Tag Archives: Musk

Who Do You Distrust?

In 2009, I wrote a book titled “Distrust, American Style.” The publisher’s blurb summed up its theme: “When people wake up every morning to a system that doesn’t respond to their efforts or accomodate their most basic needs, it should not be surprising that they don’t face the day with an abundance of trust.”

Declining trust has ominous implications for something that sociologists call social capital--the relationships among members of society that facilitate individual and/or collective action. The term refers to networks of human relationships that are characterized by reciprocity and trust. As one scholarly paper has put it, social capital is the lubricant that facilitates getting things done, that allows people to work together and benefit from social relationships. It is absolutely essential to the internal coherence of society– the “glue” that facilitates social and economic functioning.

It isn’t really necessary to understand the functioning and varieties of social capital to understand the importance of trust. Think about your daily activities: you drop your favorite sweater off at the cleaners, trusting that it will be returned–clean. You deposit your paycheck in your bank, trusting that the funds will be credited to your account and available to spend. You  pick up a prescription, trusting that the medication has been properly prepared and is safe. At the grocery, you trust that food you buy is safe to eat. You board a plane, trusting that it will not crash into another mid-air.

You get the picture. In the absence of trust, society and the economy cannot function. And an enormous amount of that trust is based upon effective and competent government regulation of banks, food processors and air traffic (among other things).

In my book, I examined the decline of social trust, and the theories being offered for that decline. Robert Putnam suggested that growing diversity had eroded interpersonal trust; my own research pointed to a different culprit: the prominent failures of religious,  business and governmental institutions. When I wrote the book, America was in the midst of widely-reported scandals: Enron and other major companies engaging in illegal activities, sports figures taking performance-enhancing drugs, the Catholic Church covering up priestly child molestation, and several others. We were just emerging from an Iraq war widely understood to have been waged on specious grounds.

My conclusion was that fish rot from the head–that when a citizenry is no longer able to trust its economic and governing and religious institutions–especially its governing institutions– that lack of trust threatens essential elements of social functioning.

In the years since, our entire environment has become rife with distrust. White Christian Nationalists suspect and reject most elements of modernity; we’re faced with the enormous gap between the rich and the rest (and evidence that not all the rich amassed those fortunes ethically or legally); we have a rogue judiciary, a castrated Congress, and most recently a federal coup by mentally-ill autocrats intent upon destroying the government agencies that have been most effective at earning citizens’ trust.

A recent Gallup Poll surveyed the trust landscape, to determine who we still trust–and who we don’t.

Three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement. Grade-school teachers rank second, with 61% viewing them highly, while military officers, pharmacists and medical doctors also earn high trust from majorities of Americans.

The least trusted professions, with more than half of U.S. adults saying their ethics are low or very low, are lobbyists, members of Congress and TV reporters.

Of the remaining occupations measured in the Dec. 2-18, 2024, poll, six (including police officers, clergy and judges) are viewed more positively than negatively by Americans, although with positive ratings not reaching the majority level. The other nine, notably including bankers, lawyers and business executives, are seen more negatively than positively, with  more than 50% rating their ethics low.

That poll was conducted before the takeover of our government by Trump and Musk, before the clearly illegal, unethical and untruthful activities that have–in Steve Bannon’s immortal words–“flooded the zone with shit.” Even before that assault, Gallup reported that there had been a serious long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions. Trust in Judges, police and clergy has plummeted.

In that 2009 book, I wrote that the trustworthiness of business and nonprofit enterprises depends on the ability of government to play its essential role as “umpire,’ impartially applying and reliably enforcing the rules. When government is not trustworthy, when citizens cannot rely on the Food and Drug Administration, the FAA or the Social Security Administration, among others, trust and social capital decline.

We’re back to Hobbes’ state of nature.

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Good-By To The Constitution

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been providing “Constitutional Minutes” to Women4Change; for the past few weeks, I’ve been sending a brief description of a constitutional provision, and an explanation of how Trump is violating it, to the organization for posting on its webpage. It occurs to me that I should share a couple of those explanations here, in support of my assertion that we are in the midst of a grand-daddy of a Constitutional crisis.

Let’s look, for example, at Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship.

Section One of the 14th Amendment reads as follows: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Trump’s Executive Order, in pertinent part, reads: It is the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons:  (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

The law is clear. A president cannot repeal part of the Constitution by executive order. Congress cannot repeal a Constitutional provision by passing a new law. Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, and subsequent ratification by three-quarters of the states.

Or let’s look at Elon Musk’s rampage through the federal government.

In our constitutional system, power comes from We the People. Only officials selected through constitutional methods may wield power in our name. Past Supreme Court cases have make it clear that individuals who serve in “continuing” positions and who exercise “significant authority” on behalf of the United States must be appointed consistent with Article II’s  Appointments Clause. That clause sets forth two methods to appoint “officers of the United States.” “Principal” officers must be nominated by the president and are subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.

With respect to “inferior officers,” the Constitution allows Congress to give the appointment power to the president, to the head of a department, or to the courts. However, inferior officers must be subject to the supervision of someone other than the president. Those who report directly to the president are by definition principal officers.

The Appointments Clause subjects individuals wielding significant authority — principal officers —   to Senate confirmation. Elon Musk is clearly wielding significant power (as evidenced by growing references to him as a “co-President.”) His activities through DOGE—a “department” that does not exist—are wreaking constant havoc with the operations of critical government agencies, threatening everything from FEMA’s responses to South Carolina’s fires to the timely delivery of Social Security checks.

There are at least two pending lawsuits alleging that Musk’s power cannot be squared with the Appointments Clause—that to exercise the authority he is exercising, he must be appointed as provided by the Constitution. (One such case, in Maryland, was filed by current and former federal employees and contractors; another, in Washington, D.C., was brought by a number of states.) The judge in the Maryland case said that he was “highly suspicious” of the administration’s (phony) explanation for Musk’s role. The judge in the Washington case has found that  Musk has “rapidly taken steps to fundamentally reshape the executive branch,” with no apparent “source of legal authority” and that his actions appear to describe “precisely the ‘executive abuses’ that the Appointments Clause seeks to prevent.”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve identified several other obvious and egregious violations of America’s founding charter. There are numerous lawsuits pending, and growing public anger, but there is no guarantee that Trump will obey the courts, and thus far, no indications that Congressional Republicans will locate their spines.

Meanwhile, Trump and Musk are busy destroying the federal government’s ability to operate domestically, and betraying our allies abroad.

As the saying goes, we aren’t in Kansas anymore….

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What Could Go Wrong?

It really isn’t possible to keep track of the lawsuits being filed against the blizzard of Trump/Musk assaults on government and the rule of law. Suits have been filed by state Attorneys General, unions representing government workers, and a wide range of non-profit organizations challenging indiscriminate and uninformed “slash and burn” tactics.

It remains to be seen whether this lawless administration will comply with court rulings–and how far the rogue and corrupt members of the Supreme Court majority will go to accommodate Trump.

In the midst of all this is a lawsuit filed by Public Citizen, representing the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) demanding “an immediate halt to the massive and patently illegal invasion of privacy being carried out by Elon Musk’s “DOGE” at the U.S. Treasury Department.”

The organization has described he basics of the lawsuit. 

The Treasury Department possesses sensitive personal and financial information for millions and millions of Americans who send money to or receive money from the federal government.

Federal laws protect such information from improper disclosure and misuse — including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it.

But instead of protecting Americans’ private information as required by law, Scott Bessent — Trump’s jillionaire Treasury Secretary — allowed DOGE full access to the data.And he punished the Treasury employee who — in accordance with his job duties and the law — tried to protect that information from improper access.

The lawsuit charges that “the scale of this intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”

The complaint cites the legal framework for access to this information–the laws established by Congress to protect the information–and the fact that DOGE has ignored that framework and those laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and several IRS statutes.

A similar suit has been filed by attorneys general of 19 states who asked for–and received– an emergency temporary restraining order blocking Elon Musk and DOGE team from accessing Treasury payment systems. That suit alleged that allowing DOGE to view information maintained by Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The lawsuit noted that the payment files in question contain “sensitive personally identifiable information,” or PII, like bank account numbers, as well as “Federal Tax Information (FTI)” protected from unlawful disclosure under Code Sec. 6103 and “Automated Clearing House (ACH) data.”

During Trump’s first term, Americans were spared the effects of several potentially disastrous measures by the overwhelming incompetence of Trump’s cabinet, which was composed of cronies who had no idea how government worked and routinely ignored the legal processes necessary to accomplish their goals. (And those inept cronies look like geniuses compared to the collection of predators, toadies, nutcases and ignoramuses of Trump II.) 

During his first term, Trump largely obeyed the various adverse court rulings triggered by that ignorance. This time, there are sobering indications that our mad rulers–having neutered Congress– will also ignore the courts, eviscerating the Separation of Powers which is foundational to the nation’s legal system.

Currently, courts have issued decisions blocking DOGE from access to the sensitive, private information contained in Treasury’s files; the extent of DOGE’s compliance is, however, unclear.

 I shudder to think what a group of self-important 19-to-24-year-olds might do with the bank account information of millions of American citizens, let alone the other personal financial information in those files. But even if those IT interns are more trustworthy than they appear, respect for individual privacy is an important social good.

As one essayist has noted, 

In an era where digital footprints are ubiquitous and personal data is often treated as a commodity, the concept of privacy has never been more critical. Despite common arguments that dismiss privacy concerns with the assertion, “I have nothing to hide,” the importance of privacy extends far beyond concealing wrongdoing.

Respect for individual privacy is an essential element in keeping personal information from being misused. The more information that is available about an individual, the easier it is to exploit it via identity theft, phishing attacks, and other forms of cybercrime. 

The last paragraph of that linked essay is particularly applicable to the threat posed by Trump/Musk:

Accepting the “nothing to hide” argument can lead to the normalization of surveillance, resulting in a society where constant monitoring is the norm. This shift can erode the checks and balances that prevent abuses of power. In such a society, the line between public and private blurs, and the potential for governmental or corporate overreach grows, threatening the liberties of everyone, regardless of their behavior.

No kidding….

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How We Got Here….

I recently came across a quote–I’ve misplaced the source–that summed up the conundrum that keeps so many of us up at night.

Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

How did that–how could that– happen? 

There are really two imponderable questions involved: one, what motivated his supporters to ignore those very obvious facts about him, plus the disaster of his first term, and return him to the Oval Office? And two, what led millions of Americans to conclude that there was no need to inconvenience themselves by going to the polls?

This blog has spent a lot of time and pixels on that first question. The superficial answer is that the Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party–it has become a White Christian Nationalist cult. The more difficult question is: why? What is it about White Christian Nationalism that is so appealing to some people that they are willing to overlook all the demonstrable deficits enumerated in that opening quotation, and support a man who lacks a single redeeming human quality? (He isn’t even one of those evil men whose despicable behaviors are covered by charm or distracting good looks–his physical appearance and personality are both repulsive.)

As regular readers of this blog know, my answer to that first question is the deep-seated racism that is America’s original–and continuing– sin. Throughout our history, far too many people have chosen to “other” those who look or pray differently. Today’s Christian Nationalism is a modern version of the attitudes that motivated and justified slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and  periodic eruptions of anti-Semitism. Christian fundamentalism feeds the persistent misogyny that allows MAGA folks to joke about sexual assaults and dismiss the significance of predatory sexual behaviors. 

There are clearly a lot of unhappy people who want to blame some “other” for their disappointments and failures–many more than we like to recognize. If there was any doubt about the immense role of racism in support for Trump, his anti-DEI rampage should have eliminated it.

But what about the second question? What failure of American life explains the significant number of people who simply didn’t bother to vote? Some of them probably didn’t want to choose between a Black woman and a clown–they shared MAGA’s biases, but detested Trump, so they opted out. Others were undoubtedly victims of the multiple vote suppression tactics employed by GOP operatives. But those two categories can’t explain the large numbers of no-shows.

Over my 21 years of teaching, I reluctantly concluded that America’s schools have failed their most important function:  citizenship education. The nation’s public schools weren’t established simply to teach the three Rs–they were also, and importantly, intended to be constitutive of a public–to turn out informed citizens who understood the system they inhabited, and recognized that membership in a polity involves civic responsibilities. (Voucher programs–as I’ve noted– wage war on that civic mission of the schools, and undermine efforts to forge a united citizenry.)

For too long, too many Americans have been–civically speaking–dumb, fat and happy. They’ve accepted the benefits of living in a free society without worrying about their obligation to maintain it. They’ve ignored politics, followed favored celebrities rather than civic or political leaders, dodged such civic duties as jury duty and voting, and complained about paying their taxes–all while assuming that police and fire departments would continue to protect them, that their Social Security checks would appear on their due dates, that the National parks would be open when they wanted to visit…expectations that are currently at risk.

If there is any bright side to the Trump/Musk destruction currently being waged, it is that people are being awakened to the fact that the maintenance of a stable government and civil society requires them to be informed participants–that they are not guaranteed an effortless free and livable society, and that continued progress toward realization of the American Idea is not inevitable. 

If and when enough good Americans eject the clowns, buffoons and bigots installed by our megalomaniac co-Presidents–if and when We the People regain control of our governing institutions, rebuilding civic education should be a first order of business. 

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If you want to understand the disastrous budget Republicans are trying to pass–and the process they’ll need to negotiate to do that–I will be doing a Zoom interview of Economics Professor Denvil Duncan from 7:00 to 8:00 tomorrow night, for the Central Indiana Indivisible chapter. You can register here.

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Heroic And Principled

When I was growing up, in a time-frame not all that far removed from the Second World War, it wasn’t uncommon for people to ask ourselves “What would I have done if I’d been an average German citizen during the Nazi era? Would I have had the courage to hide a Jewish person? To protest?”

I’ve always been suspicious of the folks who confidently assert that they’d have stood with the moral minority; when an entire society has decided to go along with power and barbarism –either because they agree that their problems have been caused by “those people” or because it has become very dangerous to object–history tells us it is the rare individual who will risk fiscal or personal harm to resist.

I am gratified to report that–in this dangerous time– America is not devoid of such individuals.

Recent reports confirm the principled resignations of twenty-one workers from DOGE.

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

This report follows widespread coverage of the departures of several principled lawyers in the Department of Justice, some of whose scathing letters have been widely circulated. 

And now, the two top designers at Tesla have left the company.

While the linked report didn’t include the reason these two resigned, it did note that the departure of these two pivotal figures comes at a time when Tesla is experiencing huge problems, significantly exacerbated by popular anger at Musk’s efforts to destroy American government.

Last year was terrible for Tesla. Bad financials. Multiple recalls. Abysmal safety record. Lawsuits. The Cybertruck disaster and cratering sales. All of it tied to design problems and lack of innovation. Add to that the dip in brand loyalty thanks to CEO Elon Musk’s toxic political activity, of course.

The article noted that this confluence of problems has led one of Tesla’s biggest market supporters to warn that the company may implode in 2025.

In recent years, Tesla has faced increasing scrutiny because of poor quality, poor design choices, and the poor personal choices of its founder. Until very recently, the Texas-based automaker has been able to ride out those storms by being the only game in town. But as the legacy manufacturers upped their electric vehicle game and stepped into the market, Tesla’s many faults have became more obvious.

The departure of top designers comes as Tesla’s sales are cratering–European sales are down 45% from last year, and the media is filled with reports of Tesla owners–famous and not–returning their cars in order to protest Musk and DOGE. 

Tesla’s problems don’t just diminish Musk’s net worth; they also provide a corrective to the myth that he is a successful entrepreneur. Much like Donald Trump, Musk’s fortune began with a large inheritance from his father. He did not “invent” the Tesla–he bought the company, and contrary to carefully nurtured PR, its early success was largely a matter of timing and lack of competition. While his business operations haven’t been the outright frauds that six-bankruptcy-Donald’s have been, his fortune has been built largely with taxpayer dollars, through billion-dollar contracts with the federal government–contracts that DOGE is protecting by shutting down agencies that were investigating charges of corruption in his companies.

Resignations by principled public servants are admirable. Unlike the billionaires (like Bezos) who immediately bent a knee to our would-be overlords, most of these people lack significant resources to fall back on–and by earning the enmity of the Trumpers, they will face barriers to their prospects for substitute employment 

Quitting their jobs took guts. 

Most of us lack the ability to resist in so public or significant a fashion, but the example provided by these individuals should reinforce our resolve to do those things we can do–join grassroots organizations, call and visit our Senators and Representatives, turn out for demonstrations, engage in boycotts…

If “good Germans” could hide Jews in their attics and principled Americans can quit their jobs, the rest of us can incur some inconveniences.

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