> When will the politicians hang?

What an appalling sentiment.

Why can't we speak figuratively anymore?

Why is Deloitte getting all the blame here? Why is the government not responsible for this fiasco? They know very well what Deloitte is and what their track record is.

> Why can't we speak figuratively anymore?

Because it’s less than a month since people stormed the US capital, literally erecting a guillotine and literally calling for politicians they disliked to be hanged. How is this hard for you to understand?

If you want to speak figuratively, then maybe don’t do it using exactly the same speech that other people are demonstrably using and acting upon literally.

EDIT: “gallows”. I meant “gallows”, not “guillotine”. That’s an embarrassing mistake which will now live in my comment history forever!

It's okay, the gallows was obviously fake as well. Loving the political downvotes btw, does this gallows, made with 2x4's, look like it would hold a body?

https://www.ourquadcities.com/news/national-news/capitol-mob...

I don't mean to offend, I don't mean to say that whoever is downvoting is unintelligent, but it clearly won't hold.

It being probably ineffective is not proof that it's fake. In fact, given who we're talking about I'd say that more or less proves that it was intended for use.

> people are demonstrably using and acting upon literally

Who did they hang?

The government isn't a person. Its lot of people. And presumably the government people involved in this case assumed Deloitte (a well known, large consulting company) was trustworthy and capable.

No doubt the Deloitte sales reps had much more experience swindling clients than the government managers had experience covering themselves against dodgy software agencies.

Yep, that's the problem with congress and parliamentary systems. They divide guilt over hundreds of people, so that citizens cannot plausibly vote anyone out.

How naive and stupid are these government people? They've been swindled like this multiple times before, it was on the national news with the Obamacare website.

They're supposed to be the best we have. They won a vote after all.

The US federal government employs over 4 million people. The employees at the CDC probably never heard of the problems with the obamacare website, let alone had the chance to learn any lessons from the people involved.

> They're supposed to be the best we have. They won a vote after all.

These mistakes aren't made by the politicians you elected. They're made by civic servants. Civic servants are employed from the pool of people who apply. And the belief that "only stupid people work in government" perpetuates this exact problem - because it ensures anyone who's capable of good work stays far away from work that could make the government more effective.

I think the right approach to problems like this is to route these decisions through dedicated government departments who are qualified to do IT work. The real question is why the US Digital Services (which knows what they're doing) wasn't contacted to create this website.

Well thanks for calling me out as to not knowing who the hell is responsible.

I agree with your approach... we need experts, who will NOT bid to one company, who will NOT accept one-sided terms.

These are fat government contracts we're talking about... the company should have to take 100% responsibility to deliver a working website at cost.

If companies mismanage and fail, they should go out of business, and another company can try... instead of us paying for it, incentivizing bad behavior.

> Well thanks for calling me out as to not knowing who the hell is responsible.

To be fair, you were also partially right. Government departments usually have elected representatives who are officially in charge, so there's someone the public can blame when things like this happen. At least thats true here in Australia and in the UK - I'm not totally sure if it works the same way in the US.

That said, the politicians usually don't get too involved in on-the-ground details like this. They have other things to worry about (like the next election). And the civil servants will usually understand the issues on the ground much better, because they spend their whole career dealing with them. (Unlike politicians who come and go.)

Blaming the politicians involved is like blaming the CEO when bugs happen in software. (Or in this case, when bugs from many years ago are discovered.) Technically yeah, they're ultimately responsible. But the actual mistake was the fault of the people on the ground.

The CEO analogy is a great one, I'll be stealing that, so thank you.

HN seems to have greatly differing opinions on where the responsibility lies when it comes to private businesses, ie: Volkswagen scandal, Uber scandal, et al

> Why can't we speak figuratively anymore?

Poe’s law is to blame. On the internet you can’t confidently tell when someone is being figurative.

Doesn't come off very figurative when a mob literally tried to hang our politicians not even a month ago.

It’s almost as if there’s some recent literal context that turns that comment - ordinarily just crass and pointless - into something more appalling

Well, we saw what "figurative" talk got us at the Capitol Building on the 6th. Calling it figurative is like Alex Jones claiming to be a "performance artist," i.e. a thin attempt to disguise the reality of the statement and to get away with saying inappropriate things.

(Plus, this is Hacker News, where discourse is intended to be civil rather than deliberately inflammatory.)

Thanks for the reminder to not be inflammatory... need more of this here. Cheers.

> Why can't we speak figuratively anymore?

Because a lot of people who hear that take it as literal encouragement. The events of Jan 6 are one example of how threats like that aren't simply rhetorical devices.

The real question is why are people incapable of regulating their own behaviour. It's convenient to say that talking about hanging politicians encourages this behaviour, and contributes to it

End of the day though -- why should my speech be held as responsible for another persons conduct?

Yeah, I just asked a question. When? I'm not asking anyone to do it. I don't really want anyone to do it. I'm comfortable. But I do suspect it may happen soon.

Unfortunately, personal responsibility has gone down the absolute shitter in the USA, hence why they are limiting our liberties - those only work in a society of nice people.

I take it as figurative language meaning roughly, when will politicians at last be held responsible?

I don’t see that as a particularly appalling sentiment.

Why does it have to be so stupidly strident? Paying giant consultants to build websites is a money sink, sure. Do you think this website was something Congress spent a year deliberating? Or a day? Stop this nonsense.

Oops, this comment will make things more clear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25975218

They awarded the contract without even getting a bid from anyone else. That's $44 million dollars. That's multiple lifetimes of salaries for the average joe. And they couldn't spend some time deliberating?

There's no accountability because tax money printer go brrr.

You want to kill people for a tiny bit of budget waste? Companies waste money all the time.

That's my money. Not a company's. To anyone who disagrees, how is this statement wrong?

It’s 0.00275% of the income tax paid annually ($44M/$1.6T)and an even smaller amount of the total tax. Assuming you’re an average taxpayer, it cost you about thirty one cents ($44M/143M people). If you’re a median taxpayer it’s even less.

This is a giant fuck up, but way out of perspective.

Even with all the other fuckups, the wasted portion of your taxes surely isn’t enough for heads to roll.

An organization dumb and bloated enough to pay $44M for a website (even one that works) is probably wasting more than half of its budget.

I love my government. I love my government. I love my government.

I want my 31 cents back.

That's just one fuckup though.

How many more fuckups does the government have?

It's roughly $0.015 of "your money." Put down the pitchfork and do something for your local community.

This is one example of thousands. Another commenter (seems to have deleted their comment) said it was about .001% of the federal budget. That is just insane.

I'd be willing to bet at least a quarter is avoidable waste.

No, it's 44 million of everyone's money.