2d ago

Is DOGE just making up numbers and hoping no one notices?

www.huffpost.com Is DOGE Just Making Up Numbers And Hoping No One Notices?

In its first public accounting, DOGE made huge, embarrassing errors — and still hasn’t acknowledged them.

Summary

DOGE initially claimed an $8 billion ICE contract reduction, but the actual figure was 1,000 times less at $8 million.

Despite correcting the ICE figure, DOGE did not adjust its overall $55 billion savings estimate, which lacks clear justification.

The ICE error wasn’t the only issue. CBS News found DOGE had triple-counted a $654.99 million savings on a single contract, overstating savings by as much as $1.96 billion.

Critics argue the errors remain unaddressed because “the propaganda of the numbers is important to them.”

58 comments

Just look at all the savings!

Yes! Next question

The problem is that idiots are eating up these numbers. I have a few low information coworkers who just hear the stories about DOGE saving all this tax money on "wasteful" programs on right wing news outlets and are convinced, full stop. Now, they parrot all the information they hear and are "glad that someone is finally doing something about government waste". They don't look into whether or not the numbers that Elon Musk spits out are truthful, let alone whether or not those tax dollars were actually having a positive impact.
We live in a post-truth society, and the Republicans have been abusing the people's willingness to give authority figured the benefit of the doubt. No amount of untruth can ruin their credibility, because all it takes is a tiny kernel of truth to make it seem like it wasn't actually a lie.
- Bro it annoys me to no end that people genuinely believe that the government never does audits. Like all this DOGE bullshit was already an ongoing part of the federal bureaucracy in place to ensure funds aren't misappropriated.
  Do people think there was zero accountability for the money??!?!!
  DOGE isn't saving shit it's a smokescreen to shift money around and enrich the unscrupulous assholes.
- Had one come up to me while I was working with chemicals excited about his doge check... then complained about owing taxes. Had to bite my tongue so hard not to tell him gullible was written on the ceiling

Worse than that, I suspect they don't care much if people notice.

Elon: The SSA database doesn't deduplicate.
DOGE: counts something three times
- doge deduplicates, but doesn’t detriplicate

Of course they are making up numbers. Noticing is irrelevant.
In both russian regimes you just declare what the truth is and everyone either agrees or is the enemy.
- Why is this even a question?
  Headline should read: "Musk, Trump, spouting BS numbers about budget, immigration, and literally everything else they do."
  Change the date, you can run the same story every day.

If I may suggest a more concise headline:
“Is Musk just making up- YES!!”
He has profited from it more than any person on the planet. Literally. The ones who are probably richer like Putin or Saudi royals at least stole something of value from their people.

Musk has been just making up numbers his entire life.
- Full self driving will be generally available next year, every year for the better part of a decade. Oh, and humans will be on Mars by the end of 2025. And don't forget Starship's incredible ~~300~~, ~~150~~, 50 ton payload.
  
  "Why should we build high speed rail when I can imagine something faster that's impossible to build?"

He's in the right administration for it. Basically straight out of a trump playbook, if you can call narcissism a playbook.

Answer: yes, and so is trumps. Does anyone actually listen to what come out of their mouths? They just pull numbers out of their asses. $10, 1 billion, tens of thousands, hundreds of millions, probably more, I mean it’s just all made up.
- Trump made up a number earlier today saying Zelenskyy's approval rating is "4%". The actual number is something like 56% iirc.
  
  Zelenskyy polls higher than Trump. Sadly, not by much, but still.
  
  I mean they are intellectually and morally bankrupt…. Didn’t they want to cut the spending budget by…. More than we actually spend? It’s wild
- I tend to listen to what come out off their mouth only because the sound of a fart always make me giggle

Plot twist: the new federal budget is just a google sheet

Wasn't the stated goal to eliminate 2 trillion in spending? So, he's destroyed the government's ability to function and compromised the security of the government's computer systems he's only reached 2.75% of his stated goal? But not actually?
I want off this ride
- No matter what, Musk will never ever eliminate 2 trillion in spending. I would bet every last dime I have that in 4 years he won't even come close to that number. Reason? First, corruption within the government does not want to eliminate spending because then it makes it harder for them to skim off the top. Trump just filled the government with lickspittles and lackwits who have no scruples that would prevent them from engaging in behavior like taking bribes or embezzling funds. Second, special interest groups, and most notably the largest special interest group of them all - defense contractors, will absolutely whip their bought-and-paid-for congressional representatives into shape if Musk even goes near the defense budget, which is the majority of where the wasted tax dollars go anyway.
  But it doesn't matter that he won't come close to that number, even when he cooks the books to make it looks like he's saving 8 billion and not 8 million, he'll just declare that any savings at all is still better than it was before even if he fell short of his laughably optimistic target. And the morons will eat it up and pat themselves on the back for gutting the government and exposing the nation's most sensitive payment information to teenaged hackers.
- I want off this ride
  Time for player 2 take action.

Probably. He’s only had access for a few weeks. There’s no way for him to know.

Yes numbers are just made up.
Yes everyone notices.
Laws don't apply to the rich.
Putin, Trump and musk have screwed America over. America is done.

I bet the Trumpers can't wait until they get their imaginary checks for their share of the imaginary DOGE savings.

No, their base will pick up whatever they say and run with it.

Yes. Safe assumption to start with.

The media needs to accept that internet trolls are running the U.S. government.
- Internet trolls are actually more organized than those clowns.
  
  Don't think for one second that they aren't achieving exactly what they set out to do. They are organized and have basically dismantled large sections of the government in the span of weeks.
  
  These people are literally internet trolls, of the 4Chan variety. One of them goes by the name "Big Balls." And their internet histories keep popping up to show how often they troll.
- Indeed, and it is frightening how persistent they are. I have blocked pretty much all their names and various connected terms by now, but my Lemmy feed still consists to a large extent of the nonsense and misinformation that these trolls spread on a daily basis to distract from their criminal activities.
  I can only imagine how much worse it must be on the mainstream platforms.
  There is simply no escaping the bullshit that spills out of the white house all over the world. Unfortunately, even less so because the local Nazis and the conservatives in my home country have long been using the same troll strategies that they have adopted from the US since they have proven effective in Europe as well.
  The continuous noise of these trolls really has nothing to do with politics or news. On the contrary, it's just vicious anti-politics and deliberate misinformation.

“Just”?
No. Not exactly.
First, they get a list of numbers from musk.
Then they need to filter out all the entries where he forgot to turn off the letters and symbols (look, he has trouble with the whole baby name thing, okay?)
Then they have to delete all the entries that are smaller than the numbers they used before.
Then they have to roll a custom d7, that’s transparent with a suspiciously phallic thing in the center (managers insist it’s a spacex falcon 9,)
This, if they can even read it, tells them which one from the bottom they use then….(it maybe takes a few tries because the knuckledraggers can't count past 2. They should just use a d2.)
Then they roll a d4 which tells them if it’s “million”, “billion”, “trillion” or “Siri, what comes after a trillion?”
- This reminds me of the "consult the chart" scene at the end of the Margaritaville episode of South Park.
  
  LOL
  I should have worked in a kazoo. ah well. missed opportunity.

Making up numbers has been Musk's modus operandi for well over a decade now.
- Sadly no longer updated, but still quite informative: https://elonmusk.today/

Yes.
Saved you the read.

I just personally saved 44 billion dollars by not buying twitter!

fELON just can't count

They're not just making up numbers. When someone found that the $8 billion number had come from some old document that got quickly corrected to $8 million, DOGE took down the $8 million document, tracked down the $8 billion document, and put that one up instead.

His pic there reminds of this fun site: https://blovish.github.io/kirkslider/

At this point can we all agree to smile and nod when he says he save a bazillion dollars if he fucks off?
- He won't fuck off. He and his billionaire friends want to collapse the United States so they have even more power.

Yes. It takes I infinity more energy to refute bullshit than it takes to lay it.

he must think he's still twitting-out bullshit to game the stock market and fool investors.

That’s one of Musk’s four core competencies.

Even at its most generous, the title of their findings keeps reading to me as "In Cost-Cutting Endeavor, DOGE, Outraged, Finds that Government is Spending Money"
I already had a coworker try to claim to me that Elon-chan found $100 billion dollars that government employees were racking up on government credit for personal expenses. I am fairly non argumentative in person but even I had to to tell him "that's bullshit" and explain he's fabricating excuses to get rid of people and replace them with stooges. Immediately tried to both-sides it and say it's just replacing one corruption with another.
Lying is certainly effective on our cowardly, ignorant populace.

Yes
- ...except for the "hoping no one notices" part. They are way past caring about that. Some people will believe them and won't be swayed by others calling bs

What's with the photo of Kathy Bates with a lesbian haircut?
Is she playing Elon Musk in a biopic of his life?

No, definitely not, nope nuh uhhhh

Unfortunately yes, but people do notice but they just brush it off and keep committing fraud. When there's no real punishment, why bother hiding? I mean posting about it does only so much when the large majority of people are content with the fascist takeover and their brainwashed media spoon-feeding them the shit. Without action, and this is not just protesting action, but real action, we are boned. Truthfully a lot of people just can't justify the risk to life for true action - be it family, friends or other loved ones that hold them back, and thus the machine keeps on chugging away

Ever head the phrase, "Trumped up"

Nobody that actually matters will notice

58 comments