Love to see it. ~45bn in less than 2 months. Even if savings only total of a few hundred billion it would have been worth it. DOGE literally costs next to nothing.

https://nypost.com/2025/02/13/us-news/epa-head-lee-zeldin-reveals-no-real-oversight-of-shocking-20-billion-waste-biden-administration-funneled-through-citibank/

Lee Zeldin, now in charge of the EPA, reveals that $20 billion in EPA funds were moved to a Citibank account with no oversight this past summer and distributed to 8 NGOs / private finance groups aligned with Democrats. Ex a native american financial assistance group with huge board of director list and seems to spend their money on speaking fees for the likes of Elizabeth Warren, and $2 billion to power forward communications which is an apparent shell business claiming assistance to renters/homeowners but lists no employees, but their only listed are a chair/vice chair who happens to be Ari Matusiak, an Obama white house staffer

Project Veritas had 2 months ago gotten an EPA official in one of their undercover stings saying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CblV6EwzKxg
"Now we're just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and, stop it all"
"It truly feels like we're on the Titanic, we're throwing gold bars off the edge."

The Biden administration had indeed announced their redirection of EPA funds last year and these various groups proudly claimed their pot of taxpayer money, but that money was moved outside of government control and into private financial institutions for distribution instead of being within the treasury system, and looks to be little more than plundering by the democrats on their way out of the door. But hey, at least they already got blanket pardons

Exactly. For years, we’ve heard about the absurd ways the government spends our money. Rand Paul calls them out every year, "$720,479 for wetland conservation projects for ducks in Mexico," "$32,596 on breakdancing. Yet no one ever seems to make a real effort to mitigate these wasteful projects. Until now. Of course the left is falling back on their favorite tactic: conspiracy theories / the sky is falling. Trump’s a Russian spy! Elon Musk is the shadow president!!!!!11 Ahhh!!!!

Lmao, why is there gambling right under it.

We are heading to dystopian societal collapse. 2077 is real. Some of the things they are focusing on like removing a creditor protection bureau, meanwhile gambling is plastered over everything these days.

Someone's gotta tackle that crap from video games up.


Hey look at what good DOGE is doing for everyone! Oh by the way here while we have you why don't you do some betting and engage in something that is harmfully plaguing everyone right now and costing Americans tons of money.

What a fucking joke.

This post was edited by SBD on Feb 14 2025 09:21am

Great to see the libs getting owned as president musk guts education, cancer research and foreign aid. Tax dollars for spacex to conduct research isn't a conflict of interest however.

How do our resident maggats feel about this?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-spacex-contracts-doge-b2697271.html

This post was edited by duffman316 on Feb 14 2025 11:59am

I think a lot of people here are happy to see tax dollars going towards getting our space program back on track, and not happy to see it paying for condoms for taliban fighters
I mean I'd be a little hypocritical if I spent decades saying we need to be spending the big bucks to get to Mars and then say the guy actually building rockets should be on the chopping block

$45bn saved so far, we feel great. SpaceX does valuable work for NASA as well as other contractors. If you want to show us how other contractors' funding was cut yet SpaceX was not/or increased unjustifiably feel free to do so, but these trash tier articles don't sway anyone.

I think in my mind I'd categorize spending into buckets like

• Things I want taxpayer funds to go towards
  
• Programs I don't care about but don't bother me
  
• Pork barrel spending used to grease the wheels I can cynically live with
  
• Wasteful misguided programs of a bureaucracy run amok that need to be ended
  
• Overt graft and corruption, politicians stuffing their allies pockets for no public benefit

Where does SpaceX fall on that chart? Does Elon Musk really profiteer off being in government, and is the Space program providing us tangible benefit? I recognize the counterargument, I just rebuke it. We should be doing everything to advance humanity to its next tier of civilization, not ballooning our population on one rock. SpaceX is a proven capable entity that is eclipsing NASA's output, and employs 15000 people almost all Americans. Now take the inverse example. $4 million was spent by USAID to fund gender issue mobile video games in Kenya, and the developer happens to be the unqualified daughter of a well connected big bank president, on her first project with a studio that's never made a game before. Funded entirely by taxpayers. I maintain that this is a clear cut example of graft with no public benefit, not even attempting to create a positive good for Americans in the short or long term, paying kickbacks to family of political allies.

There are far better programs and initiatives money could be flowing to. Will 'conquering Mars' really be in benefit of Americans (or humanity)?

My opinion really boils down to: Space exploration (at a multi-planet level) is of critical importance, at the right time. Humanity is not at that point and it would be at the expense of many less fortunate.

Somewhat off topic, but what do you reckon happens to earth and its less fortunate inhabitants once millionaires resettle in a brand new rock?

I don't think this is reason enough to halt space programs, but earth becoming dystopian wastelands is a real possibility. I don't think any current-day solutions (global regulations, wealth redistribution, sustainable development, ethical innovation) will solve this problem and hopefully AGI will have overtaken us by then.

What a commen sense approach to this. You can be for doge clearing up wasteful DEI programs or gov't positions and still think that hey maybe that large of spending into space isn't the best at this time and also see there's quite an apparent conflict of interest with Elon.

That thought process though does not include gagging on billionaire dick though so it won't be well liked here.

This post was edited by SBD on Feb 14 2025 01:51pm