[ben_w]

> $191k USAGM broadcasting contract for “broadcast operations and maintenance in Ethiopia, Africa”

USAGM's mission is to promote the USA's diplomatic interests in parts of the world with little or no press freedom. Whole thing was cut by executive order of Trump to the maximum extent possible.

Because of that order, it's not even a "not specialised" role, it's not a role.

If USAGM should be cut or not, should have been the choice of congress rather than the executive, but that's a different question entirely.

> Botswana MI curriculum

What's "MI"? Mission-Influenced? That sounds like a plausible amount to spend on a curriculum about Botswana for the benefit of the State Department, let alone in Botswana on anything.

And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists.

[qcnguy]

> And if it is in Botswana, you have to then actually ask "what is this mission, and is this in the interests of the USA taxpayer?", which needs specialists.

Specialists in what? Asking whether something is in the interests of the taxpayer? Data analysis? If so, then such specialists would have to be found in an independent organization without conflicts of interest for any specific mission, aligned with the interests of the taxpayer, and they would need to be recruited from the part of the political spectrum that cares about waste in government. In other words, you'd need a group that looks like DOGE.

[ben_w]

> Asking whether something is in the interests of the taxpayer?

Yes.

Because they need to:

(1) understand the answer, and not mistake terms of art for things they sound like to normal people. For example, to use Musk's ideology, this would be things like mistaking a study in "transgenic rats" or "trans fatty acids" to be anything about gender.

In the case of `$1.3M State Dept. education contract for “Botswana MI curriculum”`, you've still not said if you recon this is in or about Botswana, and you've still not said what "MI" is, you've taken something that you think "obviously" sounds bad (or why else would you have quoted it?) without having thought too hard. I tried searching, the sidebar was an AI summary of (and linking to) this thread that made claims not supported by anything anyone here has actually said, and only one of the four(!) real links even got me a page with the string "Botswana MI curriculum" on them, which linked to X.com which also didn't explain what that was.

What you've done here is treat it as an applause light, not considered anything about taxpayer interests. Applause lights can be done by an AI, taxpayer interests cannot.

(2) for all items including those that sound good when you do know what they mean, be able to tell if they actually did what they said they did rather than pocket the money.

(3) even when they did the thing, determine if they're any good at doing the thing or if they're a bunch of well-meaning idiots.

For (2) and (3), I'm mainly thinking of the UK with this, with PPE bought for the pandemic that wasn't fit for purpose.

(4) have security clearance to know about clandestine missions, so that you don't cut the expenses which are deliberately faked by the government on purpose with a bland an/or politically correct title so nobody complains about the clandestine mission, despite the money being spend on absolutely nothing at all like whatever the line-item says it was, once what is and isn't "politically correct" gets inverted.

> In other words, you'd need a group that looks like DOGE.

No, you'd get something a lot more competent. And boring.