General Politics Thread

[Legend]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/31/elon-musk-treasury-department-payment-systems/

I can only go off the reuters reporting since I don't want a washington post account, but that sounds pretty incredible. Lots of smart people coming in to improve old systems.

[kitler53]

I can only go off the reuters reporting since I don't want a washington post account, but that sounds pretty incredible. Lots of smart people coming in to improve old systems.

that is quite the drinking the cool aid take.  physically locking out people from a system responsible for trillions of dollars of payments to government employees, social security, medicare so that a tiny number of people with no experience in this system purpose can do whatever the fudge they are doing without any oversight at all...

.."incredible" is not the word.

[kitler53]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/business/cfpb-rohit-chopra.html

Trump Administration Fires Consumer Bureau Chief

When Congress created the consumer bureau in 2011 — to increase oversight of mortgage loans and other financial products in the aftermath of the Great Recession — it included guardrails to protect the agency's independence and shield it from shifting political tides. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the president was free to fire the agency's director without cause, which cleared the way for the bureau's leadership to change with each presidential administration.

Mr. Chopra was a scourge of Wall Street, known for his aggressive approach to enforcing consumer protection laws and expanding their boundaries by issuing new rules. He led a crackdown that prompted most large banks to abandon or significantly reduce overdraft fees, and he ordered Wells Fargo to pay $2 billion in 2022 to customers harmed by its misdeeds, which included improperly seizing some borrowers' cars and homes.

oh joy.   can't wait to look forward to even more power being concentrated in the american oligarchy..

[Legend]

that is quite the drinking the cool aid take.  physically locking out people from a system responsible for trillions of dollars of payments to government employees, social security, medicare so that a tiny number of people with no experience in this system purpose can do whatever the fudge they are doing without any oversight at all...

.."incredible" is not the word.

It's ok you'll benefit from this too.

Musk and DOGE have had so much more direct control than I expected. Will be interesting to see how close they get to hitting their target when DOGE disbands in a year.

[kitler53]

voluntarily giving up power?   another Kool aid take...

[Legend]

I'll try to remember to quote ya when it happens, but by then you'll have moved on to the next made up musk fear


edt: just wanted to state that these posts have been casual banter. If they've come across as something else then I apologize.

[kitler53]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true


The Logic of Destruction

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.

The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate.

For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.

The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a "deep state." We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.

All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves.

Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don't want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.

Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don't look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.

The gap between the oligarchs' wealth and everyone else's will grow. Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump's deliberately destructive tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. But that is just tomorrow and the day after.

In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan's ark. The self-chosen few will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside, they will be alone to dominate.

Trump's tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump's attacks on America's closest friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible.

Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the "criminals" in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power.

The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.

In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.

After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.

For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth.

They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted.

The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. The people in charge, though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. I describe it not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions. I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. Here are a few ideas.

If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you otherwise disagree.

Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work.

Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong.

Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever.

Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover. There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens.

Trump should obviously be impeached. Either he has lost control, or he is using his power to do obviously illegal things. If Republicans have a sense of where this is going, there could be the votes for an impeachment and prosecution.

Those considering impeachment should also include Vance. He is closer to the relevant oligarchs than Trump, and more likely to be aware of the logic of destruction than he. The oligarchs have likely factored in, or perhaps even want, the impeachment and prosecution of Trump. Unlike Vance, Trump has charisma and followers, and could theoretically resist them. He won't; but he poses a hypothetical risk to the oligarchs that Vance does not.

Democrats who serve in state office as governors have a chance to profile themselves, or more importantly to profile an America that still works. Attorneys general in states have a chance to enforce state laws, which will no doubt have been broken.

The Democratic Party has a talented new chair. Democrats will need instruments of active opposition, such as a People's Cabinet, in which prominent Democrats take responsibility for following government departments. It would be really helpful to have someone who can report to the press and the people what is happening inside Justice, Defense, Transportation, and the Treasury, and all the others, starting this week.

Federal workers should stay in office, if they can, for as long as they can. This is not political, but existential, for them and for all of us. They will have a better chance of getting jobs afterwards if they are fired. And the logic of their firing is to make the whole government fail. The more this can be slowed down, the longer the rest of us have to get traction.

And companies? As every CEO knows, the workings of markets depend upon the government creating a fair playing field. The ongoing takeover will make life impossible for all but a few companies. Can American companies responsibly pay taxes to a US Treasury controlled by their private competitors? Tesla paid no federal tax at all in 2024. Should other companies pay taxes that, for all they know, will just enrich Tesla's owner?

Commentators should please stop using words such as "digital" and "progress" and "efficiency" and "vision" when describing this coup attempt. The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That's it. They are offering no future beyond acting out their midlife crises on the rest of us. It is demeaning to pretend that they represent something besides a logic of destruction.

As for the rest of us: Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of "move fast and break things," like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free together.

[the-pi-guy]

I've been struggling a lot with this.

Even if you completely disregard a lot of news as being outright fake or you suspect that they're leaving things out. Musk has publicly tweeted things that I view as concerning at minimum, if not dangerous. Just how heavily he's been supporting some of the worst in the Republican party, have been genuinely terrifying to me.

And even if you are 100% certain that he genuinely has great intentions for everything, that still doesn't mean he should be messing around with these things. Being smart isn't a replacement for years of experience.

Even if Musk doesn't agree with the alt right on immigration, he has absolutely drunken a lot of the cool aid.
Fighting back at the "woke mind virus", because he thinks that they're evil or harmful doesn't constitute as something that will be beneficial for me.

[Legend]

I've been struggling a lot with this.

Even if you completely disregard a lot of news as being outright fake or you suspect that they're leaving things out. Musk has publicly tweeted things that I view as concerning at minimum, if not dangerous. Just how heavily he's been supporting some of the worst in the Republican party, have been genuinely terrifying to me.

And even if you are 100% certain that he genuinely has great intentions for everything, that still doesn't mean he should be messing around with these things. Being smart isn't a replacement for years of experience.

Even if Musk doesn't agree with the alt right on immigration, he has absolutely drunken a lot of the cool aid.
Fighting back at the "woke mind virus", because he thinks that they're evil or harmful doesn't constitute as something that will be beneficial for me.

I hear you and understand a lot of people feel that way.

I don't think it's about disregarding a lot of news as fake, but about knowing the full story behind these things. Otherwise you're right that you'd only be able to judge him off his tweets which are often bad. And while I certainly don't agree with Musk's support of Trump, he has a long track record and his accomplishments are incredible. So I will defend many of his actions but that is not me defending all of his actions.

Why do you think he shouldn't be messing around with these things? It's literally just people who have worked with Musk who are highly successful, now temporarily working at the office of personal management to try and improve things.

[the-pi-guy]

I hear you and understand a lot of people feel that way.

I don't think it's about disregarding a lot of news as fake, but about knowing the full story behind these things. Otherwise you're right that you'd only be able to judge him off his tweets which are often bad. And while I certainly don't agree with Musk's support of Trump, he has a long track record and his accomplishments are incredible. So I will defend many of his actions but that is not me defending all of his actions.

Why do you think he shouldn't be messing around with these things? It's literally just people who have worked with Musk who are highly successful, now temporarily working at the office of personal management to try and improve things.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-doge-halting-treasury-020337006.html

Musk said DOGE was shutting down payments by the US Department of Health and Human Services to Lutheran Family Services, a faith-based charity that has been providing social services to refugees. HHS and Lutheran Family Services didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Because ideally, these kind of decisions should be the work of Congress. Committees figuring out how to help people. Not with a solitary, nebulous goal of efficiency.

[kitler53]

Why do you think he shouldn't be messing around with these things? It's literally just people who have worked with Musk who are highly successful, now temporarily working at the office of personal management to try and improve things.

use some common sense here.  the timeline is that musk forcefully takes control of the treasury literally locking out or firing those that oppose him.   he is then suppose to have analyzed trillions of dollars worth of payment and then did an investigation to identify "unlawful payments".     ...all in under 24 hours.

DID. NOT. HAPPEN.

musk's version of "unlawful payments" is the same as trumps version of "unfair elections".   no grounding in the actually law.   the only standard is anything he doesn't like is declared "illegal".   notice that he's not talking about which payments or which laws.  notice that they he's avoiding any actual oversight the review anything.   he's made himself the only authority on these decision and he's destroying any one or anything that dares  provide any sort of oversight on his actions.


the constitution clearly designates congress as being in charge of allocating government's budget.  not the president and certainly not elon fudgy musk.   this isn't about upgrading the system to the latest version of Window/SQL.  this is a direct assult on the rule of law and on the constitution.  
 

i get that you think space and automated cars are cool.   they are cool.   the destruction of a free America is not cool.


government is not suppose to be "efficient".   efficiency is the same as tyranny when applied to government.   government is suppose to be slow to act and only acts after being a consensus from a diverse set americans.  that's how we avoid 1 person's dumb ideas from oppressing millions of people. 

[the-pi-guy]

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Could gone to some great parties.

Did that instead. https://t.co/0V35nacICW

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025

Ah good, who needs Congress

[Legend]

Thanks for the replies. It seems you both have the same misunderstanding about how the constitution and precedent apply here. This doesn't change the rest of your perspectives, but the government isn't set up that way.

Congress sets the budgets, but it's the executive branch that implements them. So for example the US Department of Health and Human Services gets around $80 billion from Congress for the Administration for Children and Families which funded Lutheran Family Services. Congress might get more specific and allocate portions of that to certain programs, but it doesn't dictate which individual charities get funded. That's up to the agencies themselves.

Musk and his team, working under the president, are exactly how the constitution is designed to operate. Congress allocates money, but it doesn't require that every dollar is spent. So as long as DOGE isn't overriding congress, like Trump did when he blocked Ukraine aid that was specifically passed by congress, this is all legally how the executive branch is supposed to function.

You don't like Trump, I don't like Trump, but legally, he is the oversight. Below him, Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary is the oversight. Then of course congress can get involved if they believe the executive branch is overstepping just like they did in 1974 with the Impoundment Control Act. The checks and balances are still all there, even if things are getting rubberstamped at the moment.

Also Musk has been open about what he's cutting, that's why Lutheran Family Services came up in the first place. He explicitly said the DOGE team shut those payments down.

On efficiency, I think we're actually talking about two different things. The balance of power should be inefficient so a slim majority doesn't get to dictate rapid change. But government spending shouldn't be inefficient. A good example is NASA's SLS rocket. $40 billion wasted keeping certain contractors employed in red states instead of actually designing the best rocket.


Hopefully that clears up my position enough.

[the-pi-guy]

I'm aware of the different roles that Executive and Legislative, but there are rules and requirements for how that is to function.

The Supreme Court case Train v City of New York holds that the Executive Branch can't withhold allotted funding. 

The Executive Branch can direct spending to a great extent, and no, there's no requirement to spend all of it. But the president doesn't have the oversight to prevent funding programs they don't like.

Unilaterally shutting down USAID is likely unconstitutional, if that's indeed what has been happening.
Shutting down payments to the Lutheran Family Services isn't money withheld. 

Checks and balances only work if people act to uphold them. 

On efficiency, I think we're actually talking about two different things. The balance of power should be inefficient so a slim majority doesn't get to dictate rapid change. But government spending shouldn't be inefficient. A good example is NASA's SLS rocket. $40 billion wasted keeping certain contractors employed in red states instead of actually designing the best rocket.

If the issue were just spending less money than what was needed to fix a problem, that wouldn't be an issue.

Deciding that certain problems don't need to be solved is cause for concern. It's why I called efficiency a nebulous concept.

legally

Legality isn't the bar here.

I don't care if someone legally kicks a puppy, it would still be horrendous behavior.

Especially concerning if all it takes to change the law might be for the Supreme Court to say we're looking the other way. 

[kitler53]

Especially concerning if all it takes to change the law might be for the Supreme Court to say we're looking the other way. 

it's not even about the supreme court looking the other way.  this is a smash and grab.   it takes months to build a house but it can be burnt to the ground in minutes.  trump is looking to deliberately destroy institutions and fast as he can.   the supreme court could come in and rule against trump but what will that ruling matter if the institution no longer exists by the time the ruling is made?