Elon Musk Is Faking It
The fraudster who cried "fraud"
We're going to buy an EV when we return to France in a few months.
It won't be a Tesla... 
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Did you hear the one about how USAID spent $50 million — or was it $100 million? — providing condoms to Hamas? This claim played a big role in the public relations campaign to rationalize the sudden, illegal dismantling of an agency that provides humanitarian aid to millions of people, and is also a key element of US foreign policy.
Reporters were puzzled by the claim because there didn't appear to be any evidence. You will be happy to know that the mystery has been solved. Some DOGE staffers noticed that USAID had disbursed grants to local groups trying to limit the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Gaza. But they didn't read far enough in to learn that the Gaza in question isn't the war-ravaged strip; it's a province in the African nation of Mozambique. Oh well, southern Africa, the Middle East, what's the difference to the Muskenjugend?
Elon Musk actually admitted the mistake, albeit with minimal grace, during his extraordinary Oval Office press conference with President Trump on Tuesday. (Trump hasn't acknowledged error.) That conference consisted mainly of Musk pacing around, declaiming, while Trump sat passively at his desk, occasionally expressing agreement. Musk behaved as if he were the actual president and Trump merely a heavily made-up prop.
Anyway, the incident demonstrated the level of care and understanding that DOGE is bringing to its alleged mission of identifying waste, fraud and abuse.
But both Trump and Musk insisted that DOGE has already found billions, maybe tens of billions, of waste and fraud. Here's a complete list of the specific examples Musk gave during the press conference:
That's right: Musk has yet to offer any specific examples of government waste. The closest Musk came to specifics was his assertion that DOGE had done
just cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. So that's a case where I think they're probably dead.
Is this true? Can we have some names please? It wouldn't be a violation of privacy if the people are already dead.
Actually, my personal experience suggests that this story is likely to be false. Someone once tried to impersonate me and collect Social Security payments in my name. The Social Security Administration contacted me, saying that they couldn't verify my address. So I think SSA would quickly question the identity of an 150-year-old recipient.
Now, we know that there's huge waste in Medicare, in the form of overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans. Through Medicare Advantage insurance companies have been gaming the system; the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission estimates the annual loss to taxpayers at more than $80 billion, that is, roughly twice USAID's budget. Oddly, however, this clear example of gigantic fraud isn't on Musk's radar.
But back to that Oval Office scene. Musk also asserted that
there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is what happened at USAID
Is this true? What are these peoples' stories, if they exist? Sorry, Elon, but why should we believe you when the obvious explanation is that you are taking us for fools?
Of course, given that there are 2 million federal workers, there must be somebody out there who committed fraud. But there's no reason to think that the waste is significant.
For those of us who have been around for a while, Musk's evidence-free claims of fraud by federal employees bring back memories of Ronald Reagan's ranting about welfare queens driving Cadillacs — rants that appear to have had their origin in the story of a single lifelong con artist who was in no way representative of the millions of mothers receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children.
Yet Reagan's rant came after AFDC enrollment grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast, Musk's vendetta has been launched against a federal work force that has been more or less flat for many decades, and has declined drastically relative to the size of the population it serves:
Source: FRED
So why is Musk obsessed with reducing the federal headcount? Is he just ignorant of the basic facts? Or is all the talk about efficiency cover for a purge intended to replace professional civil servants with political loyalists? Both, if you ask me.
I am, however, sure that Musk knows that DOGE's efforts to find waste and fraud have come up empty. If he had anything real to talk about, he would.
Whether Trump realizes that Musk is faking it is less clear. But as Tuesday's event showed, it's not clear whether Trump matters at this point.
In any case, Musk imagines that he can con the American people, that he can keep his racket going by talking fast and throwing around what sound like big numbers, even as people are dying.
And I wish I were sure that he's wrong.
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It seems that COBOL, the obsolete computer language that still runs on a great many government computers, assigns "175" to certain cases where date-time information is incomplete. So Musk - a computer geek, remember - doesn't understand a computer error...
Ummm, I programmed in COBOL for many years (thank you Y2K and all the good times brought by all that fear). Where did you find that nugget? Lay out your evidence please.
Dunno
Don't ya think that maybe before making a comment one should understand what they are saying? You made the claim and you cannot back it up.
I can't prove that atoms exist, either... but I'm pretty sure they do.
Difference is it is fairly easy to find scientific evidence to show that atoms do indeed exist. But you made a claim about COBOL in your very first post and it's not even in the linked article. I have no idea where you got that idea from and you cannot show where you got it from either.
Just tossing shit out there does tend to impact how people view you.
Really? Do you have access to a cloud chamber? I don't. And I wouldn't know how to identify the tracks anyway.
Your belief in atoms has nothing to do with evidence. You believe because you were told by someone you trust.
Just like you believe MAGA.
Continuing to deflect from the question merely shows that post 1 is pure bullshit. I guess we're done as you refuse an honest discussion. There are legitimate complaints to make about Musk and this administration so I don't understand why the fable attempt by tossing out such shit.
You apparently don't understand the difference between "know" and "believe". As long as that is true, everything you say is tainted.
It's OK to believe stuff that you cannot prove. All that's necessary is to be very careful with your sources. To choose sources that will never intentionally mislead you, and which will issue corrections on those inevitable occasions when they make a mistake.
Science, for example, is based on self-correction. Of course, that means you have to stay up to date.
Do your trusted sources issue corrections?
And you continue to deflect.
In post 1 you stated the following :
My first post I questioned that, explained that I had worked with COBOL for years and asked you where you got that bit of information from. I checked closely, that is NOT in your seed at all. So where the fuck did you pull that from.
Your continued refusal to answer that simple question and continued deflection tells me all I need to know.
I don't think you understand the word "answer".
"Dunno" is a perfectly good answer. It may not be the answer that you want, but it is a perfectly appropriate answer. You asked
I answered.
So you admit that post 1 is complete bullshit that was made up entirely. After all that's the only way it could then be as it's not anywhere in the seeded article so you didn't copy/paste it from the seed. So you just made it up.
Of course not. Why do you make up shit like that?
I saw it somewhere, but don't remember where. I only pay attention to sources I'm sure of, so I'll maintain what I said.
If you want to answer your own questions, please don't bother me any more.
If you only pay attention to sources you are sure of, then how can you be sure you even got the claim correct?
As I said, your post did not come from a copy/paste in your seeded article, so I asked where you got that info from. You don't remember where, sounds very similar to what we've heard countless times before from politicians.
If someone cannot validate their information, how can we trust any information they might provide?
It’s another “trust me bro” all purpose link
Ummm..... No.
I don't care what you believe. I know that you will reject anything I say.
Ignorance is bliss, so be happy.
Heard on The Street:
People are saying that the existence of atoms are "a plot" by "The Biden Administration" to prevent America from Becoming Great Again and that it's time to "Own the Libs" by firing any government employee who is attempting to perpetrate the false claim that exist.
Wow, what a zinger …… still yawning bro …..
AHA!
I see that now you are attempting to play the proverbial SYB card!
(Do you really think that will be effective here...???)
I’d trust you bro but what is the syb card.
Shave your bush?
Shake your booty?
Show your badge?
Love it!
He is referring to a default value. This is of course not a default supplied by the language but by the SSA system itself; it was a conscious decision made by a human being. SSA's system assigned a default date of May 20, 1875 when the date of birth was missing. Thus there are people who, per the SSA database, are 150 years old.
The point is that there are birthdates in the database that are wrong. Not too surprising, right?
He just got the details wrong. Take a breath, Snuffy. Not everyone understands the details of information systems.
Nope, he tossed out some bullshit that he said he read somewhere, but didn't remember where as he only pays attention to sites he trusts. If he didn't trust the site then why did he trust it enough to post it? Conversely how do we know he remembered it correctly? I've programmed extensively using COBOL (as I said, thank you Y2K. Good times and good money) and that little nugget about a 170 error code when the date is incomplete is complete bullshit.
He was wrong and attempted to double down when shown he was wrong. Way past just getting the details wrong. I understand better than most that not everyone understands the details of information systems. I worked in IT for 38 years before I retired so I suspect I do know a good bit about it. Not all of it by any stretch of the imagination but a fair bit of it.
For the edification of people, a 175 error in COBOL is a run time error. It comes when attempting to run a compiled program with severe errors that were not reported during compilation. That could have occurred if attempting to write to a file that has not been opened or was previously closed.
As I noted, not everyone is technically savvy regarding information systems.
He was correct in principle ... the date is invalid due to technical reasons.
Give him a break. The details here are chickenshit. They do not matter. What matters is that there are errors in the database (no surprise there either).
Further, given you were a COBOL developer you likely have no idea what list comprehension, polymorphism, lambda functions, dereferencing, abstract classes, etc. are about and how they are used. Thus you could easily read something and walk away with a mistaken understanding of the technical details. It happens.
We all know that if it were a conservative to throw that bs out without providing a source, some here would cry that that person doesn't know what they are talking about, their post is bs, and their though process is delusional.
No leftist would say "take a breath".
No, go back and read post 1. He was wrong from the very first post and attempted to double down on it and then try to explain it away.
As for your list, are you talking about Python? I've done a lot more than just COBOL.
I offered some of the more powerful abstractions from Python, C, and object oriented languages such as Smalltalk, C++/C# and Java.
So what? Big deal! Do you really think it is valuable to piss all over Bob on something this petty? Who gives a shit if he double or tripled down on his misunderstanding of truly irrelevant technical details. The details do not matter ... at all.
He was correct about this being a technical error. That is actually what matters here. There are no 150 year old people alive today receiving social security checks. This could be fraud or it could be a 79 year old whose birthdate was defaulted.
What matters is that it is good to find shit like this and address it.
Thank you.
Also... I feel no need whatsoever to supply details to people who don't give a fuck. They reject anything that doesn't please them, regardless of how perfectly or imperfectly true it is. They want to score points, to own the libs, and such. Tiresome.
I think I'm gonna postmark this and save it for future use. After all, if the details do not matter than this must be a valid excuse for all issues.
One wonders how the reaction would be if the mistake was made by someone on the right. But keep on spinning to defend your side.
That is a blatantly dishonest misrepresentation of what I wrote.
The details that serve to support a point matter. Details that are irrelevant do not matter.
It does not matter the exact nature of the technical failure resulting in spurious ages. What matters is that is IS a technical failure.
It is this kind of dishonesty that perpetuates aggressive discourse.
LOL, you're doing a rather good job of arguing my point in the entire discussion between Bob and myself.
What I see is your comments resorting to dishonest tactics ... such as this vague declaration.
What I see is your comments obsessively harping on a totally chickenshit, irrelevant detail — the exact nature of the system/database error which results in erroneous birthdates. You are not challenging Bob's contention that Musk has leaped to a conclusion that this is fraud, as opposed to a rather common failure in older systems. You are ragging on him because he believed sources that suggested this was a problem with COBOL. Looks to me that you are so driven to pursue a truly pointless gotcha that you do not even care about the actual point Bob has made.
Bottom line, details matter when the details make a difference in the point made. What you are doing is the equivalent of giving someone hell for a typo.
So post #1 was a typo? Is that what you are trying to say now? You want to call it an irrelevant detail but it was the entirety of the post that was wrong. But keep digging that hole.
And with that, have a nice day.
Faux obtuseness.
The point of the post is that Elon Musk, et. al. are claiming this is fraud when it appears that it is merely bad data in a database.
The point of the post is NOT the specific technical circumstances resulting in errant data.
You apparently cannot bring yourself to admit this and instead try to double down and resort to faux obtuseness, dishonesty, the stupid "dig that hole" bullshit, and the passive aggressive "have a nice day".
I have to agree with Snuffy on this. I read about the continued use of COBOL over the weekend (on my phone's news feed, I think it was The Hill) but unfortunately I did NOT read anything stating the "175" date-time conundrum. Admittedly I haven't used, programmed that language in decades but cannot remember the 175.
Granted, doesn't mean it's not true, but without the source it leaves open Snuff's argument, request for proof.
Cheers
They are dying out, but there were millions of Americans like my over ninty year old Mom who were born at home and never had a birth certificate. Her birth date was officially "unknown" most of her life. She had to hire an attorney and get a judge to authorize a provisional birth certificate based on census records and death certificates of her ancestors and her own kids birth certificates.
My understanding is that it is cases like hers that got the default date signifying a person with no official birth date. Mom traveled and lived overseas as an Air Force officer's wife, graduated college and taught school for thirty years without a birth certificate. At some point she had to make it official. The process was expensive. There are still probably a million Americans alive today, in their 70s, 80s and 90s or older, who never had an official birth certificate.
I would also point out that some states while having their poor black and brown people on their rolls simultaneously discouraged those same people from getting their documents. I would why /S...
Gonna need some backup for that "information".
How do you think it came about that a hell of a lot of very old black folks in Mississippi and Alabama have lived their whole lives without birth certificates and yet attended public schools, have received public assistance and are now receiving both Medicare and Social Security without ever having documents?
My grandfather's sharecroppers carried notes from him that local cops accepted so they could drive his farm vehicles on county roads. Abe, his foreman, had 22 children born on our farms. All of them were delivered at home None had any official papers...
If you do not know American History take a course and learn!
Where's the link?.............and subsequent answer and proof...........you stated that they were discouraged from getting their documents?
For fuck's sake! I spent years supplying facts to people who simply ignored them. I'm done. Do your own research.
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It the trust me bro source, I know a guy.
Elon Musk Is Faking It.
You didn't read the seed, did you?
Oh For Fuck Sake! Google it! They don't teach history in NC?
Funny, I don't think that link says what you want it to say. Like discouraging. NOWHERE is that evident in your link..............oh and, FFS
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@1.1.20
You have a link or is this another “trust me bro” moment?
Why on Earth would you doubt what I wrote? What nefarious reason do you presume I have for offering this technical fact?
This is easily found:
Default dates were a common practice decades ago. Nowadays we have the luxury to handle this better by recognizing the state of 'unknown' and having mechanisms which perpetually seek to supplement important unknown values. Older systems were designed with CPU cycles and data storage as a critical/expensive resource so they would typically not build this kind of ancillary functionality.
Take a breath Tig, not everyone understands details of information systems. I never said I doubted your comment.
Why do you always have to go negative? I was simply asking you to back up a comment you made. Nothing nefarious about that is there?
The level of projection here is staggering.
Far right-wingers who constantly demand links to common public information which is easily found are plainly trolling...
At the risk of stating the obvious, Medicare and Social Security are both highly regulated, age driven benefits. Difficult to qualify if you can't establish an age.
They may not have had birth certificates, but at some point a determination was made about their birthdate.
What asking for those links does is call out the nonsense being pushed by the left. The fact that the left CAN'T provide those links just shows the idiocy.
You have just illustrated JBBs point. Not only did I provide a link, but I gave several detailed explanations of what took place (technically).
Read this:
Default dates were a common practice decades ago. Nowadays we have the luxury to handle this better by recognizing the state of 'unknown' and having mechanisms which perpetually seek to supplement important unknown values. Older systems were designed with CPU cycles and data storage as a critical/expensive resource so they would typically not build this kind of ancillary functionality.
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Bullshit.
The person making the comment is responsible for backing it up. No one else.
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Exactly!
Nope, exactly the opposite of exactly.
Don't care what YOU provided. My response wasn't to you.
You have no rebuttal. Of course.
And exactly why should I respond to you again?
"I am, however, sure that Musk knows that DOGE's efforts to find waste and fraud have come up empty. If he had anything real to talk about, he would."
Not sure what this idiot is talking about but there are reports every day of what was uncovered in the form of wasteful spending and who it benefits, mostly, so far, DEI and tranny crap.
Actually, no. Absolutely nothing significant. This is dogma, not reality.
As it's from Fox News I'm sure it will be discounted or ignored, just due to the source.
Top 5 most shocking government waste secrets exposed by Elon Musk's DOGE | Fox News
It's not the source, it's the claims made with exactly ZERO evidence, it's just the ELON run DOGE saying "The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars, and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it". They wouldn't need a fucking metaphor like "gold bars" if they actually had ANY FUCKING EVIDENCE of the EPA misspending funds. Instead, they just bust in and proclaim "Ha! The EPA costs us money and it's a waste! HA!".
The "Iron Mine" claim doesn't actually show any waste of money, the DOGE is just claiming the process for retirement takes time. Musk doesn't say that he's actually done anything to fix this, he just points out it takes a long time and then the Fox News article moves on without asking what the DOGE is actually doing to address this and frankly they don't quantify what amount of money was supposedly being wasted by the delayed retirements.
As for the supposed "$59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels just last week, DOGE uncovered." nowhere does it actually list what supposed "luxury New York City hotels" they were being booked into, they could have been Motel 6's for all we know but dishonest scum bags like Fox will always choose to sensationalize a story and I guess to a child living in the trash heap of Mumbai, a Motel 6 would be considered "luxury". On this one though, no matter how much they spent on undocumented immigrants, even if it was a $49 single night stay for one family, that would be too much for the poor sad sorry sacks of rightwing bigot shit who apparently are so miserable and so poor, they can't afford to spend even a dime to help out those who are less fortunate than themselves. So, I guess I should be more considerate and not go down to their work and slap the dicks out of their mouths if they are suffering so.
Wow, so DOGE found waste that was discovered 7 years ago during the first Trump administration. /golfclap
Ah, such a waste of money. I mean, trying to address the root cause of many terrorists who attack and murder Americans by trying to promote inclusion when that "inclusion" is specifically talking about Muslims being inclusive of Christianity instead of them trying to figure out ways to kill as many Christians as possible. Doing that would completely avoid the most fun rightwing conservatives Christians look forward to which is looking macho while wiping out Muslim villages because someone among them shot at our troops, so better to just bomb them. And if any live well that's perfect for the rightwing conservative Christians who believe it is their duty to fight some religious war against Islam since the ones who lives after watching the rest of their families massacred will create more terrorists for the rightwing Christian conservative army to hunt. I mean, that's just SOOOOOOO much better than spending $20 million on trying to stop the hate at its roots. I mean, it makes much more sense to spend that $20 million on 180 hellfire missiles at $110k a pop so we can continue this moronic cycle of mutual destruction.
So, it's not the source, it's the moronic attempt to reframe reality to fit some dumb fuck rightwing conservative Christian's version of reality where they are the heroes of the universe and everyone else is a villain and truth doesn't really matter as long as rightwing conservative Christians get what they want.
Department
Of
Greedy
Extremists
But I guess I can't expect rightwing religious conservatives to understand anything about how our constitution or government is supposed to operate, they believe their religious document is more important than the constitution. And for them, if the two are in conflict, they go with their religious document that has rules for legal slavery and treating others as worthless if they're not rightwing conservative Christians.
And here's a 6th:
Undocumented workers helped build Elon Musk's business empire
Meanwhile, the Tesla CEO Elon has been spewing harsh immigration rhetoric.
And it all appears that these findings are all at a cursory look.
Trump has been in office less than a month. They are good, just not that good so give them some time. They will get to it.
And when they do get to it, many on the left will whine about it.
Already on it..............
WTF?
Now, we know that there's huge waste in Medicare, in the form of overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans. Through Medicare Advantage insurance companies have been gaming the system; the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission estimates the annual loss to taxpayers at more than $80 billion, that is, roughly twice USAID's budget. Oddly, however, this clear example of gigantic fraud isn't on Musk's radar
Wrongo.................
I am a bit perplexed as to why all the animosity and seeming surprise over a default birthdate in SSA databases.
A government database that contains incorrect information is pretty much something I would expect. It should never happen, but it takes money and effort to constantly verify data accuracy and it does not surprise me that government operations cut corners here.
This, by the way, is the kind of work I would prefer to see Musk do. Find stupid shit like this and kill wasteful, obsolete programs. Laying off government employees without first understanding government processes is ill-advised. Cutting dead/obsolete programs is a far better way to start ... that really is low-hanging fruit. And it gives Musk the immediate successes that he and Trump can brag about. Win-win.
DOGE seems to cut first, find out what they did later. What did i read recently about nuclear oversight individuals being fired, and then they couldn’t find them when they found out they were vital ?
Is this accurate TiG ?
sorry for my ignorance, but Ive been abducted by a friend from my youth, and have avoided politics as of late, as i’m unable to watch from the basement lair.
I will however hopefully, be able to enlighten myself soon, but a finer distraction i cannot conjure, even with my rather vivid and expansive imagination, i’m here and by a maga mama being attempted converted, as i’ll just N joy her perverted conversion methods, and it gives me much insight into the workings of a very attractive, intelligent, and well educated one from the “right”, and is helping me to better understand how they get things so wrong. And yes, it is still so very wrong, but helping me to understand how and why, so many here would rather apparently die, than admit that Trump and Elon, are major pieces of shit.
Yeah, Trump laid off hundreds of employees responsible for administering the safe handling of our nuclear arsenal. Now they are scrambling to rehire them.
Let us know your findings.