Calling Musk’s Bluff

I have long admired Elizabeth Warren, and recently she’s given me another reason to salute her. She has called Elon Musk’s bluff–while shining a bright light on his ignorance and naivety.

As anyone who follows the news knows, Musk has bragged that he can cut two trillion dollars out of the federal budget. His hints about how he plans to accomplish that feat mostly revolve around sticking it to the poor, ill and elderly via cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and making it impossible for the federal government to do its job by slashing the federal workforce.

Warren’s advice to Musk has done two things: it has demonstrated that there are alternative ways to cut spending, and has reinforced the reality that funding decisions are policy decisions–that where and how government spends money is a reliable guide to what it considers important.

Time Magazine had the story. In a letter that Warren sent to Musk, she listed 30 recommendations for eliminating $2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade.

The list includes several of the progressive icon’s long-held policy fixations: renegotiating Department of Defense (DOD) contracts that independent analysts have found waste billions each year; reforming the Medicare Advantage insurance program and allowing Medicare to negotiate lower costs of prescription drugs; and closing tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthiest earners.

As the article noted, Musk has already walked back his promise to cut two trillion out of the budget, given that he is constrained by Trump’s vows not to touch Medicare and Social Security, and Republican refusal to cut military spending, (As the article notes, “DOGE will have to find less conventional ideas to fulfill Musk’s budget-slashing fantasy.” )

For years, Democrats and Republicans alike have wanted to curb wasteful government spending. While much of Washington recoils at Trump’s disruptive, norm-shattering second-term agenda, some see an opportunity for strange bedfellows to emerge. “In the interest of taking aggressive, bipartisan action to ensure sustainable spending, protect taxpayer dollars, curb abusive practices by giant corporations, and improve middle-class Americans’ quality of life,” Warren writes to Musk, “I would be happy to work with you on these matters.”

As the article notes, actual collaboration is probably not Warren’s goal–her letter is undoubtedly intended to make a point  rather than inviting Musk to work together. Musk, after all, is one of those “let them eat cake” deficit hawks who insist the only way to cut budget deficits is to slash the entitlement programs that prevent millions of Americans from falling into grinding poverty.

I am an advocate for a Universal Basic Income, and I take very seriously the (reasonable) charge that so expensive a measure would require massive changes to the federal budget. Accordingly, I’ve researched what experts (not self-engrossed billionaires) have to say about where we might cut current expenditures. Among the obvious possibilities are the obscene subsidies we continue to give to fossil fuel companies, and the incredibly bloated defense budget. (Even pro-defense scholars estimate that defense spending could be cut by 25% without damaging  U.S. defense capabilities.)

Warren points to similar research.

The biggest cost-saving idea in Warren’s letter is to preserve $200 billion by renegotiating Defense contracts. She points to an Inspector General report from 2011 that found contractors regularly hike prices for the military. One egregious example includes the Air Force overpaying 7,943% on soap dispensers. To rectify the problem, she urged passing legislation she previously introduced with Mike Braun, the former Republican Senator from Indiana, that would close loopholes to prevent defense contractors from price gouging the DOD. “There is a huge problem of the government being able to supervise these contractors carefully enough to be able to make sure we’re getting our money’s worth,” says Don Kettl, an expert on government administration and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

Kettl recently wrote an essay in the Washington Monthly arguing that the federal government needs more and better skilled civil servants to oversee contractors and that Musk and Trump’s plans to massively reduce the federal workforce will perversely lead to higher, not lower, government spending. “The argument is that the market can do the government’s work better and cheaper,” Kettl says. “The problem is that that’s not always the case, and contractors often get higher wages.”

Musk and Trump and their ilk continue to prove the accuracy of that old H.L. Mencken quote:”For every complex problem, there’s a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

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The Emerging Battles

Important notice: Due to the cold, the rally today has been moved to Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E 29th St, Indianapolis. Indoors.

Today, to our great national shame, America will inaugurate our first felon President.

The fact that he’s a felon isn’t even the worst part of this disaster. Trump lacks a single redeeming characteristic–he’s ignorant, intellectually stunted, deeply disturbed and descending visibly into senility. That a (bare) majority of voters chose to place this specimen in the Oval Office may be the all-time saddest commentary on America’s current descent into White Christian Nationalism.

So what can we expect from the collection of grifters, racists and sycophants who will fill the upcoming administration?

I know my posts lately are rarely optimistic, but I think there may be cause–not for optimism, exactly, but reasons to moderate our pessimism. Because MAGA is more likely than not to eat its own. It isn’t just the nutcases in the House of Representatives, who will make it difficult for the GOP’s very thin majority (a majority that owes its status to gerrymandering, not voter sentiment) to pass anything. It’s the fault-lines between Trump’s White Nationalist MAGA base and the uber-wealthy grifters who see him as a tool to evade pesky regulations and fair taxes.

That fight has already started. As Jonathan Last reported in the Daily Beast, Steve Bannon has unleashed on Elon Musk:

“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week. “He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.”

“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon added.

Bannon focused on the recent fight over H-1B visas, and an immigration system he claimed is “gamed by the tech overlords.”  He claimed that 76 percent of engineers working in Silicon Valley are non-Americans.

Bannon went on to accuse Musk of being self-serving, insisting that his “sole objective is to become a trillionaire.”

“He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money. His aggregation of wealth, and then—through wealth—power: that’s what he’s focused on,” Bannon said.
Bannon went on to describe Musk’s preferred objective as “techno-feudalism.”

Bannon is not the only MAGA person issuing broadsides against the tech bros:

This isn’t a one-off. Bannon has hated Musk for a long time. And the fight between OG MAGA and Elon MAGA started with Laura Loomer, who launched her own jihad against Musk over the holidays. You can listen to Loomer here but if you don’t want to click, after calling Musk a “welfare queen,” she went on to indict the entire MAGA oligarch class:

“If you have a bunch of tech bros with billions of dollars and direct unfettered access to the vice president and the president of the United States, and then they are also very cordial with our adversaries as in China and Iran—we see that Elon Musk is having these meetings off the books with Iranian officials, with Chinese officials—what does that mean for us?”

If the split among Trumpers was limited to the anger over H-1B visas, that would be one thing, but it isn’t. It’s relatively easy for a party to seem united when it’s in opposition, but once in power, conflicting interests collide and political realities exert pressure, and Trump supporters have distinctly conflicting interests.

Here’s my almost-rosy analysis.

Today’s Republican Party is a White Nationalist cult. What keeps them (barely) cohesive is the cult leader. Donald Trump is the Jim Jones of today’s GOP. Unlike most cult leaders, who rule with iron hands, his obvious disinterest in actual governing means he is less able to exert dominance over factions quarrelling over policy.

The greater danger to Republican power is that Trump is old, unhealthy and in obvious mental and physical decline. His belligerence has masked the extent of that decline, but it is statistically unlikely that he will live to “serve” a full four-year term–and when he’s gone (either drooling in a senility too obvious for even MAGA to ignore, or dead), the MAGA cult will implode.

If JD Vance becomes President, sharp knives will come out; even most Republicans detest him. More to the point, Trump is already demonstrating that he’s unable to exercise total control, and there is no new Jim Jones in the wings.

Until then, sane Americans need to do whatever we can to obstruct and delay MAGA’s efforts to undermine ethics, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

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The Shutdown

One of my favorite economists, Paul Krugman, has abandoned his New York Times column after 20 plus years. He has, however, continued his daily subscriber letter, which I receive, and in a recent one, he addressed the  embarrassing pre-Christmas clown show that threatened to shut down the government. He titled the essay–quite appropriately–“The Chaos Monkeys Have Already Taken Over the Zoo.” 

In an earlier Times piece, written before passage of the last-ditch, last-minute deal to keep government over, Krugman had written

Speaker Mike Johnson (soon to be ex-speaker?) is scrambling to put a budget deal together to avoid a government shutdown tomorrow. What a Holiday Gift from President Musk and First Laddy Trump. More at The NY Times here.

They couldn’t even wait till January to unleash the chaos. Classic hubris — too bad the country and the world are within the blast radius.

One more thing. Assuming Johnson is unable to remain Speaker in the next Congress, the days and weeks it might take the GOP to select a new ‘leader’ might take them past the deadline to certify the election.

(I hadn’t considered that possibility, and quite probably, neither did the congressional monkeys, aka “the usual suspects.” An inability to certify Trump’s election, brought on by the most MAGA members of the House, would have been..interesting…)

Krugman was far from the only observer who pointed out that the reasons “President Musk” gave for torpedoing the initial bipartisan measure were mostly bogus. His enumeration of the items in the measure he found unacceptable included a number that weren’t actually included in the measure. (I’m sure everyone reading this is shocked by the revelation that Musk is happy to depart from the truth when it serves his purposes…) A number of reports have zeroed in on what was apparently the real reason he wanted to kill the measure.

As the Hill explained,

In a Friday letter to congressional leaders, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) claimed Musk derailed the deal that would have avoided a government shutdown “in order to protect his wallet and the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of American workers, innovators and businesses.”

The spending agreement released Tuesday included a bipartisan provision to limit and screen U.S. investments in China, among dozens of other proposals attached to the 1,500-page bill.

As the CEO and largest stockholder in Tesla, Musk has extensive business connections to China. The company operates a major manufacturing plant in Shanghai and has sought to build deeper connections with Chinese companies.

Interestingly, although the final bill did not include Trump’s demand to scrap the debt ceiling, it did omit the provision that would have curtailed Musk’s business with China. Musk evidently had more clout with lawmakers than Trump–quite possibly because he has ample resources to fund his threat to primary any legislators who failed to knuckle under.

What is most stunning about this particular “Chaos monkeys” episode is that the entire fiasco was triggered by a man with no official government authority–a man who has never submitted himself to the electorate, who has never received a single vote– yet clearly considers himself a co-President, and just as clearly, intends to use the considerable power of his purse to protect his personal financial interests, if need be, at the expense of the American public’s interests.

Musk is by far the richest of Trump’s proposed governing cabal, but he’s not the only billionaire, nor is he the only one who will bring multiple conflicts of interest to a designated role. The grifter-in-chief proposes to surround himself with other rich men (almost all of his designees are White “Christian” males) who are equally ignorant of government operations and constitutional constraints. They are clearly unconcerned about what policies might be in the national interest. Their first impulses will be to protect their own sources of wealth (or, in the case of RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, to impose their loony-tunes worldviews on the country.)

The dictionary defines Kakistocracy as “government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state,” and Corporatism as economic control by powerful corporate interests.

I think we’re there.

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The Know-Nothing Administration

Data tells us that education levels predict the major divisions among American voters. Educational differences are also playing out in Washington, as Trump assembles a know-nothing cabinet composed of cranks, toadies, various conspiracy theorists and general ignoramuses.

Primary among those ignoramuses is Elon Musk. Musk’s reputation as a “genius” rests almost entirely on Americans’ quixotic tendency to ascribe intelligence to the accumulation of wealth. Musk inherited a fortune, purchased rather than invented the Tesla, and pretty much tanked Twitter. We taxpayers provide much of his income through lucrative contracts with the federal government.

I may be underwhelmed by Musk’s purported brilliance (actually, he isn’t stupid, he’s ignorant, and that’s different) but–like Trump–he himself is anything but modest. He’s proclaimed an intent to use his promised new (illegitimate) “department” to produce savings and government “efficiency.”

Musk and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy have promised to cut two trillion dollars out of the federal budget–a promise that displays incredible ignorance of what is in that budget, what is and isn’t discretionary, and what would be required to reduce it.

Vox recently explained that, even if Musk and Ramaswamy took an axe to the relatively small portion of the budget that is discretionary, that would save “only” $1.1 trillion. But those cuts would be incredibly painful–and would never make it through Congress:

Let’s suppose that Musk and Ramaswamy decide to really go for it. They’re going to cut non-defense discretionary spending in half, maybe by shutting down all scientific and health research and K–12 school aid. They’re slashing Medicare and Medicaid by a quarter, and they’re eliminating food stamps, ACA credits, and unemployment insurance entirely.

These, to be clear, are all cuts that would require congressional approval and that Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump could not achieve through executive action alone. Furthermore, they’re cuts that seem politically impossible to push through. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose this is the package.

Doing the math, even this unbelievably ambitious package would amount to a little over $1.1 trillion annually. It’s barely halfway to Musk’s stated goal.

Robert Hubbell, among others, has noted that it isn’t mathematically possible (not to mention politically feasible) to achieve $2 trillion in cuts. A one trillion dollar cut would require “massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and subsidies for the Affordable Health Care premiums.” The majority of people hurt by those cuts would be the MAGA folks in Trump’s base, and they’d take effect right before the midterms.

What about Musk’s proposal to save money by firing thousands of federal workers? Again, he displays his ignorance. The federal workforce has remained essentially flat for decades; increases in the number of government workers have occured at the state and local level.

As Hubbell writes, 

The US economy is the largest in the world—by a large margin. Although Musk and Ramaswamy may not like it, the size of the US economy is due in part to the federal government, which creates stable marketplaces and economic conditions for growth.

If you demolish the federal regulatory framework by firing millions of federal employees, we devolve into a kleptocracy—like Russia, which has an economy smaller than that of Brazil. Indeed, Russia’s current GDP is smaller than that of the US before WWII. See World Bank Ranking of GDP 2023….

The myth that the US has a bloated federal bureaucracy is demonstrably false when compared to other developed economies. If Musk and Ramaswamy recommend cutting the US federal workforce by a million jobs, we will have a federal regulatory environment on the same scale as Haiti and El Salvador. That state of affairs might benefit robber barons and tech bros, but it won’t help working-class Americans.

Here’s the takeaway: We will hear an incredible amount of insufferable mansplaining and chest-thumping from Musk and Ramaswamy. But they will soon face the reality that government spending helps the American people (which is the point of having a government) and creates the conditions for a prosperous economy.

Musk and his ilk are just prominent examples of the uninformed population that thinks running a government is no different than running a business. As I explained yesterday, that belief rests on a profound misconception of what government is, and what it is for.

It isn’t just Musk and Ramaswamy. Trump’s entire cabinet is a collection of dunces and conspiracy theorists–from Soviet apologist Tulsi Gabbard to RFK, Jr. and his brain worm. His pick for Treasury Secretary is evidently pro-tariff, but as the New York Times has noted, will have a very uphill battle selling tariffs to a business community that actually understands how they work.

Some of these Trump-world clowns probably believe the earth is flat…..

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Technology And Speech: A Conundrum

Americans have always engaged in disinformation. Political foes have historically disparaged each other; activists of the Left and Right have used pamphlets and newspapers, then radio and television, to spread bile and bigotry. Those of us committed to the principles of free speech have argued that–whatever the damage done by propaganda and lies (Big and small), allowing government to censor the marketplace of ideas would be a greater danger. 

I recently posted a relatively lengthy defense of that belief, which I continue to firmly hold.

Nevertheless, It’s impossible to ignore the fact that today, technology–especially the Internet–has vastly increased the ability to disseminate lies, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda, and I suspect I am not the only free speech purist who worries about the growth of widely-used sources that enable–indeed, invite and encourage– inaccurate, malicious and hateful communication. 

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now “X”) is a prominent example. Musk dispensed with the site’s previous content moderation policies, invited Trump to return, and recently welcomed back the far-right Austrian who received donations from and communicated with the Christchurch terrorist before the 2019 attack. Since Musk purchased the social media site, such far right users have proliferated.

The founder of the so-called Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, who preaches the superiority of European ethnic groups, was banned from Twitter in 2020 under the former management along with dozens of other accounts linked to the movement amid criticism over the platform’s handling of extremist content.

He’s back.

As Max Boot recently wrote in the Washington Post, “X (formerly Twitter) has become a cesspool of hate speech and conspiracy-mongering.” 

The problem became especially acute following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel when the platform was flooded with antisemitic and anti-Muslim misinformation. It’s like watching a once-nice neighborhood go to seed, with well-maintained houses turning into ramshackle drug dens.

That deterioration of the neighborhood has been confirmed by organizations tracking digital bias:

The Center for Countering Digital Hate reported a surge of extremist content on X since Musk took over in 2022 and fired most of the platform’s content moderators. The center found tweets decrying “race mixing,” denying the Holocaust and praising Adolf Hitler. The thin-skinned tech mogul responded by filing suit; early indications are that the federal judge hearing the case is skeptical of X’s claims.

The focus of Boot’s article wasn’t on the Free Speech implications of bigotry spewed by widely-used social media platforms, but on the fact that taxpayers are essentially subsidizing this particular cesspool.

What galls me is that, as a taxpayer, I wind up subsidizing X’s megalomaniacal and capricious owner, Elon Musk. His privately held company SpaceX is a major contractor — to the tune of many billions of dollars — for the Defense DepartmentNASA and the U.S. intelligence community. He is also chief executive of Tesla, which benefits from generous government subsidies and tax credits to the electric-vehicle industry.

Musk needs to decide whether he wants to be the next Donald Trump Jr. (i.e., a major MAGA influencer) or the next James D. Taiclet (the little-known CEO of Lockheed Martin, the country’s largest defense contractor). Currently, Musk is trying to do both, and that’s not sustainable. He is presiding over a fire hose of falsehoods on X about familiar right-wing targets, from undocumented immigrants to “the woke mind virus” to President Biden … while reaping billions from Biden’s administration!

 

Musk is a “front and center” example of the conundrum posed by “Big Tech.” His obvious emotional/mental problems make it tempting to consider him a singular case, but his misuse of X in furtherance of his narcissism is simply a more vivid example of the problem, which is the ability of those who control massive platforms to distort the marketplace of ideas to an extent that has previously been impossible.

 

I have absolutely no idea what can or should be done to counter the threat to democracy, civic peace and reality that is posed by social media platforms and propaganda sites masquerading as “news.” Wiser heads than mine need to fashion regulations that require responsible moderation without infringing upon the genuine exchanges of opinion–even vile opinion– protected by the First Amendment. Figuring out how to walk that line is clearly beyond my pay grade.

 

One thing that government can do, however, is refrain from financing people who, like Elon Musk, are using our tax dollars to create division and foster bigotry. The First Amendment may protect his cesspool from sanctions, but it certainly doesn’t require financial support. As Boot concludes, Musk

 

 can espouse views that many Americans find abhorrent, or he can benefit from public largesse. He can’t do both — at least not indefinitely.

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