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0 pointsllamaimperative1y ago0 comments

If only there were professionals we could pay to go into an organization and find waste, fraud, and abuse so we wouldn't have to rely on people like @ricwe123 on X.

Ah, yes, there are. They're called auditors. They audited USAID 4 months ago.

The entire US government spent only $7.7MM on Politico over the last 12 months. Oooo spooky stuff, if only there was a way to see what for! Turns out there is. You can scroll down and see the shocking revelation that the US government paid a news publication for subscriptions to a news publication!

Similar to how if you work in the energy industry, for example, a smart employer would pay for energy trade publications so you can do your job better.

https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c...

In fact you can drill down all the way to individual line items. Here's the 49 subscriptions to Politico Pro that HHS, an organization with 83,500 employees, purchased. Looks suuuuper abusive... /s

https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_75F40120P00453_75...

> to deny that Elon is competent

Please show evidence of Elon being a competent public sector financial auditor. Or are we to believe that competence is just arbitrarily cross-applicable?

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lend0001y ago

Millions of dollars worth of subscriptions for reporting on government press releases with added spin seems like a great example of waste to me... The government shouldn't be paying any media outlets purely due to the conflict of interest, regardless.

> Or are we to believe that competence is just arbitrarily cross-applicable?

I would wager that even you are more competent than the average auditor, assuming you know how to program. I'm seeing a lot of appeals to authority and credentialism, and assumptions that people who are hired by bureaucrats and politicians to audit themselves have better aligned incentives than a wildcard entrepreneur. If we can't agree on the fundamental axioms, I don't see this conversation going anywhere.

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