Musk's move fast and break things mantra won't work in US.gov 120-hour work weeks, firing government staffers and dismantling agencies? Oh my. The US government under pseudo President Musk is in for a world of radical change. Let's leave aside what Elon Musk – who some are saying has become the de facto US government ruler – is doing with American policies, as de jure President Donald …
The fish processors son did 'clarify' his (in)famous comment
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/michael-gove-clarifies-anti-expert-brexit-comments-i-wanted-challenge-arguments-49717
[ And of course since leaving the EU the Scots fishing industry has faced challenging times... ]
Icon: buy local. Plenty of micro-breweries and artisan bakers around. Seek out local produce markets. Hire local craftspersons for your home remodelling. This is how we generate economic activity. Then the central government matters less...
Having spent some of my formative years in Greenall Whitley Land, I am keen to repeat local wisdom:
"You can't beat a pint of Greenall's, it just doesn't travel"
left unsaid is the fact that travel constituted going north of the Mersey or south of the Ship Canal, the brewery being on a spit of land between the two.
For these guys, it doesn't have to work. Someone else will have to pick up the pieces. It's an American Brexit: Wreck stuff, bank cash, exit stage right before the consequences really hit home.
They seem to have a back-of-a-fag-packet plan of wanting to switch the US from a global power (which does cost a lot of cash, hence the US national debt) to an obese version of Singapore, with a focus on control and revenue. They will engage abroad only if they can profit from it financially (Ukraine's resources) or in acts of vengeance (Iran).
What this does, is offer China a one off opportunity to replace the US on the world stage, if they are willing to pay for it. They wouldn't have been expecting it, and it will be interesting to see if they go for it.
Incidentally, $160bn is a lot of cash for a bloke who basically appeared out of nowhere a few years back. Has anyone ever tracked how Musk made all that cash?
>Has anyone ever tracked how Musk made all that cash?
Isn't it mostly stocks? You can get very rich in stocks by creating a company and hyping the hell out of it. If it works, you gain credibility, which you use to build more hype, etc etc. You have to stay just below the line where fraud begins, but apart from that the sky's the limit. You're basically being paid like a god just to be really charismatic.
Eventually, people will buy the stocks not because they believe the company might ever actually create that much value, but simply because they think you might be able to hype it some more, and then they can sell higher.
Wasn't Tesla valued more than every other auto manufacturer combined at some point? That is obvious insanity, it makes no sense at all, it is clearly harmful to the ability of markets to be of benefit to society, and it is how Musk got all that net worth.
I hope that someone eventually will figure out... a better way. I can't; I understand why things work like that, and I don't have an alternative that would work better (although restoring some of the regulations that neoliberalists demolished would probably help). But I sometimes hope that 500 years into the future history students will get taught about how stock markets worked in the 21st century, and will experience the same sense of "why would anyone in their right mind set up a society like that?" we feel when considering the feudal system.
> As long as EM has the control of the US govt cash
Yabbut, he doesn't. Neither does the man who believes he is EM's boss. It's Congress that makes the *spending* decisions. I hope everyone has heard Sen Bernie Sanders' speech by now.
Quote "Let’s be clear. The president can recommend legislation, he can veto legislation, but he does not have the power to unilaterally terminate funding and legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. That is a dangerous and blatantly unconstitutional act."
Pres. Trump has sworn to uphold the Constitution. He wouldn't fib, would he?
It made me laugh when Trump said "The EU won't buy our cars" - dude, read the room. They're mostly crap.
Yes, Elmo got in at the right time and backed EVs, but Tesla's cars are nothing special. From Korea, to Japan, China and back through Munich, Stuttgart and Wolfsburg, other places actually make more desirable cars. You've already lost and to lightly misquote a real princess "The tighter your grip, the more nations will slip through your fingers".
I took a look at the Tesla interiors after the Model S, and it screamed 'cheap' to me. The whole way in which the car is produced maximises profit, and not in a good way for the buyer.
Never been a fan. Not of Musk either - I've worked with consultants, politicians and Microsoft representatives long enough to recognise a BS-er, and he's a grade A one.
> It made me laugh when Trump said "The EU won't buy our cars" - dude, read the room. They're mostly crap.
Crap or not (usually, yeah), they also tend to be oversized road hogging hazards. Even putting aside combustion vs. EV, the cars themselves are usually considerably bigger than most EU cars.
Heck, some US car makers don't even make "cars" -- it's all mammoth trucks and hulking SUVs instead. No great surprise most folks in EU aren't interested.
I give Elmo credit for backing EVs, and setting up the Supercharger network so drivers are willing to take them on road trips.
That said the 'legacy' carmakers are catching up, with economies of scale he can't match, and the Asian companies like BYD, Vinfast, etc have a decided advantage in labor costs so he's riding on a rapidly declining image (given his recent actions the wags are labeling his vehicles as 'swastikars'). That ridiculous payout package he wanted from the Tesla shareholders was obviously his attempt to cash out before the bubble burst.
You'll note that they moved on to Ukraine ressources azfter getting not just a NO, but a HELL NO as answer from both Greenland citizenship and Denmark regarding ther power grab about the ressources there.
They may also finally spent an hour reading the fine prints when it comes to mining in Greenland [ Hint : https://govmin.gl/exploitation/start-mining/how-to-start-mining/ chapter closure plan ] and discovered, like the Chinese did, that it wasn't worth the pain in the bank account for now ( among other things ).
Has anyone ever tracked how Musk made all that cash?
From government help and tax dollars, mostly.
How much of Musk’s wealth comes from tax dollars and government help?
But in other ways, virtually all of his net worth can be pinned to government help. Tesla and SpaceX got started – and survived their early days – with assistance from state and federal policies, government contracts and loans.
“The foundation for Musk’s financial success has been the US government,” said Daniel Ives, tech analyst for Wedbush Securities.
And the value of Tesla and SpaceX doesn’t come from their profits so far.
Has anyone ever tracked how Musk made all that cash?
Not so much cash earned. More stock valuation. Tesla and SpaceX run more debts than profits. Xitter has lost most of its value. The rest is not making up for these big names in cash. All are vulnerable to cheaper and better competitors.
How does Elon Musk REALLY Make Money?
Elon Musk’s wealth is a reflection of creating investor confidence in the potential of Tesla and SpaceX rather than the actual financial performance of these companies. As competition intensifies in the EV market and the commercial space sector, maintaining this confidence will become increasingly challenging.
I must say I find their earning calls fascinating, as he seems to get away with the same trick every time.
First he mentions that they have not hit their projections, and then he immediately announces some new off the wall project that will "revolutionise" the world. Basically, Musk uses the word "revolutionise" in his earnings calls as much as Apple seems to be fond of the word "amazing" when they do publicity. There appears to be a massive thesaurus shortage in the US.
Apologies for digressing. Anyway, the net result is that investors seem to forget about his companies again missing their targets as they have for years and are all excited about the new ideas, even if they are at best 'meh' and that he doesn't exactly have a good track record of delivering something exactly new when he is in charge. He's an expert at taking credit, of course, but Tesla was already on thin margins and now sales have collapsed internationally after his antics with Trump, with the biggest jolt in German after all his talk to right wingers there (I saw it reported as 59% down, with that market moved to European and Chinese brands, with UK exhibiting the smallest downwards shift, ca. 14%. And no, no upwards trend anywhere).
So yeah, good at spouting BS, but in charge of a government? The man is a good demonstration that more money merely amplifies what is already there, so he merely transitioned from an a**hole to a very major a**hole as get got richer by, well, can we call it market manipulation? The whole crypto currency scam he knows backwards too, he holds enough coin to make the market do what he wants it to do so I'd be VERY wary to go anywhere near any cryptocoins he and his mates have their fingers on.
So yeah, I don't envy his believers when reality comes in.
On the plus side, the sale of Tesla stickers "I bought this before Elon went crazy" is presently going through the roof, and most of the people interviewed with such a sticker will not buy another Tesla..
Unfortunately most people are missing the point, perhaps they don't want to face up to the enormity of what is happening.
Ascribing ignorance to explain the behaviour of Musk et al. is to assume that if they truly understood the negative implications of their actions they would see reason and stop.
I'd suggest that this assumption is highly misguided.
Hint: it's not very positive, and certainly not as Musk is telling it.
What this does, is offer China a one off opportunity to replace the US on the world stage, if they are willing to pay for it. They wouldn't have been expecting it, and it will be interesting to see if they go for it.
Actually, that plan has been in play for years and although the parade of idiots in Washington has accelerated it I don't think there's much left they can do anything about it. Consider:
1 - one of the most basic needs of a nation is energy. The US gained its ability to get away with living miles beyond its means (aka the ever increasing National Debt) by forcing energy (main oil) sales in USD, so everyone needed to keep USD as a reserve currency. Basically economic blackmail;
2 - China had its own currency recognised and approved by the World Bank as a reserve currency years ago (to me evidence that what follows was in the make for years already);
3 - Fossil fuels are being replaced. Sadly not everywhere, but the trend is definitely downwards;
4 - As renewables do not cover the energy need, nuclear is rising;
5 - China just successfully finished the test of their prototype of a commercial Thorium reactor - in the Gobi desert (read: about as far away from the one thing a "traditional" nuclear reactor needs: water). That's going commercial this year;
6 - Waste management, long term capital needs (time before capital brings a return, so interest), safety and cost of materials, build and - VERY important - fuel of a MSR Thorium reactor are a factor better than existing nuclear designs, so electricity (energy) costs are a lot lower. And the Chinese have solved the problems, and thus hold most of the patents of the critical elements such as coatings to make Hastelloy handle hot fluoride salts.
Translated: China is pretty much ready to seriously mess up the USD if it wants to. I don't think they will do this immediately - I suspect they will first try to offload any remaining US assets before they lose their value, but they have demonstrated to Trump once already that they can control Wall Street - they took over 50% off the DOW in a few hours when they let their currency float for a bit when accused by Trump (I) of manipulating the world market by manipulating their currency. When they re-asserted control, the DOW regained it level, after a few hours.
Trump (II) sees this coming, that's why Trump has been threatening Europe with tariffs (if all you have is a hammer sharpie ..) if they had the nerve to stop using the USD as their reserve currency. Now Trump may get away with that with his poodle, aka the UK, but I don't think the EU is going to pay attention as the Chinese market is up and coming. As Trump I has started to reduce the US to a (still powerful) has-been, Trump II is going to make it much worse so the logical path for EU is to make nice noises to Trump while in the background starting to work with China. As far as I know the French have been already doing that for a while - that Gallic streak of independence has served them well here..
I fully expect China to step in to replace all the USAID operations that get cut. It will cost them around $40 billion, which is 0.2% of China's GDP, while producing a massive increase in China's worldwide influence in developing countries which will remain long after Trump and his merry band of idiots are gone.
Yep, happened to me about 20 years ago; software company in trouble.
Of a team of 6 developers; fire 1st, 2nd, and 4th top earning developers and make 3rd the 'team leader'. Result was that 3rd had a breakdown, 5th had a kid and left, last did as little as possible and eventually moved on of own accord. That left management, secretary, account manager, and sales people - another round or 2 of capital raising and rewrite the application from scratch.
Funny thing is that the company doesn't exist today, but can't figure out why?
"...destabilizes institutions reliant on expert, experienced oversight."
Isn't that the point? They've had enough of experienced people telling them they can't do things. (Cf. this tech dirt piece on on Musk moving a data centre). More importantly, they've had enough of experts telling them what reality is. They want the world to be X and they are going to fire anyone who tells them otherwise.
Reality, will no doubt have the last laugh. But at what cost?
Sometimes, I think we should just give up and stop trying to save ourselves – the effort would be better spent inventing ways to leave a legacy for the bonobos, the octopi and the dolphins and all other species that might one day evolve higher levels of intelligence so that we can warn them not to repeat our mistakes.
Sometimes, I think we should just sever our tubes and queue the music, start the party, go not gently into one glorious, hedonistic goodnight and let evolution run its course as soon as possible on evolutionary time-scales, for a more worthy species to rise to inherit the earth.
Certainly, our continued struggles aren't doing the bonobos and the octopi any favours!
But I accept that others have not given up the fight and I *will* continue to fight in solidarity with them. And, more and more, I'm thinking that fighting is going to be necessary because playing nicely is not working.
"Sometimes, I think we should just give up and stop trying to save ourselves – the effort would be better spent inventing ways to leave a legacy for the bonobos, the octopi and the dolphins and all other species that might one day evolve higher levels of intelligence so that we can warn them not to repeat our mistakes."
The problem with that scenario is we've used up most of the easily accessible resources needed for a start-up civilisation, It will take geologic ages of vulcanism and subduction to re-stock the planet :-)
They'll have to mine the ruins of our cities, extracting iron from the crumbling pre-stressed concrete and aluminium from the cars crushed under the fallen tower blocks. They won't have the coal or oil we needed to kickstart and maintain an Industrial Age, but they might be able to suss out gasification and take it a bit more slowly.
There were (and maybe still are) plans to flag nuclear waste sites with warning signs that would survive for ten thousand years. Obviously this couldn't use any existing language but required some sort of hopefully universal symbolism. We'd need to leave behind the equivalent of the Voyager Golden Record to warn our descendants / bonobos / dolphins / giant fire-ant hive minds not to emit too much CO2 or create too many plastic nanoparticles. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
I wonder what, if anything, will still be around to prove we existed in 50-60,000 years if a different species evolves some form of intelligence? The oldest existing human structures are in the 4-5000 years age range and are basically carved stone. The trappings of modern civilisation are far, far less likely to survive even that long other than as buried concentrations of unusual mixes of elements. Most modern concrete, especially steel reinforced concrete can barely survive a human lifetime, and that’s with regular maintenance.
We a tiny, tiny bit about Neanderthal because we have a small amount of evidence from stone tools and such like. I wonder much Bonobo-Superior will be able to learn about us from the fragments of the odd iPhone that may still be recognisable as some form of unnatural concentration of elements? :-)
SF TV shows and movies set many 100's or 1000's of years in the future mostly get it wrong when the director does the "great reveal" pull-away shot showing the Statue of liberty protruding from the sand or the Golden Gate Bridge with most of it's support cables dangling in the breeze.
Right, what's currently going on has nothing to do at all with "move fast and break things", but more with a mobster's motto: "break things so they no longer can move"
"break things" is not a specific, intended phase in any project that aims to build something, regardless how agile.
The saying usually relates to breaking some things _accidentially_ while building new stuff, sometimes moving too fast.
DOGE does not build anything.
What's going on in the US government currently is breaking things on purpose. Eg. destruction of government functions that are deemed not needed/wanted by the current leader.
Agreed. But may I add:
1. It's one thing to "take out some trash", especially cleaning up a workspace so the remaining workers can operate more efficiently. This works both literally and metaphorically.
2. Sometimes "taking out the trash" means knocking down a building to put up a brand new shiny one, a breaking a bone so it can be re-set to heal properly.
2. DOGE is not taking out the trash or even knocking over buildings. They are most definitely interfering with the infrastructure of our government; some may consider it destructive on the surface. And if their explicit actions aren't destructive enough, plenty of folks (experts, media) have raised the possibility of vulnerabilities that could be turned into backdoors for bad actors, state-based or otherwise.
A certain MAGA mindset holds, "the system is broken; we NEED to break it -- quite literally -- in order to fix it." However, this is not re-breaking a bone to reset it. There is no cast and Musk is no doctor*. There is no restoration back to the way things were; we must see where this ends and pick up the pieces to create something new, hoping we can restore and/or maintain the necessary functions that will actually help people.
(*As an alternative to all the HHGTTG references lately, where is THE Doctor when we need him?)
> Right, what's currently going on has nothing to do at all with "move fast and break things", but more with a mobster's motto: "break things so they no longer can move"
Exactly. American conservatives have been trying to destroy government oversight for fun and profit since the 1950s. Now that they own all three branches of government, they're going after it from all directions.
The U.S. Supreme Court weakened oversight when it invalidated the Chevron doctrine. Now it is poised to invalidate the nondelegation doctrine, which has been in place since the Great Depression. And there is a good chance that they will turn a blind eye to Trump axing departments without Congressional approval. Which he can do because there is zero chance that Republicans in charge of Congress will impeach him.
BTW, USAID was likely the first target because it was investigating Musk over Starlink contracts in Ukraine. And he's going after the FAA because of their investigation into SpaceX. And the FCC because they rejected Starlink from a rural broadband program back in 2022. He has grievances and he's out for revenge.
A cruel part of me is actually quite pleased Trump got in. The morons that voted for him can reap the tragic consequences and I hope they come away from the experience completely fucked-over.
I’m genuinely very sorry for the rest, who loath the Orange fuckwit as much as much as the next non-lobotomised person, but it’s a great sitcom to watch - more ludicrous and implausible than the 70’s Soap series
> The morons that voted for him can reap the tragic consequences and I hope they come away from the experience completely fucked-over.
While I will experience a great deal of schadenfreude over the next four years as their decisions come back to haunt them, the bigger question is if the harm will result in them reevaluating their decisions.
I suspect that they will not. Because their decisions are no longer rational. It is all about hurting the other side, which they have been manipulated into prioritizing above all else by decades of conservative propaganda. Day in and day out, they are told about the war between the Left and the Right so that they don't notice the class war that they are very much losing. And those propaganda outlets aren't going anywhere now that Trump is in charge.
Nothing short of economic destruction on par with the Great Depression or a de-Nazification program as the Allies enacted after WWII will reverse things.
"It is all about hurting the other side, which they have been manipulated into prioritizing above all else by decades of conservative propaganda."
That's how you get Turkeys to vote for Christmas!
There is a war against Holy Christmas, we must defend Christmas
As a thought experiment I wondered about the EU adopting a common policy on public holidays.
I've heard that those working for EU institutions get to enjoy *all* of the public holidays in *all* of the member states.
Turns out that it's much the same as living in France. We have loads of them.
Back to the experiment. What if recognition of Christmas as a public holiday was required for Turkey to complete its entry procedure. Possibly the sort of thing you might put to plebiscite. Would Turkey vote for Christmas?
-A.
"The morons that voted for him can reap the tragic consequences" - that would be fine if the US was a tiny, inconsequential country somewhere. Unfortunately we're all going to reap the consequences, American or otherwise, Trump supporter or not.
The EU is collapsing.
People have been saying that for 30 years.
Whenever I hear it now, I visualise either a brash young person who doesn't realise they have little or no personal experience of history or an older Farage-a-like scrunching up his face (yes, it's always a him) and wishing upon a star: "Please let me be right this time. Please let me be right!"
"I hope they come away from the experience completely fucked-over."
That won't help. Victims of devastating scams often remain in denial for the rest of their lives.
Remember the COVID patiënts who only on their death beds admitted it was a real thing. Some even then denied they were wrong.
Are we much better?
You should always ask yourself "When was the last time I admitted I was wrong?"
"Is it really a smart move for Republicans to get on the bad side of their older voters?"
In 2020, USAID bought $2.1bn in food from US farmers. USAID is being cancelled. That means $340million in purchases have been "paused". [Washington Post]
They just don't do joined up thinking. Or think things through. (It makes their heads hurt.)
...come November 2026?
Have I got this right (as a Brit)
If average Joe/Joanna feels better off then OrangeMan carries on to Valhalla or wherever
If average Joe/Joanna feels things are worse then well that's the lame duck times.
Icon: shop local. E. F. Schumacher's ideas may provide a bit of a lifeboat.
Have I got this right (as a Brit)
If average Joe/Joanna feels better off then OrangeMan carries on to Valhalla or wherever
If average Joe/Joanna feels things are worse then well that's the lame duck times.
Probably, but us Brits ought to be REALLY worried about the latest Yougov polls. Unless Trumpism fails spectacularly during the next four years, we could have our own democratically elected mini-Trump at the next election.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51511-voting-intention-lab-24-ref-25-con-21-2-3-feb-2025
There is a deeper debate to be had about this, but I can't see us managing that between all the yah-boo catcalling, especially when there's MAGA posters or their Rightpond sycophants allowed to be involved.
"There is a deeper debate"
It's not that deep. The rich have hoovered up the proceeds of what little growth we've had. Start redistributing before or the masses will vote in an idiot wrecking ball who will tear everything down. (Likewise, in our case, if Osborne had borrowed when money was cheap, and had started fixing the literal roofs, then now it's raining we wouldn't be having to borrow when money is dear in order to replace the crumbling RAAC.)
The advantage of being unelected is that there are no term limits, you have no reason to adhere to a Constitution and nobody can stop you doing what you like.
Moreover, given the flawed Justice system in the US where a felon may avoid jail time by being elected President, there is no measures that may be taken against him, however many laws he may breach. He can't even be impeached.
JD Vance makes the point that, while nobody might voted for Musk, they voted for Trump and Musk came with the package.
The first, and so far only, person to actually become de jure President of the USA without actually winning an election as candidate for either President or Vice-President was Gerald Ford.
"Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, after Richard Nixon’s resignation amid the Watergate scandal. Ford became the first, and so far the only, person to become President without winning a general election for President or Vice President.
The 25th Amendment to the Constitution allowed Ford to assume the presidency after he was selected by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew, the Vice President elected on the 1972 Republican ticket who resigned in an unrelated scandal.
Section 2 of the 25th Amendment gives the President the power to name a new Vice President, if that office became vacant, with the permission of Congress."
From: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/gerald-fords-unique-role-in-american-history
As for "... there is no measures that may be taken against him, however many laws he may breach. He can't even be impeached." Just wait for when Musk pisses off Trump royally and feels His Wrath. My guess is that there will be an awful lot of DOGE personnel who will be needing a Trump pardon in just under 4 years, and Musk will be at the top of the list, if still in favour.
The advantage of being unelected is that there are no term limits, you have no reason to adhere to a Constitution and nobody can stop you doing what you like.
Except of course that statement is entirely false. Musk has been appointed as a special advisor, which is a standard government thing and from memory, has a standard term of 130(?) days. Every incoming adminstration appoints advisors from outside government into senior government roles. So as an example, Anthony Blinken held several senior government positions, yet was never elected. Marco Rubio was an elected representative, prior to taking over Blinken's job. Pretty much every government employee is expected to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land, and if they don't, they can be fired and prosecuted.
Moreover, given the flawed Justice system in the US where a felon may avoid jail time by being elected President, there is no measures that may be taken against him, however many laws he may breach. He can't even be impeached.
Also entirely false. Trump isn't a convicted felon, because under the.. less flawed justice system, everyone has the right to a fair trial, including the ability to appeal. The Supreme Court ruled that Presidents have qualified immunity for official acts only, so if Trump decided to shoot a few Democrats, or embezzle a few billion, he could, and hopefully would be prosecuted. And of course unless he suspends the Constitution, then Trump can still be impeached. It's just thanks to the Democrat's excellent election campaign, they don't have the majorities they'd need in either Senate or Congress to get very far.
And of course the last administration showed that the best wat to avoid jail time is to have your dad elected as President.
But there's also some flaws in the original article, eg-
This is hardly a route that a NASA software developer or a Veteran Administration's pharmacist can take.
So both NASA GISS's James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt have made decent money moonlighting whilst working for NASA. The Fauci fiasco showed that he and other NIH could make millions from the private sector for work carried out as public sector employees. Obviously not every government employee has the same opportunities to profit from things like patents developed during their day job, and in the private sector, that work normally belongs to the employer. So perhaps that is something that needs to be tightened up to avoid the obvious conflicts of interest it can create.
Trump is a convicted felon, because he has been convicted of a felony.
Jolly good. So you'll have no problem citing the court records showing this? Or that Biden decided that henceforth, nobody is above the law (except) Hunter, and 'convictions' can't be appealed..
The rest of your post is similarly garbage.
Gotcha. So Presidents can no longer be impeached, and no longer convicted for anything illegal. You seem to know better than the Supreme Court, but I'm sure you can cite something to support your View.
Yep, he remains guilty of a felony unless and until he succeeds in his appeal. There is no denying that fact. It's entirely possibly that it will go all the way to the supreme court, and even then, there no guarantee he will be found not guilty. But until then, he is "guilty as charged" because that's what the court said. No amount of whataboutism or "the trial was fixed" or any other argument can change that UNLESS[*] a higher court overturns it at some point in the future.
Not the word "unless". Just as in "innocent UNLESS proven guilty". Not "until", which presupposes guilt.
No problem. Here you go: https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/Trump-Verdict-Sheet.pdf
Close, but no cigar. I was expecting the unconditional discharge issued by Merchan on Jan 10th, which Trump is obviously appealing. But then-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifying_business_records
"commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his or her intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof."
Was the trick NYC pulled to elevate a misdemeanor into a felony, but never really explained what the 'other crime' might have been to justify that elevation. Which was a bit tricky given that was supposedly 'election interference', which is a federal offence where the NYC courts don't have standing. So a strange case where the 'other crime' was never charged. But such is politics.
The fact that it's not a good idea and anyone competent says so won't stop the swivel eyed loons breaking as much as they can while they can.
We're in the situation of the negative feedback loop which is supposed to keep the system stable, but the "checks and balances" aren't tight enough or fast enough to cope, so brace for wild oscillations until the "energy" runs out!
the negative feedback loop which is supposed to keep the system stable,
Hoping for critical thinking and not even getting critical damping.
Oh deary me! I forgot our Space Karen is a brilliant engineer† who is assuredly a full bottle on Nyquist plots and stability criterion.
† oink, flap, oink, flap... jingle bells...
Chaos and craziness and flames and the demise of institutions is the very point. They're literally playing for the bullshit to flood all the channels and going for such absurdity that nobody will remember what sanity even looked like, what functional organs of state ever did or were or offered or what civil liberties and rights and safety meant at all.
They're burning it down to rule over the ashes.
They're also all sworn "longtermists" and utilitarians who will proffer some longtermist utilitarian solution once it's all gone to pieces. When nobody has health-care or food or education and only the gun-nuts have "safety" (and only as long as their ammo lasts, while they're eating out of tins and farting in their bunkers), do not fear: AI, blockchain and the metaverse will balance out all the wrong with immeasurably insignificant levels of "utility" accrued over some meaningless number of future virtual "souls" living in a simulation 10000 years from now, on Mars.
It is that dumb and they consider themselves altruistic because they're striving to bring about this future. I think that the cult of personality that they somehow never fail to dispel survives because, in some way, they do genuinely believe their own delusion that they are actually righteous in their cause.
With every passing day, fewer peaceful options to stop this madness remain on the table. "Democracy" has certainly failed to end it. They won't arrest their own trajectory into hell. We need to act.
Umm, from observation, admittedly from the East Side of the Pond, I think the motto is actually:
Move fast, break other people's things, run away
It reminds me of Broccian ultra-cricket*
Not sure whether this should be the 'sad face' icon or the 'joke alert' icon.
* Obligatory HHGTTG reference.
Nobody works 120 hours in a week. That results in 6 hours per day to eat, wash and sleep. Anyone who thinks they do that should not be trusted with anything sharper than a crayon.
And even if you somehow did, after 10 days you would be eating crayons. There's a reason sleep deprivation is used as a torture method (and why "evidence" or "confessions" extracted by torture are unreliable). Sounds more like "well I eat and sleep in my office so that counts as work". To which I say... touch some grass.
Various studies have shown that you basically can't work more than 60hours a week. Physically you can, but your productivity tails to be the equivalent of 60 "well rested" hours, but even then there's a tail after 30-40.
Notionally this could vary for different industries - manual labour vs. knowledge work, and this is true to a point. But in reality, not getting enough rest will either lead to physical fatigue and a drop in work speed/output, or a drop in cognitive function. I think we've all had those times when we've got frustrated at a gnarly problem and then the solution has presented itself in the middle of reading a book or just as we're about to nod off to sleep. This makes the argument that knowledge workers "never really switch off", that work is always at the back of your mind. To some extent that can be true, but given adequate diversion I quite happily forget about work - even if some part of my brain is whirring subconsciously or crunching the problem as I sleep.
It's vital to get out that tunnel vision.
There's a reason why people who might make poor decisions which risk people's lives if they're tired are only allowed to perform for a maximum number of hours per day or per week.
Y'know, people who drive planes, or trucks.
(For some reason that doesn't appear to apply to junior doctors...)
"For some reason that doesn't appear to apply to junior doctors.."
Of course not, if you are rich and/or famous, or simply an MP you'll be attended to by the consultant personally, and likely as not in a private hospital where there are none of the junior doctors. It's only the peasants who'll be harmed because they are being seen by a tired, over-worked, underpaid F2 doctor.
Apologies if in three year's time it's my daughter who's that F2 treating you.
True story:
Very early one morning, the Registrar of a major London Hospital is awoken from sleep by the telephone (days well before mobile phones were around).
A&E Doctor "Umm, could you come in, sir,* we have an elderly lady who is rather drunk and has a fish bone stuck in her throat."
Regastrar: "For goodness sake, don't bother me, just follow the usual procedure."
A&E Doctor: "She is very drunk, sir."
Registrar: "Why should I come in for this, when you are perfectly well capable of dealing with it?"
A&E Doctor: after a pause "She's the Queen Mother."
Registrar: pause "I'll be there in 20 minutes."
You don't believer me? See https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/11/22/Queen-Mother-Elizabeth-was-rushed-to-a-hospital-and/1235406789200/
*Yes, so long ago that there were few, if any, female senior registrars in UK hospitals.
Pretty accurate description of the newly regurgitated half digested administration.
If there were any chance that an executive order could be effectively signed with crayon† I would not extend my trust that far.
† conceivably a wax crayon might be melted and sealed with a signet ring to sign a document.
That one (or more) of these Musk Interns gets root access to a critical system and does a
cd /
rm -fr .
Either by accident or design?
The implications of these interns getting access to those systems is huge. There are no checks and balances on them and what they are doing...
What's the betting that some of those Musk Interns are undercover journalists, agents of foreign (and potentially hostile) intelligence services, or, shock horror, criminals?
Let's face it. Computer viruses started off as kiddies playing, and getting your Windows XP computer to reboot itself randomly. Now organised crime has taken over and it is called malware and ransomware and a multi-billion dollar international crime-wave.
Somehow the 'Spawn of Satan' icon seems appropriate, I cannot image why...
cd /; rm -fr .
Nah! I would guess his acolytes are hardly likely be any smarter than himself and I reckon it was a young Elon or clown of the same water that tried rm / -rf on a HPUX 9.x box which of course barfed on that command line.
In the BoFH game you deal with enough clowns or fools to assemble your own circus.
Shame Don Ameche isn't available to narrate what promises to be the World's Greatest Circus since the fall of Constantinople.
You're giving too much credit. The disaster monkeys will just chop through the power line with a fire axe and shout, "there, I fixed it".
See also "Night of the Long Knives", because axes work on people, too.
Note to admins:
We need an icon for modern Nazism. I guess we could just use the old symbol; Nazism clearly hasn't changed much.
As time passes its sad too see how much America is repeating the story of Russia.
Russian invaded Ukraine, because they have superior rights, and America has voiced the same wishes against non enemy lands like Greenland and Gaza. Both wave flags like crazy, both are obsessed about being "great", both worship their leaders and large parts of their population cant say a bad thing about Putin or Musk and so on.
Both insist how their countries are the greatest in the world, and one has many people without a toilet, and another has plagues of homeless people in major cities...
I don't think they want the US government to work. They want to stop it working and let their companies rule America unfettered, leaving just enough of the justice system to protect their gated communities and enough military to protect the borders and to suppress rebellion and secession. It probably will blow up in their faces, but not before causing huge amounts of damage to the people of the US, and to a lesser extent to the rest of the world.
"You do know which states are the ones that actually make the money in North America?"
I'll bite. No, I don't. Please explain to me which states make money, and which are poor, destitute wastelands that are a parasite on the money makers?
"Please explain to me which states make money, and which are poor, destitute wastelands that are a parasite on the money makers?"
Basically, what you already know: The NE and the Western coasts. It's twice the poorests states.
List of U.S. states and territories by GDP
GDP per capita also varied widely throughout the United States in 2024, with New York ($117,332), Massachusetts ($110,561), and Washington (state) ($108,468) recording the three highest GDP per capita figures in the U.S., while Mississippi ($53,061), Arkansas ($60,276), and West Virginia ($60,783) recorded the three lowest GDP per capita figures in the U.S. The District of Columbia, though, recorded a GDP per capita figure far higher than any U.S. state in 2024 at $263,220.
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doesn't work in technology, either, unless you're in a position where the thing you are working on is already so broken, that breaking it some will actually fix it.
In my experience, this is not often. It's pretty much universally accepted that Twitter, in its now-broken state, for example, is now worth considerably less than what musk paid for it, and the vastly overpriced Tesla shares are due for a crash, especially if sales continue to plummet.
doesn't work in technology, either, unless you're in a position where the thing you are working on is already so broken, that breaking it some will actually fix it.
It works in two places - R&D labs, and startups. That's it. And startups are really just a special case of "we don't have a product yet, so the whole company is an R&D lab for the time being".
Rapidly develop an MVP/prototype - don't overcommit scarce resource to a pathway until you're sure it's right. Don't overoptimise early on. If it isn't working, then pivot (break things). Target that weird side feature that people weirdly really seem to like - that's your hook/USP now. This is basically Ries' Lean Startup - doing everything by hand is inefficient, but you do until you can't, at which point you'll know which the biggest time sucks are and what the priorities for automation, etc are. You don't spend time chasing things that aren't really an issue to start with.
This works in all sorts of industries (although the nature of actually bringing physical product to market is more waterfall - you can rapidly prototype, but can't really ship MVP hardware and change it later on! Unless it's deliberately modular I suppose. And you can potentially ship with additional unused hardware that you add support for in later firmware releases).
For regulated industries (e.g.medical kit, aviation, all the important bits of automotive, processing 400million people's tax returns) it needs to work on day one.
Doesn't work in large companies or in government, because the very purpose of those organisations is planning, order, process, repetition, dependability and very slow, measured change. That's what they exist for. And when you're big and people rely upon you (and your CEO is paid a shed-load) you don't take existential risks by breaking stuff. Small companies are hand-to-mouth, every day could be their last, so taking big risks doesn't matter.
It's why companies like Google, Amazon and the other big tech outfits don't innovate. Small stuff that they could take risks with can never make a big enough difference quickly enough to be worthwhile, and they won't disrupt their profitable core business for that reason. And that's why they turn to M&A. Sadly they're almost as bad at that.
>It works in two places - R&D labs, and startups.
And likely doesn't actually work there either, just that survivor bias makes it possible to claim that it works.
Ill advised haste, and a cavalier attitude to running your business onto a reef, has sunk a bunch of R&D and startup companies I did design contracting for, back before I learnt how to spot these types and give them a quote that would chase them away.
"Urgency" was the number one red flag of an incoming flaming meteor.
First they looked at what dodgy things the Treasury is paying and who is doing it, then they went to the worst offender which was USAID. Now they are identifying the useful programs and moving them to the State Department. Everything else will stay halted. That sounds about right to any sensible person.
then they went to the worst offender which was USAID.
Ah yes, that terrible offender which was a key partner in the WHO drive to eradicate smallpox.
Bringing more than 30 clinical trials to a screeching halt for drugs targeting malaria, cervical cancer and tuberculosis is an obvious thing to do for any sensible person.
Anyway, I look forward to the red-voting farm lobby losing their fucking minds when they realise they've just lost the $2Bn/year in food sales that USAID buys from US farmers for disaster & famine relief.
I'm sure the domestic market will hoover up that surplus nicely and they won't see crashing commodity prices as grain mountains accumulate. I don't know if anyone's looked at the state of the ag machinery markets recently, but it was already a down-year for 2025. This is going to further defer the replacement of kit. Anyway, I'm sure that delivering further layoffs across both farming and manufacturing firms like Deere & CNH won't harm the economy at all.
To bang the drum again. Most Western "Foreign Aid" is thinly-disguised state-aid for domestic industry. Whether it's buying domestic wheat & meat for famine relief or stipulating that a civil engineering project must use US-made machinery, US civil engineers/consultants and auditors. It all comes back to the "donor" nation eventually.
Preventable deaths are a hallmark of the American Way.
Remember, his administration is radically against vaccination programs and promotes Death by Natural Causes, (aka. preventable deaths).
USAID did run vaccination programs and thereby hampered this goal of Death by Natural Causes lowering the number of preventable deaths.
..and anyway, it's aid for 3rd world countries and they're full of brown people who don't matter </sarc>
China is already spending large sums providing aid to African countries and has promised to significantly up it's contribution to WHO in light of the US pulling out. This is giving China a huge amount of soft power in a part of the world that is starting to industrialise and will be looking at the US pulling out and therefore a degraded reputation in the eyes of those African countries.
Vaccination programs must be about the cheapest way known to buy karma. And they keep your vaccine factories ticking along until you suddenly need them.
China is really going to suffer having to take up the slack on this.
"Ha, Suckers we totally owned you China."
Yeah, right. They have the required experience to decide that, even though they're, in the best case, just a bunch of billionnaires with henchmen who've never had to actually screw in a lightbulb on their own.
Yeah, I'm really reassured.
henchmen who've never had to actually screw in a lightbulb on their own.
If they had tried likely a BC (bayonet) bulb into an ES (Edison screw) fitting which would stuff both bulb and fitting.
An apt metaphor I guess.
I have been around the block a few times and as Donald and Elon, do not like waste and corruption. It sure sounds like the pigs at the empty $ trough are now squealing like crazy. So be it.
Nobody likes waste, and if you have evidence of corruption, then you should certainly report that to the proper authorities (why haven't you already?!).
1. Waste happens. A purely lean-mean government that magically achieves zero waste would have zero contingency or capacity to deal with emergencies and disasters. Running any sort of business or government agency means reserves of time and stuff will sometimes go to waste. It means that emergency planning staff do a lot of preparatory work for things which never happen. Walking around a hospital in July, you might be struck at the wasteful half-empty wards. Why build such a big hospital for so little demand? Well, because when winter comes aorund it's full of pneumonia, trips and falls, trauma from car incidents and all the other stuff that happens when temperatures dip.
When you consider it, a clear half of what the US Military do is "wasteful" - training for a war which will likely never come, just as having a DR data centre is "wasteful". Until you have a disaster.
2. If you think Musk or Trump have any ability to meaningfully reduce waste, then David Mitchell has an evergreen (and now 15 year old!) piece on waste in politics.
3. The majority of government corruption is likely to exist at State or Local level where elected mayors and sheriffs operate with frequently inadequate oversight - whereas an FBI field agent trying to cook the books in their field office is liable to be caught by HQ. Same goes for someone trying to embezzle money out the national park service - you might feel like you're operating with impunity in a little field office in the desert with noone looking over your shoulder - but eventually HQ will audit you and it'll all come out. Of course, Trump and Musk have no power over internal State affairs, so this waste and corruption will not concern them.
What on earth are you saying. Anyhoo, it doesn't matter what you say/think. The USAID is shut down. The good projects will be continued by the State Department and the rubbish will stay shut down. The NGO money troughs are now officially empty and all the fat piggies will have to find real work. Oh, the horror.
I would love to be half as unsuccessful as Musk.
So I imagine the contract Mephistopheles offered and was accepted wasn't as lucrative as Elon's.
Modern America appears to demonstrate that formerly human beings can continue to exist even after relinquishing their souls... but exist as what I wonder?
You can see it in their eyes - dead eyes - I have seen more optical vitality on the fishmonger's slab. Condemnation of the already damned is obviously pointless.
Bebu sa Ware: Modern America appears to demonstrate that formerly human beings can continue to exist even after relinquishing their souls
In Dante's Comedia, The Inferno,* there are some characters who at the time of publication were still officially alive, but whose souls were, according to the narrative being tortured in Hell. Dante claimed that some people had committed such terrible sins and had no intention of repenting that their bodies on Earth were inhabited by demons. So, um yes, you could be right.
*. Reading The Inferno, is an interesting experience. You (I) start(ed) off thinking about the sins at each level, and to begin, think 'Oh dear, I've done that'. A bit further down and it is more 'well, I haven't done that.' Even further down I get to 'I would never do that', and finally to a level in hell where the sins are so terrible that it is more along the lines of 'I will never even have the opportunity to do that.' For the last, take as an example, letting the enemy into your city by a secret door so that the men are slaughtered, the women raped and the children enslaved. There is no way I will ever get to a position where I could commit that sin.
But, strangely, there is no circle in Dante's inferno for leaders who betray their people. You can sin against God, you can sin against your Prince, you can sin against the Church, but against your people who rely on your 'good offices', nah. It would have been too much for the rulers of the day to allow that they could or should be held to account for their actions towards their subjects.
But, strangely, there is no circle in Dante's inferno for leaders who betray their people.
Hold on! At the very bottom of hell sits Satan, who has three faces and three mouths gnawing at the very worst people, which are Judas, Brutus and Cassius. I understand that this is because Judas betrayed God, and Brutus and Cassius betrayed the Republic. Doesn't that count?
This is the major disease in America. They think that money and lots of it is a the ONLY definition of being successful and this is why people like Musk are elevated and rise to the top.
Large portions of the country are mentally sick, from Wall Street to Republicans and more, they excuse everything and anything instead of actually being good people and making the world better for themselves and everyone else. This sort of greed never ends well, ask the People of Russia and Ukraine, where the Russian Oligarths took greed to th enext level a few years back.
Nobody is left to stop him, and he has already downsized government to a point it can no longer function. The damage has already been done, and there is a very loud crowd on the interwebs of lies egging him on, and convincing others to follow blindly. Some NOT so blindly, Many very much intentionally. We know he is breaking things, and we know he's a bad guy, surrounded by other bad guys, doing bad things.
There is no-one left to stop him. Any intelligent, reasonable human left in America is along for the ride. I had a fun little chat with a late 20 something the other day who put it bluntly to me; "take the punches as they come like the rest of us." Any resistance will be too slow and ineffective at this point. The only thing to do is keep your head down and stay out of sight.
I'm pretty convinced at this point he is using American's 6-7 trillion to prop up his meme coins and criminal enterprises at this point, and he has a database of every American to play with. The only recourse is to boycott/strike and take their money away, and that's at Americas own expense. Even then what does it accomplish? He's using our stolen funds for his own goals. He will still have our money.
I'm old man, and I'm tired. I don't know how much longer I have, and these kids all think they are living in a Chris Brown video or something. Like, they all should be driving lambos and have a mob to do their dirty work or something. It's unreal the affect social has had on a vast majority of today's youth, and who can blame them? Really, they haven't had any real world contact with each other. They've been stuck inside their digital worlds. It's all they know. They think they are talking to real people posting on the internet, and a vast majority of the time they are not.
We really messed up putting all our easter eggs in our virtual basket.
I'm afraid nothing can be done. We are under mob rule now.
"he has already downsized government to a point it can no longer function"
Agree with you that the US is now run by a billionaire kleptocracy of the clueless, but that statement above is simply untrue for now.
Whilst we may or may not approve of sacking DEI people and destroying USAid, neither are a big downsizing however you consider it, and won't make a blind bit of difference to general government functioning. Obviously the "buyout" offer to federal employees has run into legal challenge, but the aim was to get rid of 5-10% of employees, that's easily doable in any large corporate organisation or government body. I'm a UK government employee with long experience in large private sector companies, and I can't think of a time when the place I worked whether private or public sector couldn't have got rid of 10% of people with little or no impact. Obviously any voluntary severance offer tends to be more attractive to the experienced and skilled, but I've seen innumerable companies do this without apparent long term harm.
Where the kleptocracy will do their damage will not be through carving off slices of government administration, it will be by nepotism and cronyism that's already taking place, it will be by bypassing the checks and balances of a normal democracy, and it will be through arrogant and ignorant knobs like Cheeto man and Elmo taking decisions directly, outside their competence and without good advice.
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Yeah but its generally the most competant employees who get out first as they take the option to leave offered by the company. so you are left with the other 90% who are either hanging on until retirement or in the 'so useless as to not get another job'
This is what happened many moons ago when myself and a bunch of others left government service because it was being run down, so all that was left were the guys hanging on until retirement. then they shut down our station and outsourced all the work to a private company.... who strangely enough, charged even more for what we did than employing a bunch of skilled and experienced direct employees would have cost..... but there were big bonuses all round and some MPs got directorships as a result.. not that there was any hint of corruption. nope.. not a hint.
I follow your reasoning and accept what you say of your experience, but I've been through enough corporate downsizings to see similar approaches in the private sector, and despite letting 10% of their workforce go every few years, most of those big companies are still with us, still making tons of money so the apparent loss of mobile talent isn't showing up much in overall outcomes.
Now, two of my employers have come a cropper, but in neither case was it down to the regular culls. One was straightforward directorial fraud, the other was a single wrong choice by the CEO (self admitted) that set the company on a five year nosedive to bankruptcy.
I'm a little tempted to expose myself as a big annoying leftist to my MAGA coworkers, so they shoot me and save me from watching them go through the exercise of putting gravy in their gas tanks and insisting with a straight face: "it makes cars go faster, my favorite conservative thought leader said so."
I remember when the op eds like this one said twitter would collapse within a few days of Musk's takeover, after he trimmed the workforce down to those that could actually code. Funnily enough, the whole shebang didn't grind to a halt when a phalanx of diversity empowerment executives got canned!
The fact is, all this screeching is ideologically driven. Outlets such as yourselves are simply trying to defend the indefensible, like USAID funneling billions to leftist NGOs, media orgs and even terror groups.
You and the majority of commentards have got no problem whatsoever with wide scale governmental corruption, just as long as the beneficiaries, wherever they happen to reside in the world, are on your side.
"You and the majority of commentards have got no problem whatsoever with wide scale governmental corruption"
Actually we do. The problem is that neither the Fat Orange Bully, or his fascist Witchfinder General have been able to show much in the way of US governmental corruption. There is of course plenty - two big examples being the whole pork barrel approach to law making in Congress, or the way defence funding is wasted. But neither of those are the focus, and instead a bunch of inexperienced arselickers who worship the Witchfinder General are running round looking for stuff they don't agree with, and seeking to break it. Worse than that, DOTUS* is showing himself (again) to be a particularly petty, vindictive man who bears grudges and abuses his power to pursue them.
* Despot of the United Stated
The Washington Times? The Unification Church front paper?
The article itself says it was cancelling subscriptions to Politico billed to government agencies, nothing about running pro Democrat stories.
Politico's old CEO was pro-Trump and likes to make bad jokes on company emails about it: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/politico-trump-mathias-dopfner-b2161033.html
"running round looking for stuff they don't agree with,"
Yeah, it took what? 5 mins? for the Department of Government Efficiency to discover feature creep and go after political opponents and anything they "don't like" instead of the headline intention of rooting out "inefficiency" and "waste".
"like USAID funneling billions to leftist NGOs, media orgs and even terror groups."
The best and biggest examples posted on the Whitehouse website lists far less than the numbers you just invented and most of the examples they gave were worthy causes they don't agree with. The budget was $billions, but the vast majority is NOT covered by your assertions and those that are are mostly questionable. I know, because I just read it, straight from the horses mouth. You should try reading the facts as posted by your dear leader at whitehouse.gov instead of relying on fake facts posted to Twitter or TikTok :-)
It's about time this stupid mantra died, and the one silver lining the Musk wrecking ball may bring is to hammer the nail in its coffin. The idea that smashing the system will cause some better, more efficient replacement to miraculously materialise in the rubble is about to be demonstrated as false on an epic scale. The biggest downside is that it will bring discredit on the wider tech world for years to come in the eyes of the civilian population.
What the slogan really should be is move fast and build things. But you still need plans, full understanding of the problems and experienced, knowledgeable people to have even half a chance of success at that. Which is why Musk and his little teenage gang are unlikely to build anything of lasting worth at all.
See, for example, https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html
"In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries."
Except that in the case of the current administration, the disaster is deliberate.
And yet, the best they can come up with in the best examples they can find, is a few paltry $millions, most of which is just "stuff we don't agree with" and not a single direct example of corruption at all. On the Whitehouse own webiste. The perfect place to EXPOSE all those "billions" in corrupt "payments". And they failed.
Now, I have no doubt there is $billions of wast and corruption in an economy worth $trillions and eventually, they may even find some of it. But $billions in a multi-$trillion economy is pocket change. It really should be rooted out and stopped, but I'm sure a stable genius could find a better way of stopping a leaky tap from leaking other than turning off the water supply to entire town and claiming he's going to build a bigger and better plumbing system some day in the future. He won't be the one going without his "power showers" and flushing golden toilets. You will. Enjoy the stink. You can get used to anything if you believe it smells of roses.
This entire thing is basically a continent/economy/country slowly destroying itself from the inside out.
This really is China’s opportunity to become the next world leader (I’m not condoning China or supporting them) but they’d be nuts to miss this opportunity.
And Vlad must be pissing himself.
As a very good friend of mine used to say “only in America… fucking idiots”
A large part of me feels nothing but schadenfreude, the US was either too stupid not to vote for Trump or too lazy/indifferent or whatever else to actually get out and vote and now they have a democratically elected idiot in charge who only listens to the last person who spoke and is too stupid and arrogant to even pretend to filter the thoughts in his head.
Sadly the global consequences are huge. We're looking at trade wars, forced relocation of an entire people so that he can redevelop their home as a resort, an abandonment and denial of any attempts to control climate change and a host of other issues. And in Musk's case, this is almost entirely because he has a daughter who is transgender and wants nothing to do with him, so he's declared war on the "woke hive mind virus" as he calls it.
To be fair, it is better than no democracy at all, even though many would say that American Democracy is more than somewhat flawed, it has managed over the years to achieve reasonably peaceful transition of power since George Washington decided not to run for a third term as President. There are a lot of countries with very little to no democracy, and I, for one, would be illegal or sentenced to imprisonment or death merely for existing as a gay man in some of them.
OK, deep breath, shoulders back, here goes. el Reg experts on the US Constitution please advise.
The President can pardon anyone for breaking federal law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_United_States ).
But is there anything to stop the incumbent President repeatedly pardoning the same person for committing the same offence over and over again? I'm thinking someone (no names no pack drill) breaks the law and is prosecuted. They are pardoned, and break the same law again, with the President effectively circumventing US federal law by issuing a presidential pardon every time that person is prosecuted, or just making a pre-emptive pardon for the rest of their term of office. This could allow POTUS to effectively have any number of people breaking any federal laws he wanted during his entire term of office.
Clearly SCOTUS would have to make a ruling on this, but after they have conclude that the President is immune form prosecution for breaking any laws in the course of 'being President', my guess is that they would have difficulty putting what would, in effect, be a restraint on the Presidential power of federal pardons.
Your considered thoughts please.
....that the managers of various federal agencies are being told to fill out spreadsheets listing the 10% of employees who are mission critical, the 40% who are, know, kinda OK, and the 50% who are for the immediate chop. This alone demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of what those agencies are about. The hopeless cases never make it past the one-year probationary period, and this who late decay into uselessness are remarkably few and far between in the agencies with which I've had to deal. I know right wingnut propaganda likes to portray all Executive branch employees as lazy do-nothings, but the truth is mostly the opposite.
Given that the leaders of those agencies are likely to get the boot themselves, hopefully they'll be doing what I'd do in their shoes, and list the most useless wastrels as mission critical, and the top talent for the immediate chop. The top talent will find another gig (and probably get a payoff), and the Doge of Venice Beach can wonder why things are not turning out the way they hoped.
The thing with Government is, it's plodders who show up every day that keep the whole thing working, the real "heroes" in Government. Someone has to to the boring, monotonous jobs. Just like the economy needs people capable of saying "would you like fries with that".
> “I worked as a programmer and system administrator for NASA and the Department of Defense Inside the Beltway. In short, I know how tech works, how tech bros think, and how government tech staffers do their jobs. There's a gigantic difference between them.”
Totally (and deliberately?) misses the point of auditing accounts to stop embezzlement. If all of the waste and theft could be eliminated, America would not need an income tax, and the IRS has long been abused as a political weapon.
> “For example, Musk paid Trump more than $250 million to help fund his political campaign. In return, via the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has since gained unprecedented power over the United States for an unelected person.”
Here is a clueless author who did not do his homework: Musk was forced to help elect Trump because the Democrat party was trying to destroy his companies through malicious & contradictory regulations and lawfare, in revenge for buying Twitter and ending the taxpayer-funded censorship of the platform. He believes that colonization of the solar system is essential to ensure the long-term survival of humanity, but the neoliberals are so malicious and immature that they would condemn humanity to the fate of the dinosaurs rather than let Donald Trump be president.
> “Musk, like Trump before him, also doesn't have a clue about how the government works.”
He actually does have a clue, and that is what the criminals & parasites in government are afraid of: people like Trump and Musk who cannot be bribed or blackmailed (which is how they do business in Washington).
> “Yes, there are government employees that need to be fired, but many others are essential to getting the necessary work done.”
The larger portion of the federal agencies have been exercising powers that were reserved to the states by the federal constitution, and there are countless thousands of people on the government’s payroll that just collected a paycheck and did no work, by the admission of their own colleagues.
> “Lutheran Family Services, which provides elder care in South Dakota and support for Afghan refugees who worked with the US army during the Afghan war, among other services.”
Quite a lot of the fraud & embezzlement is concealed under innocent-sounding names, and that is one of them. It is irrelevant what they did in Afghanistan.
> “A few minutes of study would have revealed that this group should not immediately be defunded.”
A sincere investigation would have revealed a lot more.
> “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who accuses Musk of running a shadow government and calls DOGE's actions a hostile takeover,”
That’s pretty rich coming from him… and you have a bit more study to do.
___
At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke cannot account for a half-trillion dollars
https://archives.infowars.com/bernanke-i-don%E2%80%99t-know-which-foreign-banks-were-given-half-a-trillion/
Democrats Who Declared ‘War’ Over DOGE Treasury Audits Were SILENT When China Remotely Accessed Dept. Workstations
https://www.infowars.com/posts/democrats-who-declared-war-over-doge-treasury-audits-were-silent-when-china-remotely-accessed-dept-workstations
Washington: An Empire of Grift
https://www.infowars.com/posts/washington-an-empire-of-grift
Soros-backed Organizations Received Hundreds of Millions of Dollars from USAID
https://www.infowars.com/posts/soros-backed-organizations-received-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-from-usaid
USAID & CIA Connections to Trump’s 2019 Impeachment
https://www.infowars.com/posts/coup-journalist-reveals-usaid-cia-connections-to-trumps-2019-impeachment
Another description for these types of payments is “money laundering”
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886471738273247567
The DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1885964969335808217
Aren't they now owned by The Onion?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30p1p0j0ddo (BBC, but the same information is available pretty much everywhere)
Be warned, that article has a huge picture of man whose head looks like the contents of a tin of spam. Make sure you're not eating when you open it.
... is truly Rube Goldbergian. Or Jenga, if that's your thing. We have regulations and legislation that should have died decades ago. Pull just one piece out and no one is quite sure what will happen. Can't even risk replacing them with better fits. Because someone hiding their agenda behind the dilapidated pile might become offended.
The Chicken Tax comes to mind. Never mind that the tariff issues that prompted it are long gone. It was created unilaterally, by an executive order. And as such could have just as easily been rescinded.
Even legislation, written and passed by Congress should arguably have sunset clauses. If it was good, its supporters can easily argue for a renewal. If it was bad, or had unintended consequences, let it die quietly in a back alley of Washington D.C.
Space Marine here thinks he could hack getting shot at for a living.
We should listen to him guyz. He's a big boy.
This post has been deleted by its author
which makes it illegal for US companies to bribe foreign governments and companies. Where there’s corruption, there’s Trump.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-loosen-enforcement-us-law-banning-bribery-foreign-officials-2025-02-10/
Maybe Musk should start investigating Trump, but then he’d have to investigate himself too.
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