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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

The current speculation by the right-o-sphere that Alex Jones is about to be appointed the Trump press secretary is apt for the moment where Trump seems to have made his nominations on the basis of how much they will disturb the left. It's hard to imagine anyone that could be more effective at achieving that than Jones.

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Both left and right are assemblages of compromises flying in loose formation.

Vivek ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard and usha Vance and Marco Rubio.... Kkk has become very diverse lately /s.

Okay, but really... If you're going to criticize, can we at least make valid analogies?

The KKK hasn't been relevant since Jerry Springer dredged them up for his show in the 90s, you may need to update your roster of Boogeymen.

I don’t think effective government is founded on the basis of lolz.

I’ve found the testable hypothesis!

Haven't you seen the DOGE department yet?

Haven't you seen the DOGE department yet?

How do you make government smaller?

Step 1: Make government bigger by inventing a new department!

(Strictly speaking, it's not a government department. It is a private entity that will operate outside the government, and influence the president. What could possibly go wrong?)

Whatever it is, it for sure has the lolzs as its basis.

> It is a private entity that will operate outside the government, and influence the president. What could possibly go wrong?

National Science Board is an external advisory board to the US gov. There's tons of examples of this sort of thing, especially in education and science.

Pretty sure the National Science Board isn't co-chaired by a CEO and part owner multibillionaire with direct personal interests around government funded science projects though.

Not defending Doge just saying it's not new. Defence Business Board is a similar analogy. Plenty of people working at companies with gov contracts on the board during its history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Business_Board

https://dbb.defense.gov/Board-Members/

The National Science Board was established by Congress, its activities are defined and governed by the law that created it, and it is clearly a part of the executive branch. Why do you consider it to be external to the government?

I'm guessing Doge would be regulated under this act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Advisory_Committee_Act...

If they actually follow the legal requirements listed in that article I will come back and apologize to you.

It would have to be by law.

The president can’t make a task force consisting of external advisors (non full time federal employees) in an official matter unless their activities are public and open to inspection.

Clinton got in trouble for this by putting Hillary on a Task Force in the early 1990s.

Nothing screams efficiency like 2 dept heads.

And let's be perfectly clear - given two weeks in office they will be screaming at us.

In fairness, the possibility the two heads' respective egos will cancel each other out is the most efficient thing about it...

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy… They have two people running the Department of Government Efficiency

> DOGE department

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepartmentOfRedu...

Well it also wasn't founded on whatever the hell we were doing before either

It's effective at disorientation and disbelief.

> It's hard to imagine anyone that could be more effective at achieving that than Jones.

Asking as a non-American: how disturbing would it be if he appointed Putin?

If you wanted your comment to hit a bit better, you might have considered, e.g., Lavrov.

I didn't know who that was until googling before replying, are you sure that's going to hit better with an American audience?

Either on Hacker News or as an "own the libs" choice for Trump?

He is owned by another foreign government.

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