I am maybe cynical, but I sincerely doubt there's no fraud or corruption in the government spend. Among trillions of dollars of money being spent by people who can easily siphon some off, etc.
Intuitively, there _must_ be some corruption.
I have zero faith that Musk is interested in finding real corruption. He seems to be more interested in changing budget allocations and calling the removed regulations / "woke" things corrupt.
I also think that corruption was within my acceptance tolerance of wastage. _Think_ is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but maybe that's all that really matters when it comes to something like this.
It's also a very hard line to draw, in some cases, since you can have the right things happening for the wrong reasons.
If a bill contains funding to help fix a main street in a city that was destroyed by a natural disaster, is that corruption?
What if there's 500 other destroyed main streets and that one got picked?
What if it was destroyed by decades of the local gov't neglecting it?
What if it was included because you directly bribed the person writing the bill?
What if it was included because you did some horse trading and gave them something they wanted in another bill you wrote?
The intent there is not to argue that defining corruption is impossible or futile, but that some people might reasonably argue different sides of whether something was corruption without either side obviously being morally bankrupt.
his cuts are max 0.1% of government outlays, yet the MAGAs are acting like it's slash and burn and worshipping at the idol of their cult of personality(ies?) . Anyway it's so obvious to anyway who steps back and turns off the political blinders. Just look at the sheer number of lies coming from Musk and Trump about the "savings" ,about millions of people over 100 getting social security checks, that the few million of probably waste of money USAID was spending is evidence to cut without any other proof the entire USAID organization, even though it's a $50 billion dollar outlay. It's so effing sad that people fall for this, and that our education system is such a failure on probably the most necessary modern skill other than literacy--critical thinking.
The insane thing of all this is that the 1% being cut is almost entirely in investments: money for research that drives economic growth, money for the USAID that provides the US influence around the world, cuts to CDC staff that could help mitigate expensive pandemics…the list goes on.
So not only is the DOGE affair not reducing the debt, it is setting the country up for less wealth and more expenses in the future.
> The $2 billion was used for the "decarbonization of homes" in low-income communities and paid for new household appliances, such as water heaters, induction stoves, solar panels, EV chargers, and weatherization, according to an April 2024 press release from Power Forward Communities.
Second, the claim that it was given to Stacey Abrams, from the LinkedIn post cited in the article:
> The coalition includes Rewiring America, Enterprise Community Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), United Way, and Habitat for Humanity International and today, we've applied for $9.5 billion — part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act — to directly fund residential decarbonization and electrification... The application is already supported by 321 partners who have pledged to decarbonize housing units across 46 states and every EPA region. It also includes 156 communities pledging to decarbonize housing units, particularly in low-income and disadvantaged communities, and rural and Tribal communities.
It appears that Stacey Abrams was in some way involved in organizing a coalition of existing nonprofits to apply for congressionally authorized grant money. There is no evidence I can see that she received any of the money or that any other impropriety was involved.
"$2 billion to Stacey Abrams" is a falsehood, even based on the content of the inflammatory Fox News article.
Intuitively, there _must_ be some corruption.
I have zero faith that Musk is interested in finding real corruption. He seems to be more interested in changing budget allocations and calling the removed regulations / "woke" things corrupt.
I also think that corruption was within my acceptance tolerance of wastage. _Think_ is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but maybe that's all that really matters when it comes to something like this.