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There is a long history of government “efficiency” initiatives spinning up, wasting unimaginable gobs of taxpayer money, and ending up with nothing usable to show for it. Elon mentioned from the Oval Office yesterday that the government stores and processes retirement records on paper inside an underground mine. Here is an old GAO report detailing past attempts to modernize the process. The theme of the piece is repeated abject failure.
You can’t waste time on planning, outreach, and meetings. You either do the thing, or the thing never gets done. Existing governmental organizations are not going to give you what you need to do the thing. You have to make them accept a fait accompli
If previous attempts failed, I assume it’s because they lacked a real focus and drive. What you highlight, I’m guessing b/c the link is broken, is more about a process change. Embarrassing to fail at fixing it for so long, but that’s at least a difficult problem. You’re making repairs to a moving vehicle.
In comparison, choosing which USAID programs are worthwhile and which aren’t should be fairly simple, at least at a surface level, and there currently an enormous push to make cuts and authority to do it. If it’s easy for them to shut down the whole thing, why wouldn’t it be similarly simple to cut off only parts of it?
Start by cutting and popularizing the obvious cases, I’m sure there’s easy instances where even the average Kamala voter would agree that it’s wasteful. Then get into the more ideological stuff. Continue extending as ideology and politics permit, until you’re left with useful programs. You could do this in a month or two, and I think it would actually change minds about the situation.
Thats what efficiency means to me, and the fact that the administration isn’t doing that leads me to that that either they aren’t very component or they really don’t care and just want to burn it all down.
Why didn't Alexander just unwind the Gordian Knot?
I guess he just wasn't competent and lacked real focus and drive.
Well if I’m not given specific examples I can’t exactly respond in specifics. But it does seem like the first time in my lifetime that government ‘efficiency’ is actually top of the president goals, so I do think it has real focus and drive unlike, say, a house report or something.
Unwinding the knot is impossible because it was designed to not be unwound. When the millionth competent person walks up to the Gordian Knot and fails to unwind it, it's not because they're all actually just dumb and incompetent, it's because the Gordian Knot is designed to not be unwound. It must be cut.
The federal worker retirement system is literally bureaucrats toiling in a mine underground and shuffling manila folders back and forth between caverns. It takes months for retirement paperwork to be done. There is a hard limit on the physical ability of the toiling bureaucrats to process retirement claims. Meanwhile, it takes the stroke of a key to send dozens of millions of dollars illegally to a Hotel operator to house illegals.
This is a purposefully designed Gordian Knot in order to make what Trump is doing impossible. It's hard to not notice that most critics actually don't want the Gordian Knot to be unwound and/or they don't like Trump and that was he's doing is at the very least moving the needle and the various criticisms about Trump not doing it "the right way" and whatever else are just soldiers in that war.
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Previous attempts failed because they were sabotaged with the exact same appeals to decorum and proper conduct and empathy and compassion and coincidence and fortune and anything else that would fucking stick, and all of it topped with a heaping helping of 'while I've never looked into it or even thought about it you probably can't do anything about it and therefore shouldn't even try' as you peddle here.
Yes there are better ways to do things. Considering what has already been uncovered, the amount of graft and waste and just plain corrupt and autocratic bullshit we have already learned has been done in the name of the American people ENTIRELY in the dark, I prefer "incompetence". At least we can see when they fuck up.
What previous attempts you referring to?
Also, what am I supposed to be peddling? I never said you shouldn’t look into it.
https://x.com/realdogeusa/status/1889885247787217374
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You might not be doing it deliberately, but you are pushing the same line and attitude mate. Even with the revelations of the circuitous and incestuous nest of payola and corruption that has USAID funding the media to push its propaganda, and working as a cut out for the CIA to overthrow democracies (then bringing those tactics back home) your assumption is that any previous failed attempts must have lacked focus and drive, not deliberate sabotage by the people who would lose their job if it succeeded. And on top of that, you also don't like the attempt with focus and drive.
And the previous attempts I am referring to are all of them. Trump's first term, the tea party movement, Buchanan's attempt to rein in the neo cons - they always have heaps of momentum at the start, but because they are asking bureaucrats to reduce bureaucracy they get stymied by malicious compliance and feigned incompetence at every turn. Meanwhile the media - these days especially - fixates on every error and ignores any positives, ginning up hysteria and painting a false view of the world because their own bottom line is in peril too.
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The operational strategy is that of Blitzkrieg: by forgoing careful, methodical advances in favor of moving as quickly as possible, you incur substantial tactical penalties, but this is more than made up for by disrupting the abilities of your opponents to respond effectively. If your advice were followed, it would give the defenders of USAID ample time to challenge every single cut to the maximum ability possible, likely with multiple consecutive injunctions, as well as reorganize and potentially reroute funding to prevent the next most likely targets. Then, when those programs are cut, even if they have not already been rerouted elsewhere already, they will be well-prepared to immediately mount a defense-in-depth. The effort would be halted in a quagmire of legal proceedings and public propaganda for so long with so many challenges that the public would despair of any change and the political support would evaporate. That's why the only effective strategy can possibly be to cut as much as possible as quickly as possible, then give back only where it is tactically prudent to do so.
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