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Posted (edited)
Posted
8 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

It's been said a billion times but it's absolutely bonkers that not that long ago this guy had most of the world thinking he was a genius. The musk story is going to make one hell of a comedy movie/show one day if it's somehow still legal to make and distribute such material. 

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Posted

Feed the hungry? Support our nation’s farmers? 

“Not on my watch.” -Krasnov

 

Quote

The Agriculture Department has axed two programs that gave schools and food banks money to buy food from local farms and ranchers, halting more than $1 billion in federal spending.

Roughly $660 million that schools and child care facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program in 2025 has been canceled, according to the School Nutrition Association.

State officials were notified Friday of USDA’s decision to end the LFS program for this year. More than 40 states had signed agreements to participate in previous years, according to SNA and several state agencies.

The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which supports food banks and other feeding organizations, has also been cut. USDA notified states that it was unfreezing funds for existing LFPA agreements but did not plan to carry out a second round of funding for fiscal year 2025.

In a statement, a USDA spokesperson confirmed that funding, previously announced last October, “is no longer available and those agreements will be terminated following 60-day notification.”

The spokesperson added: “These programs, created under the former Administration via Executive authority, no longer effectuate the goals of the agency. LFPA and LFPA Plus agreements that were in place prior to LFPA 25, which still have substantial financial resources remaining, will continue to be in effect for the remainder of the period of performance.” 

The Biden administration expanded the spending for both programs to build a more resilient food supply chain that didn’t just rely on major food companies. Last year, USDA announced more than $1 billion in additional funding for the programs through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a New Deal-era USDA fund for buying agricultural commodities.

The Trump administration’s move to halt the programs comes as school nutrition officials are becoming increasingly anxious about affording healthy food with the current federal reimbursement rate for meals. As food costs have risen in the last few years, more people are turning to food banks and other feeding organizations to supplement their increased grocery bills.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, castigated the administrationfor the decision, noting that her state would lose $12 million it planned to dole out to school districts.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have declared that feeding children and supporting local farmers are no longer ‘priorities,’ and it’s just the latest terrible cut with real impact on families across Massachusetts,” Healey said in a statement.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/10/usda-cancels-local-food-purchasing-for-schools-food-banks-00222796

 

 

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Posted
4 minutes ago, royiv said:

Make America Healthy Again!

You will buy all of your food from the only approved seller, XGroceries.  The food will be manufactured by the only approved manufacturer, XFoodCo.

You will submit, peasants.

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Posted
11 hours ago, Hookah Horns said:

It's been said a billion times but it's absolutely bonkers that not that long ago this guy had most of the world thinking he was a genius. The musk story is going to make one hell of a comedy movie/show one day if it's somehow still legal to make and distribute such material. 

How do you say Giuliani in Afrikaans?

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Posted
On 3/8/2025 at 11:25 AM, Willfully Horn said:

More facts that expose the DOGE scam.

The discretionary budget request for the National Park Service in 2024 was $3.8 billion. 

The National Park Service revenue for 2024 was $55.6 billion.

 

https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/national-parks-contributed-record-high-$55-6-billion-to-u-s-economy-supported-415-000-jobs-in-2023.htm

 

 

The $55.6 billion was for overall economic impact, not direct National Park Service revenue.

With that nit picking out of the way, it changes nothing.  I don't give a rat's ass if the NPS is "profitable" or not in their own books.  The NPS is a national treasure and should be treated as such.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, 27-25 said:

The $55.6 billion was for overall economic impact, not direct National Park Service revenue.

With that nit picking out of the way, it changes nothing.  I don't give a rat's ass if the NPS is "profitable" or not in their own books.  The NPS is a national treasure and should be treated as such.

Thanks for the clarification. And, agreed.

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Posted

Replace fired federal employees with AI? What could go wrong?

Quote

A new phase of the president and the Department of Government Efficiency’s attempts to downsize and remake the civil service is under way. The idea is simple: use generative AI to automate work that was previously done by people.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/gsa-chat-doge-ai/681987/?utm_source=apple_news

Posted
39 minutes ago, pacman said:

With Grok's biased, hallucination prone xAI LLM model? At no charge to US taxpayers, right?

Grok said there’s a 75-85% chance that dotard is a Russian asset so it can’t be totally bad.

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Posted

Trump official tasked with defending DOGE cuts posted fashion influencer videos from her office

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/politics/opm-spokesperson-fashion-influencer-videos-invs/index.html

Quote

 

As the Office of Personnel Management oversaw the layoffs of thousands of federal workers and pressed others to justify their positions, the agency’s chief spokesperson repeatedly used her office for a side hustle: aspiring Instagram fashion influencer.

In at least a dozen videos filmed in her OPM office, political appointee McLaurine Pinover modeled her outfit choices for the day, while directing followers from her Instagram account to a website that could earn her commissions on clothing sales.

On the same day OPM sent a government-wide memo pressing federal officials to identify barriers they faced in their work to “swiftly terminate poor performing employees,” Pinover posted a video blowing a kiss to the camera with the caption “work look” and the hashtag #dcinfluencer. Her Instagram account linked to a site where viewers could buy the $475 purple skirt she wore in the video.

One watchdog group said her videos could run afoul of rules restricting the use of government property for personal benefit because, while in the workplace, she was using a website that pays content creators commissions from the clothing brands they promote.

Former OPM staffers during the Biden administration also told CNN that they were offended by Pinover posting as a fashion influencer on government property while defending mass layoffs of federal workers – at a time when top Trump administration officials have accused career employees of being lazy and wasteful.

“Your number one job as a leader is to protect and support your people,” said Jack Miller, who preceded Pinover as the politically appointed OPM communications director under President Joe Biden. “So instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep your team, we’re posting fashion videos. It’s absurd.”

Pinover, who started her job at the federal government’s human resources agency in January, has issued numerous statements backing the Trump administration’s moves to lay off probationary employees and offer buyouts to tens of thousands of others. When OPM sent federal employees an email last month asking them to list five bullet points of things they had done in the past week, Pinover described it as “a commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce.”

Pinover did not respond to a list of questions. But she deleted her Instagram account, @getdressedwithmc, minutes after CNN asked about it.

On Instagram, where she had about 800 followers, Pinover’s posts were adorned with hashtags like #dcstyle and #dcinfluencer, and soundtracked with hits like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Busy Woman.” She had posted as recently as Tuesday, when she uploaded a video showing herself typing on her office computer. Her account did not identify her as a federal employee.

 

Pinover posted at least a dozen fashion influencer videos from her office in the agency's Washington, DC, headquarters. 

 

The videos were filmed inside the office of the OPM communications director on the fifth floor of the agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters, according to three former OPM staffers. The office is across the hall from a secure annex that has become a hub for workers at the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting effort pushed by Trump ally Elon Musk.

“I saw it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, that’s my office,’” a former OPM communications staffer, who asked not to be named out of concern for retaliation, told CNN. “She’s the spokesperson for the agency that is advocating for the firing based on performance and efficiency of the rest of the government workforce, and she’s using government property as a backdrop for her videos.”

Pinover’s Instagram page linked to her account on the fashion website ShopMy, which featured links for viewers to buy the same pieces of clothing Pinover wore in her videos. At least some of the links on Pinover’s ShopMy page were “affiliate links” for clothing brands like Quince and Reformation, as well as retailers like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s – a technique used by social media influencers to receive payments from companies whose products they promote.

Brands pay commissions to ShopMy users who send them customers through affiliate links, according to the website, with the influencers sometimes receiving about 15% of the sales price. It’s not clear what commission rate Pinover could have earned or whether she received any money through the links. Pinover also deleted all the content on her ShopMy page on Tuesday.

According to federal regulations, government employees must not use public property “for other than authorized purposes,” with exceptions for “de minimis personal use,” such as sending a personal email from a government account.

Donald K. Sherman, the chief counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Pinover’s posts appeared to violate rules prohibiting the use of government resources for private gain, and would not be considered “de minimis.”

The rules don’t “give cover to a federal employee using government resources to subsidize their private business,” Sherman said. “It is highly problematic that while dedicated civil servants who want to work for the government are being fired for all manner of dubious reasons, or are being forced out by this administration, that someone at the agency leading that attack on the civil service is using their government job for private gain.”

Still, Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said Pinover’s potential rule violations were small potatoes compared to other ethical questions surrounding the role of DOGE and Musk in the Trump administration.

Because Pinover didn’t reference her OPM position in her online posts, “she does not appear to be attempting to trade on the prestige of government office,” Clark noted.

Some federal agencies also have regulations that say certain employees need to get approval before pursuing a “business relationship or activity involving the provision of personal services by the employee for direct, indirect, or deferred compensation,” although it’s unclear if a similar rule covers OPM workers.

Several of the Instagram videos from Pinover’s office were posted during business hours, according to a review of code embedded in the social media website, and most appear to have been filmed during the daytime.

The former OPM staffers say they were particularly offended by one video Pinover posted on February 13. That was the day that OPM reportedly held a call with other federal agencies directing them to lay off thousands of probationary employees – and when about 20 people on Pinover’s team were told their jobs would be cut, according to Miller, her predecessor.

The agency’s communications team “worked their butts off to support other agencies and the workforce,” Miller said. “To post that video the very day your entire team is getting laid off is ridiculous.”

“While her team is getting axed, she’s twirling around in her office,” added the other former staffer.

Related article‘Second American Revolution’: The team behind DOGE’s government overhaul

Pinover also posted a video on February 28, the day that OPM sent out a second government-wide email asking federal employees to summarize their work. Administration officials like Musk have described those emails as part of a broader effort to root out employees who were not using their time efficiently.

“Pretending to work while taking money from taxpayers is no longer acceptable,” Musk posted on his social media network, X, in January.

Before Pinover joined OPM at the beginning of Trump’s second term, she worked as a senior director at a public affairs firm, and was a deputy communications director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to her LinkedIn page. She also worked as an assistant in the Executive Office of the President during Trump’s first term.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, TexasHooch said:

Trump official tasked with defending DOGE cuts posted fashion influencer videos from her office

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/politics/opm-spokesperson-fashion-influencer-videos-invs/index.html

image.thumb.png.beb59274001279a7c4e08872f2916c56.png

These morally bankrupt assholes don't care about what they cause; they care only about themselves. So let's be clear. This woman is the very definition of plain and forgettable. If you asked the greatest AI of all time to draw "a woman who is average at best" this is exactly what you'd get. 

Basic. At best. 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

These morally bankrupt assholes don't care about what they cause; they care only about themselves. So let's be clear. This woman is the very definition of plain and forgettable. If you asked the greatest AI of all time to draw "a woman who is average at best" this is exactly what you'd get. 

Basic. At best. 

It’s as Ann as the nose on plain’s face. 

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