[fncypants]

Do not both sides any of this. One cannot claim that both sides present misinformation and then not acknowledge that one side is doing so intentionally and the other is not.

Elon tweeted that there was a lot of 150-year-old recipients. That's all he said. [1] So there was a rush to point out why, if this 150 year old number is the only information he's providing of fraud, it is not a prima facie case of fraud. That was a good faith response to a bad faith, selective release of information.

[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/musk-claims-150-year-ol...

So then Musk provides more data, but again, not enough data to provide all the context. What he leaves out is that there have been multiple, prior good faith attempts to investigate these data entries, identify whether there's any fraud, and address any problems. This was the work of inspectors general whose job is to work in good faith to try to resolve these issues.

There is one side acting only in bad faith. If they were acting in good faith, they would raise these issues through legal channels (inspectors general) and then have an orderly, legal process to address them. That is how it has always been done, for a reason. They are not operating legally because they know that what they are doing is in bad faith and would be found out as such.

What we are witnessing is a dismantling of the rule of law. It's important to recognize that and to not to be complicit in it.

[Amezarak]

You're replying to a thread on an article about how someone just made up the 1875 thing to own Elon.

There's definitely a "both sides" problem here. Many more commenters are making totally unfounded assertions about how these systems actually work for the same reason.

You yourself are pontificating about the inspector general's report at a level of expertise beyond what you likely have. I have some familiarity with IGs, though not in the SSA. It has been eye-opening to see people crawling out of the woodwork to talk about their role, their effectiveness, their "good faith attempts", etc. They don't actually know any of this: it's just ammo they found online to "get" Musk since the controversy started.

Why is it so hard to just suspend judgement about these claims, rather than attack them with little basis? Or at least go after it for solid philosophical reasons? I can't understand why the level of discourse on this subject on Hacker News, of all places, is so bad.

[mrguyorama]

>You're replying to a thread on an article about how someone just made up the 1875 thing to own Elon.

That commenter on DailyKos wasn't put in charge of dismantling parts of the government.

Musk Was.

[ModernMech]

The way Musk has acted in the past 4 weeks has caused people here to feel it's not in good faith. Suspending judgement when people are lying to your face is a recipe for getting the wool pulled over your eyes. We have ample reason to think Musk isn't acting in good faith, mainly because of the drive-by posting he is doing and the way he's not working with Congress. He wants to make incredible claims without credible evidence... which just makes his claims incredible.

If Musk were doing what FDR did 100 years ago -- affecting major change by working through Congress -- there would be a different response.

[Amezarak]

I don't approve of Musk for varying reasons, but FDR's relationship with Congress was a little more complicated than that. If anything, Musk and Trump have not yet come close to Roosevelt's excesses, which are now thankfully mostly forgotten and not used as examples. Roosevelt did not so much as "work" with Congress as directly control it, particularly in his first term. Even in his later terms, he directly embedded his executive staff in Congressional committees. He also had no problem ignoring legislation that did not suit him, and had no problem using the FBI and IRS to harass and destroy his political enemies, which helped cooperation quite a bit. Today we find even a hint of this unacceptable. (We've also now mostly forgotten FDR's war against the media.)

From the distance of almost 100 years, it's difficult to see that FDR was an extreme radical when it came to executive power and probably the most powerful US President of all time. It's a good thing he was mostly a good one too.

> We have ample reason to think Musk isn't acting in good faith, mainly because of the drive-by posting he is doing and the way he's not working with Congress.

I don't think the "drive-by posting" or not working with Congress indicate anything of the kind. Congress has for decades done it's best to do absolutely nothing. Even when just a few years ago they busted the CIA spying on Congress, Congress did nothing. Congress has passed basically no major legislation since the ACA (itself pathetically watered down and passed narrowly) except in extremis. The best you get is one party or another grandstanding in committees about some nakedly partisan "investigation." But if they don't even do anything about a level of corruption and abuse that includes spying on Congress itself, why on earth do you think they'd care about low-to-mid-level fraud/waste?

As for drive-by posting, I think we all know Musk is a fundamentally unserious person, not a deep thinker, and prone to exaggeration or outright lying. That doesn't mean that DOGE personnel aren't looking into and finding things that perhaps we'd be better off without and which the executive has the legitimate power to correct or terminate. I don't see any problem with looking more deeply into Social Security payments. As I said in another post, we've had years of reporting on mass SSDI fraud, and other countries do have small amounts of pensioner fraud. Probably we have some too, and this strange belief that "the IG and Congress would have discovered any such problems" seems bizarrely naive to many of us who have worked in the government.

At any rate if Musk is making false claims, then making our own false claims does not help us or any good cause in any way. Lying because someone else is lying does not make anything better. Almost as bad is silly tendentious "well, actuallys" that dress up as a "fact check" and word everything very carefully as if Musk is totally wrong about something when the substance is correct. Consider the Reuters situation. Here's what Musk tweeted:

> “Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception,’” Musk tweeted the night before. “That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They’re a total scam. Just wow.”

Here's an example of a fact check: https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2025/02/fact-check-u-s-go...

The entire story is written as if Musk and Trump are deranged conspiracy theorists...when in fact what Musk tweeted was correct. Yes, OK, actually "Thomson Reuters Special Services" was the one with the contract, not "Reuters", and yeah sure they're all actually ultimately part of the same organization, they own Reuters, but there's a firewall between them, we promise, so...and yeah, it was to study "large scale deception" and "social engineering defense" but actually it's a good thing and-

Long story short, Reuters did have some dumb consulting contract with the government regarding social engineering "defense", which likely was a huge waste of money. Of course, it also wouldn't be surprising if the government was not only paying for "defense" (just as the Department of Defense was not "defending" American from Iraq) but Musk didn't make that claim in the Tweet.

This is just an example. I find it just as bad as what Musk does. If we're trying to educate people telling our own lies and bending the truth to fit our narrative doesn't help anything.

[ModernMech]

> FDR's relationship with Congress was a little more complicated than that. If anything, Musk and Trump have not yet come close to Roosevelt's excesses

Yeah, what I'm saying is that going through Congress such as FDR did is what would make those actions defensible. If Congress wants to be compliant, that's their prerogative. This Congress wants to be compliant, they can pass laws to do what they are.

So if Musk were doing the same as FDR, I would have much less of an objection, and not much of a Constitutional grounds to stand on. I think they aim to wield executive power, but I think trying to go around Congress is what tips the scales from "radical view of executive power" to "dictatorial view of executive power".

> Congress has for decades done it's best to do absolutely nothing.

This is false, Congress has done N things. Some guys have proclaimed the N things are insufficient, and they demand a new thing be done. Now we are doing N+1 things. Are they working? Who knows; we can't tell because they won't post sufficient details.

We do know what Congress has done is not 0% effective - oversight, whistleblowers, IGs have identified areas of waste/fraud/abuse. Of course there's room for improvement by adding other areas of feedback and DOGE could have been that, but they won't/can't be by going around Congress.

> That doesn't mean that DOGE personnel aren't looking into and finding things that perhaps we'd be better off without and which the executive has the legitimate power to correct or terminate.

I have found in my life that "the fish rots from the head" is often true. A person of such low character surrounds himself with people of similar or lower character, because they lack the temerity to say no to him. Given the recent reports on the people who are in DOGE, they seem to be DEI hires, in that they seem to have been hired due to their proximity to Musk-owned companies rather than their ability to audit federal programs.

> This is just an example.

It's a great example of what I'm talking about when I said "drive by posting". Why is it up to leadstories.com to bring me this very relevant context about the program? Why didn't Musk describe the nature of the program in his initial tweet?

To me this tweet is implying that the money was spent for a social engineering program that caused large scale social disruption. Is that a fair reading, or do you disagree with that? Either way, it seems like many other people interpreted it that way with my reading and became alarmed, hence the reaction.

But when you look at the added context, it becomes clear this program is about preventing large scale social disruption via social media, which seems to me like a good thing. They are apparently paying Reuters for some sort of SaaS tool. I don't know what it does but if it's waste or fraud Musk could explain exactly why/how. But he doesn't, he just tweets his indignation at some perceived abuse and that's the end of it. How is this any different or going to produce better results than "grandstanding in committees about some nakedly partisan investigation".

> The entire story is written as if Musk and Trump are deranged conspiracy theorists

Can you point out where you feel the article characterizes Musk in this way? To me, the article reads as a recitation of factual statements. Every claim is backed by supporting evidence. They describe Musk in neutral and factual terms. They accurately depict his words. It only mentions Trump in passing by way of mentioning his first term. Are you claiming it has left out factual information to slant a narrative? Or that the information is presented in a misleading way?

So where does that leave us? Is the program waste/fraud? No idea, DOGE hasn't provided enough information enough though he has it all.