Why? The Trump administration will do good and bad things, and I hope they succeed at the good things (e.g. cutting waste) and fail at the bad things (e.g. cutting important services).
Show them the American people are more than partisan hacks, and maybe they’ll start pretending they’re not partisan hacks.
Horseshit. They are not being honest about clearing government waste. Any talk of reducing government spending without significant cuts to the military is a fable.
Any minor good things they do will be completely overshadowed by the pilfering of the country for a select few.
I want what’s best for the country, specifically the people in it, and the world as a whole.
I hope that trump fails because his stated objectives are abhorrent to common decency, fiscal prudence, and functional governance.
What he calls waste I don’t believe for a second is actually waste. He has done nothing to earn my trust in that or any other regard, and so I don’t. Certainly not enough to trust them with something as broad as “waste”, if the fools who think that any scientific research they don’t see the point of is “waste” like so many of the examples have been.
Listening and judging a politician based on their words and actions isn’t being “partisan”. The electorate can’t even be “partisan hacks”, they’re the one’s whose interests and opinions are supposed to be being represented.
It’s not up to the American people to live up to the expectations of politicians. It’s literally a politicians entire job to live up to ours, and do things that benefit us. If the politicians goal is contrary to that end, I hope they fail.
I’m not gonna wish someone who wants to harm me, my family and my friends luck just so that they might not want to in the future. They need to earn my trust, not the other way around.
If they do nothing for four years and things remain exactly the same as today, I’ll count that as a win. If they yell “psych!” and actually do something good I’ll eat a hat.
What he calls waste I don’t believe for a second is actually waste
I don’t know what he considers waste, but there’s a ton of obvious waste, such as military suppliers (also goes for many government suppliers). I obviously haven’t pored over government financials, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we could find tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of waste by looking for things like this.
That said, what will probably end up happening is that they’ll use it to gut services that are politically inconvenient (e.g. CDC) instead of cutting actual waste. But I’ll hold out hope, because I literally can’t control it anyway and I prefer hope to despair.
The electorate can’t even be “partisan hacks”, they’re the one’s whose interests and opinions are supposed to be being represented.
I take it you haven’t spent much time on social media then… So many people have knee-jerk reactions to things due to their party affiliation instead of the actual facts. Positive things about Biden/Harris get posted on Lemmy and Reddit, and negative things tend to get ignored (inverse is true for Trump).
People like slanting their view of events when it fits their own internal narrative, instead of objectively looking at the facts. That is what I mean by the electorate being “partisan hacks.”
It’s not up to the American people to live up to the expectations of politicians
Sure, but it’s also up to the American people to inform politicians when they are or are not living up to expectations. If they only get negative feedback from those outside their party and positive feedback from those within it, they’ll continue doing things that benefit their party over society as a whole. If members of the opposition party actually applauded when they did something good, maybe they’d do more of that thing. But if all we get is negativity and obstructionism (and yes, that happens on both sides of the aisle), we’ll just get more partisan hackery.
I’m calling for a shift in the public discourse on social media toward constructive feedback instead of partisan nonsense. We can’t change what the big media orgs do, but we can choose what we do and who we support.
I don’t know what he considers waste, but there’s a ton of obvious waste, such as military suppliers
That’s likely an accounting quirk you linked: if they list 9 screws and a tank for $1M but don’t specify individual prices, in some situations they just approximate it by assuming they cost the average - so they assume the tank costs $100k and each screw costs $100k each.
I worked at a company that sold equipment to the military, and almost all of our military sales happened near the end of the year. They wanted their own SKU with guaranteed compatibility for their software, so we charged them extra for it (to be fair, maintaining compatibility did take extra dev work). They never seemed to push back on pricing, unlike our commercial customers who kept clamoring for lower SKUs with a lower cost.
Due to that experience, I highly doubt government agencies are getting anywhere near the best price. And why should they care? It’s not like they get a bonus for spending less, but they do risk cuts if they spend less. With no reason beyond obligation to keep costs down, I could absolutely believe each agency could cut about 10% by just being more careful about expenses, some more, some less. With yearly spending of ~$7T, $500B is actually rounding down from that estimate.
It’s not necessarily because of expensive toilets, but I do know companies overcharge the government because they can. We did it to an extent, and I think we were one of the better actors because my boss’s (the CEO) dream has always been to supply our military, and that’s basically the entire reason he created the company (we only sold commercially when military sales dried up due to spending cuts in that dept). We later hired a vet just to get our foot back in the door despite booming commercial sales.
Why? The Trump administration will do good and bad things, and I hope they succeed at the good things (e.g. cutting waste) and fail at the bad things (e.g. cutting important services).
Show them the American people are more than partisan hacks, and maybe they’ll start pretending they’re not partisan hacks.
Horseshit. They are not being honest about clearing government waste. Any talk of reducing government spending without significant cuts to the military is a fable.
Any minor good things they do will be completely overshadowed by the pilfering of the country for a select few.
I want what’s best for the country, specifically the people in it, and the world as a whole.
I hope that trump fails because his stated objectives are abhorrent to common decency, fiscal prudence, and functional governance.
What he calls waste I don’t believe for a second is actually waste. He has done nothing to earn my trust in that or any other regard, and so I don’t. Certainly not enough to trust them with something as broad as “waste”, if the fools who think that any scientific research they don’t see the point of is “waste” like so many of the examples have been.
Listening and judging a politician based on their words and actions isn’t being “partisan”. The electorate can’t even be “partisan hacks”, they’re the one’s whose interests and opinions are supposed to be being represented.
It’s not up to the American people to live up to the expectations of politicians. It’s literally a politicians entire job to live up to ours, and do things that benefit us. If the politicians goal is contrary to that end, I hope they fail.
I’m not gonna wish someone who wants to harm me, my family and my friends luck just so that they might not want to in the future. They need to earn my trust, not the other way around.
If they do nothing for four years and things remain exactly the same as today, I’ll count that as a win. If they yell “psych!” and actually do something good I’ll eat a hat.
I don’t know what he considers waste, but there’s a ton of obvious waste, such as military suppliers (also goes for many government suppliers). I obviously haven’t pored over government financials, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we could find tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of waste by looking for things like this.
That said, what will probably end up happening is that they’ll use it to gut services that are politically inconvenient (e.g. CDC) instead of cutting actual waste. But I’ll hold out hope, because I literally can’t control it anyway and I prefer hope to despair.
I take it you haven’t spent much time on social media then… So many people have knee-jerk reactions to things due to their party affiliation instead of the actual facts. Positive things about Biden/Harris get posted on Lemmy and Reddit, and negative things tend to get ignored (inverse is true for Trump).
People like slanting their view of events when it fits their own internal narrative, instead of objectively looking at the facts. That is what I mean by the electorate being “partisan hacks.”
Sure, but it’s also up to the American people to inform politicians when they are or are not living up to expectations. If they only get negative feedback from those outside their party and positive feedback from those within it, they’ll continue doing things that benefit their party over society as a whole. If members of the opposition party actually applauded when they did something good, maybe they’d do more of that thing. But if all we get is negativity and obstructionism (and yes, that happens on both sides of the aisle), we’ll just get more partisan hackery.
I’m calling for a shift in the public discourse on social media toward constructive feedback instead of partisan nonsense. We can’t change what the big media orgs do, but we can choose what we do and who we support.
That’s likely an accounting quirk you linked: if they list 9 screws and a tank for $1M but don’t specify individual prices, in some situations they just approximate it by assuming they cost the average - so they assume the tank costs $100k and each screw costs $100k each.
Perhaps.
I worked at a company that sold equipment to the military, and almost all of our military sales happened near the end of the year. They wanted their own SKU with guaranteed compatibility for their software, so we charged them extra for it (to be fair, maintaining compatibility did take extra dev work). They never seemed to push back on pricing, unlike our commercial customers who kept clamoring for lower SKUs with a lower cost.
Due to that experience, I highly doubt government agencies are getting anywhere near the best price. And why should they care? It’s not like they get a bonus for spending less, but they do risk cuts if they spend less. With no reason beyond obligation to keep costs down, I could absolutely believe each agency could cut about 10% by just being more careful about expenses, some more, some less. With yearly spending of ~$7T, $500B is actually rounding down from that estimate.
It’s not necessarily because of expensive toilets, but I do know companies overcharge the government because they can. We did it to an extent, and I think we were one of the better actors because my boss’s (the CEO) dream has always been to supply our military, and that’s basically the entire reason he created the company (we only sold commercially when military sales dried up due to spending cuts in that dept). We later hired a vet just to get our foot back in the door despite booming commercial sales.