The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is

https://freegovinfo.info/node/14747/

by ChrisArchitect • 1 year ago

330 243 1 year ago

freegovinfo.info

johnneville• 1 year ago

site returns a db error for me

edit: working now - https://archive.today/Ly7Jv

basementcat5• 1 year ago

Try refreshing; loaded ok for me.

jf• 1 year ago

Here is an archived version, if needed: https://web.archive.org/web/20250201043959/https://freegovin...

tbrownaw3• 1 year ago

It's, um, interesting how they decided to make the site logo stick in the top corner. Kinda like a phone screen notch, but worse.

Cerium• 1 year ago

That's not the worst I saw this week. I saw a floating dialog box that cannot be closed, that was on the right hand side obscuring the form that it was hassling you to complete. You had to only scroll down a third of a page at a time in order to complete the form.

al_borland2• 1 year ago

If we keep fighting about the same issues, we can’t move on to solve new problems. We’re in political purgatory and have been for quite some time.

basementcat5• 1 year ago

It is because we haven’t achieved consensus on these issues or there is a faction that believes they can get a better deal by holding out and continuing to fight.

conception• 1 year ago

Or it’s because factions believe that not solving issues benefits them more than solving them or reaching consensus.

__MatrixMan__2• 1 year ago

Consensus is bad for business, so we stick to platforms designed keep it at bay.

righthand8• 1 year ago

It’s more futile than this, my parents are big Trumpers. My father watches a ton of Fox News and rants about how immigrants are flooding the cities. When shown data and statistics and pointing out Trumps blatant lying and the hysteria about it, my father will move the goal post, change the subject and say things like “I don’t like Trump but Biden is too old.”

Okay I said, if Biden is too old who is chosen when he steps down? Kamala, who while qualified was chosen to gain vote. Is that the alternative you want? Silence. Trump is also too old and definitely showing his age but it doesn’t matter anymore because the goal post moves again.

It’s pure radicalization and anything that can be labeled as a negative is rationalized to avoid regret.

My mother remains 100% silent about politics. Which is equally as hard to have a conversation.

So when you have people so radicalized they only put ear plugs in their ear, because they’ve been trained to want a war at home. They are too deep, what do we do? Wait until they die? What about the generations they’re radicalizing after them?

These are tough questions in a world where people can’t be proud we even have any kind of infrastructure. People feel they deserve better when we already have the best circumstances to be alive.

There is no consensus because there is very little left to strive for in the eyes of the average citizen.

This is why we can’t have single payer healthcare, because our populations are too busy fighting for their radicalized ideas.

LastTrain• 1 year ago

Name the faction to which you refer and what they are holding out for. Come on, be brave now.

tbrownaw3• 1 year ago

If we keep fighting about the same issues, we can’t move on to solve new problems.

Why? I wouldn't think that everything new has a hard dependency on things that are stuck.

al_borland2• 1 year ago

It’s more of an issue of time and focus, not dependencies.

nradov• 1 year ago

Have we ever not been in political purgatory? Some fundamental political issues such as federalism have been fought over since the founding of the republic. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

tdb7893• 1 year ago

I don't think it's crazy to say politics now is different and more disfunctional than the past. Congress can't pass anything substantive and needed to change their own rules to even appoint judges, the Supreme Court has overturned many precedents, and it seems like a lot of the actual policy is executive orders (and also what the executive branch chooses to enforce or not). And that ignores things like accusations of election fraud and a million other different points of nonsense that are shockingly mainstream.

The fact it's always been a mess doesn't mean it's not significantly more of a mess now than many times in the past (not that right now is the worst ever, it's hard to beat a civil war, but it's pretty bad).

yard2010• 1 year ago

Imagine people saying this when the Roman empire collapsed. They thought that just because the empire is strong and old it would last forever.

bagels• 1 year ago

We get to solve new problems, the ones that are currently being created.

toss1• 1 year ago

Stop 'both-sides-ing' it. Only one party has been pushing for minority rule (by their own party) authoritarianism for over a decade, and now having gained control is running roughshod over all checks & balances and corrupting all institutions to service their executive(s).

This is the big-standard authoritarian playbook. In functioning democracies the three branches of govt (executive, legislative judiciary), and the branches of society, industry, business, finance, press, academy, religion, social groups, sports, etc. are all independent. Under authoritarian regimes, they are corrupted & coerced (threat of prosecution or ability to pay & serve to avoid prosecution, or ability to raid the country's coffers) by illegitimate use of the power of govt to serve the executive.

That is where we are now, and will be until the people make it stop.

tbrownaw3• 1 year ago

But librarians and archivists and citizens should use this current crisis to demand more than short-term solutions. A new distributed digital preservation infrastructure is needed for digital government information.

Probably the library of Congress is the right place for it to go?

ghewgill• 1 year ago

Do you believe that the Library of Congress is immune from the current administration's information purge?

lukas0994• 1 year ago

Well, it is called the Library of Congress; is it not under the control of the Legislative?

seydor• 1 year ago

Totally depends on the kind of information. Personal information hoarding happens in fascist states

prpl2• 1 year ago

It’s hard to use words like “unprecedented” to describe what has happened this last week, but the disarray the government currently in has no precedent to my knowledge.

The current disarray moves well beyond the precedented events like government shutdowns and rapidly screw things up across the board.

silisili5• 1 year ago

Certainly.

I for one am curious how this turns out. I give it an 80% chance of failing spectacularly, 20% chance of 'wow, we were wasting that much money?'

The fact is the federal government seems to grow and spend without any limit or regard to logic. It doesn't -feel- like much has ever been done to address it.

Well, now someone decided to just sledgehammer the whole thing. I'm both horrified and hopeful at what comes from that.

chii• 1 year ago

but with sledgehammer comes the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I mean, i understand the need to remove unnecessary costs like DEI etc, but actual productive output like science fundings etc are important in nation building.

What i dont like is how trump is looking to (or is being manipulated to) move a lot of public spending into private entities. For example, the recent ai stargate announcements. How is the public spending meant to benefit all americans, rather than the few that own those companies?

voxl2• 1 year ago

Anyone who thinks the government should be "run like a business" does not deserve to be given an ounce of serious consideration in any sphere of intellectual discourse. A business does not get to print profit.

pgodzin• 1 year ago

The fact is the federal government seems to grow and spend without any limit or regard to logic. It doesn't -feel- like much has ever been done to address it.

In terms of "growth", the number of federal civilian government employees has basically never been lower as a percentage of the population.

https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_580_h...

stevage• 1 year ago

The thing is, clumsy attempts to save money by randomly shutting down departments or firing staff can easily end up costing much more, by creating expensive problems that the departments were in charge of preventing. Or when a couple of years later it turns out you needed those things, and it's very expensive to try to start up a thing again, replace all the lost knowledge and institutional experience etc.

anovikov4• 1 year ago

The fact is the federal government seems to grow and spend without any limit or regard to logic.

That's not the case really. In the last 50 years there was no trend in federal spending vs GDP, with widest movements being a growth from ~19% in FY2001 (which ended with 09/11) to almost 25% in 2009, with subsequent decline to the same average as before. Nothing catastrophic. In the immediate postwar era of course, the spending has been much lower at around 15% but that was when the population was 9 years younger and no Medicare or Medicaid existed, i.e. old or poor sick people were just left to fend for themselves.

In 2024 out of 6.8T in federal spending, Medicare and Medicaid was 1.9T. Remove that and you are back to a typical 1950s level of 16-17% federal spending to GDP.

root_axis• 1 year ago

Using a sledgehammer is reckless and dangerous.

metamet• 1 year ago

Musk et al.'s plan has been out in the open for a while. Lots of interviews and opinions from them the last few years, so I wouldn't even consider it an open secret.

This video is probably the most succinct summary of it I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

It was made two months ago and has been right on the nose so far in terms of the phases in their process.

phonon• 1 year ago

Federal discretionary (non military) spending in 2023 was around $917 Billion. Of that, $131 Billion was Veteran Benefits, and $100 Billion was Health related. That leaves $686 Billion. [0]

Total US GDP in 2023 was $27.3 Trillion...so around 2.5% of total GDP.

GDP grows (inflation adjusted) around 2.3% per year.

US Health Care is 17-18% of US GDP.

So while federal discretionary spending is important, it's not nearly as important as keeping growth up, and getting a handle on health costs.

[0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729

gniv• 1 year ago

I give it a higher chance of succeeding in saving money while at the same time destroying a lot of things and creating problems that will take decades to fix.

throw__away73912• 1 year ago

Even if they managed to find 100% savings in the spending they are targeting, they will not make a dent in the budget. Doing that and cutting all military spending would not balance the budget. Most Federal discretional spending is on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

I'm all for cutting this, reducing benefits to current recipients to bring spending to sustainable levels, but to date I haven't found a politician to vote for who endorsed this position.

nxobject7• 1 year ago

That's certainly the country (or at least the stock markets) as a whole. I'm not sure whether individual agencies – like the FBI(*) or the Inspector Generals – will ever get what integrity they had back.

(*) I say this as someone who thinks COINTELPRO was a key example of a law enforcement agency getting high off its fumes and shredding human rights, of which the list is endless.

me_again• 1 year ago

I don't believe there is really any interest in balancing the Federal budget or saving money. It's a flimsy pretext for purging every person and program not ideologically aligned with the incoming administration.

Would anyone like to bet whether the national debt will be lower in 2029?

neuronexmachina3• 1 year ago

How much do you think the deficit will be reduced by the digital information-scrubbing described in the post?

system7rocks• 1 year ago

WE ARE A HUGE COUNTRY.

There is a disconnect with how big we are and what infrastructure is needed to support it. Let's say we cut everything but Senate, House, President, VERY basic defense. Our military is larger than probably anything else. I think the naivety is hilarious. Our employees and government bloat is big because our nation is big. There is no way around this. It's time to impeach, Trump. Good night.

thayne• 1 year ago

How much money will be wasted in all the lawsuits springing from Trumps actions?

throwaway4220• 1 year ago

You’ll save 5% on your gas bill if you toss out your spare tire.

ineedasername• 1 year ago

*> chance of 'wow, we were wasting that much money?'

Do you know where I could get some data on that topic?

dragonwriter2• 1 year ago

It’s hard to use words like “unprecedented” to describe what has happened this last week, but the disarray the government currently in has no precedent to my knowledge.

Certainly, there is no precedent in US history for an authoritarian, law-flouting executive takeover centering illegal purges of the executive branch as a whole (and a particular focus on illegally purging federal law enforcement and internal government accountability officials), racial scapegoating, and massive "deportation" efforts that rapidly encompassing setting up massive concentration camps, almost all done by executive fiat, with the tacit support of a Congressional majority that is ideologically aligned with both the policies of the executive and the decision to execute them without regard to existing law rather than through legislation.

There are a history of similar things one might point to in other countries, but it's a first for the USA.

palmfacehn8• 1 year ago

The hyperbole is a bit much for me. It shouldn't amaze me, but here we are. Partisans are able to construe spending cuts and shrinking the purview of the state, with authoritarianism.

Although I am not inclined to agree, it is fair to dispute specific funding cuts or firings. It would also be reasonable to temper those arguments against the futility of general cut-backs without specific cuts.

Consider a few hypotheticals:

If we accept that special interest groups exist for spending, then it would also be reasonable to accept that these groups would protest cuts in the most hyperbolic way imaginable.

If we accept that the Federal gov. is not free from corruption, selective enforcement, what is in effect "legislation from unelected bureaucrats", or entrenched bureaucracies which oppose the will of the people - If we accept that any of this exists or is possible, it is not unreasonable to accept that some of these bureaus would be cut or eliminated.

It is reasonable to expect that these bureaus and special interest groups would stand in solidarity. They have every incentive to join together and expand the largess of the central government. It makes sense that partisan media groups would paint any criticism or cuts in the most hyperbolic and odious terms.

All of these things are easy to reason about. It is also easy to take cursory glance at the historical record. It is easy to examine the economic and political ideologies of the odious authoritarians which the partisans are so quick to invoke. Where did these odious authoritarians cut spending? Where did they reduce the purview of the state? If we examine this, we will find that cuts and reductions are entirely antithetical to the authoritarian platform. It is a contradiction in terms. For these reasons, I regard the comparisons as ridiculous hyperbole.

Humor me here. How is the following not a non-sequitur, "Cutting spending and regulation is authoritarianism. What we need are more regulations, central planning from unelected bureaucrats and socialism"?

Can anyone here explain that?

Aeolun• 1 year ago

the disarray the government currently in has no precedent to my knowledge

I would like to refer you to what happened slightly more than 8 years ago when a new president took office.

prpl2• 1 year ago

I worked at a national lab for 11 years, including all 4 years of the previous term and through multiple government shutdowns. This is much, much more disarray. I no longer work work at a national lab, but am well connected with those who do

gadders5• 1 year ago

Trump was elected on a mandate to dismantle the deep state. This is what people voted for.

drawkward4• 1 year ago

The deep state does not exist. It is a bogeyman, so that Trump can rip up whatever he likes.

chrishoyle• 1 year ago

This administration is taking down public websites and resources at an alarming rate. Including scientific documents, health surveys, project research documents that are referenced daily by government staff, contractors, and US international partners.

I recently became aware of this issue and this post made me interested to know if there are any comprehensive datasets tracking these take downs. Also would be interested to know what other efforts exist to archive at risk government websites.

Partial list of removed pages and entire websites I'm compiling:

- USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse (stores 50yrs of international aid records) https://dec.usaid.gov/dec/

- CDC HIV website https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/causes/index.html

- CDC Data Directory https://www.cdc.gov/datainfo.html

- CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/index.html

- USAID Agency wide portfolio management system https://dis.usaid.gov/

- Gender Links https://www.genderlinks.org/

- Edu Links https://www.edu-links.org/learning

matwood11• 1 year ago

DoJ also removed all information about January 6th. We’re watching 1984 in real time. If it wasn’t happening in my country it would be interesting to watch the outcomes and how supporters contort themselves to say it’s ok.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/letters/delet...

RealityVoid• 1 year ago

It's not happening in my country and the contorsions I see only make me weep for humanity. This whole thing is horrifying, and it's happening to cheers.

NicoJuicy• 1 year ago

He wouldn't leave previous time.

Now he's dismantling everything to "reduce spending".

Anyone literally thinks he'll want to leave in 4 years? He's currently normalizing doing insane things to politicize the people more.

Hoboy

PsylentKnight• 1 year ago

Yeah, he wants to stay but he's gonna die of old age before his term is up and no one will learn anything

iancmceachern2• 1 year ago

This is what I don't understand about these types. Wouldn't you want to spend your last years doing - not this? Like whatever you like, model trains, watching star wars, golfing.

BlueTemplar• 1 year ago

In the era in which government information was published in paper formats, preservation of that information relied on libraries. The information was distributed to FDLP libraries based on the needs of the communities that those libraries served.

[...]

In the digital age, government publishing has shifted from the distribution of unalterable printed books to digital posts on government websites. Such digital publications can be moved, altered, and withdrawn at the flick of a switch. Publishing agencies are not required to preserve their own information, nor to provide free access to it.

An important lesson here.

Which I guess was already known - see how the Library of Alexandria burned down, but random receipts on clay tablets / papyrus were preserved.

The government information crisis is bigger than you think it is

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