Can you point me to some of the evidence being presented? I know elon's been posting claims of fraud and abuse, but I'm only seen his claims, without any evidence.
There is ZERO context in those Tweets. Only showing a line item, with a dense description is NOT evidence for fraud. Its like if I were looking at your bank transactions and assuming the worst.
Don't get me wrong. There is certainly fraud and overpayment happening in government operations. But just looking at receipts is not the smoking gun. If anyone suspects fraud, there are a processes. Inspectors Generals are (were) one way to have those payments investigated, DOJ and FBI would be another step. The IGs were fired last week. I wonder why...
Also, this "Ian Miles Cheong" guy is literally a Kremlin operative - really someone worth blocking. So that's important to know about his motivations to sow doubt in US Democracy.
NIH Official account is saying last year $9B of the $35B in grant money was for "administrative overhead". Not fraud. But does that sound reasonable to you??
Fraud can be proven. But its a process and its not as easy than just claiming something to be fraud. We (hopefully still) have a justice system, with due process for the same reason.
That $9B is just a number. Whether it is reasonable or not can only be determined by looking into the details:
- What accounts as overhead?
- What were decisions that lead to that overhead?
- Were there alternatives that would have costs less?
- Why and how were those decisions made?
- Can we learn for future decisions?
- Was there actual fraud?
- When there was fraud, why wasn't it referred to DOJ to be investigated properly?
"Administrative overhead" is not bad by itself. Outside government, its simply called "Operating Expense" and "Cost of Revenue" (not a concern of government luckily). I am certain, if you look into SpaceX' or Tesla's expenses, you would find fraud too.
Because Musk and his brainwashed followers can claim stuff on Twitter doesn't make it true. And it certainly MUST NOT be basis to destroy Democracy and democratic processes.
Because hes not arguing in good faith for the truth of the matter. Even if you posted that someone was getting all 9billion of that administrative budget as salary; the next argument would be " ah that employee is worth 9billion no fraud here". The standard of proof hes looking for is likely a direct admission of guilt and intent lol.
> The above claim was false. Publicly available records showed that in 2023 and 2024, the USAID paid a total of $44,000 — not $8 million — to Politico, and the payments were earmarked for institutional subscriptions to E&E News, a Politico publication. No other transactions between USAID and Politico were listed for the entire previous decade.
EDIT to make my current position clear, I do think there is probably waste in various government agencies. My objection with the current approach is mainly 2 folds:
1. The lack of transparency and accountability
2. Some of the statements from the administration that are false or misleading. e.g. the 50 million on condoms.
The 2 combined makes it difficult to have trust on what's happening.
