Alternative analysis. Musk weakened or eliminated those federal agencies that regulate his corporations. He stole or at least copied large swaths of data on the people of the United States. These data are now in someone’s hands being organized by Palantir software to produce the integrated records of American citizens, which were intentionally kept in separate silos. What will happen is anybody’s guess, but nothing positive.
Always assume the worst. Maybe you get occasionally surprised.
Agree. 'waste and fraud' was just a distraction from the real purpose - weaken or eliminate the agencies currently investigating him for breaches in the Tesla loan program and the Starlink business, and gather data to progress his own contracts and defeat competitors. Not nice.
Exactly right. He's getting billions in space contracts for Starlink and rocket development, but critics and analysts have pointed out the terrible design weaknesses in his rocket development--no real cost savings because his engines can't launch the payloads needed to be cost effective, his engineering is hampered by his calling shots on issues that are technologically inferior to other companies, he's shut down govt investigations of Tesla cars, the least save EV responsible for an overwhelming # of crashes and deaths/mile--greater that all other EVs combined. DOGE made him look great to Trump, and govt handouts for inferior products that looked great when new but have proved to be poorly engineered. He's the second most dangerous man in America today, and indeed ketamine fueled at that.
You and I both hate the abominable Elon actions and rhetoric, but let’s not lose ourselves to screaming “Nothing will ever beat my horse and buggy!!”
The fact is that Tesla has the most sophisticated self-driving cars available. For managing an uncertain driving environment on surface streets as well as highways, the data prove that Tesla’s current driving model far exceeds that of any other vendor, and is likely only to get better. I love that other vendors are working hard to catch up to and I hope exceed these capabilities.
And fixating on problems solved many iterations ago is just disingenuous and stupid. The argument is laughable that its driving skills are worse than the human drivers here in middle Tennessee. I’d much rather have a Tesla driving itself next to me than some Trumper cretin who thinks down is up,and right is left, and climate change is a hoax.
If you have followed Tesla , you should know that Musk’s stubborn refusal to use LIDAR in his cars has led to an inferior product, and Google’s Waymo is safer and advancing beyond Tesla- Google has been running level 4 fully self driving taxis for years and Tesla is limited to level 2. The Bulwark had a good article about this last week. Not true at all that Tesla is the best.
Vendors like Waymo are limited to exquisitely curated navigation environments, while Tesla navigates well through random city streets with all the attendant obstacles. So in some ways we are comparing apples to oranges. That being said, I agree with you that incorporating LiDAR likely would make Tesla that much better.
Musk is sinking fast on the most dangerous list. Who is now #2? My guess is Peter Thiel and his team of creative young millionaires. Also the vice president who no one really knows and whose main job is voting in the Senate when and if needed.
On a related line; this new bunch made their wealth with creativity in the present era of explosion in new technology.. That's the real difference between now and 120 years ago. That was the last time our nation had the problem with rich people. In those times they got rich due to management skills in running a real business. I don't see those skills in today's "Whiz Kids". That includes Mr. Musk.
I love that word "Whiz". I guess it has its roots in the word "wizard" meaning someone smart. It is used in an old slang word that means urinate, one of the ways a living animal body rids itself of liquid waste products.
And his people installed a back door into every government IT system they touched, first thing , for sure. They can twist and steal whatever they want whenever they want for a decade, at least.
Yeah, this is the most underreported thing, and it should be terrifying.
Even if the "this is fine" crowd is correct and we can somehow get Trump out of the White House and a Democrat back in in 2028? If Musk et al have back doors into every government IT system, what is there to stop them from immediately fucking around in it as soon as a Democrat's back in the White House? Social Security checks stop coming, services the private sector or just the public rely on go black, critical infrastructure starts failing, etc? They're now in a position to sabotage any administration that they don't like and thereby make it stillborn as soon as it comes into office.
That assumes that the Democrats are interested in doing it at all instead of "looking forward not back," that Republican-controlled courts don't monkey-wrench every step of the process, and the less said about what an out-of-control Republican frat the FBI is, the better. But the most urgent thing isn't even prosecuting the theft of public data; it's securing all the government's computer systems to ensure the saboteurs can't fuck around in them anymore, and that's going to be a daunting task even assuming that everyone involved agrees to work on it as hard and fast as they can. Like, there may be no way of doing it short of replacing literally every computer system in the federal government.
It IS important to look forward. Still, the FBI can detect and end the theft of public data and cleaning of all government computers without prosecuting anyone. "Looking forward", in a democracy, means prioritizing restoring public services and order rather than prioritizing political revenge.
THE problem, however, is that doing so may indeed require a massive investment in renewing all government computers.
While I am in favor of looking forward, there have to be consequences for the illegal behavior of these people. And we need to work out how to create guardrails that cannot be destroyed.
The FBI does not have and has never had the skills needed to do that. The "Famous But Incompetent" trope is very true in the realm of computer security.
There are people who can (and will) locate those "back-doors" and disable them. In every company and entity with which I've dealt or at which I worked, backup tapes were regularly made. You might have to go back a couple decades in some cases, but systems can be restored.
Social Security is a perfect example. The Muskrat was talking about re-writing the software. The reason that COBOL was used and is still retained is very simple. Every other computer language introduces creeping errors into the calculations. I'm able to explain why, but it's not pertinent here. Once the Muskrat's kids are gone, the software must be restored to its old configuration.
These are master hackers and literally criminals (at least one of them). So they are highly competent when it comes to installing AI and stealing data. They are utterly incompetent when it comes to "good governance" and democracy.
They are not "master hackers;" they are hacks, but the level of **unlogged** access they have been granted makes that irrelevant. They can get plenty of help from Russian, Chinese, or other experts as they loot the US Federal government data repositories.
I'm an ordinary IT guy, but if you gave me that kind of access you'd never be able to root me out without truly extraordinary and expensive efforts from skilled security professionals—the professionals who are being ignored, demoted, sidelined, or fired.
Several people who got "fired" and "re-hired" reported finding keyboard capture software on their work laptops when they returned to work. These were just the people who had the sense to check to see what programs had recently been installed on their machines.
That's actually a major federal crime. Anyone, aside from possibly the FBI, with a court order, putting malicious software in a government computer system is looking at a very long prison sentence.
Maybe you're referring to US govt. pre-Trump. But post-Trump? And anyway, DOGE probably has a broad mandate to make whatever computer changes they want, because, you know, they are the experts who were brought in to fix everything.
Google has vastly improved its capabilities in comparison to what it was 20 years ago. You can literally type "did doge install backdoors in government computers" and get a looong list with relevant reporting. See:
Musk wants to launch Tesla's robotaxi service in June after just a few days of testing. In contrast, Google's Waymo conducted over a year of testing before deploying Level 5 self-driving. Now, Europe is also considering relaxing self-driving regulations to appease Trump.
"Musk wants to launch Tesla's robotaxi service in June after just a few days of testing."
That criticism doesn't even begin to scratch the surface, I think. Musk refuses to equip his "self-driving cars" with costly but essential LiDAR out of sheer avarice, which has already led to fatal accidents because his effing Teslas couldn't even recognize an overturned semi as an obstacle.
The Waymo's in SF are doing very well. My daughter loves them. She feels much safer. No road rage or inattention. Waymo has something like 5 different sensors, Tesla only one. My son has a Tesla and he's very disenchanted with the self driving mode. It's almost gotten them killed a few times and there are many times it doesn't work. All it has is the cameras. He'd lose too much money to get rid of it.
Presumably cities concerned with traffic safety can refuse to allow self-driving vehicles without the proven capability. My friends and I regularly walk in San Fran, and we see the Wayno everywhere. Our attitude is "let's cross in front of the waymo, we know it will never hit us", whereas drivers - you don't know 🤷. I want a private waymo!
I’ve had a Waymo run a stop sign right in front of me. Cold. Not an intersection. I nearly broadsided it. It didn’t even slow down, and turned left right in front of me. It clearly did not register my 30mph presence.
Don’t trust drivers whether they’re human or machine.
Reminds me of the first 1,000 bomber raid of Cologne. Inexperienced crews were told to aim for the cathedral on the theory that, if they did so, they would never hit it. The theory proved correct on that occasion.
Elizabeth Warren just released a 14-page document that details all the government contracts Musk recently got, the conflicts of interest he ignored, the foreign governments he's dealing with, and the charges against him and his companies that the government has dropped, including the fines he'll avoid. When you add in the cuts to the IRS, which translate into a lot less revenue, and the costs of all the lawsuits agains Musk and/or DOGE, he'll have dismantled the government and cost the taxpayers a lot of money. It was never about saving money. PS: Perfect musical coda today.
Agreed that self-serving interference and data theft, along with Musk believing he could ‘fix’ government are likely motivations. He has a pretty good opinion of himself - megalomaniacally so.
Agreed. Musk accomplished all of the goals he had when he started giving money to Trump. He eliminated everyone trying to investigate or regulate him or his companies, he sucked up mountains of data, he wrecked as much of the government as he could, he got lots of new juicy government contracts, he got Trump to sell his stuff for him and he left behind a network of minions and true believers to continue the work. Not sure how any of that is a failure. He didn't anticipate that his actions would tank Tesla, but then he has never understood who actually buys most Teslas. He really took advantage of our foolish regard for tech billionaires.
I guess if there is an upside to all this madness, it is that there won't be any need for Space X to go to Mars - there won't be anyone left alive on Planet Earth when Musk and Thiel get through with their rampage. Oh, and add RFK, Jr. to that list of killers.
This. To be clear, I'm sure there's a LOT more that Musk wanted to accomplish or thought he'd be able to accomplish but didn't. But what he did accomplish was plenty, and all of it's very very bad.
This is Elon’s entire career though. These tech bros have funded his crazy ideas- hyper loop anyone?-so this stint in the government is par for the course. This man hasn’t created anything of value in his life.
When we finally get out of this dark tunnel, all of these abuses will have to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Prosecutors and judges across the country will have their work cut out for them.
This was a massive fraud promulgated by 2 world-class sociopaths who wanted to subvert the US government for all sorts of nefarious reasons. It was born out of greed, a sense that they are too good to pay taxes, and if you need the services of the government, you are too weak to be allowed to survive. I hope the first hurricane of the season is a cat 5 and it lands square on Merde a Lardo!
They are in Musk's hands. It's HIS people, paid by HIM, who continue to work for DOGE. DOGE is still fully operative, making cuts and firing people, all while installing AI everywhere.
And Musk's xAI company... partnered with Thiel's Palantir. Thiel and Musk are old buddies.
In America, money is proof of every virtue. Elon Musk MUST be the smartest person on Earth because he's the richest person on Earth. That's how Americans view people.
So Musk, whom I call Dunning-Kruegerand, was given extraordinary extra-legal power over the entire country by Donald Trump who is easily the stupidest person ever to hold office and the stupidest president in history. The two of them form a binary black-hole system of anti-knowledge.
And the results are something we'll all be living with for the rest of our lives. Damage that cannot even be reckoned, much less repaired, in any imaginable time frame.
What I don’t get is this: An ostensible search for rooting out inefficiency produced NO verifiable evidence of actual inefficiency, for the expenditures that were cut vs. those that were not. Meanwhile there’s beaucoup evidence that the items cut were expenditures Elon and/or Donald didn’t like politically. So the criterion for cutting was some unspecified and unsupported claim of imefficiency, however in actuality what was executed was a line item veto by proxy. The President (and therefore certainly the unelected and unaithorized official Elon Musk) is prohibited from performing a line item veto on legislation passed by Congress. However they executed a BIG one by back door. Any reasonable SCOTUS would reverse everything DOGE cut; the hacks on this SCOTUS will undoubtedly look the other way, in the unlikely event a case is brought before them and the even more unlikely chance they decide to take it up. Shameful!
Small correction: It is KRUGER --- not KruEger. By the way, there is an apocrophyl story about Pres Paul Kruger (of the Transvaal) that he had injured his thumb (maybe with a gun) -- he dipped it into turpentine and cut it off. (My memories from high school)
"In America, money is proof of every virtue. Elon Musk MUST be the smartest person on Earth because he's the richest person on Earth. That's how Americans view people."
Yep.
It's really something. If you point at the elites in some communist or monarchical country and say "they didn't get there with their brains, part of it's nepotism, part of it's cronyism, and part of it's plain old dumb luck because *somebody* was going to end up in that spot and if it wasn't them it would've been somebody else," nobody has a problem understanding or believing it. Heck, no one has a problem understanding or believing it in *this* country; if I were saying this about politicians or academics or quite a few other people, including in cases where it really isn't true, everybody would be nodding sagely and going "yes, continue."
But for some reason, it's simply inconceivable that rich people in the private sector could ever have gotten to where they are the same way. THOSE elites are DIFFERENT. They're SPECIAL, don't you understand?
'But for some reason, it's simply inconceivable that rich people in the private sector could ever have gotten to where they are the same way. THOSE elites are DIFFERENT. They're SPECIAL, don't you understand?".
I chaulk it up to our Calvinist ethos - "If you are successful, it's because God loves you; if you are in the gutter, that's where God wants you, and nothing you do can change that." So rich equates to God's love, I guess?
Greed and ignorance seem to be considered virtues in US culture :-/. … despite many unselfish, compassionate, generous and smart people living in this country. 🤷♂️
Musk has proven to be just another "useful idiot" whose usefulness has run out.
Look what happened to Mike Pence when his usefulness ran out.
This is what happens when a political party is now based on nothing but lies.
Musk is still trying to play the game and "fit in" even as he trashes the bill, and criticized this budget bill for its spending.
I'm sure he knows that spending is not what is adding to the deficit and debt in this bill, it is the tax cuts.
So, how have the GOP gotten away with this nonsense for so many decades, with pretending that tax cuts do not increase the deficit?
They assume most are not aware about the impact of how things like inflation, population growth, and GDP growth impact revenues and spending, that's how.
For example, after Trump's tax cuts in 2017, revenue increased by a few billion dollars and so the GOP said "Look record revenues!"
What they failed to mention is that revenues came in hundreds of billions less than they were projected to be and when adjusted for inflation alone, we brought in less than the prior year, as well. These hundreds of billions less in revenue, increased the deficit.
Perhaps best explained here: Brookings / Did the 2017 tax cut—the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—pay for itself? William G. Gale February 14, 2020
What the GOP also fail to tell their base is that every year in the USA, tends to be a record revenue year, unless we have a recession.
This is because both revenues and spending increase every year, even if congress were to do nothing at all, due to things like GDP growth, population growth, increasing percentage of retirees, and even some inflation.
When shown on a graph over time as a projection, both revenue and spending would be upward sloping lines with the gap between them being the deficit.
Tax cuts mean that revenues, even if they increase from the prior year, are less able to keep up with normal levels of spending increases even if congress does not vote to spend more.
This causes deficits to grow. When we have yearly deficits, we have to borrow, and this adds to debt.
This widening gap over time between revenue and spending from the tax cuts or the increase in the deficit, is what CBO reports as the cost of the tax cuts.
The GOP also like to pretend that their tax cuts add a lot to growth, but there simply is zero evidence for this.
Even before the pandemic hit, Trump's average GDP growth was only 2.8% (below average) even though he nearly doubled the deficit before the pandemic even hit our shores from a projected 559 billion when Obama left office in Jan 2017, to 1.015 trillion by Jan 2020. This is in the CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook 2020-2030 that came out before the pandemic reached our shores.
In addition, Bush also only saw average growth after his massive tax cuts, and this caused massive deficits, as well. He took us from a 236 billion surplus when Clinton left to a whopping 1.186 trillion deficit before Obama was sworn in, and even before the financial crisis, he had taken us 694 billion towards the red (236 + 458) per year.
There simply is zero evidence that tax cuts aimed mostly at the top work to add much to growth. If you want to grow GDP, more needs to end up in the hands of those who will spend it and that means those at the bottom who spend the largest percentage of their incomes right back into the economy and their demand then drives the production of goods and services and business growth.
Business growth related expenses are not taxed anyway and removed before arriving at profit which is then taxed, so simply reducing the tax rate is not going to change their growth and expense decisions. In fact, with less tax on profit they may spend less on growth related expenses, not more, if there is no projected increase in demand.
So, who did see high GDP growth? Clinton.
Reagan did as well, but he benefited from the Federal Reserve finally cutting very high interest rates. The GOP claimed it was the tax cuts that increased growth, but no one has been able to replicate that with tax cuts since him, because it was not the cause for growth. The Federal Reserve's easing was. Trump seems desperate for the Fed to cut rates to keep the tax cut and "trickle down" myth alive, or to revive it.
The GOP also like to pretend the CBO is wrong by comparing numbers after things have changed and after new legislation has passed.
When the CBO makes a projection it is based on the notion that this is what things will look like when and if "all else remains the same." Thus, they are constantly updating their estimates as things change on the ground and as new legislation is passed etc.
Honestly, one would have to have never looked at a CBO report to not know this, because most, if not all, reports list what has changed from the last estimate and why. This is the whole basis for the reports. They are all about what will change, and what has changed, and how this impacts changes to the numbers in their reports. They also use actual numbers coming in from the Treasury regarding revenues and spending so they are quite accurate, as well.
The really tragic part of the Republican insistence on giving ALL the money to the ultra rich and pretending it will ever trickle down, is that giving more money to the lower and middle class WOULD do wonders to improve everyone’s lives, and likely cycle through local economies a few times before it STILL ends up in the hands of the ultra wealthy at the end!
They just can’t stand the part where anyone else gets to touch the money, even temporarily. It’s also part of why I think the right wing in America and our Oligarchs actually have a form of techno-serfdom in mind for the rest of us. There’s no denying at this point that you can’t have a functional economy with this level of wealth and income inequality, and they are fine with that, because they don’t want a functional economy.
However, I am an outlier from many in that I think that inequality is a side effect or symptom rather than the cause of a system that is now not run well enough. It is not the root cause, except perhaps when it comes to housing, should the wealthy gobble all of them up causing a feudal-like system.
The reason I say this is because an economy is not zero sum, and although I think we need higher taxes at the top (mostly capital gains rates), simply causing the wealthy to have less, does not mean there will be more for the poor or most Americans.
An economy is not cookies on a plate where is someone has more it leaves less for others. Thus, I do not believe in taxing unrealized gains and the rumor that Harris might do this was spread on sites like WSJ and helped to cause her to lose the election.
Instead we need to do things like increase taxes on capital gains and there is a way to do this that will not deter long term investments (divide the gain by the number of years held and add to income to get the rate to then apply to the whole gain).
Also, seniors downsizing for retirement should get a break.
Also, we need to increase by a small amount the employer share of payroll taxes but reduce this the more they pay employees to encourage higher wages, and higher wages also mean more is paid into shore up these retirement programs.
Finally, they could give even more incentives for people to retire even later who can.
Also, I think the government should get involved in building tons of senior housing and mobile home parks that then are low cost or free for low income seniors. If they choose to move in, then their current homes are available for others to purchase. In places like Sun City in AZ (senior living) they even have rock concerts and have a lot of fun there. It is now the hippies and the 1970's folks who are making up more and more of this group.
I think you’re overlooking the most obvious cause, which is that we used to have very high marginal tax rates and higher corporate tax rates in this country, and that acted as a direct disincentive to CEOs over compensating themselves or making excessive profits with no intention of using the gains to reward employees, invest in research and development, or making capital improvements.
It used to be that if you were a CEO it made no sense to give yourself a $10 million raise, because past $4 million the government was going to tax it at 70%. So it would make more sense to pay your employees better or at least invest that money back into the company in some purposeful way than give it over to taxes.
Now that many CEOs take stock as a large portion of their compensation, I think we need to get creative in regulating that. It should never be in a CEO’s best interests to cut other people’s wages, benefits, and staffing to increase their own gain. If the company is actually in a tight place financially it should be the top of the pay scale that needs to tighten its belt and take one for the team. But most of the time companies are laying off people not out of need, but out of greed.
I’m not sure what the solution to capital gains assholery is, but making it so CEOs can’t cash out any of their company stock until a decade after they’ve left the company might be the simplest one. They should not be able to juice their own stock value with short term strategies that undermine the company in the long term.
We’ve also gutted the previous estate tax, so these people have no misgivings about collecting lifetimes’ worth of money for themselves, because now most of it CAN be hoarded for generations without significant tax penalties.
And since they now have not just way more money than they need, but more than they even know what to do with… contributing millions to political campaigns to further their own policy agenda and interests feels “smart” and “fair.” They can buy lobbyists to press congress to make sure the will of most people doesn’t get too much consideration over the financial interests of the moneyed class. So they intentionally exacerbate policies that advantage themselves at steep costs to everyone else.
All that extra money lying around also makes them desperate for new “investments” to profit from. So they invest in PRISONS, and charter schools, and use private equity funds to buy up store brands and restaurants (like Toys r Us, Joanns, Darden restaurants) and run them out of business for short term economic gain, instead of patiently collecting profit over time in a functional way. They invest in commercial and residential real estate, driving up rents for both businesses and people. Just because they deserve to profit off every dime they’ve amassed!
And now they are so desperate to wring the last blood out of the turnip that they’re buying up things like opticians, medical imaging centers, specialty medicinal services like gastroenterology, allergies, etc… and nursing homes and childcare centers.
They are out to profit immensely off every single aspect of our lives in ways that make the products/services worse, impoverish the people working for these entities, and in the end run a highly profitable monopoly of the industry or debt load what they control and run it into the ground to extract the value,
with no care for how it affects anyone else.
It didn’t need to be a zero sum game, but the ultra wealthy want it to be. They will never be satisfied until they own and control everything and everyone. That’s why we need to put all the guardrails back in place policy wise, to end their reign of destruction and do a lot to actively reverse the damage they’ve done. Plus new regulations and enforcement of antitrust to break up their control of various industries.
They took $50 trillion from the other 90% of America. It’s long past time they pay us back with interest and stop breaking things.
edit: we also need to fix our culture as a nation. The idea of infinite money for money’s sake, & that profit is the only point of anything is corrosive and dysfunctional. We need to relegate the Jack Welch/ financialization of everything to a dumpster fire of historical levels of loathing and contempt.
The point of money/the economy/growth needs to be seen as the positive & efficient means for moving resources around our society in an effective and productive way for the collective improvement and benefit of everyone.
The idea of any one person having over maybe $50 million tops (even this is probably arguably too much for the good of society) should make everyone else completely DISGUSTED and aggrieved by someone so selfish. Those people should be treated as pariahs, not role models. They should be seen for the self centered leeches on humanity’s true potential that they are. They should feel shame, especially as we the “wealthiest nation” still have kids living in poverty, no universal healthcare system, and at least half the jobs in the country don’t pay enough for you to afford a single bedroom apartment on your own.
Another excellent long post in a string of them. But here's a snippet of my experience of stock options. When we organized our little tech company, we had enough corporate experience to hate the existing system of options, so we determined to give them to valuable people (and then to everybody) and not just to us insiders. And our respectable San Francisco law firm warned us against that, citing a 1946(?) case in which a firm got in trouble for having awarded options to unimportant people (including secretaries!). A couple of years later we switched to another firm, the leading rainmaker in Silicon Valley, who understood the tech business. But eventually, our growth brought us new Professional Management who freed the corporation of those Commie ideas.
So, your recommendations, like making sure that Senior Management should not be able to liquidate till they've retired, are sound. The rest of what you said speaks for itself.
I agree with much of what you say, in fact, I have often posted much of what you say, as well, and I am aware taxes used to be much higher on the rich and it did not harm the economy (likely helped the economy so the opposite of what the GOP claim) since higher taxes meant that there was an incentive to expense more, which meant purchases and growth related items, rather than focus on profit.
However, a CEO is often not the sole owner in many companies, so how the board then votes to pay them so much is a bit of a mystery, these days. They can’t then decide to reinvest because this is payroll and not out of profits. Musk lost a court case on his pay recently because it would take away from shareholders earnings, but in his case he is also a primary owner, as well as the shareholders,
My point is that an economy is not zero sum and that taxing non realized gains and thus forcing the sale of much of what the wealthy owns will not make the poor or middle class any wealthier. These assets will be gobbled up a lower prices by the top 1% or 10% rather than staying with the top .1%, etc.
Before I read the article you posted, l will ask a question about the title. How is it that the top 1% took this money from the bottom 90%?
I agree that our economy is bottom up and driven by demand, but this has always been the case, so what changed to lead to such inequality?
The truth is that low taxes allowed them to reinvest more and buy assets like stocks. The tax cuts added to debt and the deficit and the rich mostly used this money to buy these assets.
This extra left over money after taxes inflated these asset prices, like a pyramid scheme
Taxing unrealized gains will mostly deflate the value of these assets and this can harm the economy as a whole, and decrease the value of pension funds and retirement accounts. This decline, once it makes its way into the regular economy as reduced spending, will impact GDP which will undermine revenue gains for the federal government, jobs and ordinary citizens.
The reason GDP growth and size is important is because it helps us to generate more revenue for important government programs to help the poor.
Most of this money gained by the rich did not come from the bottom 90%, or from depressed wages (some but not a vast majority). This money the wealthy invested largely came from, and inflated, our debt and deficits and is now sitting in stocks and yes some homes. It is money borrowed by the federal government so that they can give tax breaks to the wealthiest,
So when Senator Ron Johnson (R) says deficits are stealing from our children’s future, he needs to say the rich and tax cuts are, not spending. In fact our discretionary spending to GDP is the same as it was under Clinton when we had a surplus. SS and Medicare have their own sources of funding and as far as I am concerned Medicaid and healthcare is a right.
The deficit is the same size as discretionary spending and discretionary spending has not increased as a percentage of our economy, so clearly the main culprit is the tax cuts that are supposed to fund mostly discretionary spending. In fact if we had the same revenue to GDP that we had under Clinton, our deficits would be about 840 billion less. 2.8% more X 30 trillion economy.
Yes, the GOP used tax cuts as an excuse to cut some programs and then when back in power, the Dems expanded some of them once again and added some like healthcare, but the largest share of the gains by the rich, as far as I can tell, are paid for with our debt and deficit increases.
Yes, I think we need to increase taxes on the wealthy on income and capital gains, but not on unrealized gains. The money that is simply sitting there ballooning asset prices can stay to prop up retirement accounts and pension funds, but once the stocks are then sold, the taxes should be much higher on the gain.
My point is that shaking down the wealthy few for their passive assets and wealth will not help the poor, but we need to tax their incomes more.
The solution is to go back to higher tax rates on income and capital gains and to make sure wages are higher and safety net programs are better and fully funded. Free 2 yr college, expanded Pell Grants, subsidized childcare and free pre-school at k-12 for anyone who wants it and Medicaid expansion, not cutting.
Programs to help the poor paid for with increased taxes on the wealthy will make the economy larger, as well, and reduce debt/GDP (since GDP is the denominator). After Bidens expanded CTC went out the debt/GDP ratio actually dropped from massive nominal GDP growth.
Finally, I think that the government needs to restrict investment in single family homes that are used for rental properties so that there are more available for owner occupy buyers and start building a ton of senior communities. Senior communities can be built anywhere and do not need to be near jobs and mobile homes and parks can go up fast. This opens up more single family homes for others to buy near jobs, etc.
The fact that their money and assets beget more money and assets pretty much automatically is the reason you need to rein it in. Or we just end up in this situation again, when they end up with too much money and not enough to do with it, again.
We basically already lived through this cycle at least twice in the US and dozens of times across human history. Look at the UK. They had at least some better programs than us like NHS and publically owned housing… and even there the landed gentry and foreign oligarchs investing there are trying to undermine the social safety net systems, rather than pay their fair share to keep supporting those program.
The wealth is a corrupting influence on most people. If they weren’t so capable of rationalizing insane levels of selfishness to begin with, they would t be this wealthy. Long ago they would have said, “Holy shit, that’s a lot of money. How can I use this to improve my community, city, country, humanity?
Nothing is made better by these people owning most of it. :P
Read the article. It’s basically wage suppression paired with the wealthy eschewing their fair tax burden to society and their systemic rent seeking behaviors.
They’re siphoning money out of the system every possible way they can think of. To the tune of most people having lost over $1000 in spending power every month for the last 45 years.
The median income should be almost double what it is now if economic gains had continued to be distributed at the more equitable levels of the 1970s and prior.
The top 1% own over 85% of the stock market. I think the focus on capital gains as though it truly reflects so many normal American’s pensions and 401ks is kind of a convenient rationale for shielding rich people. If I had that extra $1000+ in my bank account every month for my entire adult life, I’d probably actually have had more money to invest myself or at least put into savings at the bank rate APR or to buy CDs or treasuries. :P
It’s certainly more money than I made letting Wall Street behave like a casino with the money I did put into a 401k.
We’re being persuaded to “protecting working people’s retirements” … but I’d argue none of us being able to retire should rely on giving over $12,000 a year to rich profiteers so they can give us back $1200 in stock value that’s ethereal and can evaporate at any moment depending on what stupid things they do next.
I have to reply to this, though it adds to a long thread. Many of us remember the financial crash of September 15, 2008; I remember it clearly because I happened to be in New York that afternoon walking down Broadway (or whatever it's called at that point) past Lehman Brothers, seeing the stragglers carrying out their pathetic boxes of personal effects while avoiding the reporters who would come from behind the barriers trying for an interview. (Full boring anecdote omitted)
By January, lots of people saw that lots of money had to be pumped into the economy; and there was talk of how to do it. I saw one opinion piece that argued that the money should not go to rich people (who would invest it) but to the people who needed it and would spend it.
Who said this Keynesian stuff? A letter that Goldman Sachs sent to its clients! So the lesson had started to sink in, even among rich people.
Right, if I robbed a bank and got away with it, that makes me smarter than Einstein who worked a simple job for peanuts...that's exactly how Americans on average think.
No smearing Dunning and Krueger! The students in their study who didn’t know how ignorant they were, improved with an explanation and some additional education. There is no evidence Musk or anyone in the Trump Madministration is educable.
Gah! They're both such objectively obvious morons. The only qualities that are found in human brains that they possess in excess are ego, malignancy, narcissism, insecurity, cruelty and pettiness. If they weren't rich, they'd both have been institutionalized or put in prison years ago.
In a just world, Musk would be on trial, Stephen Miller and Pete Hegspeth would be in adjoining cells, waiting for their chance at justice, and Trump would be down the hall in solitary confinement. They have betrayed our ideals, broken our laws, and sold us out to foreign powers. We need tribunals.
While I'll never be as magnanimous as Lincoln, "with malice towards none," I'd like to see fair trials, even if that's not what this current administration is granting towards the people it is attacking.
A polite and serious question: What's up with you and guillotines? Do you seriously believe the US would be turned into a better place by having a French Revolution style overthrow of the government including all the bloodshed that was involved historically?
In a sane country, Donald would not have been elected President. And the President would not have appointed people who are manifestly unqualified for their jobs. Hegseth knows less about the work of the Pentagon than anyone in the building. He is consumed by anti DEI, anti-LGBT, anti-women, and related campaigns.
How is there any public opinion maker thinking that Musk has any valid reasons for going to D.C.? Or that any political statement he makes is worth paying attention to other than to find out what criminal enterprises he is executing or endorsing? That he is a malignant narcissistic psychopath should be crystal (not the meth kind) clear to anyone with half a brain or even a shred of decency.
This is ABSOLUTELY the line of logic we all need to continue- it’s asinine that we’ve dignified any other reasoning than that he’s overtly paid his way into freely doing nefarious acts against the interests of the American people in a capacity that there was ABSOLUTELY no logical explanation for him having functioned in, in the first place!
This is the United States of America! If we needed to rehabilitate our federal government, there are literally millions of qualified, some even already vetted professionals who could have been hired to help whose long tenure in the specialized functions that needed to be performed would have made them the right people to do it. It’s ridiculous and akin to a man as rich as Elon hiring a plumber to operate on him instead of the world’s best surgeon- who would’ve done this?!?!?
Occam’s razor applied to this situation says the richest clown in the world is a lying, scheming thief, who paid the Thief-In-Chief to commit treason of EPIC proportions to benefit himself and now is trying to launder his history of sloppy, unprecedentedly damaging and illegal, stupidly justified actions taken now that he’s gotten what he was after.
Musk is quite the enigma; did he go to Washington to do good, or was it all a smokescreen? My bet, it’s a combination; he thought the government was bloated and full of waste, but his true motivation was far more sinister.
He was being investigated by the AG’s of USAID and FAA; both agencies were targeted first. And Musk wasted little time dismantling both.
And as for DOGE going into the Treasury database? Welcome to the New World Order, where Palantir is coordinating an effort to compile all of Americans personal information into a database they can exploit in many ways into the future (control).
And as for Musk being against this monstrosity of a Big Beautiful Bill? Notice his $7,500 EV tax credit that helped Musk become the richest man in the world; miraculously eliminated! Additionally, he didn’t get his guy nominated for NASA administrator, or get the FAA contract for Starlink.
This is self interest, pure and simple. Musk couldn’t give a damn about America, and like most good businessmen, they put their own interests first, well above the future survival of our democracy and the overall health of our country.
I agree with everything here except the part about Musk ever intending to do good, and genuinely believing the government was bloated and full of waste. If he was truly the genius that some claim him to be, he would have recognized that the government operates on a shoestring budget, with personnel already pared to the bone.
Understood, but in MuskRat's case, or for that matter the entire misadministration plus the GOP's in both chambers of congress and six SCJ's don't warrant diplomacy at this stage. They all warrant prosecution and incarceration - with most of them warranting the guillotine.
Agreed, and he had other reasons to disparage the bill. He didn’t get the FAA contract for Starlink, and he also was lobbying for his guy to be the NASA administrator, which also fell flat!
This is all sour grapes, from the only guy who can give Trump a run for his money when it comes to being a petty, vindictive, petulant five year old throwing a tantrum…:)
Actually, I believe poetic justice would be both Trump and Musk losing all their wealth, and not qualifying for Medicaid or any other entitlement programs. Short of that, I’d settle for them both being hung, drawn and quartered!…:)
We have sunk to the level of thinking Judge Jeanine’s office water shortage is the greatest national issue now. Thanks for trying to keep America’s eyes on the real problem. Too bad we focused on the 1% while 50% +/- (of voters anyway) were focused on the magician’s other hand. Your coda is especially applicable to the millions who stayed home.
Musk: It was all about obtaining vast quantities of data (on competitors of his, confidential global security, and our personal) and gaining lucrative government contracts.
Musk initially became rich taking advantage of US government data collected at taxpayer expense, like most billionaires. He just outsmarted Trump by taking advantage further of us. He made a fool of Trump.
and closing down a lot of investigations of his commercial operations - what he did first of all when he got to D.C. Just about every agency he targeted had some activity directed at a Musk company. No coincidence.
"C'mon down to Big Tiny Donnie's Lot! You'll ride away in a minute once you throw yer money init! My partner Lone Skum here will take yer data and sneer! You'll LOVE it Or Else!"
The boycott of all things Musk needs to continue. I believe his latest messages are merely performative, as is his squabble with Trump. With that said, the focus needs to shift dramatically to stopping Palantir. That tech company is headed up by Peter Thiel, a Musk pal and former partner in Pay Pal. DOGE's massive illegal data harvest from every government department is now in the hands of Thiel and his radical partner Alex Karp. They are proponents of their crazed guru Curtis Yarvin, who calls for Nation States run by the supposedly superior billionaire class, and sees the "disposal" of inferior citizens, as a necessary inconvenience. This concept is behind much of the atrocious actions of the Trump Republican Regime.
and now Alex Jones is shilling for Palantir - which does the kind of things that used to drive Jones crazy (I know, that's not a drive, that's a putt) when he imagined the libs were doing it (as they never were.)
I think the fake religious zealots want to hasten the end of the world, mistakenly believing their actions would qualify them as eligible if the “rapture” exists. The technocrats want to hasten economic and environmental collapse, so they alone can rule. Hopefully their differing ideologies continue to create conflict amongst them.
It's quite interesting. The religious zealots might actually believe Trumpkopf is the antichrist - he certainly fits the description.
I believe the Yarvinites want to hasten economic collapse, I'm not so sure they really want to hasten environmental collapse. They're not the sharpest tacks in the box for sure - otherwise they'd pay no mind to the likes of Yarvin - but I can't believe they're so dense as to think environmental destruction won't impact them negatively. Can they really be that dumb? (Strictly rhetorical question there).
That seems to be the case. While it's true that wealth is power, it's not unlimited, but they're so accustomed to it they don't grasp the limitations. They'll find out the hard way, and it will be too late when they do.
I think you're correct in a sense. I think many fundies believe that global warming is God's plan to end the world. So, efforts to block it must be Satan's work. And, of course, reducing the effects of global warming are postponing the rapture.
A life of "poverty and penance" would be appropriate for trump and everyone that hitched their wagon to his convoy of destruction. Those (mostly children) who are dying get the same consideration as an ant stepped on by accident.
Yup, but Norman Vincent Peale started the indoctrination with his dad's blessing. How proud they all must be of the Frankensteinian freak they created.
Musk was the executor. The planner was racist, misogynistic, antisemitic White Christian nationalist Russell Vought. He chose the targets that Musk's spawn attacked so viciously. Vought knows the entire project to destroy the government is illegal, but abetted by the Supreme Court, he is getting away with it.
Nailed it! Vought's now actually the guy to whom the DOGE political appointees inside agencies answer. He's hasn't even tried to hide it, and the fact he expects the cuts to continue. Vought's probably quite happy the media's taken the bait and is still focused on Musk.
We recently entertained some out-of-town guests, one a newly-retired Silicon Valley tech exec. This person has lived and worked in "the Valley" for decades, knows all of the big "broligarchs," and said unequivocally that Elon Musk is "the most evil human I've ever met." My friend is not given to hyperbole so this statement shocked but did not surprise me. Elon is one of the many amoral, cluster-B personalities (narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths) that populate our highest corporate ranks. Years ago a study claimed that one in five CEOs are psychopaths. With every passing day we see that this figure was likely underestimated. The challenge is to figure out what to do about it.
Alternative analysis. Musk weakened or eliminated those federal agencies that regulate his corporations. He stole or at least copied large swaths of data on the people of the United States. These data are now in someone’s hands being organized by Palantir software to produce the integrated records of American citizens, which were intentionally kept in separate silos. What will happen is anybody’s guess, but nothing positive.
Always assume the worst. Maybe you get occasionally surprised.
Agree. 'waste and fraud' was just a distraction from the real purpose - weaken or eliminate the agencies currently investigating him for breaches in the Tesla loan program and the Starlink business, and gather data to progress his own contracts and defeat competitors. Not nice.
Exactly right. He's getting billions in space contracts for Starlink and rocket development, but critics and analysts have pointed out the terrible design weaknesses in his rocket development--no real cost savings because his engines can't launch the payloads needed to be cost effective, his engineering is hampered by his calling shots on issues that are technologically inferior to other companies, he's shut down govt investigations of Tesla cars, the least save EV responsible for an overwhelming # of crashes and deaths/mile--greater that all other EVs combined. DOGE made him look great to Trump, and govt handouts for inferior products that looked great when new but have proved to be poorly engineered. He's the second most dangerous man in America today, and indeed ketamine fueled at that.
You and I both hate the abominable Elon actions and rhetoric, but let’s not lose ourselves to screaming “Nothing will ever beat my horse and buggy!!”
The fact is that Tesla has the most sophisticated self-driving cars available. For managing an uncertain driving environment on surface streets as well as highways, the data prove that Tesla’s current driving model far exceeds that of any other vendor, and is likely only to get better. I love that other vendors are working hard to catch up to and I hope exceed these capabilities.
And fixating on problems solved many iterations ago is just disingenuous and stupid. The argument is laughable that its driving skills are worse than the human drivers here in middle Tennessee. I’d much rather have a Tesla driving itself next to me than some Trumper cretin who thinks down is up,and right is left, and climate change is a hoax.
If you have followed Tesla , you should know that Musk’s stubborn refusal to use LIDAR in his cars has led to an inferior product, and Google’s Waymo is safer and advancing beyond Tesla- Google has been running level 4 fully self driving taxis for years and Tesla is limited to level 2. The Bulwark had a good article about this last week. Not true at all that Tesla is the best.
Vendors like Waymo are limited to exquisitely curated navigation environments, while Tesla navigates well through random city streets with all the attendant obstacles. So in some ways we are comparing apples to oranges. That being said, I agree with you that incorporating LiDAR likely would make Tesla that much better.
Musk is sinking fast on the most dangerous list. Who is now #2? My guess is Peter Thiel and his team of creative young millionaires. Also the vice president who no one really knows and whose main job is voting in the Senate when and if needed.
On a related line; this new bunch made their wealth with creativity in the present era of explosion in new technology.. That's the real difference between now and 120 years ago. That was the last time our nation had the problem with rich people. In those times they got rich due to management skills in running a real business. I don't see those skills in today's "Whiz Kids". That includes Mr. Musk.
I love that word "Whiz". I guess it has its roots in the word "wizard" meaning someone smart. It is used in an old slang word that means urinate, one of the ways a living animal body rids itself of liquid waste products.
They are all 'whiz' kids
And his people installed a back door into every government IT system they touched, first thing , for sure. They can twist and steal whatever they want whenever they want for a decade, at least.
Yeah, this is the most underreported thing, and it should be terrifying.
Even if the "this is fine" crowd is correct and we can somehow get Trump out of the White House and a Democrat back in in 2028? If Musk et al have back doors into every government IT system, what is there to stop them from immediately fucking around in it as soon as a Democrat's back in the White House? Social Security checks stop coming, services the private sector or just the public rely on go black, critical infrastructure starts failing, etc? They're now in a position to sabotage any administration that they don't like and thereby make it stillborn as soon as it comes into office.
If we get the FBI back we can prosecute the theft of public data.
That assumes that the Democrats are interested in doing it at all instead of "looking forward not back," that Republican-controlled courts don't monkey-wrench every step of the process, and the less said about what an out-of-control Republican frat the FBI is, the better. But the most urgent thing isn't even prosecuting the theft of public data; it's securing all the government's computer systems to ensure the saboteurs can't fuck around in them anymore, and that's going to be a daunting task even assuming that everyone involved agrees to work on it as hard and fast as they can. Like, there may be no way of doing it short of replacing literally every computer system in the federal government.
It IS important to look forward. Still, the FBI can detect and end the theft of public data and cleaning of all government computers without prosecuting anyone. "Looking forward", in a democracy, means prioritizing restoring public services and order rather than prioritizing political revenge.
THE problem, however, is that doing so may indeed require a massive investment in renewing all government computers.
While I am in favor of looking forward, there have to be consequences for the illegal behavior of these people. And we need to work out how to create guardrails that cannot be destroyed.
The FBI does not have and has never had the skills needed to do that. The "Famous But Incompetent" trope is very true in the realm of computer security.
There are people who can (and will) locate those "back-doors" and disable them. In every company and entity with which I've dealt or at which I worked, backup tapes were regularly made. You might have to go back a couple decades in some cases, but systems can be restored.
Social Security is a perfect example. The Muskrat was talking about re-writing the software. The reason that COBOL was used and is still retained is very simple. Every other computer language introduces creeping errors into the calculations. I'm able to explain why, but it's not pertinent here. Once the Muskrat's kids are gone, the software must be restored to its old configuration.
Well, we can only hope they are as incompetent with that task as they have been with everything else....unless the incompetence was intentional.
The DOGE “boys” are incompetent, but Palantir is an organization with real expertise in combining databases.
These are master hackers and literally criminals (at least one of them). So they are highly competent when it comes to installing AI and stealing data. They are utterly incompetent when it comes to "good governance" and democracy.
They are not "master hackers;" they are hacks, but the level of **unlogged** access they have been granted makes that irrelevant. They can get plenty of help from Russian, Chinese, or other experts as they loot the US Federal government data repositories.
I'm an ordinary IT guy, but if you gave me that kind of access you'd never be able to root me out without truly extraordinary and expensive efforts from skilled security professionals—the professionals who are being ignored, demoted, sidelined, or fired.
including stealing money, money, money...
Has there been documentation of back door access? Or is this hypothetical? I find this highly plausible but had not seen anything reported…
Several people who got "fired" and "re-hired" reported finding keyboard capture software on their work laptops when they returned to work. These were just the people who had the sense to check to see what programs had recently been installed on their machines.
That's actually a major federal crime. Anyone, aside from possibly the FBI, with a court order, putting malicious software in a government computer system is looking at a very long prison sentence.
Maybe you're referring to US govt. pre-Trump. But post-Trump? And anyway, DOGE probably has a broad mandate to make whatever computer changes they want, because, you know, they are the experts who were brought in to fix everything.
Google has vastly improved its capabilities in comparison to what it was 20 years ago. You can literally type "did doge install backdoors in government computers" and get a looong list with relevant reporting. See:
https://www.google.com/search?q=did+doge+install+backdoors+in+government+computers
Musk wants to launch Tesla's robotaxi service in June after just a few days of testing. In contrast, Google's Waymo conducted over a year of testing before deploying Level 5 self-driving. Now, Europe is also considering relaxing self-driving regulations to appease Trump.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-self-driving-cars-regulation-donald-trump-trade-war-tariffs/
People in both the United States and Europe should have the courage to stand up and oppose this lack of oversight.
I will never ride in a taxi driven by a robot 🤖!
Neither will I…but we’ll both have the opportunity to be run over by one!
Hello Maria. We miss the APHC cruises.
George! Great to see you here…but boy, I miss them, too!
What if you meet a malfunctioning one?
And I live in a town with no Uber and no regular taxis
"Musk wants to launch Tesla's robotaxi service in June after just a few days of testing."
That criticism doesn't even begin to scratch the surface, I think. Musk refuses to equip his "self-driving cars" with costly but essential LiDAR out of sheer avarice, which has already led to fatal accidents because his effing Teslas couldn't even recognize an overturned semi as an obstacle.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUGh0qAqWA
Lidar isn't particularly costly. Musk is just an idiot, and refuses to acknowledge his mistake in not using it.
if we're really lucky,musk,trump,et..al.,will take a robotaxi tour...
To a Starship launch.
aye aye,Mon capitan-ever watch 'q' on star trek-tng?fantastic
Where is he when we need him?
'q' or Picard?
Yeah, preferably for a one way trip to Mars. They are after all the best of the best, perfect candidates to start human settlement on Mars.
The Waymo's in SF are doing very well. My daughter loves them. She feels much safer. No road rage or inattention. Waymo has something like 5 different sensors, Tesla only one. My son has a Tesla and he's very disenchanted with the self driving mode. It's almost gotten them killed a few times and there are many times it doesn't work. All it has is the cameras. He'd lose too much money to get rid of it.
Presumably cities concerned with traffic safety can refuse to allow self-driving vehicles without the proven capability. My friends and I regularly walk in San Fran, and we see the Wayno everywhere. Our attitude is "let's cross in front of the waymo, we know it will never hit us", whereas drivers - you don't know 🤷. I want a private waymo!
I’ve had a Waymo run a stop sign right in front of me. Cold. Not an intersection. I nearly broadsided it. It didn’t even slow down, and turned left right in front of me. It clearly did not register my 30mph presence.
Don’t trust drivers whether they’re human or machine.
Reminds me of the first 1,000 bomber raid of Cologne. Inexperienced crews were told to aim for the cathedral on the theory that, if they did so, they would never hit it. The theory proved correct on that occasion.
Elizabeth Warren just released a 14-page document that details all the government contracts Musk recently got, the conflicts of interest he ignored, the foreign governments he's dealing with, and the charges against him and his companies that the government has dropped, including the fines he'll avoid. When you add in the cuts to the IRS, which translate into a lot less revenue, and the costs of all the lawsuits agains Musk and/or DOGE, he'll have dismantled the government and cost the taxpayers a lot of money. It was never about saving money. PS: Perfect musical coda today.
Can you post a link to her list?
130 days of Elon Musk Report https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon_musk_report.pdf
It's depressing.
Thanks for sharing this. Staggering intrusion.
Depressing, yes, but entirely predictable.
Now that Trump & Musk have publicly fallen out, I expect Trump to sic his cllowns/goons on Musk's companies. Snakes eating snakes.
That's a pleasant thought.
Agreed that self-serving interference and data theft, along with Musk believing he could ‘fix’ government are likely motivations. He has a pretty good opinion of himself - megalomaniacally so.
AND….his corp have paid no Fed tax past 3 years?!
Agreed. Musk accomplished all of the goals he had when he started giving money to Trump. He eliminated everyone trying to investigate or regulate him or his companies, he sucked up mountains of data, he wrecked as much of the government as he could, he got lots of new juicy government contracts, he got Trump to sell his stuff for him and he left behind a network of minions and true believers to continue the work. Not sure how any of that is a failure. He didn't anticipate that his actions would tank Tesla, but then he has never understood who actually buys most Teslas. He really took advantage of our foolish regard for tech billionaires.
I guess if there is an upside to all this madness, it is that there won't be any need for Space X to go to Mars - there won't be anyone left alive on Planet Earth when Musk and Thiel get through with their rampage. Oh, and add RFK, Jr. to that list of killers.
I guess that the thinking of Elon and Thiel is that after humans thoroughly trash the earth, then Elon and their associates can go live on Mars.
Would it not make more sense to keep the earth a livable place?
That would be a fitting end to them. Even the dirt is poisonous.
They have to go there while Earth can still support the effort.
You put too much credence on the United States. The wreck of the US will not destroy Planet Earth (though the oil companies will do so if they can).
But he wasn't loved by the public. They have had the audacity to crucify him for his efforts. Imagine!!! (Sarcasm not troll)
This. To be clear, I'm sure there's a LOT more that Musk wanted to accomplish or thought he'd be able to accomplish but didn't. But what he did accomplish was plenty, and all of it's very very bad.
This is Elon’s entire career though. These tech bros have funded his crazy ideas- hyper loop anyone?-so this stint in the government is par for the course. This man hasn’t created anything of value in his life.
Maybe Trump should have read Kara Swisher's "Burn Book" Oh, right - he doesn't read.
When we finally get out of this dark tunnel, all of these abuses will have to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Prosecutors and judges across the country will have their work cut out for them.
This was a massive fraud promulgated by 2 world-class sociopaths who wanted to subvert the US government for all sorts of nefarious reasons. It was born out of greed, a sense that they are too good to pay taxes, and if you need the services of the government, you are too weak to be allowed to survive. I hope the first hurricane of the season is a cat 5 and it lands square on Merde a Lardo!
This is what I came here to say. Exactly.
exactly!! I read your post after posting mine ---- same worry!!
They are in Musk's hands. It's HIS people, paid by HIM, who continue to work for DOGE. DOGE is still fully operative, making cuts and firing people, all while installing AI everywhere.
And Musk's xAI company... partnered with Thiel's Palantir. Thiel and Musk are old buddies.
My turn to try word crafting:
f-elon-gate
a crime committed over long period or the effect of which last a long period with the help of political gatekeepers at high (WH) levels
(can also be used as verb)
He shared that data with the Russians and the Republicans.
Beyond that some of his DOGE minions including “big balls” are now FTE of the Federal government with some of the highest salaries allowed.
The grift is always the point.
In America, money is proof of every virtue. Elon Musk MUST be the smartest person on Earth because he's the richest person on Earth. That's how Americans view people.
So Musk, whom I call Dunning-Kruegerand, was given extraordinary extra-legal power over the entire country by Donald Trump who is easily the stupidest person ever to hold office and the stupidest president in history. The two of them form a binary black-hole system of anti-knowledge.
And the results are something we'll all be living with for the rest of our lives. Damage that cannot even be reckoned, much less repaired, in any imaginable time frame.
You had me at “binary black hole system of anti-knowledge”…
You win the internet for the day with that one!
That wins the week and maybe the year; We’ll see.
What I don’t get is this: An ostensible search for rooting out inefficiency produced NO verifiable evidence of actual inefficiency, for the expenditures that were cut vs. those that were not. Meanwhile there’s beaucoup evidence that the items cut were expenditures Elon and/or Donald didn’t like politically. So the criterion for cutting was some unspecified and unsupported claim of imefficiency, however in actuality what was executed was a line item veto by proxy. The President (and therefore certainly the unelected and unaithorized official Elon Musk) is prohibited from performing a line item veto on legislation passed by Congress. However they executed a BIG one by back door. Any reasonable SCOTUS would reverse everything DOGE cut; the hacks on this SCOTUS will undoubtedly look the other way, in the unlikely event a case is brought before them and the even more unlikely chance they decide to take it up. Shameful!
Where is the awards page to put this up? “binary black hole system of anti-knowledge” HEY!
You may like my stack: JosephZeigler.substack.com
A good match for 'Gag me with a Cybertruck'.
“binary black hole system of anti-knowledge”… me too. But nothing escapes.
You may like my stack: JosephZeigler.substack.com
Dunning-Kruegerand
Fair. Carry on.
Small correction: It is KRUGER --- not KruEger. By the way, there is an apocrophyl story about Pres Paul Kruger (of the Transvaal) that he had injured his thumb (maybe with a gun) -- he dipped it into turpentine and cut it off. (My memories from high school)
If you're gonna nitpick, do it thoroughly: It's "Krugerrand", not Krugerand.
Then again, "Dunning-Krugerrand" is already taken as a slur for Bitcoin, cf.:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dunning-Krugerrand
It's nitpicking, but you are correct. For anyone who might be interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kruger
"In America, money is proof of every virtue. Elon Musk MUST be the smartest person on Earth because he's the richest person on Earth. That's how Americans view people."
Yep.
It's really something. If you point at the elites in some communist or monarchical country and say "they didn't get there with their brains, part of it's nepotism, part of it's cronyism, and part of it's plain old dumb luck because *somebody* was going to end up in that spot and if it wasn't them it would've been somebody else," nobody has a problem understanding or believing it. Heck, no one has a problem understanding or believing it in *this* country; if I were saying this about politicians or academics or quite a few other people, including in cases where it really isn't true, everybody would be nodding sagely and going "yes, continue."
But for some reason, it's simply inconceivable that rich people in the private sector could ever have gotten to where they are the same way. THOSE elites are DIFFERENT. They're SPECIAL, don't you understand?
'But for some reason, it's simply inconceivable that rich people in the private sector could ever have gotten to where they are the same way. THOSE elites are DIFFERENT. They're SPECIAL, don't you understand?".
I chaulk it up to our Calvinist ethos - "If you are successful, it's because God loves you; if you are in the gutter, that's where God wants you, and nothing you do can change that." So rich equates to God's love, I guess?
Greed and ignorance seem to be considered virtues in US culture :-/. … despite many unselfish, compassionate, generous and smart people living in this country. 🤷♂️
Dunning Krugerand effect got me. Brava
Musk has proven to be just another "useful idiot" whose usefulness has run out.
Look what happened to Mike Pence when his usefulness ran out.
This is what happens when a political party is now based on nothing but lies.
Musk is still trying to play the game and "fit in" even as he trashes the bill, and criticized this budget bill for its spending.
I'm sure he knows that spending is not what is adding to the deficit and debt in this bill, it is the tax cuts.
So, how have the GOP gotten away with this nonsense for so many decades, with pretending that tax cuts do not increase the deficit?
They assume most are not aware about the impact of how things like inflation, population growth, and GDP growth impact revenues and spending, that's how.
For example, after Trump's tax cuts in 2017, revenue increased by a few billion dollars and so the GOP said "Look record revenues!"
What they failed to mention is that revenues came in hundreds of billions less than they were projected to be and when adjusted for inflation alone, we brought in less than the prior year, as well. These hundreds of billions less in revenue, increased the deficit.
Perhaps best explained here: Brookings / Did the 2017 tax cut—the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—pay for itself? William G. Gale February 14, 2020
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-the-2017-tax-cut-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-pay-for-itself/
What the GOP also fail to tell their base is that every year in the USA, tends to be a record revenue year, unless we have a recession.
This is because both revenues and spending increase every year, even if congress were to do nothing at all, due to things like GDP growth, population growth, increasing percentage of retirees, and even some inflation.
When shown on a graph over time as a projection, both revenue and spending would be upward sloping lines with the gap between them being the deficit.
Tax cuts mean that revenues, even if they increase from the prior year, are less able to keep up with normal levels of spending increases even if congress does not vote to spend more.
This causes deficits to grow. When we have yearly deficits, we have to borrow, and this adds to debt.
This widening gap over time between revenue and spending from the tax cuts or the increase in the deficit, is what CBO reports as the cost of the tax cuts.
The GOP also like to pretend that their tax cuts add a lot to growth, but there simply is zero evidence for this.
Even before the pandemic hit, Trump's average GDP growth was only 2.8% (below average) even though he nearly doubled the deficit before the pandemic even hit our shores from a projected 559 billion when Obama left office in Jan 2017, to 1.015 trillion by Jan 2020. This is in the CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook 2020-2030 that came out before the pandemic reached our shores.
In addition, Bush also only saw average growth after his massive tax cuts, and this caused massive deficits, as well. He took us from a 236 billion surplus when Clinton left to a whopping 1.186 trillion deficit before Obama was sworn in, and even before the financial crisis, he had taken us 694 billion towards the red (236 + 458) per year.
There simply is zero evidence that tax cuts aimed mostly at the top work to add much to growth. If you want to grow GDP, more needs to end up in the hands of those who will spend it and that means those at the bottom who spend the largest percentage of their incomes right back into the economy and their demand then drives the production of goods and services and business growth.
Business growth related expenses are not taxed anyway and removed before arriving at profit which is then taxed, so simply reducing the tax rate is not going to change their growth and expense decisions. In fact, with less tax on profit they may spend less on growth related expenses, not more, if there is no projected increase in demand.
So, who did see high GDP growth? Clinton.
Reagan did as well, but he benefited from the Federal Reserve finally cutting very high interest rates. The GOP claimed it was the tax cuts that increased growth, but no one has been able to replicate that with tax cuts since him, because it was not the cause for growth. The Federal Reserve's easing was. Trump seems desperate for the Fed to cut rates to keep the tax cut and "trickle down" myth alive, or to revive it.
The GOP also like to pretend the CBO is wrong by comparing numbers after things have changed and after new legislation has passed.
When the CBO makes a projection it is based on the notion that this is what things will look like when and if "all else remains the same." Thus, they are constantly updating their estimates as things change on the ground and as new legislation is passed etc.
Honestly, one would have to have never looked at a CBO report to not know this, because most, if not all, reports list what has changed from the last estimate and why. This is the whole basis for the reports. They are all about what will change, and what has changed, and how this impacts changes to the numbers in their reports. They also use actual numbers coming in from the Treasury regarding revenues and spending so they are quite accurate, as well.
Quite a good lesson in economics. If people don't read it because 'tl;dr', it's their loss. Literally.
Thanks
The really tragic part of the Republican insistence on giving ALL the money to the ultra rich and pretending it will ever trickle down, is that giving more money to the lower and middle class WOULD do wonders to improve everyone’s lives, and likely cycle through local economies a few times before it STILL ends up in the hands of the ultra wealthy at the end!
They just can’t stand the part where anyone else gets to touch the money, even temporarily. It’s also part of why I think the right wing in America and our Oligarchs actually have a form of techno-serfdom in mind for the rest of us. There’s no denying at this point that you can’t have a functional economy with this level of wealth and income inequality, and they are fine with that, because they don’t want a functional economy.
I agree and I think you get how the system works.
However, I am an outlier from many in that I think that inequality is a side effect or symptom rather than the cause of a system that is now not run well enough. It is not the root cause, except perhaps when it comes to housing, should the wealthy gobble all of them up causing a feudal-like system.
The reason I say this is because an economy is not zero sum, and although I think we need higher taxes at the top (mostly capital gains rates), simply causing the wealthy to have less, does not mean there will be more for the poor or most Americans.
An economy is not cookies on a plate where is someone has more it leaves less for others. Thus, I do not believe in taxing unrealized gains and the rumor that Harris might do this was spread on sites like WSJ and helped to cause her to lose the election.
Instead we need to do things like increase taxes on capital gains and there is a way to do this that will not deter long term investments (divide the gain by the number of years held and add to income to get the rate to then apply to the whole gain).
Also, seniors downsizing for retirement should get a break.
Also, we need to increase by a small amount the employer share of payroll taxes but reduce this the more they pay employees to encourage higher wages, and higher wages also mean more is paid into shore up these retirement programs.
Finally, they could give even more incentives for people to retire even later who can.
Also, I think the government should get involved in building tons of senior housing and mobile home parks that then are low cost or free for low income seniors. If they choose to move in, then their current homes are available for others to purchase. In places like Sun City in AZ (senior living) they even have rock concerts and have a lot of fun there. It is now the hippies and the 1970's folks who are making up more and more of this group.
I think you’re overlooking the most obvious cause, which is that we used to have very high marginal tax rates and higher corporate tax rates in this country, and that acted as a direct disincentive to CEOs over compensating themselves or making excessive profits with no intention of using the gains to reward employees, invest in research and development, or making capital improvements.
It used to be that if you were a CEO it made no sense to give yourself a $10 million raise, because past $4 million the government was going to tax it at 70%. So it would make more sense to pay your employees better or at least invest that money back into the company in some purposeful way than give it over to taxes.
Now that many CEOs take stock as a large portion of their compensation, I think we need to get creative in regulating that. It should never be in a CEO’s best interests to cut other people’s wages, benefits, and staffing to increase their own gain. If the company is actually in a tight place financially it should be the top of the pay scale that needs to tighten its belt and take one for the team. But most of the time companies are laying off people not out of need, but out of greed.
I’m not sure what the solution to capital gains assholery is, but making it so CEOs can’t cash out any of their company stock until a decade after they’ve left the company might be the simplest one. They should not be able to juice their own stock value with short term strategies that undermine the company in the long term.
We’ve also gutted the previous estate tax, so these people have no misgivings about collecting lifetimes’ worth of money for themselves, because now most of it CAN be hoarded for generations without significant tax penalties.
And since they now have not just way more money than they need, but more than they even know what to do with… contributing millions to political campaigns to further their own policy agenda and interests feels “smart” and “fair.” They can buy lobbyists to press congress to make sure the will of most people doesn’t get too much consideration over the financial interests of the moneyed class. So they intentionally exacerbate policies that advantage themselves at steep costs to everyone else.
All that extra money lying around also makes them desperate for new “investments” to profit from. So they invest in PRISONS, and charter schools, and use private equity funds to buy up store brands and restaurants (like Toys r Us, Joanns, Darden restaurants) and run them out of business for short term economic gain, instead of patiently collecting profit over time in a functional way. They invest in commercial and residential real estate, driving up rents for both businesses and people. Just because they deserve to profit off every dime they’ve amassed!
And now they are so desperate to wring the last blood out of the turnip that they’re buying up things like opticians, medical imaging centers, specialty medicinal services like gastroenterology, allergies, etc… and nursing homes and childcare centers.
They are out to profit immensely off every single aspect of our lives in ways that make the products/services worse, impoverish the people working for these entities, and in the end run a highly profitable monopoly of the industry or debt load what they control and run it into the ground to extract the value,
with no care for how it affects anyone else.
It didn’t need to be a zero sum game, but the ultra wealthy want it to be. They will never be satisfied until they own and control everything and everyone. That’s why we need to put all the guardrails back in place policy wise, to end their reign of destruction and do a lot to actively reverse the damage they’ve done. Plus new regulations and enforcement of antitrust to break up their control of various industries.
They took $50 trillion from the other 90% of America. It’s long past time they pay us back with interest and stop breaking things.
edit: we also need to fix our culture as a nation. The idea of infinite money for money’s sake, & that profit is the only point of anything is corrosive and dysfunctional. We need to relegate the Jack Welch/ financialization of everything to a dumpster fire of historical levels of loathing and contempt.
The point of money/the economy/growth needs to be seen as the positive & efficient means for moving resources around our society in an effective and productive way for the collective improvement and benefit of everyone.
The idea of any one person having over maybe $50 million tops (even this is probably arguably too much for the good of society) should make everyone else completely DISGUSTED and aggrieved by someone so selfish. Those people should be treated as pariahs, not role models. They should be seen for the self centered leeches on humanity’s true potential that they are. They should feel shame, especially as we the “wealthiest nation” still have kids living in poverty, no universal healthcare system, and at least half the jobs in the country don’t pay enough for you to afford a single bedroom apartment on your own.
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
Another excellent long post in a string of them. But here's a snippet of my experience of stock options. When we organized our little tech company, we had enough corporate experience to hate the existing system of options, so we determined to give them to valuable people (and then to everybody) and not just to us insiders. And our respectable San Francisco law firm warned us against that, citing a 1946(?) case in which a firm got in trouble for having awarded options to unimportant people (including secretaries!). A couple of years later we switched to another firm, the leading rainmaker in Silicon Valley, who understood the tech business. But eventually, our growth brought us new Professional Management who freed the corporation of those Commie ideas.
So, your recommendations, like making sure that Senior Management should not be able to liquidate till they've retired, are sound. The rest of what you said speaks for itself.
I agree with much of what you say, in fact, I have often posted much of what you say, as well, and I am aware taxes used to be much higher on the rich and it did not harm the economy (likely helped the economy so the opposite of what the GOP claim) since higher taxes meant that there was an incentive to expense more, which meant purchases and growth related items, rather than focus on profit.
However, a CEO is often not the sole owner in many companies, so how the board then votes to pay them so much is a bit of a mystery, these days. They can’t then decide to reinvest because this is payroll and not out of profits. Musk lost a court case on his pay recently because it would take away from shareholders earnings, but in his case he is also a primary owner, as well as the shareholders,
My point is that an economy is not zero sum and that taxing non realized gains and thus forcing the sale of much of what the wealthy owns will not make the poor or middle class any wealthier. These assets will be gobbled up a lower prices by the top 1% or 10% rather than staying with the top .1%, etc.
Before I read the article you posted, l will ask a question about the title. How is it that the top 1% took this money from the bottom 90%?
I agree that our economy is bottom up and driven by demand, but this has always been the case, so what changed to lead to such inequality?
The truth is that low taxes allowed them to reinvest more and buy assets like stocks. The tax cuts added to debt and the deficit and the rich mostly used this money to buy these assets.
This extra left over money after taxes inflated these asset prices, like a pyramid scheme
Taxing unrealized gains will mostly deflate the value of these assets and this can harm the economy as a whole, and decrease the value of pension funds and retirement accounts. This decline, once it makes its way into the regular economy as reduced spending, will impact GDP which will undermine revenue gains for the federal government, jobs and ordinary citizens.
The reason GDP growth and size is important is because it helps us to generate more revenue for important government programs to help the poor.
Most of this money gained by the rich did not come from the bottom 90%, or from depressed wages (some but not a vast majority). This money the wealthy invested largely came from, and inflated, our debt and deficits and is now sitting in stocks and yes some homes. It is money borrowed by the federal government so that they can give tax breaks to the wealthiest,
So when Senator Ron Johnson (R) says deficits are stealing from our children’s future, he needs to say the rich and tax cuts are, not spending. In fact our discretionary spending to GDP is the same as it was under Clinton when we had a surplus. SS and Medicare have their own sources of funding and as far as I am concerned Medicaid and healthcare is a right.
The deficit is the same size as discretionary spending and discretionary spending has not increased as a percentage of our economy, so clearly the main culprit is the tax cuts that are supposed to fund mostly discretionary spending. In fact if we had the same revenue to GDP that we had under Clinton, our deficits would be about 840 billion less. 2.8% more X 30 trillion economy.
Yes, the GOP used tax cuts as an excuse to cut some programs and then when back in power, the Dems expanded some of them once again and added some like healthcare, but the largest share of the gains by the rich, as far as I can tell, are paid for with our debt and deficit increases.
Yes, I think we need to increase taxes on the wealthy on income and capital gains, but not on unrealized gains. The money that is simply sitting there ballooning asset prices can stay to prop up retirement accounts and pension funds, but once the stocks are then sold, the taxes should be much higher on the gain.
My point is that shaking down the wealthy few for their passive assets and wealth will not help the poor, but we need to tax their incomes more.
The solution is to go back to higher tax rates on income and capital gains and to make sure wages are higher and safety net programs are better and fully funded. Free 2 yr college, expanded Pell Grants, subsidized childcare and free pre-school at k-12 for anyone who wants it and Medicaid expansion, not cutting.
Programs to help the poor paid for with increased taxes on the wealthy will make the economy larger, as well, and reduce debt/GDP (since GDP is the denominator). After Bidens expanded CTC went out the debt/GDP ratio actually dropped from massive nominal GDP growth.
Finally, I think that the government needs to restrict investment in single family homes that are used for rental properties so that there are more available for owner occupy buyers and start building a ton of senior communities. Senior communities can be built anywhere and do not need to be near jobs and mobile homes and parks can go up fast. This opens up more single family homes for others to buy near jobs, etc.
The fact that their money and assets beget more money and assets pretty much automatically is the reason you need to rein it in. Or we just end up in this situation again, when they end up with too much money and not enough to do with it, again.
We basically already lived through this cycle at least twice in the US and dozens of times across human history. Look at the UK. They had at least some better programs than us like NHS and publically owned housing… and even there the landed gentry and foreign oligarchs investing there are trying to undermine the social safety net systems, rather than pay their fair share to keep supporting those program.
The wealth is a corrupting influence on most people. If they weren’t so capable of rationalizing insane levels of selfishness to begin with, they would t be this wealthy. Long ago they would have said, “Holy shit, that’s a lot of money. How can I use this to improve my community, city, country, humanity?
Nothing is made better by these people owning most of it. :P
Read the article. It’s basically wage suppression paired with the wealthy eschewing their fair tax burden to society and their systemic rent seeking behaviors.
They’re siphoning money out of the system every possible way they can think of. To the tune of most people having lost over $1000 in spending power every month for the last 45 years.
The median income should be almost double what it is now if economic gains had continued to be distributed at the more equitable levels of the 1970s and prior.
The top 1% own over 85% of the stock market. I think the focus on capital gains as though it truly reflects so many normal American’s pensions and 401ks is kind of a convenient rationale for shielding rich people. If I had that extra $1000+ in my bank account every month for my entire adult life, I’d probably actually have had more money to invest myself or at least put into savings at the bank rate APR or to buy CDs or treasuries. :P
It’s certainly more money than I made letting Wall Street behave like a casino with the money I did put into a 401k.
We’re being persuaded to “protecting working people’s retirements” … but I’d argue none of us being able to retire should rely on giving over $12,000 a year to rich profiteers so they can give us back $1200 in stock value that’s ethereal and can evaporate at any moment depending on what stupid things they do next.
I have to reply to this, though it adds to a long thread. Many of us remember the financial crash of September 15, 2008; I remember it clearly because I happened to be in New York that afternoon walking down Broadway (or whatever it's called at that point) past Lehman Brothers, seeing the stragglers carrying out their pathetic boxes of personal effects while avoiding the reporters who would come from behind the barriers trying for an interview. (Full boring anecdote omitted)
By January, lots of people saw that lots of money had to be pumped into the economy; and there was talk of how to do it. I saw one opinion piece that argued that the money should not go to rich people (who would invest it) but to the people who needed it and would spend it.
Who said this Keynesian stuff? A letter that Goldman Sachs sent to its clients! So the lesson had started to sink in, even among rich people.
Right, if I robbed a bank and got away with it, that makes me smarter than Einstein who worked a simple job for peanuts...that's exactly how Americans on average think.
Right. Like Trump said about being "smart" because he paid no Federal taxes for years.
Dunning-Kruegerand works on so many levels. I love it.
Especially since somebody has used the same locution to describe Bitcoin.
No smearing Dunning and Krueger! The students in their study who didn’t know how ignorant they were, improved with an explanation and some additional education. There is no evidence Musk or anyone in the Trump Madministration is educable.
Sadly, all too true. They are both as impervious to new information as a frog's anus is impervious to water.
They worship the Golden Calf. It's the same one - remember Aaron and Moses? - same sh*t different pile
Even dumber are the idiots who voted for that clown.
True that. I'm lucky as I am old and will be room temperature soon enough. I feel sad for the young people.
Gah! They're both such objectively obvious morons. The only qualities that are found in human brains that they possess in excess are ego, malignancy, narcissism, insecurity, cruelty and pettiness. If they weren't rich, they'd both have been institutionalized or put in prison years ago.
That’s the number who voted for trump and Vance … that is the abomination!
It will take a decade to wipe out the new “deep state”.
77,303,568
The government of the United States of America was handed over to a drug addled man-child. I just can’t get over it.
In a just world, Musk would be on trial, Stephen Miller and Pete Hegspeth would be in adjoining cells, waiting for their chance at justice, and Trump would be down the hall in solitary confinement. They have betrayed our ideals, broken our laws, and sold us out to foreign powers. We need tribunals.
Maybe we do need Alcatraz after all. We can rename it New Elba.
Actually, in a just world, they'd all get the guillotine. Indeed we need tribunals.
While I'll never be as magnanimous as Lincoln, "with malice towards none," I'd like to see fair trials, even if that's not what this current administration is granting towards the people it is attacking.
I totally agree. Due process first, then let the heads roll.
A polite and serious question: What's up with you and guillotines? Do you seriously believe the US would be turned into a better place by having a French Revolution style overthrow of the government including all the bloodshed that was involved historically?
I'm being facetious.
He owns stock in the factory. It hasn't been doing very well outside of Russia.
In a sane country, Donald would not have been elected President. And the President would not have appointed people who are manifestly unqualified for their jobs. Hegseth knows less about the work of the Pentagon than anyone in the building. He is consumed by anti DEI, anti-LGBT, anti-women, and related campaigns.
I think we're of like minds:
https://bsky.app/profile/kiwiguy1.bsky.social/post/3lpdzwmirds2k
How is there any public opinion maker thinking that Musk has any valid reasons for going to D.C.? Or that any political statement he makes is worth paying attention to other than to find out what criminal enterprises he is executing or endorsing? That he is a malignant narcissistic psychopath should be crystal (not the meth kind) clear to anyone with half a brain or even a shred of decency.
This is ABSOLUTELY the line of logic we all need to continue- it’s asinine that we’ve dignified any other reasoning than that he’s overtly paid his way into freely doing nefarious acts against the interests of the American people in a capacity that there was ABSOLUTELY no logical explanation for him having functioned in, in the first place!
This is the United States of America! If we needed to rehabilitate our federal government, there are literally millions of qualified, some even already vetted professionals who could have been hired to help whose long tenure in the specialized functions that needed to be performed would have made them the right people to do it. It’s ridiculous and akin to a man as rich as Elon hiring a plumber to operate on him instead of the world’s best surgeon- who would’ve done this?!?!?
Occam’s razor applied to this situation says the richest clown in the world is a lying, scheming thief, who paid the Thief-In-Chief to commit treason of EPIC proportions to benefit himself and now is trying to launder his history of sloppy, unprecedentedly damaging and illegal, stupidly justified actions taken now that he’s gotten what he was after.
And p.s. - the malignant part of his character may once have been muted, but power and drugs have put it on full blast now.
Count his teeth!
rofl
A characteristic he shares with his former co-president.
Musk is quite the enigma; did he go to Washington to do good, or was it all a smokescreen? My bet, it’s a combination; he thought the government was bloated and full of waste, but his true motivation was far more sinister.
He was being investigated by the AG’s of USAID and FAA; both agencies were targeted first. And Musk wasted little time dismantling both.
And as for DOGE going into the Treasury database? Welcome to the New World Order, where Palantir is coordinating an effort to compile all of Americans personal information into a database they can exploit in many ways into the future (control).
And as for Musk being against this monstrosity of a Big Beautiful Bill? Notice his $7,500 EV tax credit that helped Musk become the richest man in the world; miraculously eliminated! Additionally, he didn’t get his guy nominated for NASA administrator, or get the FAA contract for Starlink.
This is self interest, pure and simple. Musk couldn’t give a damn about America, and like most good businessmen, they put their own interests first, well above the future survival of our democracy and the overall health of our country.
I agree with everything here except the part about Musk ever intending to do good, and genuinely believing the government was bloated and full of waste. If he was truly the genius that some claim him to be, he would have recognized that the government operates on a shoestring budget, with personnel already pared to the bone.
True, but I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible…:)
Understood, but in MuskRat's case, or for that matter the entire misadministration plus the GOP's in both chambers of congress and six SCJ's don't warrant diplomacy at this stage. They all warrant prosecution and incarceration - with most of them warranting the guillotine.
Agreed, and he had other reasons to disparage the bill. He didn’t get the FAA contract for Starlink, and he also was lobbying for his guy to be the NASA administrator, which also fell flat!
This is all sour grapes, from the only guy who can give Trump a run for his money when it comes to being a petty, vindictive, petulant five year old throwing a tantrum…:)
Poetic justice defined! 😂
Actually, I believe poetic justice would be both Trump and Musk losing all their wealth, and not qualifying for Medicaid or any other entitlement programs. Short of that, I’d settle for them both being hung, drawn and quartered!…:)
That first sentence could be in any NYT op ed, and i don’t mean in a good way. The rest is on point.
True, and duly noted…:)
We have sunk to the level of thinking Judge Jeanine’s office water shortage is the greatest national issue now. Thanks for trying to keep America’s eyes on the real problem. Too bad we focused on the 1% while 50% +/- (of voters anyway) were focused on the magician’s other hand. Your coda is especially applicable to the millions who stayed home.
Musk: It was all about obtaining vast quantities of data (on competitors of his, confidential global security, and our personal) and gaining lucrative government contracts.
Musk initially became rich taking advantage of US government data collected at taxpayer expense, like most billionaires. He just outsmarted Trump by taking advantage further of us. He made a fool of Trump.
and closing down a lot of investigations of his commercial operations - what he did first of all when he got to D.C. Just about every agency he targeted had some activity directed at a Musk company. No coincidence.
Making a fool of tRump is easy!
You know, you're being very subtle about it, but I'm gleaning just the teensiest smidgen of an impression that you're not very keen on Mr Musk.
No mention of the Tesla cars on the front lawn of the White House while our president started hawking them like a 1am local infomercial....
"C'mon down to Big Tiny Donnie's Lot! You'll ride away in a minute once you throw yer money init! My partner Lone Skum here will take yer data and sneer! You'll LOVE it Or Else!"
It's scrupulously accurate and evidence-backed - and I'd struggle to make a claim to the contrary with a straight face.
The boycott of all things Musk needs to continue. I believe his latest messages are merely performative, as is his squabble with Trump. With that said, the focus needs to shift dramatically to stopping Palantir. That tech company is headed up by Peter Thiel, a Musk pal and former partner in Pay Pal. DOGE's massive illegal data harvest from every government department is now in the hands of Thiel and his radical partner Alex Karp. They are proponents of their crazed guru Curtis Yarvin, who calls for Nation States run by the supposedly superior billionaire class, and sees the "disposal" of inferior citizens, as a necessary inconvenience. This concept is behind much of the atrocious actions of the Trump Republican Regime.
and now Alex Jones is shilling for Palantir - which does the kind of things that used to drive Jones crazy (I know, that's not a drive, that's a putt) when he imagined the libs were doing it (as they never were.)
No surprise there. Jones will do anything for a profit.
Interestingly, this points to the one major faultline in this misadministration - the Technofascists vs. the Christofascists.
I think the fake religious zealots want to hasten the end of the world, mistakenly believing their actions would qualify them as eligible if the “rapture” exists. The technocrats want to hasten economic and environmental collapse, so they alone can rule. Hopefully their differing ideologies continue to create conflict amongst them.
It's quite interesting. The religious zealots might actually believe Trumpkopf is the antichrist - he certainly fits the description.
I believe the Yarvinites want to hasten economic collapse, I'm not so sure they really want to hasten environmental collapse. They're not the sharpest tacks in the box for sure - otherwise they'd pay no mind to the likes of Yarvin - but I can't believe they're so dense as to think environmental destruction won't impact them negatively. Can they really be that dumb? (Strictly rhetorical question there).
They think their money will insulate them from environmental collapse. Fat chance.
That seems to be the case. While it's true that wealth is power, it's not unlimited, but they're so accustomed to it they don't grasp the limitations. They'll find out the hard way, and it will be too late when they do.
I think you're correct in a sense. I think many fundies believe that global warming is God's plan to end the world. So, efforts to block it must be Satan's work. And, of course, reducing the effects of global warming are postponing the rapture.
Yes. And the techno shits would rather exploit resources, bankrupt public and live in their castle cities.
As the song says "God said a fire, not a flood next time."
The US could one day have a modern day holocaust of its own. It would be a dream-come-true for tRump and his boss, Stephen Miller.
In a just world, Musk would be in jail.
Or a guillotine.
Wow Brutal! And justly deserved!
A life of "poverty and penance" would be appropriate for trump and everyone that hitched their wagon to his convoy of destruction. Those (mostly children) who are dying get the same consideration as an ant stepped on by accident.
Correct me if wrong, but I don't believe Trump has ever shown an ounce of repentance.
part of the Roy Cohn lesson plan: never admit a mistake, never apologize.
Yup, but Norman Vincent Peale started the indoctrination with his dad's blessing. How proud they all must be of the Frankensteinian freak they created.
tRump said himself in an interview when asked if he had ever asked God for forgiveness. He admitted that he had not.
The faith in which I was raised asks worshipers to repent of their sins. Perhaps DonnyJon simply believes that he's never sinned.
You are correct.
Not necessarily by accident. Remember, we're talking about psychopaths here.
Musk was the executor. The planner was racist, misogynistic, antisemitic White Christian nationalist Russell Vought. He chose the targets that Musk's spawn attacked so viciously. Vought knows the entire project to destroy the government is illegal, but abetted by the Supreme Court, he is getting away with it.
Nailed it! Vought's now actually the guy to whom the DOGE political appointees inside agencies answer. He's hasn't even tried to hide it, and the fact he expects the cuts to continue. Vought's probably quite happy the media's taken the bait and is still focused on Musk.
I can't wait to see him, and the rest of the King's Klown Kar, in criminal court.
Vought + Miller = Evil squared.
We recently entertained some out-of-town guests, one a newly-retired Silicon Valley tech exec. This person has lived and worked in "the Valley" for decades, knows all of the big "broligarchs," and said unequivocally that Elon Musk is "the most evil human I've ever met." My friend is not given to hyperbole so this statement shocked but did not surprise me. Elon is one of the many amoral, cluster-B personalities (narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths) that populate our highest corporate ranks. Years ago a study claimed that one in five CEOs are psychopaths. With every passing day we see that this figure was likely underestimated. The challenge is to figure out what to do about it.
Now our turn (legally): sink Tesla.
I seem to be seeing just as many of them on the road around here. There's even an orange Cybertruck in the neighborhood.
Wonderful piece. Thanks for reminding everyone of the destruction Musk has wrought.