowry said:I don't know that USAID ever admitted that. They admitted some problems with documenting their risk management decisions, but that's a long way from "distributing funds to a terrorist organization."BearlySpeaking said:Yes he did. The Rhode Island District Court judge ordered the spending pause to be lifted, blocking executive oversight over an executive agency. USAID admitted in 2024 in a report to Congress they had problems with funds going to Hamas and other organizations. If Trump is lying about where the funds are going, then Congress has a wonderful opportunity to expose him in their current oversight hearings on DOGE. I'm looking forward to their evidence that he is lying. That is the proper role of Congress, not a Rhode Island District Court judge. You should write your Congressman and ask him to turn off funding of executive initiatives until DOGE is dismantled instead of trying to slow-roll the shut down of it through the courts, which is the stated goal of the litigants.Sam Lowry said:The judge has made no such ruling. It's not clear that funds are being distributed to terrorist organizations. It's been alleged, but that investigation is still ongoing…with judicial oversight.BearlySpeaking said:1. Then why was he blocked by a district judge from doing so.Sam Lowry said:1. Yes.BearlySpeaking said:
You didn't answer the last 2 questions. Does the President have the authority to block the distribution of funds to a terrorist organization?
Does a district judge have the authority to force him to distribute funds to a terrorist organization?
2. No, but he can limit data access to civil servants who have passed all background checks and security clearances.
2. That's irrelevant. The judge blocked the pausing of the funding flows, so he is doing the very thing you say he cannot. The President has the ultimate authority to grant or revoke security clearances. It's not a district judge's prerogative to declare the President's authority to do so is unconstitutional, and that you don't know this shows how you have been manipulated by the media and politicians opposed to the exposing of corruption in the bureaucracy.
Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
Sam was apparently in a coma 2021-2024.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier
If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
You mean when Republicans blithely went along with everything Biden did? Please remind me.Oldbear83 said:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
Sam was apparently in a coma 2021-2024.
And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
You're arguing for a judicial check on the right of the elected United States President to manage the agencies under his authority. Yes, that is a radical idea and I don't think it's going to hold up once it hits the higher courts.Sam Lowry said:And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
The fact you reject the options outlined in the Constitution, because they don't appear to have enough support to be on the table right now, in favor of a judicial overreach speaks volumes.
Sam Lowry said:You mean when Republicans blithely went along with everything Biden did? Please remind me.Oldbear83 said:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
Sam was apparently in a coma 2021-2024.
You mean when Biden hid all kinds of corrupt behavior. Or you would if you were honest in this thread.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier
It's already been upheld. It's Trump's extreme version of the unitary executive theory that is radical.BearlySpeaking said:You're arguing for a judicial check on the right of the elected United States President to manage the agencies under his authority. Yes, that is a radical idea and I don't think it's going to hold up once it hits the higher courts.Sam Lowry said:And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
Beat you to it. See above.Oldbear83 said:Sam Lowry said:You mean when Republicans blithely went along with everything Biden did? Please remind me.Oldbear83 said:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
Sam was apparently in a coma 2021-2024.
You mean when Biden hid all kinds of corrupt behavior. Or you would if you were honest in this thread.
You're wrong; the First Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled on Judge McConnell's ruling yet. They have chosen not to get involved yet. If this overreach succeeds in being implemented through the final court, then it means the President does not have authority over executive agencies, rather the judicial branch does to the point of controlling funding flows. Let that sink in. The judicial branch has claimed the authority to determine how funds in the executive agency should be distributed.Sam Lowry said:It already has.BearlySpeaking said:You're arguing for a judicial check on the right of the elected United States President to manage the agencies under his authority. Yes, that is a radical idea and I don't think it's going to hold up once it hits the higher courts.Sam Lowry said:And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
Again it speaks volumes that since you don't think DOGE can be stopped through explicit Constitutional remedies such as impeachment, the 25th Amendment, congressional defunding, or midterm elections, that you are willing to support judicial overreach to stop the President from auditing his own agencies and attempting to limit his function as the final arbiter of security clearance grants/revocation. Everyone is aware of what the endgame here is - stopping the tracking of actual funding distributions.
Has Congress brought the evidence out in their Congressional oversight hearing of DOGE that Trump is lying or doing something illegal? You are so sure he is that I'm surprised you're not putting it out here what Congress has discovered about the nefarious DOGE plot. I'm interested in seeing the evidence of illegal activity that caused the court to act. It's not for the court to rule that their job is to oversee the potential for corruption. That's a blank check for controlling the other branches since the potential for corruption is not limited by branch or agency boundaries, and if that was the case, they would be limiting the financial managerial roles of all civil servants/Congress in every part of the federal government. What evidence are they acting on?
Translated for accuracySam Lowry said:Oldbear83 said:Sam Lowry said:You mean when Republicans blithely went along with everything Biden did? Please remind me.Oldbear83 said:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
Sam was apparently in a coma 2021-2024.
You mean when Biden hid all kinds of corrupt behavior. Or you would if you were honest in this thread.Beat you toI already lied about it. See above.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.BearlySpeaking said:You're wrong; the First Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled on Judge McConnell's ruling yet. They have chosen not to get involved yet. If this overreach succeeds in being implemented through the final court, then it means the President does not have authority over executive agencies, rather the judicial branch does to the point of controlling funding flows. Let that sink in. The judicial branch has claimed the authority to determine how funds in the executive agency should be distributed.Sam Lowry said:It already has.BearlySpeaking said:You're arguing for a judicial check on the right of the elected United States President to manage the agencies under his authority. Yes, that is a radical idea and I don't think it's going to hold up once it hits the higher courts.Sam Lowry said:And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
Again it speaks volumes that since you don't think DOGE can be stopped through explicit Constitutional remedies such as impeachment, the 25th Amendment, congressional defunding, or midterm elections, that you are willing to support judicial overreach to stop the President from auditing his own agencies and attempting to limit his function as the final arbiter of security clearance grants/revocation. Everyone is aware of what the endgame here is - stopping the tracking of actual funding distributions.
Has Congress brought the evidence out in their Congressional oversight hearing of DOGE that Trump is lying or doing something illegal? You are so sure he is that I'm surprised you're not putting it out here what Congress has discovered about the nefarious DOGE plot. I'm interested in seeing the evidence of illegal activity that caused the court to act. It's not for the court to rule that their job is to oversee the potential for corruption. That's a blank check for controlling the other branches since the potential for corruption is not limited by branch or agency boundaries, and if that was the case, they would be limiting the financial managerial roles of all civil servants/Congress in every part of the federal government. What evidence are they acting on?
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
The court has taken de facto control of the distribution of funds by telling the president what he can and cannot do in regard to it.Sam Lowry said:
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
Ok, it's clear you know there is no evidence of any illegal activity, and that this is a fishing expedition. Can you at least tell me the illegal behavior that is being alleged? I don't mean abstract accusations of "there could be corruption" because that is true of anything the government is involved in. I mean specific accusations of illegal behavior.
You're not only not interested in evidence at all, you mock a question about the existence of any of it. You're interested in shutting down an effective audit that can track the actual flow of funds, and want to go back to the general ineffective "audits" that have never resulted in any changes to wasteful or fraudulent spending. It's clear it's not evidence of illegal behavior you're concerned with. Quite the contrary.
1. The stated goal as pointed out is to slow Trump's agenda thru lawfare.
2. 100% of Sam's energy is focused on bashing Trump - not the corrupt evil left.
3. When this all gets kicked out at the SCOTUS, Sam will be found to be dead wrong. Yet again.
Think about point 3. When the SCOTUS says basically all the same stuff yall have been saying, just reply to every post Sam has made with a quotation of the majority's opinion.
2. 100% of Sam's energy is focused on bashing Trump - not the corrupt evil left.
3. When this all gets kicked out at the SCOTUS, Sam will be found to be dead wrong. Yet again.
Think about point 3. When the SCOTUS says basically all the same stuff yall have been saying, just reply to every post Sam has made with a quotation of the majority's opinion.
They're trying to pause it indefinitely and kick the can so it can't be resolved…Sam Lowry said:Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.BearlySpeaking said:You're wrong; the First Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled on Judge McConnell's ruling yet. They have chosen not to get involved yet. If this overreach succeeds in being implemented through the final court, then it means the President does not have authority over executive agencies, rather the judicial branch does to the point of controlling funding flows. Let that sink in. The judicial branch has claimed the authority to determine how funds in the executive agency should be distributed.Sam Lowry said:It already has.BearlySpeaking said:You're arguing for a judicial check on the right of the elected United States President to manage the agencies under his authority. Yes, that is a radical idea and I don't think it's going to hold up once it hits the higher courts.Sam Lowry said:And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
Again it speaks volumes that since you don't think DOGE can be stopped through explicit Constitutional remedies such as impeachment, the 25th Amendment, congressional defunding, or midterm elections, that you are willing to support judicial overreach to stop the President from auditing his own agencies and attempting to limit his function as the final arbiter of security clearance grants/revocation. Everyone is aware of what the endgame here is - stopping the tracking of actual funding distributions.
Has Congress brought the evidence out in their Congressional oversight hearing of DOGE that Trump is lying or doing something illegal? You are so sure he is that I'm surprised you're not putting it out here what Congress has discovered about the nefarious DOGE plot. I'm interested in seeing the evidence of illegal activity that caused the court to act. It's not for the court to rule that their job is to oversee the potential for corruption. That's a blank check for controlling the other branches since the potential for corruption is not limited by branch or agency boundaries, and if that was the case, they would be limiting the financial managerial roles of all civil servants/Congress in every part of the federal government. What evidence are they acting on?
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
With more and more breaking and needing fixing in the US, that the Bureaucracy somehow found more value in sending money abroad to these programs than fixing core problems in the US is completely deranged. https://t.co/SBuDIxFcwH
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) February 15, 2025
Mainly it has to do with violations of labor and privacy laws. Among other things they're alleging that DOGE employees with read-only clearance are altering files. That Musk has access to sensitive information about his competitors, a conflict of interest. And so on.BearlySpeaking said:The court has taken de facto control of the distribution of funds by telling the president what he can and cannot do in regard to it.Sam Lowry said:
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
Ok, it's clear you know there is no evidence of any illegal activity, and that this is a fishing expedition. Can you at least tell me the illegal behavior that is being alleged? I don't mean abstract accusations of "there could be corruption" because that is true of anything the government is involved in. I mean specific accusations of illegal behavior.
You're not only not interested in evidence at all, you mock a question about the existence of any of it. You're interested in shutting down an effective audit that can track the actual flow of funds, and want to go back to the general ineffective "audits" that have never resulted in any changes to wasteful or fraudulent spending. It's clear it's not evidence of illegal behavior you're concerned with. Quite the contrary.
Plaintiffs don't have to prove their case at this stage. All they have to do is show a likelihood of success on the merits. Two of the courts are maintaining the status quo in order to prevent irreparable harm until they have more evidence. This is something Congress can't do; they necessarily take much longer to act.
There's nothing unusual here. It's how the system is supposed to work.
They can try, but courts don't take kindly to it. These cases are less than two weeks old.Doc Holliday said:They're trying to pause it indefinitely and kick the can so it can't be resolved…Sam Lowry said:Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.BearlySpeaking said:You're wrong; the First Circuit Court of Appeals has not ruled on Judge McConnell's ruling yet. They have chosen not to get involved yet. If this overreach succeeds in being implemented through the final court, then it means the President does not have authority over executive agencies, rather the judicial branch does to the point of controlling funding flows. Let that sink in. The judicial branch has claimed the authority to determine how funds in the executive agency should be distributed.Sam Lowry said:It already has.BearlySpeaking said:You're arguing for a judicial check on the right of the elected United States President to manage the agencies under his authority. Yes, that is a radical idea and I don't think it's going to hold up once it hits the higher courts.Sam Lowry said:And also judicial checks and balances. Radical idea, I know.BearlySpeaking said:If enough people agree with me in such a situation that a president's actions rise to the point of being a Constitutional violation deserving a response, then see the rest of my post that you left out:Sam Lowry said:You will, if it's ever done in this manner.BearlySpeaking said:I don't have a problem with a Democrat President making decisions to stop funding flows through executive agencies under his authority.Sam Lowry said:I support at least some of what Trump is trying to do. See my comments on USAID, for example. I just want it done in a way that won't give unlimited power to Trump and future executives, including Democrats.BearlySpeaking said:You are. The goal of the litigants in this situation to attempt to shut down the audit of the agencies and to keep the funds flowing wherever the civil servants want to send it. You support this litigation to stop the audit and to keep the funds flowing by blocking oversight from the executive branch.Sam Lowry said:No one's saying it is.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:Corruption and illegality are not the same thing. There are myriad ways for politicians to profit from their connections without necessarily breaking the law. The Bidens are experts at that game. I criticize other parties and areas of the government all the time, as you would know if you read my posts. Again, your take on separation of powers is incorrect. Not only Congress but also the courts act as a check on the executive.BearlySpeaking said:Sam Lowry said:No, my concern is not narrowly restricted.BearlySpeaking said: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.Sam Lowry said: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.BearlySpeaking said: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?Sam Lowry said:NO ONE IS SAYING THE AGENCIES SHOULDN'T BE AUDITED.BearlySpeaking said: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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 terrorist organization?
Also, your take on the separation of powers is incorrect. A president asking one of his agencies to conduct an audit of agencies under his authority is not a constitutional violation.
"If any president oversteps statutory boundaries or makes politically unpopular decisions to stop funding distributions, then the Constitutional remedies are:
1. Impeachment by Congress.
2. Removal through implementation of the procedures authorized in the 25th Amendment if it is alleged he (or someone acting in his name) did so because of a mental or physical disability affecting his ability to effectively carry out his executive duties.
3. Don't re-elect him or if he has served 2 terms, elect the presidential candidate from a different party in the next election."
Again it speaks volumes that since you don't think DOGE can be stopped through explicit Constitutional remedies such as impeachment, the 25th Amendment, congressional defunding, or midterm elections, that you are willing to support judicial overreach to stop the President from auditing his own agencies and attempting to limit his function as the final arbiter of security clearance grants/revocation. Everyone is aware of what the endgame here is - stopping the tracking of actual funding distributions.
Has Congress brought the evidence out in their Congressional oversight hearing of DOGE that Trump is lying or doing something illegal? You are so sure he is that I'm surprised you're not putting it out here what Congress has discovered about the nefarious DOGE plot. I'm interested in seeing the evidence of illegal activity that caused the court to act. It's not for the court to rule that their job is to oversee the potential for corruption. That's a blank check for controlling the other branches since the potential for corruption is not limited by branch or agency boundaries, and if that was the case, they would be limiting the financial managerial roles of all civil servants/Congress in every part of the federal government. What evidence are they acting on?
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
New York is mad a judge ruled that the Trump administration, not Elon Musk, could claw back the 70 million dollars that was sent to pay to shelter illegals.
— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) February 15, 2025
Look at these unhinged people who are not embarrassed to be ripping off taxpayers. I don’t care how much the hotel cost… pic.twitter.com/nLMeP6xtpG
Facebook Groups at; Memories of: Dallas, Texas, Football in Texas, Texas Music, Through a Texas Lens and also Dallas History Guild. Come visit!
I don't know how SCOTUS will rule, but they won't say the same stuff y'all have been saying. If they reverse the injunction they'll have a good reason.Married A Horn said:
1. The stated goal as pointed out is to slow Trump's agenda thru lawfare.
2. 100% of Sam's energy is focused on bashing Trump - not the corrupt evil left.
3. When this all gets kicked out at the SCOTUS, Sam will be found to be dead wrong. Yet again.
Think about point 3. When the SCOTUS says basically all the same stuff yall have been saying, just reply to every post Sam has made with a quotation of the majority's opinion.
Doc Holliday said:With more and more breaking and needing fixing in the US, that the Bureaucracy somehow found more value in sending money abroad to these programs than fixing core problems in the US is completely deranged. https://t.co/SBuDIxFcwH
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) February 15, 2025
Nothing was more deranged than our debt ridden federal government borrowing an additional 200 billion dollars ….just to give it to Ukraine.
Sam Lowry said:I don't know how SCOTUS will rule, but they won't say the same stuff y'all have been saying. If they reverse the injunction they'll have a good reason.Married A Horn said:
1. The stated goal as pointed out is to slow Trump's agenda thru lawfare.
2. 100% of Sam's energy is focused on bashing Trump - not the corrupt evil left.
3. When this all gets kicked out at the SCOTUS, Sam will be found to be dead wrong. Yet again.
Think about point 3. When the SCOTUS says basically all the same stuff yall have been saying, just reply to every post Sam has made with a quotation of the majority's opinion.
And you will have been proven wrong. Yet again.
Only if they don't have a good reason. But you may be more right than you know...I'm assuming SCOTUS is still recognizably conservative.Married A Horn said:Sam Lowry said:I don't know how SCOTUS will rule, but they won't say the same stuff y'all have been saying. If they reverse the injunction they'll have a good reason.Married A Horn said:
1. The stated goal as pointed out is to slow Trump's agenda thru lawfare.
2. 100% of Sam's energy is focused on bashing Trump - not the corrupt evil left.
3. When this all gets kicked out at the SCOTUS, Sam will be found to be dead wrong. Yet again.
Think about point 3. When the SCOTUS says basically all the same stuff yall have been saying, just reply to every post Sam has made with a quotation of the majority's opinion.
And you will have been proven wrong. Yet again.
Data management is part of the purview of the USDS. Obama's website for the USDS had these words:Sam Lowry said:Mainly it has to do with violations of labor and privacy laws. Among other things they're alleging that DOGE employees with read-only clearance are altering files. That Musk has access to sensitive information about his competitors, a conflict of interest. And so on.BearlySpeaking said:The court has taken de facto control of the distribution of funds by telling the president what he can and cannot do in regard to it.Sam Lowry said:
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
Ok, it's clear you know there is no evidence of any illegal activity, and that this is a fishing expedition. Can you at least tell me the illegal behavior that is being alleged? I don't mean abstract accusations of "there could be corruption" because that is true of anything the government is involved in. I mean specific accusations of illegal behavior.
You're not only not interested in evidence at all, you mock a question about the existence of any of it. You're interested in shutting down an effective audit that can track the actual flow of funds, and want to go back to the general ineffective "audits" that have never resulted in any changes to wasteful or fraudulent spending. It's clear it's not evidence of illegal behavior you're concerned with. Quite the contrary.
Plaintiffs don't have to prove their case at this stage. All they have to do is show a likelihood of success on the merits. Two of the courts are maintaining the status quo in order to prevent irreparable harm until they have more evidence. This is something Congress can't do; they necessarily take much longer to act.
There's nothing unusual here. It's how the system is supposed to work.
"The United States Digital Service is a startup at the White House that pairs the country's top technology talent with the best public servants, to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country's most important digital services.
…what we realized was that we could potentially build a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government that was helping agencies. We've dubbed that the U.S. Digital Service…they are making an enormous difference…"
The United States DOGE Service isn't doing anything it wasn't already purposed to do - using technology to improve government efficiency across the agencies.
The TRO petition's cites look pretty thin. It seems to be a grab-bag of cases and emotional arguments that some members of USAID won't have jobs and be able to pay bills if they are let go.
Anyway, the copy I found has broken links in the footnotes that are supposed to support their claims.
Yes, there is nothing unusual about those who want to derail a precise auditing of USAID and other agencies judge-shopping for a judge who openly stated his contempt for President Trump and is willing to work with them on delaying and "bureaucratizing" the implementation of the audit until enough red tape has been wrapped around it to derail it into another typical "audit" with no detailed tracking of the flow of funds. Maybe you will get your wish and a publicly biased judge will be able to stop any accountability for the spending of funds on circumcision in foreign countries or terrorist-aligned groups.
Where was this concern for Samantha Powers having access to her competitors' data when she was head of USAID? She ended up with an increase around $23 million in net worth after being the USAID director. That is an actual event of possible corruption to look into, but you don't care about that nor do you argue that the judicial system should be looking into it, because the laughably very recent concern that a specific individual in DC (and literally one else in the civil service, LOL) might get rich through their civil service position is not what this judicial action is really about.
I don't think Sam has really thought this through.Sam Lowry said:Only if they don't have a good reason. But you may be more right than you know...I'm assuming SCOTUS is still recognizably conservative.Married A Horn said:Sam Lowry said:I don't know how SCOTUS will rule, but they won't say the same stuff y'all have been saying. If they reverse the injunction they'll have a good reason.Married A Horn said:
1. The stated goal as pointed out is to slow Trump's agenda thru lawfare.
2. 100% of Sam's energy is focused on bashing Trump - not the corrupt evil left.
3. When this all gets kicked out at the SCOTUS, Sam will be found to be dead wrong. Yet again.
Think about point 3. When the SCOTUS says basically all the same stuff yall have been saying, just reply to every post Sam has made with a quotation of the majority's opinion.
And you will have been proven wrong. Yet again.
The Democrats have used Lawfare to go after Trump for years, and some of their efforts have greatly abused our legal system. Democrats since Obama have gone after Conservative groups, punished people for not wanting to take an experimental drug just because they were told to, even gone after parents for criticizing school district abuses of power; the tools used include the FBI, IRS, CDC, and many other government agencies, and not a one of them has ever admitted they abused their power.
There is a strong desire in many Americans to do unto the Left as they have done to us. DOGE is very, very popular for a lot of reasons.
Anyone who thinks a judge whose jurisdiction is one federal district has the authority to over-ride the President when addressing Executive authority is a complete fool and playing with matches as they stand in a pool of gasoline.
SCOTUS knows this is a very dangerous behavior, and will shut it down before it becomes a genuine Constitutional crisis.
But asses will bray, and career bureaucrats are irredeemable asses.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier
Samantha Powers is reprehensible. If someone had evidence against her and didn't pursue it, they dropped the ball.BearlySpeaking said:Data management is part of the purview of the USDS. Obama's website for the USDS had these words:Sam Lowry said:Mainly it has to do with violations of labor and privacy laws. Among other things they're alleging that DOGE employees with read-only clearance are altering files. That Musk has access to sensitive information about his competitors, a conflict of interest. And so on.BearlySpeaking said:The court has taken de facto control of the distribution of funds by telling the president what he can and cannot do in regard to it.Sam Lowry said:
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
Ok, it's clear you know there is no evidence of any illegal activity, and that this is a fishing expedition. Can you at least tell me the illegal behavior that is being alleged? I don't mean abstract accusations of "there could be corruption" because that is true of anything the government is involved in. I mean specific accusations of illegal behavior.
You're not only not interested in evidence at all, you mock a question about the existence of any of it. You're interested in shutting down an effective audit that can track the actual flow of funds, and want to go back to the general ineffective "audits" that have never resulted in any changes to wasteful or fraudulent spending. It's clear it's not evidence of illegal behavior you're concerned with. Quite the contrary.
Plaintiffs don't have to prove their case at this stage. All they have to do is show a likelihood of success on the merits. Two of the courts are maintaining the status quo in order to prevent irreparable harm until they have more evidence. This is something Congress can't do; they necessarily take much longer to act.
There's nothing unusual here. It's how the system is supposed to work.
"The United States Digital Service is a startup at the White House that pairs the country's top technology talent with the best public servants, to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country's most important digital services.
…what we realized was that we could potentially build a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government that was helping agencies. We've dubbed that the U.S. Digital Service…they are making an enormous difference…"
The United States DOGE Service isn't doing anything it wasn't already purposed to do - using technology to improve government efficiency across the agencies.
The TRO petition's cites look pretty thin. It seems to be a grab-bag of cases and emotional arguments that some members of USAID won't have jobs and be able to pay bills if they are let go.
Anyway, the copy I found has broken links in the footnotes that are supposed to support their claims.
Yes, there is nothing unusual about those who want to derail a precise auditing of USAID and other agencies judge-shopping for a judge who openly stated his contempt for President Trump and is willing to work with them on delaying and "bureaucratizing" the implementation of the audit until enough red tape has been wrapped around it to derail it into another typical "audit" with no detailed tracking of the flow of funds. Maybe you will get your wish and a publicly biased judge will be able to stop any accountability for the spending of funds on circumcision in foreign countries or terrorist-aligned groups.
Where was this concern for Samantha Powers having access to her competitors' data when she was head of USAID? She ended up with an increase around $23 million in net worth after being the USAID director. That is an actual event of possible corruption to look into, but you don't care about that nor do you argue that the judicial system should be looking into it, because the laughably very recent concern that a specific individual in DC (and literally one else in the civil service, LOL) might get rich through their civil service position is not what this judicial action is really about.
Whinging about anti-Trump judges won't get you far in court. Hopefully Trump's lawyers will do better.
She is not going to be investigated. That is the point of this TRO for shutting down the President's integration of USDS with USAID and other agencies, as it was designed to do originally under Obama. They don't want this information coming to the surface and people being investigated, hence the order to delete the data that was gathered.Sam Lowry said:Samantha Powers is reprehensible. If someone had evidence against her and didn't pursue it, they dropped the ball.BearlySpeaking said:Data management is part of the purview of the USDS. Obama's website for the USDS had these words:Sam Lowry said:Mainly it has to do with violations of labor and privacy laws. Among other things they're alleging that DOGE employees with read-only clearance are altering files. That Musk has access to sensitive information about his competitors, a conflict of interest. And so on.BearlySpeaking said:The court has taken de facto control of the distribution of funds by telling the president what he can and cannot do in regard to it.Sam Lowry said:
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
Ok, it's clear you know there is no evidence of any illegal activity, and that this is a fishing expedition. Can you at least tell me the illegal behavior that is being alleged? I don't mean abstract accusations of "there could be corruption" because that is true of anything the government is involved in. I mean specific accusations of illegal behavior.
You're not only not interested in evidence at all, you mock a question about the existence of any of it. You're interested in shutting down an effective audit that can track the actual flow of funds, and want to go back to the general ineffective "audits" that have never resulted in any changes to wasteful or fraudulent spending. It's clear it's not evidence of illegal behavior you're concerned with. Quite the contrary.
Plaintiffs don't have to prove their case at this stage. All they have to do is show a likelihood of success on the merits. Two of the courts are maintaining the status quo in order to prevent irreparable harm until they have more evidence. This is something Congress can't do; they necessarily take much longer to act.
There's nothing unusual here. It's how the system is supposed to work.
"The United States Digital Service is a startup at the White House that pairs the country's top technology talent with the best public servants, to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country's most important digital services.
…what we realized was that we could potentially build a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government that was helping agencies. We've dubbed that the U.S. Digital Service…they are making an enormous difference…"
The United States DOGE Service isn't doing anything it wasn't already purposed to do - using technology to improve government efficiency across the agencies.
The TRO petition's cites look pretty thin. It seems to be a grab-bag of cases and emotional arguments that some members of USAID won't have jobs and be able to pay bills if they are let go.
Anyway, the copy I found has broken links in the footnotes that are supposed to support their claims.
Yes, there is nothing unusual about those who want to derail a precise auditing of USAID and other agencies judge-shopping for a judge who openly stated his contempt for President Trump and is willing to work with them on delaying and "bureaucratizing" the implementation of the audit until enough red tape has been wrapped around it to derail it into another typical "audit" with no detailed tracking of the flow of funds. Maybe you will get your wish and a publicly biased judge will be able to stop any accountability for the spending of funds on circumcision in foreign countries or terrorist-aligned groups.
Where was this concern for Samantha Powers having access to her competitors' data when she was head of USAID? She ended up with an increase around $23 million in net worth after being the USAID director. That is an actual event of possible corruption to look into, but you don't care about that nor do you argue that the judicial system should be looking into it, because the laughably very recent concern that a specific individual in DC (and literally one else in the civil service, LOL) might get rich through their civil service position is not what this judicial action is really about.
Whinging about anti-Trump judges won't get you far in court. Hopefully Trump's lawyers will do better.
Your whining about my point that I have no reason to trust a judge who has called one of the sides in the case a "tyrant" before taking the case and compared his presidency to the Civil War and Jim Crow doesn't change the phenomenon of bias evident in those statements. There is a code of conduct for Federal judges and it looks like he violated it.
"Canon 2A. An appearance of impropriety occurs when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry, would conclude that the judge's honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge is impaired."
Derogatory comments about one side in a case reasonably calls into question his impartiality.
"Canon 5: A Judge Should Refrain from Political Activity
(A) General Prohibitions. A judge should not:
(2) make speeches for a political organization or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office;"
He is on video making oppositional statements about President Trump.
I've never seen any evidence of that. Which judge are you talking about?BearlySpeaking said:She is not going to be investigated. That is the point of this TRO for shutting down the President's integration of USDS with USAID and other agencies, as it was designed to do originally under Obama. They don't want this information coming to the surface and people being investigated, hence the order to delete the data that was gathered.Sam Lowry said:Samantha Powers is reprehensible. If someone had evidence against her and didn't pursue it, they dropped the ball.BearlySpeaking said:Data management is part of the purview of the USDS. Obama's website for the USDS had these words:Sam Lowry said:Mainly it has to do with violations of labor and privacy laws. Among other things they're alleging that DOGE employees with read-only clearance are altering files. That Musk has access to sensitive information about his competitors, a conflict of interest. And so on.BearlySpeaking said:The court has taken de facto control of the distribution of funds by telling the president what he can and cannot do in regard to it.Sam Lowry said:
Other decisions make it clear that the courts have a role.
This court is not removing presidential authority or controlling the flow of funding. They are not usurping his power to decide on security clearances. They are not saying illegal activity has occurred. They are simply pausing some of DOGE's activities so that evidence can be presented.
Despite your protestations, you don't seem at all interested in seeing the evidence. Quite the contrary.
Ok, it's clear you know there is no evidence of any illegal activity, and that this is a fishing expedition. Can you at least tell me the illegal behavior that is being alleged? I don't mean abstract accusations of "there could be corruption" because that is true of anything the government is involved in. I mean specific accusations of illegal behavior.
You're not only not interested in evidence at all, you mock a question about the existence of any of it. You're interested in shutting down an effective audit that can track the actual flow of funds, and want to go back to the general ineffective "audits" that have never resulted in any changes to wasteful or fraudulent spending. It's clear it's not evidence of illegal behavior you're concerned with. Quite the contrary.
Plaintiffs don't have to prove their case at this stage. All they have to do is show a likelihood of success on the merits. Two of the courts are maintaining the status quo in order to prevent irreparable harm until they have more evidence. This is something Congress can't do; they necessarily take much longer to act.
There's nothing unusual here. It's how the system is supposed to work.
"The United States Digital Service is a startup at the White House that pairs the country's top technology talent with the best public servants, to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country's most important digital services.
…what we realized was that we could potentially build a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government that was helping agencies. We've dubbed that the U.S. Digital Service…they are making an enormous difference…"
The United States DOGE Service isn't doing anything it wasn't already purposed to do - using technology to improve government efficiency across the agencies.
The TRO petition's cites look pretty thin. It seems to be a grab-bag of cases and emotional arguments that some members of USAID won't have jobs and be able to pay bills if they are let go.
Anyway, the copy I found has broken links in the footnotes that are supposed to support their claims.
Yes, there is nothing unusual about those who want to derail a precise auditing of USAID and other agencies judge-shopping for a judge who openly stated his contempt for President Trump and is willing to work with them on delaying and "bureaucratizing" the implementation of the audit until enough red tape has been wrapped around it to derail it into another typical "audit" with no detailed tracking of the flow of funds. Maybe you will get your wish and a publicly biased judge will be able to stop any accountability for the spending of funds on circumcision in foreign countries or terrorist-aligned groups.
Where was this concern for Samantha Powers having access to her competitors' data when she was head of USAID? She ended up with an increase around $23 million in net worth after being the USAID director. That is an actual event of possible corruption to look into, but you don't care about that nor do you argue that the judicial system should be looking into it, because the laughably very recent concern that a specific individual in DC (and literally one else in the civil service, LOL) might get rich through their civil service position is not what this judicial action is really about.
Whinging about anti-Trump judges won't get you far in court. Hopefully Trump's lawyers will do better.
Your whining about my point that I have no reason to trust a judge who has called one of the sides in the case a "tyrant" before taking the case and compared his presidency to the Civil War and Jim Crow doesn't change the phenomenon of bias evident in those statements. There is a code of conduct for Federal judges and it looks like he violated it.
"Canon 2A. An appearance of impropriety occurs when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry, would conclude that the judge's honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperament, or fitness to serve as a judge is impaired."
Derogatory comments about one side in a case reasonably calls into question his impartiality.
"Canon 5: A Judge Should Refrain from Political Activity
(A) General Prohibitions. A judge should not:
(2) make speeches for a political organization or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office;"
He is on video making oppositional statements about President Trump.
Sam Lowry said:I was referring to corruption in DOGE. Apparently you all are convinced that it's rampant and must be hidden from scrutiny by the courts.Doc Holliday said:It should be your number one concern.Sam Lowry said:Evidently I'm not as worried about it as you are.Married A Horn said:
Sam, like every single person on the left, is more worried about corruption in DOGE than the trillions of dollars of corruption DOGE is finding.
If we do nothing, it will be the destruction of the U.S.
Before worrying about hypothetical, imaginary corruption in DOGE, let's get rid of all the very real corruption being exposed daily by DOGE everywhere else.
All the accusations against DOGE are coming from the corrupt people responsible for all the fraud & scams scattered throughout the government. They are the ones who have been stealing from us & lying to us for decades about everything. They have no credibility.