I still have to wonder if Musk did indeed follow through with "anything can be hacked". The idea that Trump won ALL the swing states by such tiny margins...it just didn't seem possible. Meddling with some voting machines, maybe??
To me, the smoking gun is not that he won the swing states by tiny margins, but that the margins were all just large enough to avoid triggering an automatic recount.
They actually weren’t tiny margins. I despise this administration but I don’t want to see the Left acting like the Right and screaming “fraud” without proof, just because we didn’t like the result.
Let’s place the blame where it belongs: the American voting public. They’re largely ignorant and lack understanding of how the country works. I would argue that a majority can’t name the three branches of government and also can’t name their two senators.
They voted for cheaper eggs, lacking any understanding that in our capitalist system, with the exception of the impact of trade wars and tariffs, presidents have nothing to do with retail prices, CEO’s do.
They trusted Trump and Republicans more on the economy even though Trump ran up the highest annual deficit in history at over $3.1 trillion and he was the only president since Hoover to have negative job growth.
And their racism and sexism prevented them from voting for Harris as well as their hatred of immigrants.
The fact that Trump’s 48% positive job approval rating means that about 75% of Republicans actually think he’s doing a good job supports the notion that he won the tossup states.
The only place the margin was small was WI, where Trump won by 29,397 votes (0.87%), but those 10 electoral votes wouldn’t have changed the result. Trump still would have had 302 (to 236).
Thank you for your comment. Trump and his minions like to portray his win as "a landslide", "historic", "mandate from the American people". He had/has no problem telling bald-face lies to get what he wants. Biden then Harris were set on their heels by inflation and rising costs of groceries. And when a big portion of the public is only hearing Fox News then that's all they believe. I've had people tell me they voted for him because he was a businessman and would be good for the economy, which to me is just bizarro thinking. He ran again to stay out of jail and line his and his family's pockets. Rs in Congress are terrified of him. He is a bully, through and through. Dems simply can't or don't know how to grab the megaphone, and Rs do all the messaging. Part of me thinks we would have been better off with him winning in 2020 and having to reap what he sowed with the pandemic. It would have been a disaster and we'd never hear from him again.
There's an investigation into this currently in Rockland county, NY. I hadn't given it much credence but a judge ruled the allegations are serious enough for the case to proceed to discovery.
As someone who knows some stats, Election Truth Alliance has some interesting statistical results that are hard to explain. Vote need auditing in many states.
I would guess he has his boys install back doors everywhere, so he can continue to drain the private data at least, and who knows if they installed a skimming "feature" (snagging a penny on each transaction or something).
I wish I could discount that. I try to avoid conspiracy ideation. And yet... there are lawsuits in play where swing state voters swear that they voted for Harris in counties that recorded 0 Harris votes, but plenty for downticket Democrats. It is a nagging doubt that keeps growing. Nonetheless, as John Gregory puts it below, there is nothing we could do about that, even if it were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Our entire system is based on the sanctity of elections. There is no mechanism to just hit CTRL-Z and undo a fraudulent one.
I still remember the comment of a NYT reader when the rumours of the “argument” between Musk and Bessent in the cabinet (apparently calmed down by Trump) was reported for the first time: “You really understand how bad things are when you realise Trump is the only adult in the room”.
How can anyone get around just intense anger at the people who are so damned dumb as to believe the right wing propaganda? By definition half the population is of below average intelligence. When that half calls the shots a society cannot survive.
Intelligence can't be the measure by which bad choices are scored. There are many who live good lives with little reason. Their counterparts are those who reason their way to great evil.
True, Al. My only caveat is that reason is not the only reason (ha ha) we make decisions. Our minds include other capacities of knowing, like that hard-to-pin-down element of intuition that sometimes informs our decisions. And the hard-wired stuff, like reactions of disgust, which actually have to be blunted by misinformation and disinformation on repeat. Many of us are being brainwashed into a distorted kind of 'reasoning' that indeed has nothing to do with intelligence, per se. More like a hypnotic trance enhanced by crowd hysteria. (But call me crazy,)
There's lots of ways to explain it, Leigh. Intelligence gets a bad rap unless it meets the approval of the speaker. Most have an innate sense of good and evil. We are experiencing that much smaller group who can spot one another across a crowded room. They have found their moment and have coalesced through the centrifugal force of culture around the current president.
In my experience they have different goals, not that they are merely poorly informed or lack intelligence. Many of them are fatalists who expect to die relatively young because that’s the tradition in their families, so they want maximal entertainment while they are still alive. Others want to meet Jesus as soon as possible while fulfilling their desire to feel superior to their neighbors, classmates, coworkers and family members. This last motivation is under appreciated. Much of the MAGA psychology seems rooted in unresolved early childhood grievances against parents and siblings, even for the non evangelical Christians members of the cult.
Cult's as I think of them are in tension with society. However, one defines what Trump is selling the voting democratic society has defined him as society and those not endorsing him as a cult. He is in the process of nailing down further definitions of society and cult with speed and precision. Citizens who do not think as he does are being defined as a dangerous cult.
We humans are a mind-bogglingly confused and confusing bunch, aren't we? Which is why, maybe, I'm still a person with her own set of challenges, despite a life spent as a therapist and a whole lot of cushion sitting alongside...
In corporate America (especially tech), this kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME. The process is
1. The board/CEO/somebody brings in a youngish new C?O to "fix things".
2. New C?O gets a whiteboard overview of business processes and thinks he understands everything.
3. Broad layoffs ensue focused on replacing the most expensive (== experienced) workers. The workers in a best position to leave (with most sought after skills) leave voluntarily. Some are replaced with younger or off-shore workers.
4. Crisis ensues. Business processes break. Customers leave. Nobody knows what's going on anymore. I can tell personal stories I've experienced as both an employee and a customer.
5. The new C?O is pushed out. Some old employees are lured back at higher pay. The bleeding is stopped. But nobody is works hard anymore. Product quality is bad, customer service is bad, innovation stops. Customers notice and seek out competitors. The organization goes into long slow decline.
While fun to imagine, I doubt the story. Musk was not there to find fraud wate and abuse as you or I think about it. He is (as they are still working on it) there to create a database that can pull a Russian style dossier on whom ever they decide to go after. Several ex-doge, after leaving have reported its all about the data. As for waste, fraud and abuse, it is, as it always has, them who are the worst offenders. trump first said it was rigged and it was--by him. He is the biggest fraudster. They are all into their necks in waste fraud and abuse doing jobs they aren't qualified for and honestly too stupid to do. They are destroying their agencies, hiring others just as unqualified and spending money like crazy on stuff like a dictator style parade, fake health reports, arranging shake down tours for trump and the like. Then of course is trumps own corruption.
I completely agree with this. Musk and DOGE will take the fall for "chaotic" cuts and some federal workers will be rehired, but others will have moved on. Then Russell Vought will use the opportunity to hire crony loyalists into the open positions which, as outlined in Project 2025, was always the plan all along. They want to replace large parts of the civil service, not just the top positions but all throughout government, with their own people who'll support their agenda. These guys don't care if their actions degrade government services, that's a feature to them not a bug. They don't think their base will connect the damage to government services with their actions and if the services are worse, it justifies further cuts and privatization.
It appears that Musk wanted to install someone at the IRS that would allow his companies to avoid paying a lot of taxes they owe. Why else would Musk get that juiced up about the rejection of his choice to run the IRS? And wouldn't that give Bessent grounds to call Musk a total fraud?
The Washington Post reported the reversals of the DOGE devastation at the IRS right after Trump nixed Musk's choice to run the IRS:
"At the IRS, managers received a notice on May 19, a Monday, that all probationary workers would be coming back to the office on Friday, according to a copy obtained by The Post. The turnaround was so swift that some probationary staff probably wouldn’t have a desk or a laptop initially, the announcement acknowledged: “If a seat assignment is not available … your employees should begin teleworking until local management secures a seat assignment for them.”'
Krugman pointed out in a previous post that reducing the tax gap shouldn't disrupt our economy. The tax gap is about $600 billion or 2% of GDP of pure fraud that Biden's beefing up of the IRS would have recovered a chunk of if it wasn't reversed by Rs and DOGE.
But the mother of fraud, waste, and abuse in America is our healthcare system. Weighing in at over $4 trillion a year, radical reforms could eventually cut that by at least a $1 trillion and extend healthcare coverage to all Americans. Negotiating for prescription drugs alone could save $300 billion or around $1000 a year on average per person in America.
I mean it's the same reason DOGE kneecapped the FAA.
There was no plausible argument to kneecap the FAA as part of a "government efficiency" thing. There were a lot of reasons for Elon Musk to kneecap the agency that keeps telling him his idiotic space travel business can't blow up rockets in the Gulf of Mexico at will, though.
It's astounding the Dems don't hammer on these facts nonstop. Fixing tax evasion and gross inefficiencies in the heath care "system" (extortion racket) alone would save over $1trillion/yr. Musk was a joke, a bad one. Congress knows where the fraud and waste is, and refuse to do anything about it because they are paid to look the other way.
So much of the damage Musk has done to this country seem to be part of the plan Vought and his Project 2025 were aiming for: return us to a primitive society based on an all-white, evangelical model. We can't let them codify the damage already done with the Rescission Package before Congress this week. Call your reps!!
It's really an early insight into the way that the emerging (perhaps now-emerged) tech billionaires (along with the other wealth-elite) have or are seizing all of the power in our lovely little picnic here in America :)
He coined the delightful moniker: "Neo-feudalism" to describe the apparent direction of 'governance' we seem to be entering at the present.
Perhaps you will enjoy him (and his writing,) if you've not run across those as yet.
In my opinion we should never neglect to mention that musk made out bigly. He short-circuited numerous investigations into his companies and hoovered up the personal data of American citizens.
I think that we need to take seriously the possibility that the disruption and chaos were the point all along. Musk accomplished something: He eliminated everyone investigating him and trying to regulate his companies and he has even more government contracts than before. The rest of are screwed, but Musk is doing OK. Plus, do we really believe much of anything that anyone in the Trump administration says?
If they don't self-deport, the next Democratic administration should deport them to Supermax for all the felonies that led to them getting access to the government computer systems.
I can't find a reference to them "self-deporting" - unless you mean they are leaving government "service" or perhaps SpaceX. I was hoping that some of them were here on some kind of visa and returning to from whence they came.
No, he's angry because the bill blows up the deficit and is "wasteful". He's calling for more cuts but not saying anything about the tax breaks for the wealthy which are the real reason the bill adds to the deficit.
In part — he wants DEEPER cuts. But the GOP will still be happy maintaining the defunding of science, public broadcasting, and soft power initiatives, with the social safety net in greater tatters than it is now.
If the government wants to eliminate waste and fraud, there is an obvious target: the defense budget. It has been common knowledge for decades that defense contractors levy hugely excessive charges for the work they do. Remember the $600 toilet seat? Despite the fact that the Pentagon has failed seven audits, it appears to be untouchable.
But it is not and never has been just about Musk. It's about Project 2025's plan - being ruthlessly carried out amid the deliberate and opportunistic distractions - to establish a Christian nationalist regime of small ineffective government and greatly empowered rich people. That project was designed well before Musk decided his personal interests could benefit from Trump's election. Musk served Russell Vought's and Peter Thiel's purposes - he was the useful idiot in that scenario - until he didn't, and now he's gone (though not far enough, yet, alas for the rest of us.)
I still have to wonder if Musk did indeed follow through with "anything can be hacked". The idea that Trump won ALL the swing states by such tiny margins...it just didn't seem possible. Meddling with some voting machines, maybe??
To me, the smoking gun is not that he won the swing states by tiny margins, but that the margins were all just large enough to avoid triggering an automatic recount.
"I actually tell our people, we don’t need your vote! We got so many votes, we don’t need them!" - Donald Trump, June 14, 2024
I've long thought that this particular quote was worthy of more scrutiny than it has received.
Oh GOOD point! I hadn't thought of that.
They actually weren’t tiny margins. I despise this administration but I don’t want to see the Left acting like the Right and screaming “fraud” without proof, just because we didn’t like the result.
Let’s place the blame where it belongs: the American voting public. They’re largely ignorant and lack understanding of how the country works. I would argue that a majority can’t name the three branches of government and also can’t name their two senators.
They voted for cheaper eggs, lacking any understanding that in our capitalist system, with the exception of the impact of trade wars and tariffs, presidents have nothing to do with retail prices, CEO’s do.
They trusted Trump and Republicans more on the economy even though Trump ran up the highest annual deficit in history at over $3.1 trillion and he was the only president since Hoover to have negative job growth.
And their racism and sexism prevented them from voting for Harris as well as their hatred of immigrants.
The fact that Trump’s 48% positive job approval rating means that about 75% of Republicans actually think he’s doing a good job supports the notion that he won the tossup states.
The only place the margin was small was WI, where Trump won by 29,397 votes (0.87%), but those 10 electoral votes wouldn’t have changed the result. Trump still would have had 302 (to 236).
Thank you for your comment. Trump and his minions like to portray his win as "a landslide", "historic", "mandate from the American people". He had/has no problem telling bald-face lies to get what he wants. Biden then Harris were set on their heels by inflation and rising costs of groceries. And when a big portion of the public is only hearing Fox News then that's all they believe. I've had people tell me they voted for him because he was a businessman and would be good for the economy, which to me is just bizarro thinking. He ran again to stay out of jail and line his and his family's pockets. Rs in Congress are terrified of him. He is a bully, through and through. Dems simply can't or don't know how to grab the megaphone, and Rs do all the messaging. Part of me thinks we would have been better off with him winning in 2020 and having to reap what he sowed with the pandemic. It would have been a disaster and we'd never hear from him again.
There's an investigation into this currently in Rockland county, NY. I hadn't given it much credence but a judge ruled the allegations are serious enough for the case to proceed to discovery.
https://www.newsweek.com/2024-election-lawsuit-advances-2083391
Yes, there is something here. Look at these electoral districts:
Ramapo 21 Harris 2 votes, Gillibrand 102
28 5 64
30 3 36
35 0 331 (!)
41 3 36
45 0 34
55 2 909 (!)
58 1 544 (!)
84 0 30
86 6 86
88 3 45
95 4 514 (!)
97 0 292 (!)
98 5 735 (!)
This did not come out well. First number is Ramapo ED, second is Harris vote (single digit), third is Gillibrand vote.
As someone who knows some stats, Election Truth Alliance has some interesting statistical results that are hard to explain. Vote need auditing in many states.
https://electiontruthalliance.org
Sadly, we will never know.
or be able to do anything about it, even if it is proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Maybe we will. Guys like that make a lot of enemies.
I would guess he has his boys install back doors everywhere, so he can continue to drain the private data at least, and who knows if they installed a skimming "feature" (snagging a penny on each transaction or something).
Take a look at https://electiontruthalliance.org/ and help with a request to get the audit going. Also see https://dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/the-machines-were-changed-before for more evidence that points to hacks in advance.
I wish I could discount that. I try to avoid conspiracy ideation. And yet... there are lawsuits in play where swing state voters swear that they voted for Harris in counties that recorded 0 Harris votes, but plenty for downticket Democrats. It is a nagging doubt that keeps growing. Nonetheless, as John Gregory puts it below, there is nothing we could do about that, even if it were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Our entire system is based on the sanctity of elections. There is no mechanism to just hit CTRL-Z and undo a fraudulent one.
I'll worry more about conspiracy ideation when the <edited> quit conspiring to commit felonies. Until then, <edited>.
I wonder too. Sadly, I doubt that there will ever be a legitimate investigation.
It's possible. The machines in some states were compromised.
I still remember the comment of a NYT reader when the rumours of the “argument” between Musk and Bessent in the cabinet (apparently calmed down by Trump) was reported for the first time: “You really understand how bad things are when you realise Trump is the only adult in the room”.
How can anyone get around just intense anger at the people who are so damned dumb as to believe the right wing propaganda? By definition half the population is of below average intelligence. When that half calls the shots a society cannot survive.
It's low and disinformation combined with below average intelligence and fear of social change, remember. Nothing is determined by only one thing.
Intelligence can't be the measure by which bad choices are scored. There are many who live good lives with little reason. Their counterparts are those who reason their way to great evil.
True, Al. My only caveat is that reason is not the only reason (ha ha) we make decisions. Our minds include other capacities of knowing, like that hard-to-pin-down element of intuition that sometimes informs our decisions. And the hard-wired stuff, like reactions of disgust, which actually have to be blunted by misinformation and disinformation on repeat. Many of us are being brainwashed into a distorted kind of 'reasoning' that indeed has nothing to do with intelligence, per se. More like a hypnotic trance enhanced by crowd hysteria. (But call me crazy,)
There's lots of ways to explain it, Leigh. Intelligence gets a bad rap unless it meets the approval of the speaker. Most have an innate sense of good and evil. We are experiencing that much smaller group who can spot one another across a crowded room. They have found their moment and have coalesced through the centrifugal force of culture around the current president.
Birds of a feather...
In my experience they have different goals, not that they are merely poorly informed or lack intelligence. Many of them are fatalists who expect to die relatively young because that’s the tradition in their families, so they want maximal entertainment while they are still alive. Others want to meet Jesus as soon as possible while fulfilling their desire to feel superior to their neighbors, classmates, coworkers and family members. This last motivation is under appreciated. Much of the MAGA psychology seems rooted in unresolved early childhood grievances against parents and siblings, even for the non evangelical Christians members of the cult.
Cult's as I think of them are in tension with society. However, one defines what Trump is selling the voting democratic society has defined him as society and those not endorsing him as a cult. He is in the process of nailing down further definitions of society and cult with speed and precision. Citizens who do not think as he does are being defined as a dangerous cult.
We humans are a mind-bogglingly confused and confusing bunch, aren't we? Which is why, maybe, I'm still a person with her own set of challenges, despite a life spent as a therapist and a whole lot of cushion sitting alongside...
I've long thought that the biggest difference between Democratic voters and Republican voters is that the former have better bullshit detectors.
Well the trouble with democracy is that it tends to the lowest common denominator on policy.
My father used to say: "Thinking is hard work, that's why so few people do it!"
In corporate America (especially tech), this kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME. The process is
1. The board/CEO/somebody brings in a youngish new C?O to "fix things".
2. New C?O gets a whiteboard overview of business processes and thinks he understands everything.
3. Broad layoffs ensue focused on replacing the most expensive (== experienced) workers. The workers in a best position to leave (with most sought after skills) leave voluntarily. Some are replaced with younger or off-shore workers.
4. Crisis ensues. Business processes break. Customers leave. Nobody knows what's going on anymore. I can tell personal stories I've experienced as both an employee and a customer.
5. The new C?O is pushed out. Some old employees are lured back at higher pay. The bleeding is stopped. But nobody is works hard anymore. Product quality is bad, customer service is bad, innovation stops. Customers notice and seek out competitors. The organization goes into long slow decline.
So true! But you forgot the part about bringing in consultants who are about 25 years old.
While fun to imagine, I doubt the story. Musk was not there to find fraud wate and abuse as you or I think about it. He is (as they are still working on it) there to create a database that can pull a Russian style dossier on whom ever they decide to go after. Several ex-doge, after leaving have reported its all about the data. As for waste, fraud and abuse, it is, as it always has, them who are the worst offenders. trump first said it was rigged and it was--by him. He is the biggest fraudster. They are all into their necks in waste fraud and abuse doing jobs they aren't qualified for and honestly too stupid to do. They are destroying their agencies, hiring others just as unqualified and spending money like crazy on stuff like a dictator style parade, fake health reports, arranging shake down tours for trump and the like. Then of course is trumps own corruption.
I completely agree with this. Musk and DOGE will take the fall for "chaotic" cuts and some federal workers will be rehired, but others will have moved on. Then Russell Vought will use the opportunity to hire crony loyalists into the open positions which, as outlined in Project 2025, was always the plan all along. They want to replace large parts of the civil service, not just the top positions but all throughout government, with their own people who'll support their agenda. These guys don't care if their actions degrade government services, that's a feature to them not a bug. They don't think their base will connect the damage to government services with their actions and if the services are worse, it justifies further cuts and privatization.
It appears that Musk wanted to install someone at the IRS that would allow his companies to avoid paying a lot of taxes they owe. Why else would Musk get that juiced up about the rejection of his choice to run the IRS? And wouldn't that give Bessent grounds to call Musk a total fraud?
The Washington Post reported the reversals of the DOGE devastation at the IRS right after Trump nixed Musk's choice to run the IRS:
"At the IRS, managers received a notice on May 19, a Monday, that all probationary workers would be coming back to the office on Friday, according to a copy obtained by The Post. The turnaround was so swift that some probationary staff probably wouldn’t have a desk or a laptop initially, the announcement acknowledged: “If a seat assignment is not available … your employees should begin teleworking until local management secures a seat assignment for them.”'
Krugman pointed out in a previous post that reducing the tax gap shouldn't disrupt our economy. The tax gap is about $600 billion or 2% of GDP of pure fraud that Biden's beefing up of the IRS would have recovered a chunk of if it wasn't reversed by Rs and DOGE.
But the mother of fraud, waste, and abuse in America is our healthcare system. Weighing in at over $4 trillion a year, radical reforms could eventually cut that by at least a $1 trillion and extend healthcare coverage to all Americans. Negotiating for prescription drugs alone could save $300 billion or around $1000 a year on average per person in America.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/06/06/doge-staff-cuts-rehiring-federal-workers/
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/doge-tax-gap
I mean it's the same reason DOGE kneecapped the FAA.
There was no plausible argument to kneecap the FAA as part of a "government efficiency" thing. There were a lot of reasons for Elon Musk to kneecap the agency that keeps telling him his idiotic space travel business can't blow up rockets in the Gulf of Mexico at will, though.
It's astounding the Dems don't hammer on these facts nonstop. Fixing tax evasion and gross inefficiencies in the heath care "system" (extortion racket) alone would save over $1trillion/yr. Musk was a joke, a bad one. Congress knows where the fraud and waste is, and refuse to do anything about it because they are paid to look the other way.
Paul,
While I just made a comment of the kind in reply to your preceding post - "Wake Up and Smell the Corruption"
I want to say again, that It is a pleasure to read absolutely everything that you write.
Oh, and I must also repat: Your art of the "Musical Coda" really is genius!
So much of the damage Musk has done to this country seem to be part of the plan Vought and his Project 2025 were aiming for: return us to a primitive society based on an all-white, evangelical model. We can't let them codify the damage already done with the Rescission Package before Congress this week. Call your reps!!
The adjective you were looking for isn't "primitive" , it's "antebellum". They want to go back to the Confederacy.
Or feudal.
Judith,
Do you happen to know about Anand Giridharadas (as yet?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anand_Giridharadas
He's quite a sharp tack, who is also very articulate and I enjoy listening to.
He wrote this rather wonderful book ("Winners Take All") back in 2018:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All:_The_Elite_Charade_of_Changing_the_World
It's really an early insight into the way that the emerging (perhaps now-emerged) tech billionaires (along with the other wealth-elite) have or are seizing all of the power in our lovely little picnic here in America :)
He coined the delightful moniker: "Neo-feudalism" to describe the apparent direction of 'governance' we seem to be entering at the present.
Perhaps you will enjoy him (and his writing,) if you've not run across those as yet.
Kindly,
-d
"Antebellum!"
Toute a fait mon vieu!
[Oops: Mixing a little French in here with the Latin, which is a total incongruency [slash] anachronism to that which you are referring.
And of course they were *not* speaking French in any of those colonies at the time :) ]
My "representative" is a Republicrudite.
All the more important to demand he block this package - and the Bog, Horrendous Bill!!
Remember when Trump and company floated the idea of “refund checks “ to every American taxpayer thanks to these waste and fraud discoveries?
I know a woman who was almost giddy about the possibility .
“Do you really believe that,?” I asked her. “Oh yes. They are finding all these dead people who’ve been getting Social Security”
I know she had lots of company in embracing this fantasy. This is a problem.
In my opinion we should never neglect to mention that musk made out bigly. He short-circuited numerous investigations into his companies and hoovered up the personal data of American citizens.
and he got billions in new contracts.
I think that we need to take seriously the possibility that the disruption and chaos were the point all along. Musk accomplished something: He eliminated everyone investigating him and trying to regulate his companies and he has even more government contracts than before. The rest of are screwed, but Musk is doing OK. Plus, do we really believe much of anything that anyone in the Trump administration says?
Doge bros "self deporting" in the absence of their ketamine pharaoh 😅
If they don't self-deport, the next Democratic administration should deport them to Supermax for all the felonies that led to them getting access to the government computer systems.
I can't find a reference to them "self-deporting" - unless you mean they are leaving government "service" or perhaps SpaceX. I was hoping that some of them were here on some kind of visa and returning to from whence they came.
That was in an earlier post. The author meant that some of the DOGE appointees are voluntarily leaving government.
"America will spend years paying the price for Musk’s fraudulence."
Truer words have never been written.
DOGE may have been a joke, but Congress is trying to codify their cuts. A back door, but still dismally effective.
I know I’m having trouble keeping up with everything, but I thought I saw that Musk is angry because Congress is NOT codifying his cuts?
No, he's angry because the bill blows up the deficit and is "wasteful". He's calling for more cuts but not saying anything about the tax breaks for the wealthy which are the real reason the bill adds to the deficit.
In part — he wants DEEPER cuts. But the GOP will still be happy maintaining the defunding of science, public broadcasting, and soft power initiatives, with the social safety net in greater tatters than it is now.
If the government wants to eliminate waste and fraud, there is an obvious target: the defense budget. It has been common knowledge for decades that defense contractors levy hugely excessive charges for the work they do. Remember the $600 toilet seat? Despite the fact that the Pentagon has failed seven audits, it appears to be untouchable.
I read that the $600 toilet was for the entire toilet and it was one designed to be used in submarines. The price was very reasonable for that.
But it is not and never has been just about Musk. It's about Project 2025's plan - being ruthlessly carried out amid the deliberate and opportunistic distractions - to establish a Christian nationalist regime of small ineffective government and greatly empowered rich people. That project was designed well before Musk decided his personal interests could benefit from Trump's election. Musk served Russell Vought's and Peter Thiel's purposes - he was the useful idiot in that scenario - until he didn't, and now he's gone (though not far enough, yet, alas for the rest of us.)
mars