It is not the eliminating of waste or even downsizing. It’s the way in which it is being done. Ignoring the separation of powers, claiming laws don’t apply to the executive, and using executive orders to attempt to rule the country.
Multiple US federal judges (Democrats, not Trump appointed) have stated what DOGE is doing is neither harmful nor illegal. Those judges dismissed the injunctions. So the rule of US law is reigning supreme with regards to Trump, DOGE and Elon Musk.
Claims - and that is the key point - many claims that Executive Orders cannot do some of the things that Trump has ordered - are only that - claims. To establish whether or not certain Executive Orders can or cannot do this or that - that those Orders are actually violating US law - well that has to be determined by cases filed within the US legal system. That, again, is the reign of US law.
Trump is not the first US President to be criticized for Executive Orders. Other US Presidents - both Democratic and Republican - and their administrations have been challenged by injunctions and legal cases. So Trump is doing nothing that has not happened to almost every single US President since Eisenhower.
Neither Trump nor Elon Musk have ever stated that "Laws don't apply." Claiming that Trump or Elon ever stated that is just a reactionary social media statement.
They are decimating the agencies that cause Musk problems.
More reactionary social media rhetoric. Nobody has shown than anything DOGE is doing is to enable Elon Musk to "harvest all the data" and then become the American King who gets away with all crimes.
I do not trust that Musk doesn’t have American’s data sitting on his desk right now, and unless he is scraping the dark web he doesn’t have the old OPM data.
That is your prerogative but it is speculative tinfoil hat paranoia. If Elon Musk wanted to data-hack the world, then he could have done it - and gotten away with it - when he was at PayPal.
LOL, there is no such thing as "old OPM data." There is just the various OPM databases that have existed for decades, and yes, DOGE has access to it all as it should.
Really eliminating waste is also not running the government as a business, because businesses constantly make damaging decisions to appease shareholders and enrich executives. Yes, government contracts need to be better scrutinized, organizations need to be invested in, modernized, and streamlined. A structured downsizing where they even understand who they are firing makes sense as well. Being a good steward of taxpayers money is very important.
Now you're just bringing in an aspect of public corporations as distraction and to undermine the topic.
Any government is a business and needs to be run as a business. Both Democrats and Republicans enrich themselves under the radar. They are part of the problem. So choosing one political party over the other for ideological reasons defies any kind of common sense since both parties are working against their citizens.
All government agencies need to be run as businesses because that is what they are. Agency heads, department heads, and all lower staff need to be accountable and responsible for meeting the budgets. The way that is done is using good old basic accounting and management methods. The "shareholders" as you put it, are the taxpayers to which those agency staff are to be held accountable to. So business methods are the de facto way to properly run a government.
Firing the guys who manage the nukes in the dark of night because you want to move fast and break stuff is not it.
And they admitted it was a mistake and hired them back.
It makes no sense to go line-item by line-item across hundreds of thousands or millions of database entries. That process would take far too long and be very expensive. It makes absolutely no sense to try and save money, but use a method that will only hinder the cost cutting quickly and add huge additional costs. So they are going to make mistakes and they've admitted that multiple times. However, the overall net benefit is huge for the average US citizen. If US civil servants lose their jobs, they will cope. Government does not exist to provide jobs. The entire notion of government is to serve the citizens at the lowest cost possible. However, in the US, and apparently Canada, government is intended to be a gigantic, fat money-eating hog that robs the taxpayers while funding dubious programs, projects and contracts.
As another note having worked with government contracts and accounting. There is no way they are auditing these agencies within 24 hours and finding massive waste. Just like the firing of employees who they actually needed and scramble to hire back. They don’t know what they are looking at and aren’t taking the time to learn.
So, no, I wouldn’t trust any government because I wouldn’t trust a cultural wave won’t crush UK sensibilities in government either. Keep the data encrypted.
Nobody said that DOGE was performing audits to accounting industry standards. If it did that, the audits would take years, if not decades and cost hundreds of millions in USD in and of themselves.
Culturally, the UK is much different than the US, particularly where security and "personal rights." Absolutism here is shunned. Most native Brits are all for protecting personal data, but not at the expense of thwarting legitimate law enforcement and The Crown's security service investigations. That is why the UK has a much higher terrorist prosecution rate than the US. Because the laws enable law enforcement to perform the mandate that is entrusted to it by the British citizens.
Keeping data encrypted without lawful, completely legitimate exceptions because "Maybe someone will come along and deliberately not follow the rules" defies any common sense.
www.neowin.net
![[correlate]](/data/avatars/s/79/79653.jpg?1556985072){kind=avatar}