lnofeisone

How are you not concerned that Musk and the current administration fudged a past contract to go from $500k to $500M with the US government and all its budget imbalances but somehow find consumer reaction appalling? https://electrek.co/2025/02/26/teslas-400-million-armored-ev-us-gov-contract-was-indeed-shady/ h/t @Saluki Nvm that Musk's current enterprises qualify him as the biggest welfare queen in the US.

BUR, is probably as close as you can get.

Sure. There will be contracting firms happy to support this effort and in the end it will look just like McKinsey's NYC trashcan value-add (https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-orders-4-million-mckinsey-study-on-whether-trash-piles-would-be-better-inside-containers) but it will somehow be sustainable.

I know for a fact that it didn't work. The numbers were off by a considerable margin, somewhere in the 50-75% range. I also know of another effort about 2 years ago where they tried to use satellite data, couple it with cell phone usage, and utility power usage, and internet usage to estimate numbers and they were still off. We aren't talking single % digits off or margin of error off. We are talking high teens % off. I don't know what the protected jobs program is, but I do know that the Census employee who ran the program was a smart cookie, very tech oriented, very frugal, and also cared about getting numbers right.

I hope there are people left in Census or USPS (or some random redditor/X user) to tell him that has already been tried, and it didn't work well at all to continue to expansion of the pilot OR they can try it again, waste $ and come to the same conclusion. https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2017-20036.pdf?1505825175 The number of wheels this administration will reinvent is going to be colossal.

This must be the result of some of these fine, fine methods. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/26/musk-doge-savings-website

What a terrible analysis. Population also grew from 1883 so did the GDP. What are the ratios of population:civ. work force or GDP: salary of civ. workers. The right is so fixated on civ. workers being bad and then somehow conflate it waste and fraud. The civ. workers for the right is like TDS for the left. The right can't point to fraud or waste in meaningful numbers (we are plying this game of "let's see what Elon will do") and the left card blanche thinks everything Trump does is bad. In the end, we all will have a terrible time.

Elon is the only one not getting paid. The rest of DOGE is paid.

Do you work in Gov't to say things like "Until a month ago, nothing has been done?" From my days in Gov't contracting, I 100% disagree. I dreaded getting TIGTA audits and went through a couple. But let's table this discussion and see where Elon comes out at the end of this. I just want to set the parameters clear: 1) can't complain when he gets fired that he wasn't allowed to finish his job 2) we'll tally up total savings and add all the extra expenses that I think will come because of his actions 3) we'll take into account any economic growth/contraction that will likely precipitate from this 4) though some of this isn't going to be on Elon, let's see what our debt is on the day Elon is done. Let's stay objective, numbers only. No politics.

You are now changing the goalposts. Elon is being wasteful and destructive. When Gov't checks and balances are restored - for example IGs are brought back - they will have a field day with this. It'll be millions of $s spent (wasted really because Elon can follow a process instead of trying to a wrecking ball) righting a lot of these wrongs. And again, how many gov't workers are being paid to do [I assume you meant to question what they do]. Give me a number. Give $ amounts. No conjectures, just straight-up facts. I am mindful of where my tax dollars go. I care that my tax dollars are not abused by overpaying farmers in the mid-west for their soybeans, just like I care that my tax dollars don't go to some non-profit that claims that peace in Palestine will improve our climate. I'm also not stupid to see that what Elon is doing is counterproductive.

It's also not mutually exclusive that he is wasting money by sending out tweets that cost $10M+ in wasted time to see who "has a pulse and two working neurons." There were hour-long gov't meetings to figure out what to do to respond to this email. Even Tulsi said to ignore it. This is on top of all the extra costs that are now being added to contractors to make sure cyber component of all the DOGE nonsense isn't leaking any more classified information. How are you all OK with this colossal waste of tax dollars? How are you OK with exposing gov't to all the labor-related liabilities? I'm gonna be so pissed when my tax dollars will go to pay settlement agreements for all the gov't workers.

So is he doing a fine job or did he just start? Anyway, obviously, this will play out as it will play out, and we'll get to judge it with hindsight in mind.

In terms of $ value, Elon didn't cut all that much on the $6T. Show me wrong. I'm open to seeing it. The amount of misery he brought to the Federal workforce is extremely real. The amount of illegal things he has done is also extremely real. The amount of liability he opened Gov't to is extremely real. You can try arguing that Gov't has sovereign immunity, but our Gov't also waived it for labor issues. If/when this admin gets replaced, the sheer number of tax dollars that will go to pay for all the class actions will be ridiculous. Talk about a waste of tax dollars. Eventually, Democrats will figure this out, and the pendulum will swing hard in the other direction. Those of us who have businesses and make significant capital investments don't do well when there is this much unpredictability. I can tell you that I've deferred multiple large projects, and my suppliers and a few others call me every week to see when it will be back on schedule. Now, maybe $100k of projects that I had in my pipeline isn't a big deal but I'm not the only person. In my main line of work, the number of contracts from private organizations that I'm tracking that are getting delays and cancelations is growing by the day. I'm in the AI field, with 85%+ of my work centered on commercial non-government entities. Handle this guy? This guy is breeding the likes of AOC, who will enter Congress and be just as unhinged as him, and the handling of this guy will be merciless. the next time dems win anything they'll have morality police whip you if you get someone's pronouns wrong. Everyone will wonder how we got there but it is "this guy (i.e., Elon)" that is the impetus. Oh the irony all around. jfc.

I tend to agree with you that anytime dems touch the tax code, their MO is "everyone must suffer." By the same token, Trump's tax code modification doesn't do a thing to help the middle class. Anyone in the $70k-400k is getting hoses by him. Anyone under $70k gets some improvement but the impact is going to be tiny (as you noted, they don't really pay bulk of the taxes). Anyone over $400k will benefit at the expense of those in the middle.

What, in your opinion, is a "massive amount of waste?" Put $ values on it.

So far he canceled $8B of stuff on a $6T budget. I wouldn't call that epic. I would call his latest tweet with 5 bullets that feds have to send somewhat epic. Lord knows his dumb tweet cost the taxpayers $16M+. Imagine doing it every week and he is creating $800B worth of waste. He is also opening USG to all sorts of labor liabilities, you know, a hostile work environment. I am terrified as to what this will look like when Dems win back House/Congress and/or WH. That pendulum is going to swing so wide in the other direction which is truly unhealthy for the country and incredibly challenging for businesses to navigate.

That's not a balanced view. The latest proposal is to bring back SALT deduction. Also, zeroing out tips is a really tiny amount. it's about 10% of what SALT brings and not even a 1% change for the additional deficit. Put another way, of roughly 700B that is planned in gov't deficits that will be allotted to tax adjustments, 550B (individual TCJA, SALT, and TCJA Business) will go to high earners, and 150B (SS tax removal, tips and overtime removal, etc.) will go to lower income earners. How does this not amount as tax cuts for the rich? Never mind the fact that a lot of carried interest stuff is neatly repackaged in the TCJA Business so the impact of closing this loophole will be immaterial.

I can say with confidence that O&M is usually considered essential. No clue what non-essential will be.

You are right. I had to refresh my memory. LMT merged its consulting with Leidos about 10 years ago and absorbed whatever was left. LMT is a product company that provides services around products, so it is the complete opposite of BAH. CACI is somewhere in the middle.

BAH is a pure play gov't consulting (though they have been trying to build their asset plays). LMT's IT competes with BAH. The rest of LMT doesn't. In many ways, CACI and LMT are similar. Both sell military hardware and offer consulting that focuses on armed forces IT. CACI's consulting is about 50%, and LMT's is about 25%.

BAH has something like 35% of their portfolio in civilian, and a lot of them are getting hit very hard (cfpb is $0 now). CACI is a bit more insulated because of its technology play but some of their service contracts are looking weak (e.g., part of USCIS that handles inbound immigration, etc.).

What's your thesis? BAH is a total mess internally. They are losing contracts and people are jumping ship. BAH is also pure gov play and don't have commercial contracts to offset (unlike ACN which lost $1.5B or so of contracts already).

Same. I'm holding steady but have dry powder to pick up extra shares if needed.

CPNG is a big position for me, and I'm aware of its silly trade-down on a good earnings pattern, but I am hoping this time is different. Ha!

Naked but with tight stops.