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Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by nessbot on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @11:01AM (#42934103)
And what they are doing now is "skipping the movies and spending it on weed." Shutting down USAID, even if eventually Rubio came in and rolled that back is what you just described. That was an office created by congress.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by bbarnett on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @04:53PM (#42939403)
No, what they're doing is skipping the movie, saving up money, hiring a lawyer, so mom loses the right to say "don't spend it on weed".
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by abracadaniel on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @05:47PM (#42940198)
A better analogy might be that mom bought groceries for the starving family down the road with a check and you cancelled the check, stole the checkbook, and changed the bank account password.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @11:10PM (#42943669)
But clearly: did not spend it. Did not misappropriate it. That is much different.

To me it’s more like mom gave me money to pay the rent but my landlord is likely violating laws so in the meantime I am putting the rent in escrow while we sort out the facts.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by 9dev on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @02:08AM (#42944949)
But that wasn’t your decision to make. Maybe your picture of the landlord is incomplete, and you act as the hot-headed, short-sighted teenager your are, instead of sitting down with mom to discuss the situation.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @02:12AM (#42944980)
Disagree. You are allowed to have agency. Mom would be proud of you for not wasting her money. If there is no crime, the landlord will be made whole. Maybe with a little interest at the prevailing rate.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by 9dev on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @02:48AM (#42945298)
And that's where the analogy falls apart, because yes, maybe it's okay for a teenager to have an agency, but billionaire friends of the president are not, in fact, allowed to have an agency on government spending! People who waltz in and have no fucking clue of how things work generally are not allowed to have an agency!

Remember when Musk built the submarine to save the kids in the cave, was absolutely useless, even actively obstructed others from saving them, and finally resorted to denigrate the diver saving them as a pedophile? That's exactly the same thing he is doing right now.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @02:55AM (#42945377)
He’s not a “billionaire friend” in this role. He was asked by the president to do a job and he’s doing it. You expect the president to do everything by himself? Trump likes businessmen. Steve Mnuchin was another “billionaire friend” and it’s hard find fault in his tenure running treasury.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:02AM (#42945907)
>He’s not a “billionaire friend” in this role.

Yes he is.

> He was asked by the president to do a job and he’s doing it.

1. And he did it in an illegal way, yes. If you wanna go back to Mom, you can go to the grocery but you cannot throw a bank heist and lock all employees out of the store so you can grab some bread

2. He doesn't have access to the store. Mom sent him to Costo without her card. You can't just storm into Costco. Go back to mom and get her card, if possible.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:17AM (#42946017)
Is it illegal? My understanding is that paused appropriations are tied to the fiscal year. That’s September 30th. Are you sure they are not? Or are you just being an ideologue?

Nobody stormed anything. They just filed a dispute with their credit card company. Costco will get the funds if they win the dispute. If there is malfeasance at Costco don’t you want to know? What exactly are you afraid of?

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by UncleMeat on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @08:59AM (#42948556)
You can disagree all you want. Our laws have a say.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:00AM (#42945889)
>but my landlord is likely violating laws

Which is stupid because you Uncle Orange has access to the spending records.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:28AM (#42946102)
I don’t have an uncle orange. You must have me confused with somebody else.
Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @03:58AM (#42945874)
Meanwhile the laywer refuses because the constitution says that you cannot "save up money" that "your mom" allocated. Let alone choose to spend it on a lawyer instead of groceries. You need to argue with Mom about lawyer Money next quarter.

Man, March is going to be bloody.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @11:07PM (#42943648)
Remains to be seen.

For now, they are just pausing payments.

If they find serious issues they can likely go to congress and have them canceled outright. If not, they need to distribute the funds during the fiscal year.

I don’t understand the pearl clutching. The government shuts down often due to spending issues. Payments pause when this happens. Moreover, everybody has known for decades that nobody is reading these 50,000 page appropriations bills.

I’m willing to give musk and his guys some time to sort this out.

The president has asked them to do this. If they go against his wishes there is no reason they will not be thrown under the bus. If he pardons them for obvious malfeasance it will make big political waves and likely change the outcome of the midterm elections, where a congress could begin impeachment.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @03:56AM (#42945861)
>If they find serious issues they can likely go to congress and have them canceled outright

uhh, no they can't. Those are also government elected representatives. Checks and balances. To "cancel congress", you need the courts to charge and convict them. You're going to find it very hard to do that from treasury records alone (AKA, how the executive branch spends the money allocated).

>I don’t understand the pearl clutching. The government shuts down often due to spending issues.

With that dismissal, you're not opening yourself up to understanding. Maybe there's wrongdoing; The answer isn't to charge into the treasury and hack it.

That's the stupid part: Musk doesn't need to. He's clearly not TSI/TS clearance level, so he just needs trump to go in and look. Or have trump hire someone with that clearance to look in on his orders. Remember, this is the executive branch; Trump has all access powers here (within reason).

>I’m willing to give musk and his guys some time to sort this out.

I'm not. I didn't vote for him. You didn't. He was not approved by Senate, as is executive apointee tradition. He does not have clearance. "Asking" isn't enough. Where's this willingness coming from? Even if you just like the guy, you really want the man who laid off 80% of his staff to handle your money?

>If they go against his wishes there is no reason they will not be thrown under the bus

I can think of 8 or 9 figures why he wouldn't.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by encoderer on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:20AM (#42946045)
You are just wrong here. You misread my comment. The “them” in my 3rd paragraph refers to the paused payments. If it turns out that what congress appropriated funds for is actually fraud, congress will want to know, and can amend that spending retroactive to this fiscal year. How is this controversial to you?

Elon Musk was hand picked by the president to do this job. Clearly you do not like the president nor Elon but that is a personal view not held by a majority of voters in the last election.

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by Izkata on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @11:16AM (#42950673)
> He's clearly not TSI/TS clearance level

He might be due to SpaceX government contracts.

Edit: someone linked below confirmation he does have top secret clearance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942848

Re:Payments Crisis of 2025: Doge Have "Read-Write" Access to... by UncleMeat on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @08:57AM (#42948543)
They are not just pausing payments. Huge portions of USAID is being fired. That's not something you can just boot back up over a weekend.