Trump creates new "department" whose goal is efficiency and cutting down government waste

[Caveira]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

USA Today 11/2/24

The valuation of social media platform X has dropped dramatically in the eyes of major investment firm Fidelity, according to multiple reports.

The market value of Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund's shares in the private company is estimated at $4.2 million, according to a monthly report released Sunday.

That's 79% less than the fund's estimate of its shares in October 2022 when Elon Musk took over Twitter, which were valued at $19.66 million. Applying the shares' relative decline to the total value of X when it was purchased would indicate a $9.4 billion overall valuation, a steep drop from the $44 billion that Musk paid in the acquisition.

MarketWatch 8/20/2024

Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter Inc. has emerged as the worst buyout since the global financial crisis for seven large financial institutions that provided debt for the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The deal has now run up about $13 billion in so-called hung debt, which is money owed to banks that has not been sold partly because the value of the underlying asset has dropped so sharply due to its weak performance.

Doesn’t cutting the waste of time bureaucratic  government fat seem like so much fun?  Elon is fairly adept at that.  

[Tripnsweep]

So Trump appointed a guy who, like him, was born wealthy and had to do very minimal work to become wealthy. Musk didn't create anything himself. He saw opportunity and got involved early with PayPal and that was really what started him off. He also didn't create Tesla, the company existed well before he knew about it. 

Strange how Trump is appointing a immigrant from Africa to do this, after he began his political career with a racist lie about a rival of his being born in Africa. 

[mspart]

It may be funny that it takes 2 people to find inefficiencies.   But what if they do?   There has never been a serious effort such as this to find wasteful spending and innefficiencies.   What if they are successful?   Would that be a bad thing?   What is the real problem here?

mspart

[ionel]

11 minutes ago, Tripnsweep said:

 Musk didn't create anything himself. He saw opportunity and got involved early with PayPal and that was really what started him off. 

You've never heard of Zip2 or X.com?  

Edited November 13 by ionel

[ionel]

6 minutes ago, mspart said:

It may be funny that it takes 2 people to find inefficiencies.   But what if they do?   There has never been a serious effort such as this to find wasteful spending and innefficiencies.   What if they are successful?   Would that be a bad thing?   What is the real problem here?

orange is bad 

[Wrestleknownothing]

19 minutes ago, Caveira said:

Doesn’t cutting the waste of time bureaucratic  government fat seem like so much fun?  Elon is fairly adept at that.  

It does sound awful. I do not envy anyone tasked with doing it.

[PortaJohn]

12 hours ago, VakAttack said:

And appoints two billionaires to run said department, which, again, is ostensibly targeting efficiency.  The jokes write themselves.  And obviously they named it after a meme cryptocurrency, because nothing matters any more.  Also the department is, at it's inception, immediately redundant with the GAO.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/11/12/congress/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-trump-00189209?fbclid=IwY2xjawGhDU9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHeVk_neQy-monfqBR516iZ96u0F9VAus2eJl0q7gJ3_O6eem0mOOge81oA_aem_cLrV2O8rHM7M-Avof_VzmA

Vak, I myself do enjoy the humor in this.  At the same time as a level headed thinker like yourself I'm surprised this is the issue you'd take up against Trump.  I'm as skeptical as you are with Trump's intentions but creating a department to possibly cut back on government waste is music to my ears.  I'm taking a wait and see approach on this particular issue

Edited November 13 by PortaJohn

[jross]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

X is worth less...

Streamlining operations is not why advertisers cut back, and the product is better.  So much better, I am now a paying premium member.

[VakAttack]

2 minutes ago, ionel said:

orange is bad 

If you guys can't read, that seems like a problem on a text-based format.

Anyway, I'm sure nothing bad can happen when we let the billionaire oligarch with billions of dollars in government contracts have a say in how the government spends their money. 

It reminds me of the story.of how those silly, naive chickens needed help, so they let that wily fox into the house to help protect them.  Everybody lived happily ever after!

[Wrestleknownothing]

5 minutes ago, jross said:

Streamlining operations is not why advertisers cut back, and the product is better.  So much better, I am now a paying premium member.

It really is not a quote if you replace it with your own words.

Nor did I make the claim you are objecting to. Caveira asked a specfiic question that I gave a direct answer to.

As for streamlining operations, it is related to why advertisers cut back. Those streamlined operations included cutting back on content moderation to such an extent that advertisers were appearing along side content that they did not want to appear along side of. 

[VakAttack]

9 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

Vak, I myself do enjoy the humor in this.  At the same time as a level headed thinker like yourself I'm surprised this is the issue you'd take up against Trump.  I'm as skeptical as you are with Trump's intentions but creating a department to possibly cut back on government waste is music to my ears.  I'm taking a wait and see approach on this particular issue

As stated, multiple times, my issue is not with the idea,  as always it's with the social media era infused execution.  There already is an agency designed for this purpose.  Strengthen it, give it teeth, if you truly want to do this.  Nope, have to make a whole new department and put two billionaire campaign surrogates in charge (in the same role, no less, erego the original joke) one of whom has massive government contracts and thus has a vested interest in how this plays out. 

[ionel]

11 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

Vak, I myself do enjoy the humor in this.  At the same time as a level headed thinker like yourself I'm surprised this is the issue you'd take up against Trump.  I'm as skeptical as you are with Trump's intentions but creating a department to possibly cut back on government waste is music to my ears.  I'm taking a wait and see approach on this particular issue

In other news Trump will require all PortaJohn's to transition to two story units.  This is based on the historic 50% efficiency savings found from the Gay's Illinois two story outhouse.  

[jross]

27 minutes ago, Tripnsweep said:

So Trump appointed a guy who, like him, was born wealthy and had to do very minimal work to become wealthy. Musk didn't create anything himself. He saw opportunity and got involved early with PayPal and that was really what started him off. He also didn't create Tesla, the company existed well before he knew about it. 

Strange how Trump is appointing a immigrant from Africa to do this, after he began his political career with a racist lie about a rival of his being born in Africa. 

But before Musk and his brother could cash in on their first big venture, the bootstrapping brothers had to rough it by living in their small office.

“We showered at the YMCA and we were so hard-up that we only had one computer,” Musk said in 2014. “The website was up during the day and I was coding it at night, seven days a week, all the time.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/how-elon-musk-founded-zip2-with-his-brother-kimbal.html

---

Musk says. “He (Dad) was irrelevant. He paid nothing for college. My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20240104225617/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-the-architect-of-tomorrow-120850/

 

---

And the comment about Tesla is bananas.  You give zero credit for what he did for Tesla!

[Caveira]

9 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

Anyway, I'm sure nothing bad can happen when we let the billionaire oligarch with billions of dollars in government contracts have a say in how the government spends their money.

It sounds like you don’t want this to happen?   Who is more qualified to cut fat than Elon?

would or did the left have a plan to cut spending?

all joking aside.    Investing my tax dollars in trans potato pumpkin education for kids in Thailand is not something my $$$$ should be going to.  I’m sure he can find loads of programs that should just go bye bye.   That’s not the job of the govt imo.   

[jross]

24 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

It really is not a quote if you replace it with your own words.

Nor did I make the claim you are objecting to. Caveira asked a specfiic question that I gave a direct answer to.

As for streamlining operations, it is related to why advertisers cut back. Those streamlined operations included cutting back on content moderation to such an extent that advertisers were appearing along side content that they did not want to appear along side of. 

I'll just tag your name next time as a better means to avoid filling a page with a large quote.

Moderation was changed due to principles (by design), not because of layoffs.

Edited November 13 by jross
duplicate words

[ionel]

10 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

If you guys can't read, that seems like a problem on a text-based format.

Anyway, I'm sure nothing bad can happen when we let the billionaire oligarch with billions of dollars in government contracts have a say in how the government spends their money. 

It reminds me of the story.of how those silly, naive chickens needed help, so they let that wily fox into the house to help protect them.  Everybody lived happily ever after!

The left should love a wily fox or a couple wolves.  Look at the re-introduction program in Colorado.  What better place to turn loose a couple of wolves than among the swamp chickens of Washington DC.   

[PortaJohn]

10 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

As stated, multiple times, my issue is not with the idea,  as always it's with the social media era infused execution.  There already is an agency designed for this purpose.  Strengthen it, give it teeth, if you truly want to do this.  Nope, have to make a whole new department and put two billionaire campaign surrogates in charge (in the same role, no less, erego the original joke) one of whom has massive government contracts and thus has a vested interest in how this plays out. 

Are you referring to the New Oversight and Accountability Board which has already become a partisan *I poop my pants, don't laugh at me* show?  

[PortaJohn]

4 minutes ago, Caveira said:

would or did the left have a plan to cut spending?

Yes Obama did with the Recovery Act

[jross]

@VakAttack - Your Musk comment about gov contracts reminds me of that time when Trump happily took credit for tax write-offs.  

 

[jross]

11 minutes ago, Caveira said:

would or did the left have a plan to cut spending?

Harris was not cutting spending...

Clinton had a plan to cut spending -- and had an economically conservative approach.

[uncle bernard]

You guys are putting on a clinic in missing the point.

[jross]

5 minutes ago, uncle bernard said:

You guys are putting on a clinic in missing the point.

DOGE is Connor, GAO is Jeremy.
 

 

[uncle bernard]

2 minutes ago, jross said:

DOGE is Connor, GAO is Jeremy.
 

 

Again, you've missed the point of the joke.

He created a new department to improve efficiency and put two people in charge, which is....inherently inefficient.

[headshuck]

Everyone got the joke. A conversation followed.

[Caveira]

34 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

Yes Obama did with the Recovery Act

I mean this cycle.  The past isn’t on the table imo at least.