WTW81: They're Gutting the Government and Trying to Call It Savings.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode 81. I'm Thomas. That over there is Lydia. Oh, look, I've, nope, you've been fired for redundancy. Yep. So we need to do cost savings. So what we're doing is we're firing you, um, the one who's, you know, like doing all the work and I will be here and it will be a silent podcast. Yep, and here's the thing. As long as, yeah, it's super efficient and as long as everybody still listens just as much or more and pledges more listening to a silent nothing podcast, then it's, it's efficiency. That's just pure. Why do we have two people doing this job? One per actually I've now, I've not been sacked. I'm now it's now just a file can make itself. Now you can just have AI just make a file. Yeah. Just generate an MP3 file and automate the posting. Why are we having people doing these jobs? This is such an inefficient thing. We're going to, I okay. I can't, I could keep going, but it's just just so dumb. It's so fucking dumb. The fact that this is a quote unquote serious effort. This is, these people are deadly serious in this interview that we've been covering. This is a part two. Make sure you've listened to the last episode. You don't want to miss it because this is Doge. This is, well, is it? This is the face of Doge? This Is the, yeah, carefully selected all white male. Let's just check it. Yep. All white male, one guy in the back, one guy who they made sure to put as far away from the camera as possible. Actually one guy's

0:00:49 Lydia: I'm still here? No. Okay. Mm -hmm. Oh. Wow. That sounds efficient. Right. It's a ghost podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Carefully selected. No. No. Not. He's

0:02:09 Thomas: Not he looks like he might be mixed race or something he's also the youngest but they literally I wish people could see the image I'm looking at now it's comical he's as far away from the camera as could be other than that it's a bunch of idiot white men with the idiotist whitest man in the middle Elon Musk and they are very serious they are so serious about this they are trying to put a straight face a businessy smart innovative all those all those stupid adjectives face on, on what is really silly nonsense, silly, harmful, idiotic nonsense. They're gutting the government and trying to call it savings. I'm just in disbelief. I's so glad you're doing this because it's, it's. We need to never let this go.

0:02:11 Lydia: Also the youngest. Mm -hmm. Mm -huh. Yeah.

0:02:49 Thomas: I know there's a lot of things like that, but this is so fucking stupid. What do we have? What do you have in store for us in part two? If you want to give a preview or anything. Okay. IT systems. Here's something that I will reset. I'll try to be less mad. Here's something that maybe they could find a way to do something good with their IT people. Like maybe there's enough like barriers to change in the government. I don't believe that. I mean, we've worked in government and like it is tough. Oftentimes you're using antiquated systems and it's annoying. And it's like maybe they can through sheer force of their audacity of the caucasity. Maybe they could get one win in that they'll like Like replace a system that will actually, you know, they'll do it badly and it'll cause a bunch of chaos and all that. But like maybe at the end of the day, these workers will end up with like a slightly better system or something. Maybe I'll give I'll open my mind. I've had time to meditate and relax from the last episode. I will open my heart to the possibility that they could be right about a thing. Maybe we'll see

0:02:58 Lydia: Oh, yeah. On the last one, we talked a lot about the Social Security Administration. We talked a little about credit cards. This time, we're going to be talking about IT systems and retirement primarily. Yeah. Mm -hm.

0:03:57 Lydia: You'll have to wait to find out until after the break, yeah?

0:03:57 Thomas: After the break. All right. Well, we'll take our usual break. Please support the show. Hey, all the cost cutting is really getting to us here. We need in order to make these cost cuts work we need to increase revenue please go to patreon.com slash where there's woke and sign on there's a new bonus it's blank podcast that's uh it's just a podcast that nobody does ai made and you need to get your hands on it's the only way I can make these numbers work please patreon.com slash wherethere'swoke okay here we go where are we starting oh yeah we got the elevator and the so I've heard this enough that it probably refers to something, but already it feels a little weird. Why would our retirement system need to be underground? Is it manned by the old dead ghosts of the previously retired and they have to go down into the crypt

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0:04:25 Lydia: All right. We're going to start with retirement. So the claim is that there is a nine-month wait to retire via paperwork filed underground. Well, we'll get a little bit into the history, but first I want to hear what the Doge folks have to say about this.

0:04:58 Thomas: To communicate with the ghosts? Or are they radioactive?

0:05:06 Clip: And they said they needed somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government. I loved the challenge, so I jumped on board, and it turns out there is actually a mine in Pennsylvania that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. Now, picture this. This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets, stacked ten high to house 400 million pieces of paper. It's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed in the last 70 years. And so as you dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet. So the process takes many

0:05:16 Thomas: A mine. Okay. Okay, all right. Do we pay rent on the paper itself?

0:05:44 Thomas: Okay, there's a lot of paper. Got it. Now, OK, here's the thing. Already just pausing. There were days before this one. So I don't know if you explain to this guy like time didn't start the minute you became aware of something going on. Like time predates us actually goes back. Time goes back a ways weirdly. And I could imagine that like there's a lot of paper. When do we think we digitized anything in the federal government? Like knowing how slow the federal government is, knowing how important these systems are, by the way, like weirdly, the more important a system, the older it's going to be because like, well, we can't fuck with that. It's really hard to change anything. Yeah. And so like, when would we have even started trying to do that? Two thousand fucking ten. You know, like when would be a lot of like still relevant pieces of paper that the government is dealing with? And once again, large numbers don't equal bad. All right. I'll keep going.

0:05:45 Clip: Months, and we're going to make it just many days. Will it be digitized? Absolutely. So this

0:05:54 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's scary. Yeah.

0:06:42 Clip: Will be an online digital process that will take just a few days at most. And I really think it's It's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older

0:06:43 Thomas: Okay. Okay, fine. Yeah. No one's ever thought of this before.

0:06:54 Clip: Than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. So we really believe that the government can have an Apple Store-like experience, beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.

0:07:03 Thomas: What an example.

0:07:05 Clip: Because right now, it's by hand, you can't.

0:07:06 Thomas: So you want the federal worker to wander into the mine, not know who actually works there. Cause you can barely tell eventually someone in the mind comes and is like, Oh, Hey, what are you doing here? And they're like, oh, I assumed if I came into this mind that there'd be somebody who would help me. Oh, did you already like make an appointment? Oh, Oh, did I have to make an appointment to be at a store? I thought I could just go to a store. This is very confusing. I'll go find someone in the back of the mind to come out and help you in like 20 minutes. Okay, I guess. So that's how we want it to work. Got it. Much better. Apple store -like experience.

0:07:40 Clip: The retirement process is all by paper, literally with people carrying paper and manila envelopes into this gigantic mine.

0:07:46 Thomas: Literally, you know, okay, now I'm on his side. The paper's in envelopes? That's double the paper. Almost triple if you think about it. I was okay with one to two layers of paper, but three is out. Now I'm a full -on MAGA. I'm dark MAGA

0:07:47 Lydia: Almost triple. Yeah, yeah, that's a sandwich. Which.

0:08:04 Thomas: Idiots.

0:08:05 Clip: You can't retire more than a certain number every month, about 8,000 a month. That's how we, the reason we discovered it was we were saying like, well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. They said, well the most you could be, they could do is 8, 000 a month and even under normal circumstances it can take six to nine months just to have your retirement paperwork processed and they often get the calculations wrong. So we're like, well why would it take so long to retire? And they're like...

0:08:32 Thomas: Okay, question already. Does that mean you literally can't retire? I think what this would mean is the government is being slow in some part of the paperwork process. Now, maybe, I don't know, the government can suck, so maybe that means you're not getting paid for that time, your retirement benefits, which would be really, really bad. It doesn't mean literally, nope, sorry, Bob, I know you're 105, but we can't get we can't get you on that pallet today. There's like one guy who's like, oh man, I've been wanting to retire for so long. Oh, cool. We're going to go in. Yeah. It sounds like it would be very cool. I like, I always like, yeah, like a good cellar, a good cavernous and some chili. Yeah, which sucks. Not good, but it's also not waiting on retirement.

0:09:01 Lydia: Let me let me debunk really fast some of some of the statistics regarding retirement and then what we're going to get into this cave mind thing. I would love to actually.

0:09:13 Lydia: This. Yes. Yeah exactly. Exactly. So the six to nine month wait to retire is not exactly Exactly true. There is potentially a three to five month wait, according to the Office of Personnel Management's guide that they have online regarding retirement. But the wait is not to retire. It's to receive your full benefits.

0:09:37 Lydia: Well, but they have adjusted this. So you get 80 percent of your retirement while they are processing it and then you receive the back pay, the 20 percent while they were processing it once they're done. So they cannot begin processing your retirement until your last day. So that's part of the issue there. And as I said, you receive back pay when it has been completed with processing to cover the 20 percent that you missed over that processing time.

0:10:01 Thomas: So they do an estimate that's going to be like close enough, but they just don't want to overpay people. So they like kind of undersell it. Yeah.

0:10:07 Lydia: Exactly. And this is a known issue that, yeah, it can take a long time for them to process your paperwork. And there's a lot of things involved with that. There are complicated retirement packages and there are not so complicated retirement packages. So keep that in mind, too, that when we're talking about how long it might take, That depends on, like, did you receive, you know, disability benefits during your time working for the federal government, you know, calculating your service time, all of those things. It can get really, really complicated, especially if, like you've moved a lot of jobs, a lot of departments.

0:10:14 Thomas: Yeah, that sucks, I guess. But I'm not saying Doge is right or anything, but that all stuff like when when I went into work for the state government, it's like, yeah, OK, I'll make a I'll making either a program or an Excel formula that will do this instantly. And people are like, you are a wizard. No one here. And I will say, like, there is a sense in which there's a lot of room for improvement in the government.

0:10:58 Thomas: There just is that this is not it like it's just this and this this shouldn't be even taken seriously as an attempt at it this is just lying this is ways to lie and sure like yeah all that no matter how complicated it is it's a set of rules that you could formulate into computer logic and it could all do that instantly like that's not hard oh

0:11:17 Lydia: But I will say the reason why I'm saying that is OPM publishes their backlog, like the cases that they've processed, the cases that they received, how long it's taken to process it. Their goals regarding processing times, their carryover caseload, which they call their inventory month to month. And the average processing time for packages for retirement packages in February 2025, so just last month, was 44 days.

0:11:41 Lydia: That's significantly less than that three to five month. Now, also keep in mind that I said that there were packages, cases that were more complicated than others. If you look at retirement packages where, yeah, by type, so you You have the ones that were produced in less than 60 days. The average is 29 days to complete those packages. If you look at the cases that were produced in more than 60 Days, on average, it took 126 days to compete.

0:11:50 Thomas: By type or something yeah okay so it's it's like a bimodal distribution where it's not like the average has a whole lot that are literally the average. It's more like there's a bunch that are high and a bunch that are low. Yeah. Okay. Okay, yeah.

0:12:14 Lydia: You have The Easy Ones and The Harder Ones, yeah, and The harder ones I mentioned can be complicated because of various things that happened during your time working for the federal government, but it also can be contributed by making mistakes on your paperwork. And Megyn Kelly like really demonizes this and says, like, you have to take a training in order to retire. Well, the training is literally to help the employee fill out their paperwork correctly from the get go. Yeah. And then it takes a long time. Yeah. Mm hmm. And you lose efficiency.

0:12:41 Thomas: So, sorry. Who's the problem there? Just already. Oh, you have to take a training to retire. Okay? What's the alternative? People do the paperwork wrong and then other people have to correct it. It takes longer. It is just, again, if you get into this mode of hyper-criticism that they get into where everything is the worst and the government is the worst. You just say things with a negative tone and then it's like, oh, a training to retire. It's like okay, is that bad? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah I know they're the first people to think of the concept of speed. More! Like that's the level of complex thought it took to faster that's anyone can think of that there's not you're not geniuses you're not super fucking geniuses yeah

0:13:09 Lydia: They get really hung up on this idea of like private sector workers can retire whenever they're ready. Well, I mean, public sector workers can retire whenever they're ready to, too. However, public sector retirement is a heck of a lot different than private sector retirement. We're talking pensions, right? We're talk about lifetime benefits. And that is something that private sector is not going to get like that. That's that's a huge cost to the government. They need to make sure they get that right. Also, my other point, we kind of talked about this already, but obviously any normal person, any person at all would see, hey, we'd like this to to go as quickly as possible. So people aren't without their 20%. Exactly. They are the first people to think of, we should modernize the system.

0:14:00 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So Washington Post published a piece on this back in 2014. And I'm going to share quite a lot that I learned from this whole process via the Washington Post. But I want to start with a comment that they shared here. Quote, the need for automation was clear in 1981, said James W. Morrison Jr., who oversaw the retirement processing system under President Reagan.

0:14:25 Lydia: So there's a lot that still relies on paper files. But then the state archivist of Pennsylvania said that he talks with people at this facility and he told Wired recently that it's a mistake to view OPM's process as, quote, woefully outdated. He said, much of the work that goes on at Boyer's, as I understand it, is digital. So the idea of people trundling piles of paper through dark mine shafts is absurd. In fact, these facilities are meant to protect you and me by protecting the records that safeguard our legal rights, our public benefits. So what is this mine? Yeah. Oh, I know. Oh.

0:14:25 Thomas: Mm -hmm right yeah yeah well to say nothing of the fact that again think back to a time before now and the people you're talking about the people who are involved in this transaction are retirees you know how hard it was to get anyone old to do something digital and like the nineties, it was fucking impossible. They grew up with horse and buggy. Like they don't, they fuck it again. And like, it's better now, but like, just think back to the nineties or to the like eighties, two thousands, we're dealing with the oldest people. They're not going to like, oh, jump on your iPad and do it. Like, it's like, it's hard. They like paper. Yeah. They're still getting their checks, you know, now that they're 150. 150.

0:15:29 Lydia: Yeah, such a great point. Some that are in their hundreds. Oh, my gosh. I know the tax records that they that they keep holding on to at their homes, too. It's a lot. In The Washington Post article, they ask, but why is it in a cave at all? Yeah.

0:15:51 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Interesting question. And again, you're saying this is a long time. This is 2014. So yeah. Why is it in a cave? Okay. They eat limestone? Wow. Oh, okay. From fire, flood. Yeah, yeah. Weather. Yeah it was really cold. So they, yeah, safe from that. Russians don't know about underground yet. That's really cool. We're the only ones who know. Don't tell them. Yeah oh reels I was gonna say that yeah special

0:15:57 Lydia: All right. Back in 1958, the U .S. government needed storage space. It needed 30 ,000 square feet to hold personnel files that were being relocated from a building in Washington. They were looking at buildings in various places like Syracuse, New York, Richmond, Virginia. And then they decided to do this place, which is an underground complex where they had previously cut limestone from these caves to feed the steel mills in Pennsylvania. And a private company had taken over this cave and they had turned it into basically like a huge safe deposit box. And the thought was it's safe from the weather. Well, and this is during the Cold War, too. They want to keep it safe fromthe Russians, the communists. Right. And then it was naturally cool as a cave. So for document retention, you know it made a lot of sense so the complex is now owned by a company called iron mountain and they lease out other caverns in this entire mine this old mine to store old hollywood movie reels yeah photo archives things like that that need really um special conditions exactly oh

0:17:07 Thomas: Conditions yeah the federal government should have a wine cellar like it's like the federal wine celler yeah and it'slike I don't know what they would use it for but yeah just for fun like hey we have a giant ass wine cellare we keep it's sort of like you know that library of congress yeah it should be that but like for wine you know

0:17:13 Lydia: That would be so cool can we work there uh

0:17:24 Thomas: Like we'll keep and they do that with certain with movies I think don't they save a certain number of movies or they say that this has become part of the national whatever you know what you know I'm talking about you do that with wine where they're like all right 10 wines a year you know what no not that not that exactly but it's like that where they recognize certain works of art and they whatever it becomes part of a national I don't know what that word is uh but they do that and then just a nice badass wine cellar you have you have the space you know you got the you got the cave space idiots why wasn't it all on PDF back in 1960 morons God idiot government yeah who mines the miner right although it would be good bit to be like yeah I work in the

0:17:33 Lydia: Yeah yeah not the criterion collection where that that Armageddon is part of. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah yeah. So the government started moving its records there in 1960. Initially it was just a file room so they would ship records from Washington. Yeah God so inefficient. Then the government started to hire more people to work in the mine itself. And now this is in a very rural part of Pennsylvania. So now we're talking about federal government positions in a place where there's not a lot of jobs otherwise. Yeah, exactly.

0:18:31 Thomas: Mines wow yeah yeah the paperwork mines I had to I had to mine several HR files the other day so it's a really good job yeah sounds like it's nice and cool that's all literally all I think about I was like, oh, nice and cool down there. Yeah, that's fair.

0:18:39 Lydia: The Washington Post interviewed someone who recently retired after working 38 years in the mine processing this paper. She said that that nobody up there goes on to another job. You can work Monday through Friday, eight to five. There's mostly overtime if you want it. They're flexible about using leave. It's a great job. Yeah.

0:19:03 Lydia: Yeah. But I mean, it's also like it's hard to like you're down in a mine. So like you don't see sun, I guess, while you're working the mine. And so, you know, and there's there's a whole process that happens there. And I don't have information about like how the process is done today. But I will say in 2014, after the Washington Post shared this article and detailed kind of the steps for how the retirement processing is happening, they provided an update and they said, nine months later, not much has changed in the federal government's underground paperwork mine.

0:19:37 Thomas: Until that one journal entry that said they delved too greedily and too deeply. They've awoken something in the dark. A Balrog of Mocha.

0:19:43 Lydia: Yeah, but I do think,

0:19:47 Thomas: It's like an HR paperwork Balrog, though. It's, like, made out of, like. Personnel files. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I kind of forgot to say, like... That is what I did in the state of California for the CCR. Yeah, like that is what it is. And is really annoying it's also true at every company

0:19:54 Lydia: Though, that it would be interesting. And I just, you know, like digging through OPM's budget requests over the last 10 10 years was not something that was on my to -do list today, but I would think it's interesting to see, you know, everybody who works in government wants things to be more modernized. Everyone who does, like as an employee, rank and file, like you're like, why are we doing it this way? Why can't we do it this way? Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:26 Thomas: Too you ever go to get your car fixed and they enter your car information into a green computer yeah it'll be like the text is green that's how you know it's fucking from the 70s or some shit yeah this is not just a government problem yeah it's

0:20:32 Lydia: The legacy mainframe systems. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

0:20:41 Lydia: Well, yeah. I mean, this is a government example, but when I was with Department of state hospitals. We had a massive system that like every single one of our state hospitals, you know, we're talking about helping people with psychiatric illnesses and also the intersection of corrections there as well. And this was a very, very, very important system for all of our hospitals connected like pharmacy information, admission information, legal information. It had a lot of data, people's social security numbers. And we did move to modernize it. But it was a long, long time to make that transition. And it was not without bumps.

0:21:17 Thomas: So hard everyone fights it all parts of the way this is just how human Has no one worked at anywhere? Have you ever worked at anywhere that's an office? It's impossible. And some of the complaints and concerns are very legitimate. Like, you don't want to fuck around with a system that important. Like, can't just be like, oh, let's just try messing I'm just going to see if this works. It's like, no, this is people's lives. Like, it's really important stuff often. So you have to be very sure. And then you have to get a group of people to, like, agree to it and to try to get input to make sure that every facet of the process is being considered and, like you have a replacement for all of it. Then you get 1400 people who complain because they just don't like change and they get people like it's so hard. Right.

0:21:54 Lydia: Not even to mention like like the bidding process, too, because you have to make sure as a government entity that you are procuring a bid in the best interest of the taxpayer. That is also an element that folks from the private sector aren't used to. They just can say, like, you know, we can kind of cut whatever deal we want. But it's very regimented when you're talking about the government.

0:22:15 Thomas: And I'm not sure if this is part of your coverage, but, you know, the Obama administration, past administrations have actually tried to do this and had success to varying degrees.

0:22:20 Lydia: Yeah. Well, the Affordable Care Act website was like the marketplace. That was a big failure when it first launched. Well I mean like the government like trying to do technology and stuff like it's not it's not always going to be smooth sailing is what I'm saying.

0:22:29 Thomas: Right, well, that's kind of a different thing that we're talking about, but.

0:22:35 Thomas: Oh, oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, but I'm saying there have been reforms of these systems from time to time, and it's not that easy. Now, if you wanted to make the argument, if someone one wanted to make a good faith argument that like hey let's pass a bill or something that authorizes like you know let's let's go for a limited use fascism which is just like hey this committee or this agency that's full of experts is going to be in charge of modernization and what they say goes and they have to fucking do it but they also have to answer to and you know if they fuck something up and if you wanted to do something crazy in that direction where hey there's just too too much slowdown. There's too many barriers to innovation in the government with some of these things. Okay. I could buy that if it's a good faith effort to like, hey, we really just need an overhaul. You still need to make sure it's done right and that there's accountability and real people on it, not big balls and fucking whoever else. But like, I could believe that. But again, this isn't that. This is always the other direction where you're starting from a premise that there is all this waste and fraud and abuse, and then you're just trying to justify it later so

0:23:37 Thomas: Is I just have to know before we move on is the elevator limit even a thing like is that like so the mind's real sure and the time limit they're talking about is obviously it's not the time before you can retire it's the time by the way that the government is paying out less money than it would so in terms of doge like I mean it all evens out in the end I'm sure but like that's not a savings you know what I mean like if we pay people faster it's good it's Not a savings so is Is there this elevator limit thing? Like, what is that referring to? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I doubt it. It's probably not like a fucking super insanely. It's not at the core of the earth. You know, like, it's just like kind of underground. You might just walk into it. Yeah. So dumb. God, these people.

0:24:08 Lydia: So Iron Mountain, the company that owns the mine, they have not directly addressed the elevator claims, but they have just reiterated that the facility is a highly secure and resilient location for data centers, records management, media archives and digital transformation services. Iron Mountain didn't address the elevator claim, but several employees with with OPM, who asked to remain anonymous, did address it. And they said that Musk's comments are inaccurate and the facility doesn't have an elevator. So. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It might just be like in the side of a mountain, essentially. It is very, very, Very dumb. Yeah OK.

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0:25:04 Lydia: So we're going to keep talking about some IT systems. This next claim is that there are 700 different IT systems at just one federal agency? Uh -huh. Yep. Yep, great, great question.

0:25:16 Thomas: Okay. 700 IT systems? How are you defining? I'm already calling bullshit. Shit how do you define that what's an it like at what granularity are you defining it system like what even would that be okay all right what

0:25:32 Clip: Another example at NIH is today they have 27 different centers. They got created over time by Congress, and they're typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 different IT systems today at NIH. 700 different I.T. systems. They have 27 difference CIOs.

0:25:50 Clip: And so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data. Time out, you said 27 different chief information officers?

0:25:49 Thomas: I don't talk what

0:26:07 Clip: And when I say that, uh, our job is tech support, I really computers, uh can't go, stay failing computer systems that happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud, and we're fixing it.

0:26:36 Lydia: Best I could do to try and track down this 700 number, I think this is what it is. There are 700 networked devices in the NIH Clinical Data Center. It's not IT software systems. It is specifically computers yeah yeah like um and they have you know multiple for each activity to kind of help prevent um like if there's a failure on one they have a backup you know kind of ready to go or whatever in this clinical data center right that's the only reference to 700 I can find and also like you don't necessarily need stuff to talk to each other you know we've talked about this before with dr rick on sio when we were talking about health and human services how how vast that agency is. And it's made up of 27 institutes and centers or ICs. You don't necessarily need software for, say, dental and craniofacial research to communicate with allergy and infectious diseases. Like there might not necessarily be a lot of crossover there. Some software systems, yes, potentially, like if you're talking about like names, Like maybe they'll pop up in both systems or something like that. But like you're focused on specific things. Yeah.

0:26:51 Thomas: So computers of some kind or instruments maybe it's not an it system it's so already okay yeah with the butthole people what yeah what what are these things this is so vague what are they what are they doing what's happening who's doing what like I think it's intentionally vague like I don't know what these are used for who's using them for what purpose like it seems like they're talking about research like they make it sound like okay we have different people researching different areas of the body and they don't even talk to each other so we got like a a left arm research center and a right arm research Center they're probably probably duplicating their work, but they don't even know it because the computers can't talk. That sounds ridiculous. So that's probably not it.

0:28:00 Lydia: Right. It's a big number. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like when you when you look at the institutes and centers, so you have institutes from like the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute of Mental Health.

0:28:31 Thomas: Okay. So if you're talking research, I mean, that really isn't done by computers talking to each other. Like if you look at academia, if you Look at any, you're doing research together. Am I crazy that you don't need computers talking To each other?

0:28:43 Lydia: And that's my point is that like there may be some overlap if they're looking into particular things in, you know, like mental health that might have an opportunity for like integration with research that's being done with like the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Like there could be things where it's like a collaborative research project.

0:29:00 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. So what you do is you wait until Windows notifies you. Hey, no, there's gonna be like a white paper someone publishes and then you see it and then then you're like hey maybe we can work together on this oh

0:29:11 Lydia: Right. And then there's plenty of institutes and centers that probably don't have intersectionality very often. Like I mentioned, like dental and craniofacial research, which is an institute with allergy and infectious diseases. There's probably not a lot of opportunity for, you know, collaboration of data there. They also talk about this idea that how in the world could you have 27 chief information officers? You're supposed to be the chief, right? There's supposed to Be one. It's because there are 27 institutes and centers. Right. And this is a huge agency with incredibly varied interests. Would they say the same thing about the Department of Defense, that they need one CIO or one comms office? They have a lot. So there is the secretary of the army has a CIO directly reporting to them. It's not a CIO reporting to the secretary of defense. They have CIOs reporting at these department levels at these defense agencies levels at the command levels. They also have public affairs offices that are not just for the entity itself but also like based on location. So you'll have a public affairs office for this particular base in this particular area of, you know, the Army or the Marines or whatever. And so I think it's this idea that we can reduce the complexity of the United States government to that of someone had previously said elsewhere, you a midsize bank in a different interview. They said, you know, why is it so complicated? You know, like this is what it would look like at a midsized bank. Yeah, I know. I know it's just it's absolutely crazy. You see the attacks happening in very particular places. Like I said, they don't call out the Department of Defense for having an even more complex communication strategy, maybe because it's kind of necessary. How would that all filter to a singular person. It just can't. Some other stuff that they talk about when they're tearing apart kind of the NIH and the NIH approach. I don't know if you had seen a lot of concerns about the NIH funding when that was getting changed up and they were attacking the indirect costs part of the grants.

0:29:47 Thomas: How many do they it's only fucking 400 million fucking people and all this other stuff like it's just stupid yeah oh yeah what was that

0:31:23 Lydia: Did you see that at all? So it was basically saying we're restructuring our grants. We're capping indirect costs to be 15 percent. Let me get you a timestamp, actually, because I I think the way that they try to sell this in the interview is really interesting.

0:31:36 Clip: Today, if you're an NIH researcher and you get a $100 grant at your university, today you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that. The policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that, and your So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures.

0:31:54 Clip: Another example at NIH is today they have—

0:31:54 Thomas: All right so what we just heard that sounds plausible enough like okay for one we know like just take for example in higher education we know there's a lot like costs keep keep going up and up. There's a lot of bloat. There're a lot of administrative costs. So, I guess, I mean, this sounds plausible that it's like, hey, instead of letting the university spend 40 % of whatever this grant is on a new fucking football stadium or something, then let the researcher spend the 60%. So, is that anything like what's going on?

0:32:23 Lydia: Absolutely not. So what this is actually referring to, and they're just kind of changing the naming convention here, I think, in a very manipulative way, is we're talking about direct costs for grants versus indirect costs for grant. And the split tended to be 60 -40.

0:32:39 Thomas: Hmm. I was just going to ask, is that some rule? Is it like, oh, the... Because they make it sound like, well, before the university was taken 40 % off the top. You know, they take their cut and then, you know, or is it just like Like, on average, there's a breakdown of where this money goes. And, you know, sure, seems important. Yep, that also seems important, mm -hmm. So, wait, are you telling me that the way they do research isn't just one guy sits in a chair in his mind palace and goes like, nah, and then thinks of something and there's no other cost associated? Also, I have to imagine there's, like, you now, grad students and stuff, but that would be part of the, is that part of The Direct Cost? Okay, sure. But yeah you need facilities you need a building you need instruments you need all kinds of stuff software you know like sure yeah it's not a shakedown oh god to do that you'd have to listen to where there's woke yeah no kidding

0:32:57 Lydia: Yeah, I, I I think it's more like that. It probably depends on the specific research and the specific, you know, like grant and stuff that you're doing. But the things that they're that they'RE trying to allude to there are like your university is making money off of you getting grants for your research and you only get a portion of it. But what they're not talking about is the money that's going to, quote, the university, those indirect costs, are things like maintaining the lab facilities, paying for utilities related to the research, purchasing any specialized equipment.

0:33:36 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that. Yeah ,I think usually the direct cost for any sort of salary is coming from that. Data storage. Yeah, exactly. All of those things are indirect costs related to conducting research for these various grants that folks are applying for. It's not a way for the university to squeeze money out of the federal government to fund a new football stadium. Right, right. And if you want to look at stuff like that, maybe you should look at New College of Florida and Richard Corcoran and how he's been squeezing money out to the Florida state government to find that.

0:34:22 Lydia: Oh, you're here. Thanks. So that I think is a really sketchy, shady way of trying to present what that 15 percent cap that they're trying to implement is. And anyone who's been involved with NIH grants has been really concerned about this because they say like this could also impact universities from pursuing like long term planning and investment because they don't know if they'll be able to afford it. It could result in more reliance on nonprofit or like local funding sources, which are going to be extremely tapped by, you know, this outsized need now to make up for what the federal government is trying to change there. In this claim, there's also a piece regarding the IRS and how there are 1 ,400 people whose entire job is to supply IRS hires with a laptop and a phone. But let's hear how they present this. Yes.

0:35:18 Clip: It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. A good example of overstaffed would be the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones. So if you join the IRS, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, you could provision the entire IRS in a little more than a month. So, 12 times a year, you can re-provision. Why would you have 1,400 people whose only job it is to give out a laptop and a phone? The whole IRS could be handled once a month. So that doesn't—that doesn't make any sense, and President Trump's been very

0:35:58 Lydia: All right. Scalpel not hatchet. Yeah. So when I heard this claim, I was like, this is just ridiculous. First of all, like, I mean, yeah, should I even spend time debunking this? But I think, again, like having worked in state government, not federal government, there is no way in hell that your only job is to issue a laptop and a phone for employees. There's no way. There's no way. And is tech support for everyone who's like, like, I don't understand why this isn't printing anymore. Come on. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so that was like one of the first things that caught my eyes, like so incredibly dismissive to the people who are working these jobs. But then also, they are presenting it as if there are 1 ,400 people in one office. Yeah.

0:36:17 Thomas: Usually it's one guy does all that and somehow somehow maintains, like, a bunch of the tech and has no time to give you your shit or receive it back. Yeah. Yeah, we missed a flight because it took you too long to return your shit to your, to your state job before. Yeah yeah, they hand you, 40 ,000 people come and, like they bake it, roll out the red carpet, they're like, here sir, here's your laptop, and they're, no way, I'll just say that. Okay.

0:37:00 Lydia: There are IRS offices all across the country because people People are not going to be just talking with the folks in Washington, D .C. when it comes to handling their taxes and issues regarding that. Yeah. So say there's, you know, 350 offices nationwide. I think there's more like 326 or something like that. But I did I did 350 just for easy math. 1 ,400 folks serving in that capacity, 350 offices nationwide. That would be four people per office that are in charge of not just issuing telephones and laptops, but also probably providing a host of other services for however many employees are at their office, too, which is going to be more than four. Yeah.

0:37:36 Thomas: Yeah. Sounds. Yeah, that sounds right.

0:37:47 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:37:47 Lydia: So this last claim that's highlighted in this article specifically is that $600 million in federal loans were issued to children and dead people. So specifically what they say in this claim is that people under the age of 11 received $300 million in small business loans and then people older than 120 received more than $300 billion in small all business loans. Yeah. Musk said we should not be giving out loans to babies.

0:37:57 Thomas: Huh? Nice. That's true. I'm just proud of them. Good job. Hey, Phoebe and Arlo, get on that. Damn. Good for them. I don't think we're doing that. Gonna go out on a limb before you debunk it. I don't think we're loaning MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO BABIES. And then why wouldn't they steal older people's then? There's still why would you if you were like okay my goal is to scam the government out of a business loan whose data should I steal a baby that doesn't make sense. Yeah, that's a weird two groups to do Jesus, is this happening this is the first I've heard of it that

0:38:31 Lydia: So their position is that scammers are stealing children's social security numbers to obtain loans.

0:38:50 Lydia: Well, also people older than 120. Yeah, and Megyn Kelly speaks about this as like oftentimes it's parents that are using their children's social security numbers and getting small business loans under their childrens names and identities and then ruining their child's credit for their entire life. Yeah. So I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure this out. There was something going around on the Internet that that I think has been debunked itself where it was saying like, oh, no, it's actually related to survivors benefits assistance.

0:39:28 Lydia: But there's no corroboration for that specifically. And the Small Business Administration has, you know, granted it's under Kelly Loeffler and this Trump appointee and everything like that, but they have come out and kind of corroborated this, not 100 percent. So I have struggled to debunk this particular claim, but I think it's because a lot of the material is not publicly available, at least immediately, without me FOIA -ing it. Yeah. Yeah. And had on its books, how long, how many loans are we talking about over what period of time that's captured here? And so I kind of hit a dead end with that one. And I know it's kind of like a bummer to to close out our last claim there. But I do have a lot of other thoughts about things that happened during this during this interview.

0:39:27 Thomas: Would make more sense yeah how much would this line item in our budget be anyway for like and it's a loan so like it's already not something that, like, we make money on loans, usually.

0:40:15 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Oh, God. Brett Baer, you're not a serious person.

0:40:34 Lydia: That's a good thought.

0:40:34 Thomas: Yeah, that was just my first thought. Okay, I started. You go next.

0:40:39 Clip: And President Trump has been very clear. Scalp will not hatch it, and that's the way it's getting done. And then, once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on being generous, being BEING CARING, BEING COMPASSIONATE, AND TREATING EVERYONE WITH DIGNITY AND RESPECT. AND IF YOU LOOK AT HOW PEOPLE HAVE STARTED TO LEAVE THE GOVERNMENT, IT IS LARGELY THROUGH THERE'S VOLUNTARY EARLY RETIREMENT. THERE'S SEPARATION PAYMENTS. WE PUT IN PLACE DEFERRED RESIGNATION, THE EIGHT-MONTH SEVERANCE PROGRAM. SO THERE'S A VERY HEAVY BIAS TOWARDS PROGRAMS THAT ARE LONG-DATED, THAT ARE GENEROUS, THAT ALLOW PEOPLES TO EXIT AND GO AND GET A NEW JOB IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR. And you've heard a lot of—a lot of news about RIFs, about people getting fired. At this moment in time, less than .15—not 1.5, less than .15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a RIF notice. So, they've selected, if they're— Basically, almost no one's gotten fired, is what we're saying.

0:41:46 Lydia: This is crazy. The New York Times is actually capturing this in a really effective way. There is no official record of the cuts to the federal workforce. So they are compiling their data through sources that they have within the federal agencies, court filings, any statements to the press or any public statements that have been issued. And what they are capturing is that about 75,000 employees took buyouts. 49,110 were fired, though many are temporarily reinstated and on paid leave due to the court orders. But there are also over one hundred and seventy thousand planned reductions. There was an internal White House document that was given to The Washington Post for some reporting that they did. And they said they reported that agencies are preparing to cut between eight and 50 percent of their staff. And that covered about 22 agencies. So this is I think they're very scared about this particular line of inquiry from the public. I think people are very, very upset because reduction in force notices absolutely have been happening. Otherwise, they wouldn't have ended up in court and being told that all the firings that they were doing were illegal. So this is just a flat out lie. Another note I wanted to make is just regarding math. So at one point in this interview, Elon Musk says that their plan is to cut $1 trillion in 130 days. Now, he's a special government employee, so his term is 130 days, and then he's supposed to be gone. Now, note, this is half of what he said in the Madison Square Garden, you know, Nazi gathering that they were going to cut $2 trillion. So $1 trillion. Okay. And then he says, we're going to do $4 billion per day, every day, seven days a week. That, if you do the math, $520 billion in 130 days. So they're not even going to hit their own target because math has to math. Now, the last thing that I want to share here is regarding transparency. And this is something that, you know, they will reiterate over and over again. And so let's just hear from the folks themselves from Doge.

0:44:01 Clip: DAVID BROOKS, Former President of the United States of America, We actually believe there's a chance to succeed, that there's an administration that's supportive and a great Cabinet and just a great group that will actually make success a possible outcome. And I think that's given the inspiring mission and given the nonzero chance of success, it JONATHAN CAPEHART, Former U.S. Secretary of State, I'd just like to sort of reemphasize the success is only possible with President Trump and with the outstanding Cabinet that IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE CABINET.

0:44:32 Lydia: It feels like North Korea.

0:44:35 Clip: I MEAN, IT'S BIG NUMBERS, RIGHT? YEAH, LIKE YILAN SAID, THE MINIMUM IMPULSE BIT IS OFTEN A BILLION DOLLARS. SO, FOR EXAMPLE, THE $830 MILLION, WHICH WAS THE ONLINE SURVEY, THAT'S AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN FOUND IF THE DOGE TEAM WASN'T WORKING WITH IT, IN THAT CASE THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR, BUT THEN TAKING IT ONE STEP FURTHER, DOGE THEN PUBLISHES THESE THINGS ON OUR WEBSITE FOR MAXIMUM TRANSPARENCY. So, now the general public, it would have been impossible for the general Now anyone can just log into doge.gov any time and see these payments. But they'll probably be in real-time within the next few weeks.

0:44:45 Lydia: False.

0:45:09 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. All fucking lies. Yeah. Yeah. These fucking clowns. Well, I hate it yeah I mean it's just try to get the word out as good as best as possible I mean these people are clowns what they're doing is a joke and uh I think they've actually managed to spend more money haven't they we'll see what it all shakes out but it's really inefficient to fuck with things this much it's not efficient it's actually smart business it's smart it's not how's the boring company doing all right well thanks everyone for listening thanks for the breakdown, hun, and I'll go have my usual mental breakdown. And we'll see everyone next time.

0:45:10 Lydia: Yeah, Transparency, right? Like that is something that's very important to them. When they started posting their receipts on this website, they were all wrong. They were all wrong. News agencies were, you know, calling it out and stuff. They were deleting things and then reposting things, renaming things. Just all sorts of movement was happening with no transparency. You know, if there was transparency, it'd be like, we issued the following changes for the following reasons. And recently, they reformatted their website. So now it's more difficult for the general public to confirm savings and cancellations. So if you go on the page, there is a list of contracts, but it's spread across multiple web pages. You can't like export all of them or anything like that. You have to manually navigate 711 pages to see the entire list of contracts, 923 pages to see all the grants, and another 68 pages for canceled or expired leases. There's no way to download that data there. You can sort based off of savings. You know, a handful of things. But it's not accessible. It's not transparent. And it's being done purposefully to obfuscate any mistakes that they make. And that's how. Yeah, yeah, that was my little journey through DOGE's little North Korea propaganda efforts last week. What are we going to do? Oh, yeah. I mean, they keep getting more staff. Yeah.

0:47:36 Thomas: The paper's in envelopes!