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DANA's avatar

The question that comes to mind is: can the government reproduce the function that Politico (and other outlets) served in a more cost effective way without losing the value of the product? If it aids government functioning, I don’t mind my tax money going to make things work better. If it’s cost effective to buy these reports from third parties instead of hiring people to produce them, what’s the problem? I haven’t seen anyone talking about that perspective before deciding it’s a “bad” thing.

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Clif Brown's avatar

In how many ways does private enterprise feed off of government funds? It is hard to imagine that Congress passed any legislation that specifically names Politico to be a beneficiary, so that means that some decision maker somewhere made the call.

The "Medicare Advantage" program is a gift to private insurance companies. The elephant in the room is the "defense" industry that gains directly from the nearly $1 trillion "defense" budget. I heard that Musk is going to the Pentagon. Praise be!

Today it was news that NOAA is being invaded by DOGE. Privatize NOAA, so that all of the weather information freely available to the public becomes subject to fees that must be paid to get a forecast or to view a satpic from a satellite that we have paid for? I am worried that Musk is on a mission to blow everything up so that private enterprise can selectively pick up this or that piece and profit from it.

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