• LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    Anyone have a link to the real story this is based on? This page is practically unintelligible. Are the gold bars metaphorical? What the fuck are they talking about?

    • RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Anyone have a link to the real story this is based on? This page is practically unintelligible. Are the gold bars metaphorical? What the fuck are they talking about?

      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/20/fort-knox-gold-donald-trump-elon-musk/79314407007/

      They’re talking about the gold at Fort Knox.

      “We’re going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there. If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset,” Trump said, per a C-SPAN recording.

      Now today’s update is that “gold is missing” (I use quotes because it’s so obviously untrue). And according to Trump it’s the Democrats that took it. Always the democrats. Black female ones too.

      As if politicians need to steal gold bars. They receive that as a gift from Egypt as a bribe maybe, but they don’t steal from Fort Knox. Makes zero sense. They can just trade stocks with insider info like everyone in congress.

    • takeheart@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The Washington Examiner:

      In the Wednesday video, Zeldin accused the Biden administration of rushing out these funds and said they should remain under the control of the government.

      He referred to the funds several times as “gold bars,” referencing a December 2024 video put out by the conservative group Project Veritas in which a former EPA employee told an undercover member of the group that the administration was attempting to distribute as much of the promised funds as possible before President Joe Biden left office.

      So it’s just someone using a metaphor. And shoddy journalism. Wrapping gold bars in quotes does exculpate anyone from shoddy journalism.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        So literally just normal government operations that they are trying to spin into some kind of scandal, same as all the other bullshit coming out each day.

        • GorGor@startrek.website
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          One could make the argument that they didn’t do their due diligence and rushed out funds without proper oversight. Honestly it doesn’t sound great rushing out that amount of money (IF true), but with the backdrop of what was coming, it is obvious WHY they rushed.

          Really, the accusation of corruption is comical given this administration’s actions.

          • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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            1 day ago

            Simply moving something along faster isn’t malfeasance though, it’s efficiency. Unless there was some issue with what they did, but so far no one has pointed to anything that I can find. They just executed the grant programs as directed by congress.

            • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.world
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              15 hours ago

              Yup. We often have practices that go above and beyond the requirements. Doing the bare minimum isn’t misappropriation, it’s following the rules.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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      There’s a link early on to a separate, earlier page on epa.gov, which is also insane, which makes it clear that the “gold bars” are metaphorical. Someone allegedly said something about “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” some sort of nugget of theoretical truth I guess being that a lot of people were trying to get as much money out the door as possible before Trump came in and destroyed everything, and then Newsmax and Breitbart seized on the opportunity to deliberately misunderstand the metaphor as something literal, and also make up a whole bunch of total bullshit out of the whole cloth.

      I didn’t look too deep into it because it’s clearly all gibberish. What I just typed is as far as I went. But there are links on the page, if you have some mental fortitude and want to go adventuring. I honestly don’t think it’s worth much time to look into.

    • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
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      Looks like a grant based program to electrify housing etc. was included in the inflation reduction act, and a fund to distribute funds to grant recipients was created. I’m guessing the total funding was $20 billion, to be distributed over several years. One of the manager/admins previously worked at a group that was one of those receiving the initial set of grant funds. Claims conflict of interest without citing evidence. Another group appears to involve Stacy Abrams, and looks to have been created from other groups to carry out the kind of work the fund was designed to address. Thus, it’s new and has only 1 year of tax reporting available with little revenue.

      What I’m getting out of this is that non-profit volunteers or admins who go into the federal government aren’t allowed to work in their area of expertise, even with sufficient conflict of interest reporting, and that private citizens who support their preferred candidate for president aren’t allowed to work with groups that recieve any federal grants, ever.