We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M
18F are the bureaucrats they want to traumatize.
Also among these so call "bureaucrats" are psychologists at the VA helping veterans with PTSD; search and rescue professionals working for forest service, park service, fema, etc; undercover FBI agents trying to stop organized crime; NOAA scientists predicting hurricanes, the list goes on.
The demonization of the civil servants of this country is a story that people who want power are telling the country in order to gain said power. It's a story as old as time.
"Bureaucrat" is always a pejorative for a professional person who works in a bureaucracy. It doesn't mean anything.
It certainly means something in context, seeing as virtually everyone in the civil service has been painted with this same brush regardless of whether the term's use is correct or not.
Language is everything. Are they a government workers or are they a bureaucrats? Deep state operatives or public servants? All of these words could describe someone who works for 18F.
18F workers are public servants, some of the best in the government, but by calling them bureaucrats, it makes their work seem inefficient and their removal seem logical.
Accepting the word chosen for the conversation determines what actions are acceptable. Protestors or rioters? Freedom fighter or terrorist? Peacekeeper or occupying force? Security or surveillance? Whistleblower or leaker? Regulation or Red Tape? Tax or Theft? Patriot or nationalist? Socialism, Marxism, or communism?
Peace (justice) or peace (submission)? Woke (generational injustice) or woke (any leftist idea I don’t like)?
It's precisely because these words have exact meanings, that they are so insidious. Many end up becoming shibboleths, dividing us vs them.
There are companies, PR firms, private intelligence, and think tanks that A/B test words and ideas in order to create the right metaphorical context to get people to submit to a certain framing.
A good read on the general topic of control via metaphorical framing:
https://commonslibrary.org/frame-the-debate-insights-from-do...
A lot of people got away with saying a lot of BS for a while Vague thought-terminating cliches, and we are observing one of these formless things decay, in real time, to the point they're outré.
The based to cringe pipeline, if you will
I grew up in the DC area 30 years ago. Civil servants declaring “Resistance” to the agenda of the duly elected president would have been unthinkable then. That destroys the premise of a civil service that is a machine that processes paperwork and doesn’t think for itself.
Balances, on the other hand, were from old lost Balancing Empire. This was really just a stubborn remnant of the Roman Empire that didn't want to admit the party was over.
Together, the refrain "Checks and Balances" is normally to remind us of our ambiguous and ephemeral place in history. Are we hardy folk like the Checks who will remain even as the political landscape changes? Or are we Balances left twisting in the wind?
Then, I think the earlier poster was expressing his own sense of loss in proclaiming there aren't even Checks anymore. It's no longer ambiguous, we are un-Checked and out of Balance.
If you want, you can attempt to clarify why you're asking the person you're replying to if they know what checks and balances are. We can all ready social study books and read wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers_under_the...) and it seems unlikely the response to your question is going to differ much from the philosophy and practice described there.
Not sure where you got the "widespread misinformation about checks and balances in the executive branch", the C&B are across branches, nobody implied otherwise.
Saying “hey, don’t you know what checks and balances are” seems ruder.
The silver lining is that it's not too late for those people to get some upcoming elections to swing and push to a congress that will kick out Trump before it's too late.
I'm going with deceptive.
If there's a free and authoritative easy way to file taxes, then there's no reason for people to pay for unnecessary third party services who earn ALL their money by imposing themselves between the taxpayer and IRS. They will fight like bastards to preserve their privileged position.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax...
The sell is to individuals to get their votes, not corporations (who of course are on board, but cannot vote), and more amorphous for not being above board. About how people's hardship are being caused by "enemies" who must be punished. Thus the "cruelty is the point" observation.
Simply stating their goal, "the hyper rich feel too fettered, with respect to the rights/safety/wellbeing of individuals", would fail for being overly direct and honest.
(I have no doubt there is governmental waste. But their behavior is not consistent with doing the work of identifying and eliminating waste. Waste elmination here is a side effect (that can be pointed to) of mass elmination independent of waste.)
The cruelty is the point.
Straight to ad hominem. Excellent.
You don’t get to hide behind high minded ideals.
I am hardly advocating for destruction of the USA simply because I disagree with that pithy quotable, "The cruelty is the point."
EVs and all that stuff were nothing more than a toy to play the charged up games the barons / slavers play
oil > nuclear > some miraculous thing
LOL. I'll get right on that, after I ask the North Koreans for their opinion.
Russia currently is run by an ex-KGB dude. The KGB opposed Gorbachev's reforms. Putin is actively trying to rehabilitate the Stalin personality cult and revive a longing for Soviet era colonialism to legitimize his war of expansion.
The Russian people are amazing, but there's only so far you can go if you don't have a free press, if expressing certain facts about history is illegal and if people are murdered for being too open about their opinions.
I don't doubt there are people who are still unhappy that Russia lost its status from the imperial days, just as there are British people frustrated that they're no longer an important empire. But that was happening anyway and it was only a matter of time.
It's not really surprising that the average opinion in an authoritarian country aligns with the position actively promoted by the government of that country. Just like it's not surprising that the party wins by a landslide in a one party state.
So Russia was effectively cargo culting the idea of capitalism and democracy. They did things that looked right, but because they didn't understand a core principle, Rule of Law, they did not get democracy or capitalism. Instead opportunists attained all of the once governmentally owned assets, and then used their levels of wealth gained to consolidate their own power, leaving Russia in the current mafia state/oligarchy it is in.
I wish I could find it for you, but it's kind of painful to search for videos based on semantic information.
Snyder's US centric video on rule of law, was not only prescient, but it builds some of the scaffolding needed to understand just how bad everything is right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6fpu_9S31c
But as you describe it that's fairly plausible to me. Russia under communism had no rule of law and was basically a mafia state. So it's not surprising that remnants of those institutions, the paranoia, the corruption, opportunism, etc carried over through the transition.
My point wasn't that Gorbachev was some sort of miracle worker, just that he helped end totalitarianism and is recognized for his efforts. And Trump will definitely not be remembered as that kind of figure. Putin is trying to bring back the state religion, and Trump is trying to do something similar in the US so if we're going to compare him to someone in Russia historically, it will be someone who tried to tear things down and impose a dictatorship for the supposed "betterment" of the people.
It may, again sadly, be the best of both worlds. The motivated ones will see a link in the description and start their research, the non-motivated ones (the majority) will accept or reject it right here.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/01/03/russ-voug...
The media has been lying to us for decades and no, I don't take them at their word, especially when they share a clip that removes all context.
If so, I would note that it’s curious that he’s declined to comment rather than clearing his record and the Trump campaign similarly reacted by pretending they wouldn’t have him setting policy again rather than by saying that’s not what he meant.
> https://youtu.be/oBH9TmeJN_M
This clip starts at the same point.
Wait until you see Twitter Files or whatever Elon is going to drop from DOGE.
GSA, Digital Analytics Program: https://analytics.usa.gov/
Huge amounts of data about how government websites are used including: locations (cities, countries), languages, referral sources, media sources, devices, browsers, OS, website destination, and top file accesses.
Treasury, Government Spending Explorer: https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
Really thorough breakdown of government spending from 2017 onward, with per month, per quarter, and year spending totals by budget function and agency. Divable categories so you can look at the $1,400,000,000,000 in National Defense spending, and actually find out a little about where it all goes to each year.
Edit: Here's their Github and 1200 repositories: https://github.com/orgs/18F/repositories
If I had enough money to hire them, I'd snap their employees up quickly.
They definitely do not care if this "makes things worse". Often, it's intended.
And the rhetoric that the reason the working class have lower quality of life now than 20 years ago being due to immigrants and the poor ... is a way to focus attention elsewhere instead of increasing taxes on the rich.
2. That's been the republican spending outline for at least 60 years now. And it's no coincidence that our deficit tends to increase under republical administrations.
It’s about regulation. The only thing that can counteract the super rich are government regulators.
No.
They often pay FAR less than an average person as a percentage, often times paying nothing for a year.
In total amounts - most of them are still paying millions in taxes per year - most of them end up paying tens if not hundreds of millions in taxes over their lifetimes.
But we should not understate how much they fight for tax cuts. Deregulation is nice long term, but we're in "number go up" mode right now. Tax cuts would benefit them very quickly.
So that when this gets litigated, everyone who broke the law is convicted.
The civil servant should collect his pay as long as possible and do as little as possible.
But no one following his orders has any immunity. They should keep that in mind.
As long as they commit their crimes in DC, they enjoy the ability to be fully pardoned. Outside of DC, you have to have a prosecutor with cohones.
Someone has always disagreed with something the government is doing. It has always been the end of democracy as we know it.
And yet, the future then and present now were formed by people who acted.
Not quite "oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture." Yet quite a few of the others.
- stratified social classes; impoverished working class [1]; ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites; economy of state capitalism operated for the exclusive profit of the ruling class; collusion between the state and favored monopolies; profit is private property, while debts are the responsibility of the public treasury.
Maybe it's cynicism like noted in other commments, yet the linked chart from the NYT would say "it wasn't always this way" and its not my imagination that the situation has changed over the last 40 years.
[1] NYT, "Our Broken Economy", https://archive.is/ZFnAT
...So it's easier to justify to the people when they tear it down completely and then "rescue" the country by replacing it with a true corpocracy.
And as an added benefit it sounds a lot like "corpsocracy" with the "corp" and a country that's a "corpse" animated by "corps." That uses their military "corps" to exert control. Insurance company with a military.
Neoliberalism is about a big, functional government that is utopian and takes care of everything for you.
"You own nothing, and you'll be happy."
You can argue in practice it's terrible (subjective, no one really cares about your opinion). But it's hard to argue its GOAL is to be small.
So, a useless definition? I'm sure dictators think they run a utopia.
But your defiinition runs counter to my research and readings. Neoliberalism often refers to this blend of liberal social policies but capitalistic-centric economic policies. Being small isn't inherent to neoliberalism.
>subjective, no one really cares about your opinion
>Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Hopefully the GitHub repos stick around; I forked and cloned a few and suggest folks browse through them and grab anything that looks interesting in case they disappear.
This is perfectly emblematic of our national decline: a person with little interest in doing the work to understand things, spoon feeding their mistakes over social media to an audience with little interest in doing the work to know whether the things they read are real.
Also, that chart is just magical, did she inflate the numbers by repeatedly adding same money being shuffled around (represented by those arrows between entities)?
You’d think that simplifying tax returns and reducing costs in the taxation system would be something the right could get behind?
The real kicker of course is that if you don't file your taxes, they actually do calculate your taxes for you, and send you a bill. It just includes the non-payment penalty and doesn't include donations.
The fact that they are capable of doing that implies how much time we all have to waste doing our taxes.
For most people, taxes are more than the next 3 biggest expenses.
If you want people to visually see where their money goes and when taxes are increased, you do a better job breaking down where it goes when described on a paycheque. Think "$0.82 for military spending; $0.05 for road maintenance" instead of "Federal tax: $317.02"
If you want the people to misunderstand and hate the government, then you make the people do math every month with numbers that change throughout the year and have financial penalties for getting wrong.
EITC eligibility, for example, depends on the aggregate employment and spending patterns of your household. The IRS does not (and shouldn’t) track when you moved in with your boyfriend.
The home mortgage interest deduction depends on your primary residence; if you have more than one, that means tracking how much time you spend at each.
Although you're wrong about the mortgage interest deduction, that is reported by the bank per address, and you have the list your primary address with your state tax authority, which the IRS gets a copy of.
I think you’re seriously underestimating the amount of data the IRS would have to proactively collect. “We get your tax obligation right 80% of the time!” isn’t an acceptable SLA. Kids are born, houses (and electric cars!) are bought and sold, community college classes are enrolled in, …
Re: Primary residence: Uhh, OK, so I report to my state tax authority who reports to the Feds. I thought the point of this thread was that somebody else would do all this for me, but for the evils of Grover Norquist and Intuit?
There is a reason TurboTax is popular -- because it's a better interface for asking those questions.
But look at other countries. They don't ask you to fill out a form. They send you a bill and ask if they missed anything. For 80% of taxpayers, they would send the bill and the taxpayer would say, "yep, that's right". And your taxes would be done.
The rest could keep doing it the old way.
> Kids are born, houses (and electric cars!) are bought and sold, community college classes are enrolled in
All things they already know about! Because when you claim those things on your taxes, they cross check that to try and catch you in a lie.
When the IRS audits you, they don’t come with their own evidence beyond the basic income reporting that yes, they could pre-fill into forms. It’s up to you to produce documentation that justifies your filing.
Our tax code is complicated. It relies on voluntary (but potentially audited) reporting and compliance. If you want to argue for a simpler tax code, great, but at the end of the day, either the IRS needs to collect a lot more data or we’re stuck with self-reporting.
So for 80% of people, they would never have to fill out a tax form at all. They could just get the tax bill and have it auto-pay (or more likely auto-refund).
And for the next 10% of people, who only take a small set of deductions that you can take on top of the standard deduction, you don't need even a two page form, you just need a wizard that asks a few questions like TurboTax.
And then for the rest they can opt to fill out the regular forms if they don't agree with how the IRS calculated their bill. This is how it works in pretty much every other civilized country (and a lot of uncivilized ones too).
Taxes are in hindsight so you've already made whatever donations you did by the time you paid taxes.
Donations either lower your tax bill or have no effect on it. So, by not filling taxes (_and getting caught_) you're just increasing your tax bill.
...but then tax you on the interest they paid you if you claim it.
Do you have a source handy? My Google-fu is failing and only bringing up interest on unpaid taxes.
As a non-American whose country break out the VAT into a separate line item, with the explicit intent to inform consumers how much tax they are paying, and who has shopped in countries where they roll it all into one, I can say that this 'claim' is absolutely what happens in practice.
Pretty much everyone does, of course, know that the VAT rate is 20%, but still you always get people complaining that we’re being ripped off when something which costs $1000 ends up being sold here at £950.
Meanwhile, you can simply check "VAT rate 20xx" and find that. It saves time doing the math for your state sales tax and then doing mental math to figure out what you leave the store with.
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=TurboTax&type=site#gsc....
Using OpenSecrets in particular is misleading because it shows you donations fron "employees of corporations" to political campaigns and then people pretend it's donations from "corporations", which is obviously not the same thing. (and not allowed either)
No they don't. Corporations can't give money to representatives. That's exactly why I just said OpenSecrets is misleading.
There's zero reason why taxes, for the majority of citizens, isn't just a postcard you get in the mail and confirm against your own earnings records. It should not cost me hours of my own life and/or dollars of my own money to file my taxes. I don't mind paying them (if they're used for something actually constructive like public infrastructure) but gosh they sure make it hard.
* Eliminate all taxes
* Eliminate all regulations
* Use the government for financial gain (by the "right people")
* Use the government to oppress all "others" (those who are not white christian men)
* Crown a king and ensure that crown stays within their select groupEverything they say is double speak, you have to look at what they say and what they do.
Indeed if taxes are too difficult or painful, a reasonable person would demand that the government simplify taxes, and that's not the same as reducing taxes. But then again maybe they are banking on the masses conflating simplifying taxes and reducing taxes.
That’s not accidental: the rich have been funding anti-tax messaging since the introduction of the income tax, and it’s heavily promoted by the media voices they fund. The tax preparation industry is similarly biased since it’s with so profitable for the median voter to think that they need to pay hundreds of dollars every year to fill out a couple of forms.
Sure, if you only have a W-2 then it is pretty simple. The issue is that over time people have a tendency to accrue other tax reportable activities as a function of age. It actively discourages people from making some types of potentially productive investments because of the additional tax complexity.
Enough 401k, mild investments over time with disposable income, or transfers from friends / family / inheritance, that the process becomes quite challenging. You make a couple thousand on a decent year in capital gains or dividend distributions, yet end up with rather confusing paperwork piles to deal with at tax time. Finding out it was necessary to note each buy / sell and the holding time individually for the entire year just seemed crazy in the detail necessary.
Mild awareness of why the actual wealthy hire accountants and firms with specialized teams and software to deal with those issues.
The part that's also not dealt with, at least in terms of those deductions, is that usually they're related to businesses and expenses. The deductions are available, yet often you have to be treating almost your entire life like a business expense every moment. Business cell phone. Business internet. Business supplies. Business ads, website, and marketing. Business travel. Business property depreciation / amortization. Business legal and accounting. Business mileage. Business loan interest. Business meals.
A (personal opinion) funny one is "Hire your own children as workers." You can write-off the payment you make to them which reduces your taxes and the income they earn can be tax-free if you pay them less than the standard deduction.
You're an exception and, yeah, it sucks. For somebody who has W-2 income, maybe a 1099-INT, and takes the standard deduction filing taxes is painless and simple.
I've just accepted the $800 - $1,000 cost per year for preparation of my LLC K-1 and personal taxes as part of the cost of being an exception. It sucks, but I just roll it into my rates.
But also, Intuit spends a lot money lobbying.
Hell, I have a fairly complex return. It takes me <90 minutes with a $40 software package.
It just does not believe in a federal government that it is not in control of.
For example: the perennial fight over "net neutrality" was because Congress absconded their duty to write regulation and handed it off to the Executive to figure out in a vague way that allowed for flip flopping policies with the force of law every time the administration changed.
You know what would stop the Executive power grab currently happening? If Congress would do their damn jobs. The Republicans in Congress are more to blame for this mess than the White House. This is supposed to be their power that they are just sitting and watching get taken away.
But the Democrats aren't guiltless either. People who care about this sort of thing have been complaining for decades, right through Democrat majorities and administrations. They had plenty of chances. The whole beltway fucking sucks and we are so cooked.
The fact that Congress is ineffective in no way absolves the executive branch of irresponsible or illegal behavior. The president took an oath.
That's what makes it illegal.
31 USC 1535, The Economy Act, authorizes Federal agencies to purchase from each other in the interests of economy. Obvious application is that rather than have the Social Security Administration lease an office or build a building, they sublease or lease a facility owned by the GSA so Federal demand can be aggregated. 1 big lease is cheaper than 12 little ones.
In the case of 18F, having a consultive entity within the GSA maximizes the value of procurements made by GSA and other agencies. When congress appropriates money to say, the Department of Labor to perform a function, DOL may choose to engage 18F to deliver or assist, avoiding additional procurement and taking advantage of investments and capability already built.
Congress in 1949 recognized that basic concepts like shared services, aggregation and mission focus deliver value and promote efficient operations. The current regime's corrupt interest is obvious to anyone with a brain.
The current iteration of USAID was created by an act of Congress. Unless the President's office has been given the power to create and pass legislature at some point in the past five weeks, only Congress can unmake it.
So was the CFPB, which is also being shut down.
So was the Department of Education.
People have been warning for a long time that this concentration of power in the executive is ripe for abuse. And here we are.
The legislature could stop this, yes. But it won't, because he is carrying out the program the GOP always wished it could have done, but couldn't. Once this all goes to shit, they will of course, blame him, while keeping their own hands clean.
And given just how fucking fast a dedicated executive can destroy anything it doesn't like, there's literally nothing the Dems could have done to prevent this. It doesn't matter what laws they passed when they had control of government, when the current executive simply doesn't follow the law.
And the only people who could compel it to follow the law don't want it to.
The only cure to this is never voting red, under any circumstances, for any position, in any race. It's been fully compromised, and is unsalvageable.
Oh yes there is. It's just more radical than they were prepared to admit was necessary. It's things like ramming through thousands of new federal judgeships, packing the Supreme Court, passing anti-gerrymandering laws with jail-time penalities for state officials that violate them, and ultimately packing the union (https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-133/pack-the-union-a-...). The things that needed to be done were not "make things so no president can do this when he gets elected", it's "fix the system so these kinds of people cannot ever be elected".
(We can also blame them for not imprisoning, quicky and fairly trying, and executing Trump for sedition and treason when they could.)
What do think would really happen in that case? They'd change their platform slightly in a way that allows them to get 5% more of the vote and then still get in half the time. They're one of the parties in a two party system and it's a two party system because it uses first past the post instead of e.g. STAR voting. And the reason court packing doesn't work is obviously that as soon as either party actually did that, it would become the norm and happen every time the party in power switched, and nobody wants the courts to become fully partisan and the number federal judges to double every 4-8 years.
If you actually want to stop them from fucking everything up, figure out why they're doing the things they're doing. "They're evil and corrupt and have entirely impure motives" doesn't explain why ~half of voters voted for them.
Instead you have to look at the actual reasons and do something about them. Why do they want to expand oil production? Because people want cheap energy. If you don't want to expand oil production then you need to cause energy prices to go down in some other way, e.g. by not actively opposing the construction of nuclear reactors so their costs don't balloon as a result of lawsuits and a capricious regulatory environment, or provide more tax incentives for renewable energy so the transition happens faster and people stop caring about the price of gas sooner. Use diplomacy to e.g. encourage Germany not to shut down their nuclear reactors and raise global energy prices by switching back to fossil fuels.
Republicans keep getting elected by saying they're going to do something about burdensome regulations. Maybe consider whether there's something there? Look into what it's like to operate a small business. If you're making $9000/year selling stuff on Etsy and you invest in a postage meter, should you now have to know what MACRS is? If you don't, is it because it's somehow illegal to own one? How does property tax work on unsold business inventory stored in an out of state third party warehouse? If you have a question about any of this, why isn't there anyone in the government who can give you an official answer? Does the law create a good way for you to accept digital payments without getting locked into an overpriced payment gateway that can capriciously disrupt your business by dropping your account at any time? If you get an electric vehicle for your business, can you take the tax credit if you have enough income to be eligible for it personally even though the business didn't make a net profit this year? Why is the tax credit aimed at making it easier to afford one limited to people who make enough money that they already can? What can happen if you get some of these things wrong?
People keep voting for Republicans because interacting with the government is slow, frustrating, complicated and dangerous. The best way to take that away from them is to solve those problems yourself instead of insisting that they don't exist.
It's true that to some extent both parties participate in propping up that system, but Republicans clearly do so far more. There are a lot of problems with the Democratic party as well, which is precisely why radical change is needed rather than just "pass some garden variety Democrat measures".
I agree that there are important changes to be made that Democrats are lamentably unwilling to engage with, but I'm not talking about a world where Republicans need 51%. For most of the Republicans of national prominence, we should consider ourselves as a failure as a nation if they can even get 5%.
Which in turn works because, even if they don't solve those problems, the problems are real and people experience them. So if you would make the problems actually go away, they would lose the ability to run on them.
> But they also get elected in large part because of the highly unequal and unrepresentative system that they perpetuate
This is what I mean by 46% vs. 51%. There are way bigger problems than the electoral college or district lines, which would only change how and where both parties campaign rather than making anything obviously better.
> including a media system built on feeding people falsehoods utterly disconnected reality (which is another reason ~half of voters voted for them).
This was never great but the thing that really seemed to turn it into a tornado full of broken glass is the interaction between Trump and the traditional media.
Major media outlets were used to politicians fearing them, and then Trump didn't, so the media got more aggressive and less cautious. Which was only effective for a minute until people started to realize what they were doing and that set the media's credibility on fire and made things dramatically worse.
Meanwhile the right-leaning media outlets, which were traditionally more partisan but only a little, saw this and their conclusion was basically "oh, so we can just do whatever now?"
> There are a lot of problems with the Democratic party as well, which is precisely why radical change is needed rather than just "pass some garden variety Democrat measures".
The most significant thing you could actually do is replace first past the post with one of the cardinal voting systems (STAR, score, approval), because it would allow for more than two parties. Which in turn would upend the the entire partisan apparatus of both sides which has evolved in that environment and would be maladapted to defending itself and therefore vulnerable to positive change. But it's also a subtle enough change and distinct from any of the usual battle lines that all of the villains you'd be disrupting might not recognize the implications until it has already gone through.
But the fact that they run on them without solving them shows that it's possible to run on a vaporware platform and never do what you said you would. So they would just find some new nonsense to run on. Also to a non-negligible extent the "problems" they run on are already illusory or unrealistically exaggerated, like demonizing various groups, or capitalizing on people's lack of understanding of how regulations can amortize risk.
I think we agree that structural reforms are necessary (like changing voting systems), but I think it's more than just that. There is a very real movement that is based in getting a large mass of non-wealthy people to reject reality in order to capture their votes to support the goals of a small number of wealthy people. Switching to STAR voting isn't going to fix it. That entire phenomenon has to be actively purged from society in the way that Nazism was purged in post-WWII Germany.
People care about the things that are causing trouble for them. You can promise to fix their problem and then not fix it, but if there's nothing they need from you then there's nothing to promise them.
> Also to a non-negligible extent the "problems" they run on are already illusory or unrealistically exaggerated, like demonizing various groups, or capitalizing on people's lack of understanding of how regulations can amortize risk.
Nah, that's just confusing the problem with the rhetoric.
Republicans hype immigration because the Democrats have an immigration problem:
a) "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". b) Generous social safety net.
You can't have unlimited immigration of the world's poor and then give them all welfare; you have to pick one. But Democrats can't choose, so we end up with this nonsense where immigration which is formally illegal is still happening at scale and they're neither willing to formally legalize it nor enforce the law against it.
Which means Republicans get to beat them over the head with it because the Democrats have no response to it when they're legitimately caught in an inconsistent position. To stop that from happening they need to pick which one of the two incompatible things they want.
Likewise, the US really does have a lot of regulatory overhead, and many of the rules are needlessly complicated, inconsistent, blunt, poorly considered or obviously corrupt. The people who actually have to interact with them -- mostly small businesses -- are intimately familiar with it and find it infuriating. Now, some of the rules are net positive, but even those are often still needlessly complicated or in conflict with other, stupider rules. To fix it you would need large teams of smart people go through all the rules, throw out the bad ones (even if they're corrupt and someone wants them that way), simplify the needless complexity, do a cost/benefit analysis that includes the administrative cost of implementation and have the ability to actually modify them. Which requires fastidious people to do something expensive and boring at large scale. But until that happens -- which it hasn't -- there is still a problem.
And in the meantime the Republicans get to say "regulations bad! less regulations!" and have a bunch of people cheer because they know how much the status quo sucks.
> There is a very real movement that is based in getting a large mass of non-wealthy people to reject reality in order to capture their votes to support the goals of a small number of wealthy people.
Eh. That's kind of one of the things a cardinal voting system does fix.
You're defining the problem too narrowly. The general issue is, in a two party system, both of the parties are big tent parties. Which means that if your party wants both X and Y and you need a majority to get either, the people who want X can go drum up support from people who want Y so their party gets in and they get X, because by nature the other major party will support both not-X and not-Y, so more support for Y is more support for the party that wants X.
If you have a voting system that supports arbitrarily many parties and your party supports both X and Y but X is stupid or unpopular, you can't win by getting more people to support Y because then some other party would come in and support Y but not X and then win because you've convinced people to want Y but not X and now that's actually one of the options on the ballot.
But that sounds like you're saying the solution is to just fix all problems. That's never going to happen. There will always be problems of some sort, which means there can always be someone claiming to have solutions.
If the democrats grow a pair and shutdown the government by filibustering the budget, Trump will fire (or worse) Elon, scorched earth whatever is left and blame the democrats. They are all about the big lie -- they'll float the idea that Elon was secretly working with the democrats the whole time. If Trump is lucky, there will be an early hurricane or an earthquake in California and the devastation will be Chuck Schumer's fault. Long live the king.
(Disclaimer: I don't live in the US and don't want to take any political stance with this)
I don't think that is average for US tech workers. I don't believe the vast majority of US tech firms have such a thing.
I wouldn't call that "far left" myself – although "far left" as used by American conservatives is a pejorative colloquialism whose meaning has shifted from its traditional definition (Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists, etc). Not slang I'd use myself but I can understand it.
P.S. If you don't trust a tweet from a right-leaning journalist, here's a page from their own GitHub repo about their bot: https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/InclusionBot.md
Some of the terms are genuinely offensive or unprofessional. I'm not sure about some of them, but I'd expect a government agency to show a higher level of sensitivity and professionalism about their language than a private start-up.
I also note that the bot "lectures" people as a private message.
Maybe a new administration want to to change the culture at GSA/18F. Fine, they can do that.
Nuking an entire department and chucking out a significant chunk of work they've done because of a Slack chatbot and a few minor documents/policies is just mental. It's vindictive score-setting and an ideological purge.
It is unclear how much of the actual work they've done is being "chucked out".
18F did work for various federal agencies, and whatever code 18F wrote for its client agencies would still be in possession of those agencies.
What happens to that code going forward – whether it continues to be maintained by other resources, or whether it just gets archived – is going to be an agency-level decision. Probably some will be kept, others will be thrown out – keeping or abolishing 18F is a separate decision from keeping or abolishing the agency-level projects/initiatives 18F was working on. (And even if 18F had survived, probably some of that code would eventually have been thrown out anyway, since government IT projects frequently end up failing and being cancelled, and 18F involvement is no guarantee against that outcome.)
Obviously, if those projects are going to be kept, removing 18F resources is going to cause a delay to the project – but maybe other resources will be found. It also depends on what percentage of the project resources were from 18F. If a project was 18F-heavy, it may take a big hit, if 18F's contribution was smaller, the negative impact might be smaller.
18F was funded out of the Acquisition Services Fund (ASF), managed by the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) within GSA. FAS is legally obligated to spend ASF funds on federal technology modernization projects. Without 18F, FAS will have to find some other mechanism to spend those ASF funds on technology modernization. So, while of course there will be a delay, agencies which were relying on 18F may still end up getting help from GSA TTS for their modernization projects. I wouldn't be surprised if ASF funds were redirected towards DOGE, and DOGE was then tasked with working on those projects.
What is going to happen in four years? Is every administration forms to fire each others federal workers?
Building a bot to harangue people about pronoun usage seems like a giant waste of time and resources to me. Those sorts of cultural preferences are a feature of only a very very small portion of the US political culture. Maybe nuking the whole department was a bit strong, I don't know, but if I worked at a place that had tools like that I'd quit, and I think a lot of other people would too. Which suggests that the overall culture of 18F was far from the mainstream of America. It should reflect the middle, no?
Traditionally how civil servants handle this, is to be aware of the political sensitivities of both sides, and try to avoid language which overly triggers either. But people seem to be forgetting that tradition, or even intentionally discarding it
I think there was another possible reason for getting rid of 18F, separate from any concerns about its political culture – there was a lot of overlap in the mission statements of 18F and USDS, and it wasn't clear why both existed. Yes, I do understand that they differed somewhat in their working methods and area of focus, but I don't think anyone can deny that they were both ultimately trying to do the same thing. In fact, at one point 18F was even going to be called USDS, until GSA was forced to pick a different name when they discovered OMB was already using it. Abolishing 18F can be seen as a way of rationalizing federal technology modernization efforts.
18F hasn't been without its share of controversies, including an OIG finding that GSA leadership retaliated against a whistleblower who reported doubts about 18F's legality: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-GS-PURL-gpo134276...
And 18F wasn't formally speaking a government agency – it was just a team within GSA. It hadn't been established by law, just by an internal executive branch policy decision. Hence, abolishing it is just an internal restructure within GSA, it isn't a genuine case of "abolishing a government agency".
I believe laid-off 18F workers are still allowed to apply for open positions in the US government, including DOGE positions. So if they are still keen on contributing to 18F's mission, they may have the opportunity.
> there was a lot of overlap in the mission statements of 18F and USDS, and it wasn't clear why both existed
And now neither of them exist (the vast majority of what once was USDS is gone, and what remains has been converted into "DOGE").
I don't know what the quotes around "abolishing a government agency" indicate -- those words weren't used previously in this thread.
Do any of the old USDS staff survive? I don't know. USDS acting administrator, Amy Gleason, used to work for USDS under the Trump and Biden admins, so it sounds like there is still room for "old USDS" staff in "new USDS" – if they are happy to be there, and if the new administration is happy to have them.
And I don't think DOGE's remit is completely distinct from that of USDS. Of course, DOGE is a lot broader in scope than USDS, but according to Executive Order 14158 which established it, a big part of its mission is software modernization–same as old USDS was–and DOGE staff appear to include a number of software engineers, which also aligns with that mission.
> I don't know what the quotes around "abolishing a government agency" indicate -- those words weren't used previously in this thread.
You asked the question "Which government agencies have been targeted by Democrats for being too conservative?" – which seems to put 18F in the category of "government agencies" - if it isn't one in some sense, then the question isn't asking for a relevant comparator. And the title of this thread is "GSA Eliminates 18F", and "eliminates" is a synonym of "abolition". So, the premise of your question implies "abolishing a government agency". Which in a sense abolishing 18F is, since it was sort-of-kind-of a government agency – but strictly speaking it isn't, since strictly it wasn't – hence the quotes.
40 were laid off and 21 resigned (and Musk claimed that they would have been fired for being Democrats, regardless). That's approximately 60% of the total.
https://apnews.com/article/doge-elon-musk-federal-government...
As for "government agency", I was using your language:
> If a government agency has a culture [etc]... the agency becomes a target
Again, your claim here is that it's typical and predictable that new administrations conduct ideological purges on the civil service. So far, you haven't actually been able to name a single example of a Democratic administration doing that, and instead you're saying that maybe 18F was bad anyway, etc. Would you consider just admitting that your claim is false rather than resorting to this "by definition, strictly speaking, the premise of your question implies" ink cloud?
No, I'm not denying this is reaching a level which hasn't been seen before.
But, perceptions of political impartiality of civil servants have been greatly eroded.
Imagine if the situation were reversed, if Democrats had a widespread perception that the federal bureaucracy had a pro-GOP/anti-Democrat bias – can you be so sure they wouldn't do similar things?
The ICE union endorsed Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 -- the only presidential endorsements it has ever made.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/immigration-customs-e...
The FBI has traditionally leaned Republican (it has never had a Democratic director), as has the US military (especially the Air Force).
Biden did not purge ICE, nor did he replace Trump's FBI director, etc.
The right is deranged with intolerance. All the talk about "free speech" and they can't stand that someone might not think or act like them.
The "anti-woke" crusaders are honestly more unbearable than any social justice warrior type I've met because they will not shut up about it and it colors their whole life.
It's just another flavor of identity politics with in and out groups.
I'm the complete opposite. Swap "anti-woke" with "social justice warrior" and you have my experience across multiple years, both inside and outside of companies.
What we need is a center. Just stuff that makes sense. The problem is our "sense" has been under attack we've basically collectively lost it.
Citizens need to understand the tax code themselves, they shouldn't need an entire government division to write software that is the only way to understand it.
And until that happens, helping people file their taxes for free is a benefit to everyone (except tax prep companies).
The fact that there is no such sentence in US tax law should be a wake-up call... The reason the income tax parts of the IRC are so complex is to keep them in perfect accordance with the constitutional limits on taxation while deceiving you. Taxes on income are in their nature excises, which are taxes on privileges. Foreign persons do not have the same rights that we Americans do (I don't necessarily agree with this, it is just how the law works).
Eventually this will come to an end. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people have known about what I am saying for a hundred years. Eventually a critical mass of people will be wise to the scam and HR departments will no longer subordinate perjury by pressuring clueless people to improperly sign a Form W-4, declaring themselves to be a foreign person subject to wage withholding (see Treasury Decision 8734)[0].
I'm all for simplification, but it's already pretty simple to understand for almost all Americans.
The only part that sucks for all Americans is actually filing, especially when you have to pay some asshole intermediary just to make it slightly faster.
In our state, they streamlined filing. I still have to understand the same things, but it's 3x faster than before. So I know it's possible.
Laying off the one programming team whose products were actually improving my interface with the government was braindead stupid.
Again, yes, simplify the tax code. But for the love of Christ, streamline filing with DirectFile no matter what you do!!
https://www.govtech.com/civic/what-is-18f.html
Key Projects:
Beta.FEC.gov: Revamped the Federal Election Commission's website for easier record access.
MyUSCIS: Simplified the immigration process for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
USCIS ICAM Development: Developed a login and identity verification system for USCIS users.
eRegulations Platform: Made regulations more accessible and understandable.
College Scorecard: Provided clear data on college costs, graduation rates, debt, and post-college earnings.
Cloud.gov: Offers a platform for government teams to develop and manage web applications efficiently.
U.S. Web Design Standards: Created open-source UI components for consistent federal website experiences16.
It's never been about making government more effect or efficient-- it's the managerial equivalent of the "starve the beast" mentality.
Can't imagine how much better the thing had been if it'd been allowed to fully blossom, but given all the stuff they deal with it, it wasn't perfect but it was a really good experiment.
Trump is no spring chicken, but he hasn't yet turned that corner into rapid physical decline. It will happen in the next couple of years, but he's not there yet.
But really Democrats keep providing one unpopular boomer candidate after another, so when it is NYT or anybody upset - I am not surprised.
EDIT: actually I meant to reply to the person you are replying to, heh.
The polls in the immediate aftermath of the debate showed Biden's approval/disapproval rate was unchanged. It did change after weeks of negative front-page stories and speculation that gave the impression the man was a vegetable.
While we’re at it, they even endorsed Harris as an institution, writing;
“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election,”if we leave the current crop of democrats in place, they will overlook it. current democrat leadership is spineless and useless
In US you generally gerrymander to the max or throw all sorts of road blocks to discourage voter participation, but we might also see more physical harassment going forward, both for voters and poll workers.
No offence intended, no intention of arguing, and you seem like a lovely person, but you did ask and I'm feeling grumpy.
18F staffers joined the government to make a difference. Most of which likely joined from industry forgoing very lucrative salaries to be the government’s internal tech consulting team. One thing they shipped that the government hadn’t shipped in a long time was the IRS e-file service to the chagrin of the big tax filer companies.
So I assumed in the post that they are capable, mission driven, loyal, hard working (to navigate the government takes dedication) folks that any company and team would benefit from.
AND they were cut not for merit or bad performance but for political reasons by the meme-lord-turned-carnate Elon for dubious reasons.
All of that has me thinking that we as a community should give them a break — in doing so we only would be benefiting ourselves: we’d get new employees and coworkers who are eager to get back to employment who have all those attributes I mentioned above.
Of course the market for jobs is tough as it is. Now with all these federal employees being cut from all parts of the government now likely looking for work in the private sector means competition for roles is only going to get worse. I get that. I feel for all job seekers. You were right to challenge me. Maybe my enthusiasm was unwarranted. It’s just now you know my thinking.
Honestly if people actually voted for Trump after the last time, how could they ever be convinced to change? Maybe we deserve what we get.
In the last decade I’ve seen big improvements in housing policy and zoning laws in my municipality. There are ongoing efforts to shift more of the local energy grid to renewables. This won’t make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, but it does improve things locally and chips away at the larger issues.
It’s easy to lose hope with all the huge problems we see, but no one person can fix climate change, economic inequality, the cost of food, etc. It’s good to hear folks like you were fighting the good fight, just remember you aren’t alone and it’s not up to just you. Keep the hope and optimism alive if you can, we need it more as things get harder.
- how many free media? - will the queues be longer in some places? - will Trump have money from all the big companies? - Will some people have accidents?
Even Russia, Cuba and North Korea celebrate elections
All this bluster and wishful thinking is exactly why we're here today.
"you should admit your situation there would be more dignity in it"
https://www.ncja.org/crimeandjusticenews/nearly-half-the-wor...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-co...
> Nearly Half The World's Civilian Guns Are In The U.S.
I live in Massachusetts and I know a bunch of socially conscious techies who’d love to help out in this manner.
I have no idea if there is need for 18F at the state level, but I could see something like this working OK in MA, CA, and maybe NY.
[1] https://www.mass.gov/orgs/massachusetts-digital-service [2] https://watech.wa.gov/services [3] https://governor.maryland.gov/news/press/pages/governor-moor...
Texas Department of Information Resources: https://dir.texas.gov/
New York State Office of Information Technology Services: https://its.ny.gov/
A Letter to the American People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43224350 - March 2025 (298 comments)
18F GitHub Repositories - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43222842
I imagine those are the types attracted to this work to potentially do it for free or cheap
A great many people would've told you beforehand what DOGE was going to be and do (although I think most of us are a bit shocked about the speed and violence of the thing). I expect you heard some of it ahead of time, too. It may be worth updating your priors on the intents, beliefs, and capabilities of the people involved in this to match this new experience, and to apply those new priors as you hear new proposals and ideas from those same groups in the future.
I can't wait to send thoughs and prayers about whatever America's Tiananmen Square would be called. I would even write a twit full of empathy and a nice picture.
Maidan Square situation not inconceivable any more in quite a few countries. Too bad not in Russia though, or as you hint, in the PRC. Our Tiananmen would be the Washington Mall.
And please don’t tweet: send condolences to your Mastodon account or HN. I’ll check this thread every few years.
The last thing they need are smarter, more experienced people around who can show that none of those assertions are true and all of the costs being racked up are pure waste.
Except: 18F spent 10 years building trust in the government. As consultants, they met their clients where they were, and acted with empathy and understanding. This is pretty much the opposite of DOGE coming into an agency and seizing control.
18F’s model was geared toward continual improvement over time (“Move slowly and fix things”). It was, I think, a model with a more long term mindset than what is going on with DOGE.
This is the moment a petulant man-child decided to destroy America:
https://www.gsaig.gov/sites/default/files/ipa-reports/OIG%20...
The GSA conclusion was...
1. Establish a viable plan to ensure full cost recovery of ASF funds expended by 18F.
2. Ensure that internal 18F projects have appropriate supervisory review.
3. Implement controls over 18F’s reimbursable agreement process to ensure that work is not performed outside of a fully executed agreement.
4. Ensure that GSA CIO reviews and approves, in writing, all 18F IT-related work performed for GSA internal organizations.
5. Implement a comprehensive review of 18F’s past work to ensure accuracy of all billings.
6. Establish reliable internal controls to ensure that 18F’s future billings are accurate.
7. Ensure that 18F’s billing records are retained in accordance with GSA records management standards.Yet, people still seem baffled by what's going on and refuse to accept the maliciousness behind his and Trump's actions. He came out against a public technology service!
It's like Bill Gates being confused about USAID being dismantled and being willfully ignorant that the people dismantling it believe he's part of some sort of global health conspiracy along with Soros.
It's easy to see why they're successful. Their 'opposition' does nothing but roll over.
(Direct File doesn't directly affect them, but the push towards automated tax collection strikes at the heart of their games.)
I don't think that's even it. The goal is to make taxes seem scary and complicated to the public, to build a consensus that taxes should be eliminated or simplified - which inevitably plays out in ways which will largely, if not entirely, benefit the wealthy. And in this light, the reason the wealthy are opposed to Direct File is obvious: having it available reduces the pain that people (and particularly the working class) will feel from having to file taxes, making it harder to drum up popular support for "reform".
Tax fraud is just top of mind because the other day I had to endure a smug rich asshole brag about it over dinner and I wasn't in a position to push back, so I'm venting a bit.
Intuit wants everyone to think it’s so scary that you need to pay them, and the company is run by rich people who would want to pay less in taxes no matter what industry they’re in.
The combination is how you get people arguing for their boss to get a tax cut even if they personally will pay more, because as long as the IRS is a fabled bogeyman they have been told that’s the price of freedom. It took the better part of the 20th century and billions of dollars in funding to teach the point where enough people believed it, but they were patient.
I really find this kind of seemingly performative "confusion" at what's happening by high profile people (politicians, media, etc) irritating. As if they don't know. It's similar to how they use every euphemism for the word "lie", i.e. "misrepresentation", "mischaracterization", etc, rather than call a lie a lie.
Can’t wait for the pitchforks to rise up against the billionaires that created this mess.
Exiling Musk to the Moon or Mars (at his own cost) would be amusing.
These days I'm getting skeptical of these anti-billionaire quips. Sounds like a great segue to "all politicians are the same because they're in the billionaire's pocket," and now look at what that led us into.
I am waiting for all the "good billionaires" to step up and do something about it.
> From the Department of Education, Medicaid, the CDC, and more - Trump and Elon Musk are gutting the agencies and programs that protect Americans every single day.
https://bsky.app/profile/jbpritzker.bsky.social/post/3lisgh4...
By all means, after America kicks out Trump, feel free to discuss billionaires and the tyranny of capitalism and everything. Just not now.
if he weren't a billionaire we might not be in this situation at all
During one of these transitions, I lost access to my account and had to go through a full re-validation process.
When the VA added ID.me last year as 4th identity provider, and mandated its use by March 4th 2025, it felt like an admission that private-sector providers outperform government-built identity systems.
Internal VA IT resisted years of 18F and USDS-led attempts to refactor the underlying COBOL and MUMPS systems — progress is necessary, but this was not the team to deliver it.
Appreciate the ground truth, this is enough for someone to dig further in VA from a journalism perspective.
Has anyone agency completed replacing ID.me with Login.gov?
For that matter do any agencies that support both Login.gov and ID.me have a way for users to switch which one they use?
When the ssa.gov first started asking people who used username/password login to add one of Login.gov or ID.me, I picked ID.me because I already had an ID.me account for use with the IRS and did yet have a Login.gov account.
Since then I've gotten a Login.gov account and would prefer to use that with ssa.gov but there doesn't appear to be any way to set that up. There's nothing I can find in account settings to add another login method to an account.
Government employees reliably wanted to serve the American people. Their non-partisanship is the entire problem. Please please stop being naive about Trump and thinking they or DOGE is doing anything above the board.
This is happening in other countries as well. It seems like people have found some critical exploits in the old separation of powers social technology.
The US is a constitutional republic, not an Athenian democracy. The whole purpose of constitutions is to act as checks against base majoritarian impulses.
Everyone agrees civil servants can disobey “clearly unconstitutional orders.” But civil servants must work equally hard to execute the policies of the president regardless of party, right? Biden’s student loan forgiveness was based on thin but colorable legal interpretations that were ultimately found to be incorrect. Civil servants who worked to implement Biden’s policies must work just as hard to implement Trump’s executive order say effectuating mass deportations, correct?
We got rid of the spoils system because it fucking sucked.
Additionally, it looks like some of 18F’s public guides are still available (e.g. the “Derisking” guide, which is all about how to structure your IT projects to be less likely to fail spectacularly: https://guides.18f.gov/derisking/)
"""18F, a digital services unit inside the General Services Administration, has been completely laid off, according to an email I’ve seen. The email says that 18F was deemed “non-critical” and the decision was made with the “explicit” direction of the administration and GSA leadership."""
18f creates shared and open source government resources for technology efficiency, quality, and streamlining such as login.gov, cloud.gov, design packages, and free IRS tax filing
Previously, Elon Musk stated it has been "deleted": https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/02/musk-take...
We Europeans used to be able to gleefully report that we could file our taxes in minutes (which, in fact, it being 1 March, I did today), but you almost had it fixed.
Look, I know we Dutch aren't perfect. After all, that twat Rutte (our teflon coated former prime minister, currently secretary general of NATO) just told Zelenskyy, essentially, to apologize to the big kid bullying him, so there's that. Sorry about that (didn't vote for him though). But still, could you guys, like, stop your government from being run by ironically fascist muppets?
It’s funny to watch (probably) the same people in a tutorial-level situation who thought that if I’m a man/human/etc I should stand by their principles and just go and overthrow the dictator of the place I happen to live in.
Its even done automatically here in Austria for you. You just have to use a simple to use webapp if you want a tax refund for stuff like donations or tax-writoffable expanses.
I can’t access an archived version at the moment but if someone finds a link, it is an insightful read.
The new administration put a 28-year old tech-bro in charge of the parent service named Thomas Shedd from Tesla who started demanding root access to systems, firing probationary employees, and generally making the place worse (to say nothing of the partner projects that were abandoned with no notice). All in a few weeks. Somebody needs to be taken out to Chesterton's fence and whipped a few times. They have no idea about the value of what they just threw away.
That's so 2024.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Anil Dash - understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture
https://www.anildash.com//2025/01/04/DOGE-procurement-captur...
Already Trump has said the government will sell federal buildings and rent them instead.
If this continues, it will be very similar to how the kleptocrats took over Russia when the Soviet Union fell...
1. IRS itself created DirectFile. 18F merely provided some unquantifiable "support"
2. DirectFile is not shut down.
But, I saw on a documentary of FIFA corruption that one guy making millions in (I think NY) didn’t file taxes for over ten years, maybe twenty. I didn’t know it was possible until then.
Someone actually downvoted my comment above, can you believe? :-D
Total annual spending is around $6.75 trillion, of which only around $210 Billion is spent on federal payroll (not including military and postal workers).
All these cuts are intended to pay for tax cuts for Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires.
No, they’re just trying to wreck the government.
They were pretty open about it during the election.
Please. It’s an emergency. No one is coming to save us.
I find it pretty amazing that conservatives would be against Direct File since the government is forcing people to pay taxes shouldn't the way to pay those taxes not be another tax?
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/2/27/fy202...
If you went to the average person and asked whether they’d like to have services like Medicaid and SNAP cut so their senior management can pay less in taxes, they’d say no. If you demonize the concept of tax collection, however, then they might go for it because they’re reacting out of fear rather than thinking analytically.
Elimination of these “non-critical” agencies are nothing but a drop in the bucket compared to military spending and amounts tax cuts for billionaire parasites.
The author's adoption of Elon Musks's irritating "deleted" lingo is quite a vibe though. Not.
(The creativity has to do with asset games of fixed overhead that only amortizes on sizable fortunes. Poor people had better file their taxes correctly. If you work for a wage, you are poor for the purposes of this discussion.)
Our tax filling is free for decades, but lots of things can be made better.
https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/agenda/rules-as-code-rencontre...
Providing a free, digital service to collect taxes would then be considered a real threat.
I hear outright wrong arguments for why the USA has not moved to a modern filing system. The US tax system is NOT more complex than other countries. It's pretty middle of the road in complexity. Yes other countries are made up of states too. Yes there's a ton of exemptions in other countries.
It's yet another example of people taking an absurd "government is always less efficient than private" viewpoint that isn't even founded in any academic sense. It's a line broadcast by very rich people that want to siphon off profit and it's hard to do that when it's tax payer funded.
The argument I always hear from the right about this is that they worry that making taxes more efficient will allow them (and government action in general) to increase. The right is explicitly committed to reducing that, so it's not in their interest.
Same reason I've heard from people on the right about ending withholding. They think that if people had to cut an actual check to the government every year (or quarter) that people would realize how much it's costing them and be more amenable to reducing it.
Tax preparation is a huge industry in the US, they're going to fight tooth and nail to make sure the government doesn't cut into their business.
(this is the right wing argument, so to speak)
E.g: https://bsky.app/profile/jacobbogage.bsky.social/post/3ljc2o...
(I do not agree with it, it's just what I interpret the arguments to be)
>18F, the far left government wide computer office that was recently taken over by allies of @elonmusk, is also the same agency that built Elizabeth Warren's "Direct File" tax program.
>Direct File puts the government in charge of preparing peoples tax returns for them.
https://nitter.poast.org/alx/status/1886415751528972515?
Clearly, they think there is something malicious in having the federal government manage this service despite the fact that the result gets submitted....to the federal government anyway
Second, are we pretending it was a good system?
"Direct File is now open and available in 25 participating states." Wow. Half the country! That's _almost_ useful.
"You can't use Direct File if you had other types of income, such as gig economy, rental or business income." Again another baffling miss. Perhaps Senator Warren is willing to explain this personally?
"You can't use Direct File if you itemize deductions." What is even the point? Who would have wasted their time creating this boondoggle?
This is all lipservice. People who want to claim credit for a half working implementation. It's 2025. This is utterly embarrassing to the nation and I can't rightly determine what goes through the minds of Senators. They are so detached from the common American experience.
Perhaps you overestimate the fraction of taxpayers that itemize deductions, have gig/rental/business income?
Also, as the below commenter mentioned, states need to agree to be part of Direct File.
So, you know, a policy of making life better for average people.
Everything the DOGE undertakes is absolutely justified except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.
Whoa, I thought DOGE was just trying to root out waste and corruption to save America from its deficit, but now you tell me it's to cement right wing loyalty in the deep state?!
Those are two different things, at two different levels of abstraction. One of them is written in relatively plain language while the other is based off my own perceptions.
Can you give a few examples of the vocal extreme left-wing activism?
https://technical.ly/software-development/18f-using-slackbot...
https://github.com/18F/18f.gsa.gov/blob/master/_posts/2016-0...
In abstract, I support a smaller government. In practice, Chesterton’s Fence is an important principle to remember.
For example, the TSA is largely security theater. It would be a real win and legitimate cost savings (unemployment numbers aside) to dismantle the TSA and go back to metal detectors and simpler X-ray machines run by private companies in airports.
On the other hand, getting rid of USAID diminishes America’s stature in the world. Where do you think our power comes from? It’s not solely due to our nuclear arsenal.
These people are destroying the US government’s capabilities and influence for bizarre ideological reasons that are largely grounded in equally bizarre fictional views of the world. It’s going to be _more_ costly, devastatingly so, to US citizens both financially and otherwise in the short and long term.
They could have reduced the size of the government strategically and they could even have done it using this same illegal DOGE technique, but it would have required care and thought, grounded in actual reality.
In general, the number should be sufficient to meet legal obligations with a bit of lag as it goes up or down as agencies and programs come and go or find their scope changing. If the departments cannot meet their legal obligations because they have too few people (consider if tax return processing takes a year), then staffing probably needs to increase. If most people are idle or grossly underutilized, and the work doesn't have a high seasonal variance like tax processing, then the department or agency should be reduced in size. If the work is seasonal and requires low expertise, then hiring can be seasonal too.
It's not that complicated.
I don't think there is one fixed number. What is the point you are trying to make?
You wrote a lot of words saying very little.
The gains to be had are pointlessly minuscule in comparison to the federal budget and the actual cost to Americans is extreme.
I generally like my own government but I similarly think they've made some serious blunders at times. I don't think that's a huge contradiction (I'm not American FWIW...)
Anyone who trusts the "stated" mission of DOGE is a simple child who hasn't followed project 2025
Eliminating 18F does not fit into either of those categories.
I believe it was eliminated because it was staffed with people who almost exclusively opposed the current administration’s agenda. This as a political decision.
I’m trying to say that when I put myself in the position of Trump and his administration, I understand why 18F was cut, while simultaneously stating that my belief that 18F did good work and we’ll be worse off without them.
It's easy to read into his parroting of putin's talking points as deliberate, but I think it might just be "wannabe mobster" talk. If anything it's probably a little more nuanced than uncle vlad pulling the puppet strings, but they sure do seem awful friendly..
I think it's risky to ascribe any real agency or planning to trump. He's a very simple creature, and he wears his cravings and impulses on his sleeve. I'm much more worried about the thinking people operating in his chaotic wake.
I’m a firm believer in Hanlon’s Razor, and like you ascribe most of his and his followers’ actions to stupidity, but there’s clearly also some maliciousness.
But given what little we know about Putin and his cunning as an ex KGB officer and likely one of the richest men on the planet — I’m Willing to go into conspiracy land and speculate that he has the ability to puppet master folks and I wouldn’t be surprised that he got his hooks into Trump.
I don't know where their actual motives fall on the spectrum from being useful idiots stage-managed by social media bots and foreign agent handlers, to deliberately working for personal rewards in a new Chinese world order. But does it really matter?
Would it have helped to instead be told that you have poor comprehension skills and limited understanding of nuance?
Because that’s clearly the case if the above quote describes a conclusion that you reached.
People get the wrong idea because they want to. They're not turning into fascist racial and gender supremacists because someone was mean to them.
That's just who they were all along, and all it took was someone to come along and exploit that, and for others not to do enough about it.
We can argue til the cows come home how true it is or not, but it has played a role in what we're seeing unfold.
I don't know why the genuinely irrational, harmful things these people believe somehow means that I shouldn't be angry about immensely worthwhile and beneficial programs being shut down on the whim of an unelected billionaire.
Founded on stolen land is historically accurate AFAIK.
Slavery was practised in some regions but I don't remember being told that the US was founded on it.
I have been told that some sections are racist and sexist, especially in so-called "red" states. These beliefs seem to be whitewashed by right media using euphemisms like "all lives matter" or "pro-life".
But the nation itself was not painted as sexist or racist. Indeed, it was often described as mostly welcoming of all races and immigrants.
I don't think it's been called an illegitimate nation and don't see it as such. Rather manipulative and bullying. With bad healthcare and ruthless capitalism. But still a better values-based policeman than the USSR or Russia or China.
I see Trump admin as a higher level success of the racist sexist sections. It is destruction. But by the wrong section of society on the better sections. I see it not as restorative justice but as a path to worse future injustice.
Are those who talked about all this to blame for these consequences? Observing a phenomenon to analyze, criticize, and predict is something we all do. They were just the messengers of a phenomenon that was already in motion.
The phenomenon was irrational brainwashing using euphemisms and disinfo to whitewash unethical ideas, done by the US rightwing media and its corporate backers.
How exactly did a country that elected Obama twice fall to this brainwashing? How exactly did the liberal media fail to counterbalance the brainwashing? Perhaps you could excuse it for the first Trump presidency, but how exactly did all the smart, well-intentioned liberals fail to address the problem and stop it from happening again?
They failed to offer any hope to the people who were seduced by the dark side. Liberals failed. And to keep characterizing this failure as simply a "successful brainwashing by the other side" you completely remove any responsibility from the "good guys". And even worse, you completely remove any opportunity to learn from the situation so that the "good guys" can do something different next time. You've turned the entire left-wing political and media apparatus into hapless innocent victims of an evil empire, who were faultless in the face of an all-powerful right-wing brainwashing regime that had absolute power and was impossible to defeat. That's the most childish of assessments possible.
https://www.usglc.org/blog/americans-vastly-overestimate-u-s...
I mention this because there’s another side of this: taxes have been cut massively over the last half century, but a lot of people have not internalized what that means and simply assume that most of the money is going to something they don’t like. Cutting expenditures in any meaningful way means cutting the military, and the big social programs like Medicaid, SNAP, etc. People talk like we’re spending trillions on foreign and buying Reagan’s welfare queens new Cybertrucks but it’s really coming down to whether we want to spend less on the military, deal with our world-leading medical costs, or have rich people pay taxes at the same rates they paid around the turn of the century. The DOGE cuts work out to a few dollars per person total, and that’s before you factor in the significant new costs those cuts have incurred. It’s like looking at your personal budget and saying that the place to cut is your monthly movie date while ignoring rent, food, and car payments.
And this isn’t an interesting thought experiment. It’s the whole ballgame. This is the focus of right wing propaganda.
And also consider whether you will change your mind if the actual fraction is <<<1%.
There are better factions within the government doing truly remarkable things. Largely in DoD and integrated well with industry service providers; all of whom have ample gov't experience. If you can flip bureaucracy in DoD, you can flip it in the rest of gov. Beyond that, every agency should how it's own _18F_