Government Waste and Corruption thread

[Marauder06]

This is a LOT of money from a LOT of peoples' ricebowls.

People are going to start getting murdered over this.

 

[Box]

My thoughts

Be nice to know who authorized the spending, or which politician put it in the budget.

My thoughts always return to Nancy Pelosi and her ridiculous comment on oBamaKare
"gotta pass it to find out whats in it"

The inhabitants of permanent DC are so busy cheating and stealing that their left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I'll tell you who puts this kind of shit in the budget...
...a staffer

These criminals aren't writing legislation - they proselytize, throw in a few board room cliches, and then wink at their aide and say "write that up so we can get it signed"

How many of you ever worked on a general staff and WATCHED a flag officer build their own briefing slides?
None of you.
Because flag officers dont build slides.
The '3 builds them
or the '5 builds them
or the PAO builds them
or the JAG
or someone from the commanders action group
...but the boss don't build slides
...neither do corrupt government officials

BUTBUTBUTBUTBUT...
...don't they at least read them before they sign them ???

No.
No they don't.
That's why the "autopen" is such a popular office machine.

Then the staffer makes sure that the version they put under the autopen results in a campaign donation so the primary doesn't ask questions. As long as it doesn't interrupt their taxpayer funded three martini lunch, all is good in the world.

 

[AWP]

This is a LOT of money from a LOT of peoples' ricebowls.

People are going to start getting murdered over this.

Hillary about to go into triple digits.

 

[Box]

This is a LOT of money from a LOT of peoples' ricebowls.

People are going to start getting murdered over this.

Hillary about to go into triple digits.

Indeed - it won't be long until the Arkancide starts.

 

[R.Caerbannog]

This is a LOT of money from a LOT of peoples' ricebowls.

People are going to start getting murdered over this.

Indeed - it won't be long until the Arkancide starts.

Where are they gonna get the money? Thought DOGE has access to the treasury accounts. Killing people isn't going stop all the data that's leaked out either. Thanks to inflation, hard untraceable assets (like cash) are worth less than normal. Not to mention that banking transactions can be tracked now.

 

[R.Caerbannog]

Interesting. A Clinton appointee is trying to gum up the works.

Fed judge limits DOGE access to Treasury Dept. payment records as member of Musk’s team quits over offensive posts

 

[Box]

The real money is off shore - if one was to believe the "Panama Papers" hoax...

 

[R.Caerbannog]

The real money is off shore - if one was to believe the "Panama Papers" hoax...

Even if the money is in overseas banks, I thought we got real good at pressuring financial institutions to hold/freeze transactions. Due to chasing after Jihadi funding. The only financial institutions that can resist are Chinese, Russian, Iranian. Which only a fool would put cash in.

The other thing is the status of hard assets the stolen money ultimately went into. Things like art, real estate, etc. I dunno if these people can quickly divest themselves of these assets, turn them into cash, and access the financial mechanisms to pay for their armies of useful idiots. Reason I mention that, is that the "Tides Foundation" was recently implicated in the BLM riots of 2019. That org was being funded through USAID.

So as access to monetary distribution networks fail I wonder how these people can carry out operations. It's not like these people to have Scrooge McDuck-ian rooms with cash stacked to the ceiling. Unless they are very dumb or paranoid. Which would make it even easier to track them.

 

[compforce]

In CBO’s estimation, 49 percent of authorizations identified for this report expired at least a decade ago; the oldest expired in 1980. More than 70 percent of such authorizations were for specified amounts of annual funding that, when combined, totaled $101 billion for the year when they were last in effect. The remainder authorized appropriations of indefinite amounts.

The $516 billion in funding for fiscal year 2024 for which authorizations have expired can be attributed to 491 expired authorizations contained in 177 laws out of all 304 laws with expired authorizations. Of that total, $395 billion is associated with specified authorizations and $121 billion with indefinite authorizations. Nearly two-thirds ($320 billion) of that $516 billion was provided for activities whose authorizations expired more than a decade ago.

Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2024

So half a trillion dollars in funding not authorized in 2024 according to the CBO. I'd assume, although I can't substantiate it, that we've been paying those unauthorized expenses every year since they expired... That's TRILLIONS of dollars in unauthorized spending coming straight out of taxpayer pockets. This isn't a political statement, these span multiple administrations from both parties. Sounds like a big slush fund to me...

 

[R.Caerbannog]

Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2024

So half a trillion dollars in funding not authorized in 2024 according to the CBO. I'd assume, although I can't substantiate it, that we've been paying those unauthorized expenses every year since they expired... That's TRILLIONS of dollars in unauthorized spending coming straight out of taxpayer pockets. This isn't a political statement, these span multiple administrations from both parties. Sounds like a big slush fund to me...

Is there a way to get the data for the contracts that were awarded?

Wouldn't it be crazy if we found enough fraud to pay off our deficit.

 

[R.Caerbannog]

Also, found this little gem. It was scrubbed from the internet.

Former FBI Agent and Pentagon Senior Advisor Outed by O'Keefe Media Group was Allegedly Filmed by 'Predator DC' in November 2021 at a 15 Year-old Girl's 'Home' | The Gateway Pundit | by Brian Lupo

Dude, was a "spy hunter".

https://twitter.com/x/status/1879576876974219281

 

[AWP]

Is there a way to get the data for the contracts that were awarded?

Wouldn't it be crazy if we found enough fraud to pay off our deficit.

As a guy who spent hours every 2-3 years going into the FBI's violent crime data...most likely. I won't speak for financial info, but the VICAP database has limitations because state and local organizations aren't required to report data. I admit money and crime aren't the same when it comes to reporting, but I think answers are out there, if incomplete.

In cybersecurity we talk about the fallacy of "security through obscurity" and my personal stance is a lot of financial data follows the same thought.

Ass to my elbow answer: it's out there, but it will take some work.

 

[R.Caerbannog]

As a guy who spent hours every 2-3 years going into the FBI's violent crime data...most likely. I won't speak for financial info, but the VICAP database has limitations because state and local organizations aren't required to report data. I admit money and crime aren't the same when it comes to reporting, but I think answers are out there, if incomplete.

In cybersecurity we talk about the fallacy of "security through obscurity" and my personal stance is a lot of financial data follows the same thought.

Ass to my elbow answer: it's out there, but it will take some work.

Thank you. That is regrettable, but makes perfect sense. Security through obfuscation. Though, I bet AI will make that nut much easier to crack.

 

[R.Caerbannog]

You guys ever wonder how we got the freak show in DC? Turns out that the department DOGE was built from... was an Obama initiative that staffed sexual degenerates, perverts, and moonbats.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-do...arack-obama-laid-the-groundwork-for-elon-musk

Spoiler: Story in Text

How Barack Obama Laid The Groundwork For Elon Musk​

USDS forms a case study in why Trump’s second term is being approached with a more skeptical and hard-knuckled approach.

---

By Luke Rosiak

7 min. read
View original

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Democrats thought they could shutter the Department of Government Efficiency before it even started, filing lawsuits that said its anticipated structure as an outside advisory committee was illegal. But when Inauguration Day rolled around, the reality was, for them, much worse: DOGE would be an official entity with hundreds of paid staff, authorized to hire outsiders with little vetting, and able to engage in openly ideological activity.

And Democrats had only themselves to blame.

DOGE took over the U.S. Digital Service, a 300-person technology office President Barack Obama set up inside the Executive Office of the President in 2014 to fix his beleaguered HealthCare.gov. Bureaucrats had bungled the site, so USDS sought out Silicon Valley innovators, and was authorized to circumvent federal hiring procedures to get them. Hiring young people from the tech world and putting them together to work for Obama, unmoored from the stuffy rules of a typical government building, led to an environment of overt left-wing advocacy.

Obama designed it that way, making the USDS administrator, its top employee, a political appointee. When Donald Trump took over in 2017, he didn’t attempt to turn the tables. Instead, he turned the other cheek. He reclassified USDS’s top job as a career position, not a political one, signaling that he trusted the employees to simply carry out the unglamorous job of fixing government IT.

But USDS staff abused that trust, using it, incredibly, to run left-wing activism from inside Trump’s first White House. During his first term, it hired multiple people who had worked in the porn industry, one who’d worked in a gender studies department, and a transgender activist. USDS leadership subjected staff to memos lecturing them on “toxic masculinity” while devoting significant effort to DEI hiring, a Daily Wire review found.

Trump wasn’t rewarded for his attempt to give federal employees autonomy. Democrats have continued to claim that he was trying to “politicize” the federal workforce. And when Joe Biden won the presidency, he didn’t even make a pretense of maintaining the nonpartisan nature: He promptly changed the top role back to political appointment, and even granted his appointee waivers exempting her from ethics rules.

​

The irony is that Democrats had built a ticking time bomb. Then federal employees destroyed any pretense that, if left to their own devices, they would be “apolitical” instead of left-wing. Happening in over-the-top fashion right underneath Trump’s nose, it was an outrageous betrayal that no president would forgive or forget.

USDS is a case study in why Trump and his team are taking a more skeptical, hard-knuckled approach to the president’s second term. Trump learned that kindness would be exploited as weakness. Democrats and federal employees had set the table, and now Elon Musk is serving revenge that’s been chilling for four years.

***

A professional bio describes Clare Bayley as a “sex and technology expert” for whom “both technology and sexual media have been passions of hers since she hit puberty.” Bayley “founded and runs The Nectarine Project, a non-profit trying to make big tech more sex positive,” the bio notes.

Bayley worked for MIT’s Women’s & Gender Studies Department, then for the hardcore pornography website Kink.com. She’d later work for “Lesbians Who Tech & Allies :: Queer. Inclusive. Badass,” according to her LinkedIn. But the job she held in between was perhaps the oddest: Beginning in 2018, she worked for Donald Trump’s Executive Office of the President.

It wasn’t that the Trump administration hired her, per se. To the people at USDS, Trump wasn’t president at all. They made Bayley a high-level manager. In September 2019, she wrote a memo to staff from her eop.gov address:

“I was at a conference in Boston last week and the opening keynote was the most Machiavellian, toxic-masculinity-focused approach to the project mindset I’ve ever seen. Let’s talk about it. This is a chance for us to vent about some of the biases we’ve seen in our careers, especially those expressed as ‘career advice,’ and talk about what we can do in our own community to guard against/dig out similar things. Please note, white straight cis men are welcome at this meeting, but please spend most of your time actively listening.”

The email, and Bayley, were typical of USDS’s culture. Harlan Lieberman-Berg (“he/him”) came from the porn world, as the “founder of AdvertiSin, an online-advertising company bringing modern real-time bidding technology to the adult entertainment industry.” USDS hired him in 2017, and he worked there until 2020 as “advisor to several acquisition efforts with contract values totaling over $10 billion,” according to his LinkedIn.

Woodhull Freedom Foundation
Amy Paris was hired by the Trump USDS in May 2020, making him one of the highest-ranking transgender-identifying people in government. He used his position to push for airport screenings geared towards transgenders, and non-gendered passports.

19th News
Natalie Moore, a former Peace Corps member, worked at the Trump USDS through September 2018, before going on to NPR and the Biden for President campaign and Biden’s 2020 transition team. Then she came back to USDS, where she expanded food stamp uptake and “improved U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), resulting in the highest refugee arrival numbers in the last three decades,” according to her LinkedIn, which says she remains a USDS employee to this day.

A former employee told The Daily Wire, on condition of anonymity, that USDS employees “actively would not help any tech or program that had to do with Trump’s immigration policies. They would stall, say we don’t have the resources. They’re smart and savvy and leverage their knowledge of federal operations to stall reforms. The worst ones are the ones smart enough to not expose themselves overtly.”

“When [the Trump administration] first came in they thought ‘it’s tech, they’ll do their jobs, how bad could it be?’ They have learned over the last years about how diabolically malicious they are,” the employee said.

***

The first Trump administration put Matt Cutts, a former Google engineer and Democratic National Committee donor, in charge of USDS. His deputy was Edward Hartwig, a former public defender who was originally hired by the Obama administration. Cutts did little to ensure that the office was advancing Trump’s policies, or at least not actively undermining them, according to the former staffer. Jared Kushner had announced a plan to use USDS as part of an “Office of American Innovation,” but no one heard much about the innovation office after that, and USDS pretty much behaved as if Trump had never been elected. When Cutts left in 2021, his departure note was signed “Matt Cutts (he/him).”

During the Trump administration, significant effort was spent attempting to hire staff using DEI criteria. It had four recruiters on staff, none of whom were white. In 2019, it sponsored a conference called AfroTech, aimed at hiring black web developers.

In 2018, a panel at a Lesbians Who Tech conference consisted solely of USDS employees, including Director of Design Amanda Miklik, who moonlights as a “Kink Aware Professional.” Miklik offers life coaching as a “kink-aware, queer, genderqueer person. I specialize in body liberation/body justice, anti-racism for white folks.”

Product Manager Kasia Chmielinski (“they/them”), who now “builds tools to mitigate bias in artificial intelligence,” was also on the panel. It was moderated by USDS Director of Strategy/Operations Julie Meloni, who previously worked at a “4-person queer women-owned & operated multimedia company” and gravitated towards USDS not because it mirrored Silicon Valley, but because it didn’t, having more diversity.

USDS is supposed to hire for limited two- or four-year terms. In practice, people worked in a high-level but unusually partisan environment, then used the contacts they made to embed in the permanent workforce across government agencies. Paris, for example, now works for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Dana Chisell is in a high-level role at the Department of Homeland Security after her Biden USDS term. USDS alum Michael Boyce, whose career has focused on refugee programs, is the head of DHS’s AI Corps.

Others may have cashed in on those connections as government contractors. Former USDS deputy administrator Hartwig, porn entrepreneur Lieberman-Berg, and Kat Jurick (who worked for USDS throughout Trump’s first term) now comprise a contracting firm called Service Design Collective, which bills itself as a “woman owned small business” where “pronouns matter.”

USDS wrote a report saying that the database tracking organ donors needed to be replaced. Ankit Mathur worked at USDS from April 2022 until March 2024 when he took a job at the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the database. That same month, HHS awarded Service Design Collective a $1.4 million contract to work on the Organ Procurement Transplant Network.

In a statement to The Daily Wire, the United Network for Organ Sharing said it was “following all applicable post-employment legal and ethical requirements for anyone previously employed by the federal government.” Service Design Collective did not respond to a request for comment.

Current and former USDS staff keep in touch via an email group. It’s taken for granted that they’re all Democrats who want to stop Trump. Paris seemed to believe his second inauguration meant end times were near. “The time to start backing up websites was yesterday,” he wrote.

Jordan Kasper, a Trump USDS alum now working for DHS, wrote that it would be “illegal for the administration to simply delete

 en masse. Of course that wouldn’t necessarily stop them.”

USDS employees seem to have realized that Trump learned from his first experience with them and isn’t likely to tolerate insurrection.

Meloni wrote on LinkedIn last month that back in 2017, she and other employees wondered “how do we go on?”

“But this one is hitting much differently,” she wrote of what she called the “DOGE BS.”

“It’s pain.”

[URL='https://www.dailywire.com/news/triggered-no-more-fed-tech-arm-deletes-inclusion-bot-page-after-musk-takeover'][B]Related: ‘Triggered’ No More: Federal Tech Arm Deletes ‘Inclusion Bot’ After Musk Takeover[/B][/URL]
[/SPOILER]

 

[Box]

So as access to monetary distribution networks fail I wonder how these people can carry out operations. It's not like these people to have Scrooge McDuck-ian rooms with cash stacked to the ceiling. Unless they are very dumb or paranoid. Which would make it even easier to track them.

These checks are not written with "Riot Cast Member Fee" on them and they certainly aren't signed with names like Soretoes, or Klingon, or Peloton, or Schoomore.

The people doing the dirty work are scum bags - refer back to the three wild dogs that got euthanized by Kyle Rittenhouse.
They didn't get a check from "The Foundation" - they got a nickel bag - or a speed ball - or a few counterfiet 20's and a paper sack full of Four-Loko

Then we can look at all of the peaceful protesting that took place in the "CHAZ" after Saint Floyd overdosed on Fentanyl - the folks that actually "made money" off of that riot could have probably fit into a 1998 Model Ford Windstar. The folks that DID get paid got paid without a paper trail that resulted in the rest of their "payout" being crowd funded. That's how they were able to be humble BLM protestors while still being able to pay for a million dollar house.

Give me a few bucks, introduce me to a few people with influence, help me post some nefarious motivational shit on social media, then BAM - I'll set up a go fund me page and the peaceful protestors will start paying my salary.
Can't trace my largesse to USAID when its coming from useful idiots donating to my 'Go Fund Me' page.

Once you have a few hundred million dollars hidden off shore - or a private "Foundation" with a 501(c)(3) exemption - you can just sit back and watch the fire works while your money works for you. Sure maybe the "real" grift gets put on pause for a while, but you don't really need it for day to day operations. Besides, thats what "The Foundation" is for. Maybe every so often you post something to social media for your loyal followers to grab onto - but otherwise - your connection know who you are - they know what you can do - and they are as constrained as you are - it's not like they are going to "move on you" while the DOGE is meddling through everyone's receipts and a quarter of a million old "birthday emails" and "exercise schedules" on your private server. The clock is ticking and you know your friends in congress will eventually find a few judges that will order a stay while you shred the documents that incriminate you.

Either way - your money is safe - and once the mob runs these interlopers out of town, you'll be right back in the game.



This entire post is just sarcasm of course - I don't actually think this type of nefarious behavior could ever happen in the United States of America

 

[RackMaster]

Is there a way to see if USAiD and Internews was funding anything in Canada? I know Canada has "partnered" with USAiD on international projects. I'm curious if they are involved in our media or politics.

 

[AWP]

Is there a way to see if USAiD and Internews was funding anything in Canada? I know Canada has "partnered" with USAiD on international projects. I'm curious if they are involved in our media or politics.

So I mosey on over to USAspending.gov to look it up. There's this gem of a banner across the top today (it wasn't there 2 days ago).

There is currently a bug affecting the Recipient Filter feature of our service. We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to fix this issue. Please contact our service desk for additional assistance.

That's a little sus. The rest of the site works but you can't look up who or what received money? But, if I type Canada into the Recipient search box, items will show up, but only in the menu, not a list on the main page as they should.

I grabbed about 20 or so, most of those were DoD contracts related to aircraft parts and such. The big ticket item I saw was about 2.5 million to Proceco LTD for equipment and installation. Meh.

If you filter by location and select Canada for your country we get into some BIG money, and the top one is 2.3 billion for LAV-25 support and other big money ones for...the Ukraine. I don't know if this will work for overall Canadian stuff: USAspending.gov

This is interesting, from 2006 and it tells us nothing.
USAspending.gov

200 million for botulism antitoxin. USAspending.gov

A lot of the biggies are related to LAV's and the Ukraine.

 

[RackMaster]

So I mosey on over to USAspending.gov to look it up. There's this gem of a banner across the top today (it wasn't there 2 days ago).



That's a little sus. The rest of the site works but you can't look up who or what received money? But, if I type Canada into the Recipient search box, items will show up, but only in the menu, not a list on the main page as they should.

I grabbed about 20 or so, most of those were DoD contracts related to aircraft parts and such. The big ticket item I saw was about 2.5 million to Proceco LTD for equipment and installation. Meh.

If you filter by location and select Canada for your country we get into some BIG money, and the top one is 2.3 billion for LAV-25 support and other big money ones for...the Ukraine. I don't know if this will work for overall Canadian stuff: USAspending.gov

This is interesting, from 2006 and it tells us nothing.
USAspending.gov

200 million for botulism antitoxin. USAspending.gov

A lot of the biggies are related to LAV's and the Ukraine.

I'll give them some time to finish their audit. I'm curious about Ukraine prior to 2014 and a little known Canadian reporter turned politician, that's running for party leader/Prime Minister.