Don't spend that $5,000 DOGE dividend just yet.
The NY Times examined that "wall of receipts" supposedly proving the $55 billion in savings dug up by Musk and his minions. Turns out the math was a little iffy.
Of course, the NYT is "fake news" so we can go on believing whatever Karoline Leavitt says in the WH briefing room.
Key takeaway:
But the math ... is marred with accounting errors, incorrect assumptions, outdated data and other mistakes, according to a New York Times analysis of all the contracts listed. While the DOGE team has surely cut some number of billions of dollars, its slapdash accounting adds to a pattern of recklessness by the group, which has recently gained access to sensitive government payment systems.
I don't know what to believe at this point. IF all this really turns out to be much ado about very little, well, it won't look good for DJT.
I have no idea what DOGE has actually done, how they've done it, if the math is correct, and also at this point there's good reason not to have seen receipts,
yet.
What I do know is I trust the NYT zero, anymore. They're not just wrong at every turn, they're exactly wrong, on so many stories the last many years. You can't do that by accident. The chances are zero. They're not good faith actors.
It's to the point where if they say it, I'm just about happy to blindly believe the opposite.
Which to my earlier point somewhere, is to their discredit, because they have no way of reaching someone like me now if they see an actual problem that people should know about which they should be reporting. I'm not listening anymore.
I mentioned somewhere else to you a couple weeks ago, I have a few rules I think are very reasonable for gathering "good" information in today's world, where it's certainly not easy. I wouldn't claim it to be foolproof, but just using some general epistemic principles, similar to how historians "know" history reliably, is a good way to go. I'm not exposed to
many "news" sources. There's just too many anymore. I did track the NYT for several years, and they're on my BS list.
It's a slow process, and I wish I could say I have a list, even a small one, of "reliable" news. But it's more like piecing together things from here and there. That obviously leaves me with less time and consequently more uncertainty on many things. I try to remember that when I inevitably get fired up about something.....I think I know something but I haven't yet met my own standards. Whatever. I'm just saying, whether they're right about DOGE accounting or not, they've given me no reason to trust them lately.
