The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by billfor on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:08PM (#42923939)

Totally appropriate. Everytime congress would ask USAID for information on their spending or audit what they were doing, they would just ignore the requests and say they were apolitical. They're not apolitical. The state department is by definition political, and responsible for the US interests. Totally reasonable to roll it under the state department where they will have to answer questions and not refuse audits. It's not going away it's just going to be accountable to the public that pays its budget (the US taxpayer).

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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by apical_dendrite on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:37PM (#42924955)

What is your source for this? USAID has an inspector general like every other government agency. Inspector generals are independent of the agency and part of their function is to perform audits. Congress has the same powers with regard to USAID as it has with any other agency. It can investigate, subpoena, etc. The senate must confirm nominees to lead the agency. USAID is subject to the same laws like FOIA as any other agency.

What does it even mean to say that the state department is by definition political? There are political appointees, but the overwhelming majority of the state department is career foreign service or career civil service, which are apolitical. The same is true for USAID.

None of what you're saying makes any sense or has any relation to reality.

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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by billfor on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:15PM (#42925376)

My source for what?

Marco Rubio (head of the state department) stated that they refused to audited. So did other congressmen. https://x.com/cspan/status/1886473339201360210

Do you disagree with what he says in the above video? They denied to be audited. The US in USAID stands for United States. Can we not ask what they spend the money on?

USAID was not created by congress. It was created by executive order 10973 by JFK. It can be undone by executive order. It's function can be rolled into the state department.

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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by and0 on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:32PM (#42925603)

I worked on USAID software for reporting costs and results and there were annual and quarterly briefings IIRC. It was kind of a whole thing.

Also, Congress codified it as an independent agency in 1998. So.. that last part isn't true either. This stuff isn't hard to look up.

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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by billfor on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:49PM (#42925791)

That is factually incorrect. Congress did not codify USAID as an independent agency in 1998. It reaffirmed and clarified its role. The foreign affairs reform and restructuring act of 1998 left USAID a separately managed and operationally independent agency UNDER THE AUTHORITY of the secretary of state. Congress did not explicitly codify it as fully independent.

This stuff isn't hard to look up, but feel free to send an explicit link explaining why they can spend money and never have to answer any questions about what they are spending it on. Some of the alleged things that they spent the money on are ridiculous (not going to repeat them here).

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