@philotheis49253 @marilynmaupin @JuddLegum @DataRepublican @Oilfield_Rando I ran the same query and got completely different results. Of contracts > $1M ending in 2024:
- 30.5% had obligations < potential value
- 69.3% were equal
- 0.2% went over
Furthermore, if we project "savings" using DOGE math (potential - obligations) on 1/1/2024...
@philotheis49253 @marilynmaupin @JuddLegum @DataRepublican @Oilfield_Rando ...45% end up falling short of the projected "savings" (comparing final numbers to beginning of year snapshot), with actual savings of those contracts averaging 40% of the "DOGE projection".
I'm not sure what she did, but it's wrong. I do have a guess though:
Mar 13 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
DOGE now claims $115B in total "savings". However, evidence is only provided for $18B (contracts & leases with receipts).
By my count, their receipts show between $2.8B and $5B per year in cuts, with 75% of the total being USAID. Let's explore what DOGE is "saving" on...
1) "savings" divided by years remaining 2) mean annual spend to date
2) is only considered if there is at least 1 full year of data. This number is sometimes much lower, meaning the contract was not on pace to realize the full award.
Mar 7 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
The EPA press release echoes NY Post, which on Wednesday published one of the most pathetically under-researched articles I've ever seen. It reads like a @DataRepublican post, alleging that the EPA gave BILLIONS to unaccountable groups that had only been formed recently.
The first example is Climate United Fund, which the author complains formed only months before being awarded $7B.
In reality, it's a joint venture between Calvert Impact, Self-Help Ventures Fund, and Community Preservation Corp.
They are 30, 44, and 50 years old, respectively.
Mar 6 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
DOGE currently lists $30B of cuts consisting of $15.2B to contracts, $14.5B to grants, & $470M to leases.
After fixing accounting errors, this amounts to $4B/year of contracts and $170M/year of lease cancellations. If we assume similar term for grants, total is roughly $8B/year?
(Grants can't be independently audited as DOGE currently provides no metadata)
Of note, 80% of cuts came from dismantling USAID. Today, Supreme Court ruled that Trump admin must release $2B to contractors for work rendered, so this # should come down.
a) This is not what Elon said at all
b) Appeal to false authority (he makes rockets!)
c) Weak analogy - calls Social Security a "complex system" likened to ML because it has... 3 steps?
d) Applies irrelevant concepts, none of which are described correctly
"These errors compound, not linearly, but exponentially"
No, these errors would compound sublinearly. If we have an error rate e for a 2 step process, the probability of correctness is (1-e)^2, or 1 - 2e + e^2, which is always greater than 1 - 2e (simple addition of errors).
Feb 21 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
The first $16M of @KristiNoem's wasteful $200M advertising campaign "warning illegal aliens to leave our country" has been awarded to Safe America Media LLC after a "competitive procurement process"
Safe America Media LLC is a shell company that was incorporated in Delaware 2 weeks (!) ago. That's only 11 days before Noem made the announcement. No wonder they don't even exist in SAM's entity search.
So what did this newborn vendor do to win this contract?...
Feb 20 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
SCOOP: @DOGE does damage control
A diff of "savings" estimates from doge.gov between today and yesterday shows that 4 rows have been edited - all corresponding to errors I called out in my thread yesterday. Let's see what they changed!
🧵 x.com/DOGE/status/18…
Change #1 pertains to the (now infamous) $8B vs. $8M mistake, which @DOGE claims was not factored into their total savings estimate. Thus, while the website now lists $8B less in savings, the headline $55B remains unchanged. Concerning...
After several delays, @DOGE has finally posted its purported savings. Why did it take so long to create a simple webpage with a 1000-row table? Who knows! Let's dig in.
Headline number: $55B saved. They list the savings per nixed contract. This should be easy to verify then.
