cowfriend

> I don't see anything that lends credence to the idea that Congress can control the workings of executive departments.

Along with what others have said, you might want to recognize that Congress controls the purse. They dictate how much the executive should spend on each item, though that can be nuanced (as in "up to this much" vs "exactly this much")

yes.

Friend, I think I see your concern, and I may have an answer. Most of the bureaucracy is apolitical. However, the heads and higher-ups of each agency are appointed by the currently in-office politicians.

So the upper management is composed of political appointments. And like any other organization, the upper management has considerable discretion in setting priorities.

re: "politically selective law enforcement" is not a good thing, because laws are one of the things that are supposed to constrain politicians.

> But our government doesn’t have independent branches.

In theory it does, that is the whole idea and genius of the constitution.

In fact at the moment it does not, because Trump has so captured the Republican party that the legislature has almost no power to stand up to him. The Supreme Court has a long history of judges aligning with the political party that seated them, and Trump put 3 of them into their seat.

The first sentence of the article:

this alarming trend seems to coincide with DOGE’s unrestricted access to federal networks.

the first 2 paragraphs: Beginning on January 8, 2025, a surge of U.S. government infrastructure began appearing on what’s known as “the search engine of Internet-connected devices,” Shodan.io.

Federal agencies typically secure their systems behind multiple layers of protection, ensuring that critical services – such as mail servers, directory services, VPNs, internal IP addresses, and remote access gateways – remain isolated from public access.

Now is this conclusive proof that DOGE did it? Hardly. However, can you think of anything else that changed since 8 Jan that would override decades of policy in the matter of hours?

Going to defend dang here.

These posts have a high political index, which given America's current culture wars tends to bring out the kind of behavior which none of us want on HN.

It's a damn tough balancing act.

Also, look at my post history, I'm pretty strongly anti-DOGE. I'm defending Dang because I love HN and appreciate what he is doing under extremely tough conditions.

yeah, the claim that the bureaucracy is the thing that is broken-- can we look at a few things?

Every time the administration changes, the heads of all the departments change, and the incoming people are typically pretty ignorant of what the department does. How would a corporation work if every 4 years you rotated the C-suite and 2 levels down, with people from a completely different business sector?

Meanwhile, funding is shifted even more often. Or is just outright cut once every few years.

Meanwhile, every action they take is an official government action. Which means it is LEGALLY REQUIRED to happen in certain ways based on laws written by people who don't think about consequences or how they are enacted.

And it is 2.2 Million people. There are economies of scale here.

So I wonder how this compares to current Google, current Facebook. I've heard people here talking about how messed up those companies are, projects started/stopped at whim, massive investments that get abandoned 2 years later, etc.

Or to banks. Banks don't modernize their software because they can't, not because they don't want to. No wonder the US government has similar issues.

By "thought crimes", would you mean firing people for holding positions responsible for DEI policies which were assigned to them and which there was a legal obligation to enforce?

Because that would NEVER happen in the US, certainly no government agency would fire its own people for having following legally enacted government policy just because that policy was no longer in fashion (though still legal government policy, because Congress hadn't yet changed the law).

I respect that you have been a HN member since 2016, making it unlikely that this is a troll account.

However, your views read like propaganda.

The "internal resistance" you refer to is simply people trying to follow the law, while being constantly whipsawed by changing political winds. We see similar stories here on HN about work in large corporations. What do you think it is like in an org with 2.2 MILLION employees, where their actions have the power of government behind them often including access to extremely sensitive information?

HN talked about leaking any Youtuber's contact information for 10K, with suggestions that Google should better protect people's data.

HN frequently talks about the dangers of non-accountability for police. Would you like that same non-accountabilty spread to all aspects of the Federal government? (if so, merry christmas because now you have it)

If you cannot find any steel-man arguments against DOGE, may I suggest that you read the remainder of this HN article?

pro tip: an insider action does count as a cyberattack. Your first argument is nonsensical.

re: mandate to audit government. If this was a serious audit, then DOGE would have put serious data privacy controls in place.

An audit without proper data protection IS a cyberattack; an exfiltration of protected data.

Shutting down every agency that is investigating his companies is "shits-n-giggles"?

Tesla's valuation is 10x the rest of the Magnificent 7, obviously investors think his ties to government are worth something.

(edit- valuation means i.e. P/E ratio; I saw the chart about 2 weeks ago so forget the exact valuation metric)

also, many of musk's actions are illegal. Which means he is now owned by Trump. Play nice or go to jail. For a long time.

> that people feel like any bump on the road of life risks turning into a complete derailment.

Maybe because in many ways it can be?

Unexpected medical condition -> crushing debt

Police stop goes bad

Job loss for reasons outside of your control

Wildfires burn your house down, or some other natural disaster

not a counterfactual. "fish" was a legal definition which allowed hunting.