Tag Archives: Musk

When Ignorance Meets Arrogance

In Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton wrote

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Reflection and choice require something entirely absent from Trump, Musk and their respective clown shows: knowledge and understanding.

MAGA’s ferocious assault on knowledge, expertise, and factual communication has given us today’s constitutional crisis–a crisis that reflects not just the massive civic ignorance of the general population, but the arrogance of the White Christian Nationalists who can–thanks to the Internet–choose such “facts” as they want to believe. Of course, as Hamilton would tell us, choosing false facts is not “reflection,” and ignoring both inconvenient facts and laws does not facilitate rational choice.

There is a chasm between the world inhabited by people who are capable of recognizing the current coup and the credulous souls and MAGA cultists who combine profound and visible ignorance with a wholly unearned arrogance–who take the laughable pronouncements from Trump and Musk at face value.

In a recent Substack letter, Paul Krugman described that chasm. 

Here’s where we are as a nation right now:

1. We may be in the middle of a trade war. Or maybe not

2. We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis. No maybe.

3. We may be in the midst of a sort of digital coup, which might as a side consequence cause large parts of the federal government to cease functioning at all.

The unifying theme here, I guess, is that the federal government has been taken over by bad people who also are stunningly ignorant.

Krugman referenced the “concessions” made by Mexico and Canada, in return for Trump backing off his ridiculous tariffs.  Neither country agreed to do anything it wasn’t already doing--indeed, as Heather Cox Richardson has noted–these “concessions” confirmed agreements previously reached with the Biden administration.

As Krugman wrote,

The U.S., on the other hand, agreed to crack down on weapons shipments to Mexico. Trump will spin this as a victory; low-information voters and some intimidated media outlets may go along with the lie. But basically America backed down.

So is Trump the classic bully who runs away when someone stands up to him? It definitely looks that way.

Let’s be clear, however: this isn’t a case of no harm, no foul. By making the tariff threat in the first place, Trump made it clear that America is no longer a nation that honors its agreements. By caving at the first sign of opposition, he also made himself look weak. China must be very pleased at how all this has played out.

And as I argued the other day, the now ever-present threat of tariffs will have a chilling effect on business planning, inhibiting economic integration and damaging manufacturing.

Krugman described Musk’s effort to abolish USAID (which the man-child called a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,”) pointing out that Musk not only isn’t president — he isn’t even a government official. Trump’s approval is irrelevant: shutting down an agency established by Congress is both illegal and unconstitutional.  Only Congress can legally abolish it.

This isn’t about saving money–USAID is responsible for a tiny fraction of the federal budget, although few voters understand enough about the federal budget to recognize how small a portion it is. Krugman observes that “in Musk’s worldview the mere fact of trying to help people in need makes you a radical-left Marxist who hates America.” And helping people is what USAID does; it funds humanitarian programs around the world. It feeds, medicates and vaccinates people. It saves lives.

Its termination–or even a pause–will cause many deaths.

And how many voters understand the enormity of the threat posed by the takeover of the Treasury’s computers by Musk’s interns?

Those systems control all federal payments, from grants to nonprofits to Social Security checks to salaries of federal workers. The potential for mischief is immense. 

Imagine that you’re a federal contractor who has made campaign donations to Democrats; suddenly the government stops paying what it owes you and brushes off inquiries by saying that they’re working on the problem. Or you’re a federal employee who, according to somebody in your office who has a personal grievance, has expressed sympathy for DEI; somehow your regularly scheduled salary payments stop being deposited into your bank account. Or even imagine that you’re a retiree who canvassed for Kamala Harris, and for some reason your checks from Social Security stop coming.

Don’t say they wouldn’t do such things. We’ve seen these people in action, and of course they would if they could.

As I type these words, America is in thrall to people who disregard the law, disregard court orders to stop, and whose arrogance deprives them of any understanding of the immense and long-lasting harm they are doing, as they play to the cheers of an equally ignorant cult.

Instead of “reflection and choice,” America is submitting to “accident and force.” And the rest of the world is watching.

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No More Rule Of Law

Talking Poiints Memo has been considering what the publication calls “Musk’s Little Green Men.”

The little green men are the Musk operatives who have been taking over the top federal administrative agencies–the Office of Personnel Management, the OMB, GAO, the Treasury Department…).  TPM asks “Who are these guys?” and the answer turns out to be far from comforting. These Musk flunkies are young men between 19 and 24 years of age. Several are college dropouts who left to go into tech and are currently interning at Thiel’s or Musk’s companies. At least one is a “Thiel fellow.”

They know a lot about computers–and nothing, obviously, about the Constitution or the rule of law.

These interns have gained access to the private information of millions of government employees. They have connected insecure computers to the secure ones used by the federal agencies, allowing them access that could allow them to cut off payments to government vendors, Social Security recipients, humanitarian NGOs and state governments.

Like Musk, these young “techie nerds” are unelected, unappointed and unauthorized– and happily violating numerous laws.

As Josh Marshall writes,

In other words, hard right, techno-red-pilled bros, who now have access to things like your social security checks (whether you get them or not), your financial and, likely in some cases, medical records and at least the ability to shut down whole sections of the federal government at will by simply turning off their funding spigots. (Not good!) It sounds crazy and absurd to think that individual people could have that kind of power absent anything the law recognizes. But this is what it means when you’re this far up (or down, choose your metaphor) in the brain stem of the national government. This is what it means when you have access to the central Treasury Department payment network. You can simply turn off a spigot of funding. (I’ve now had it described to me precisely how you do it.) If you have that access, whether it’s legal or not isn’t relevant. The best analogy I can provide is that there’s some person at your bank who could just change a setting and suddenly all your checks and payments would be rejected and your funds would be frozen. Now imagine if “you” is NIH or USAID or … well, Social Security.

Musk is claiming that they’ve “found” $4 billion dollars of “waste” a day, and is threatening to turn it off. Of course, what Elon Musk considers “waste” is undoubtedly similar to the version of “free speech” with which he destroyed Twitter’s utility and credibility. 

Whether Musk’s version of “waste” is accurate or not, however, is beside the point. What he and his band of techie hackers are doing is illegal. Monumentally illegal. 

Senator Ron Wyden has challenged the hacking–noting that Musk lacks a security clearance and has multiple conflicts of interest. (The full text of his letter is available here.) 

To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems … The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The press has previously reported that Musk was denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China — a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems — endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.

Americans did (narrowly and with the help of significant voter suppression) elect one megalomaniac, but no one cast a vote for Elon Musk. No voter, no legislative chamber, no public official was empowered to authorize his takeover of vital federal agencies, or the substitution of his opinion about expenditures for that of Congress.

While Trump diverts public attention by undermining what had been the world’s strongest economy, terrorizing immigrants and making the country safe for White Christian Nationalists, Musk is managing the coup.

Neither respects–or obeys–the law.

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It’s Even Worse Than We Expected

I expected the incompetence and the racism, and the first few days of the Trump Administration fulfilled those expectations. The wholesale assault on diversity–not just the elimination of DEI, but the scrubbing of any mention of minorities from websites (including those used by medical researchers)–accompanied the nominations of pathetically unqualified Whites, unintended confirmation of the charge that MAGA defines “merit” as “White guys.”

Those nominees are being confirmed by spineless GOP Senators to “manage” a workforce that is under attack. Those of us who read and understood Project 2025 anticipated these deeply concerning efforts to destroy civil service rules that  protect  professionalism and guard against politicization of the federal workforce.

But as Robert Hubbell has recently explained, what we are seeing is monumentally worse. It’s a coup. And–as he also says-the longer we fail to recognize that we are seeing a slow-rolling coup attempt, the longer it will take for us to recover. The coordinated attacks on the DOJ, FBI, Office of Personnel Management, Treasury Department, and dozens of other agencies leave little room for doubt.

Taken together, those actions amount to a hostile takeover of the US government by those who are loyal to Trump rather than to the US Constitution. The only word that accurately describes that situation is “coup.” Any other description is a sign of fear, submission, or surrender.

Hubbell proceeds to enumerate the activities that justify identifying what is occurring as a “coup.” (The linked essay has references confirming the allegations.)

Elon Musk and his DOGE infiltrators have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM.) They’ve connected non-government computer servers to the US personnel mainframe computers, seized private information about millions of federal employees, and locked senior managers out of their agency’s computers. They’ve moved “sofa beds” into the OPM offices and put the offices into a “lockdown mode.”

That takeover is what allowed Musk to send his unauthorized memo inviting millions of federal employees to resign in exchange for eight months of “non-working paid employment.”

Musk and DOGE have also attempted to seize control of the US Treasury payments system. That system is the gateway through which all federal funds flow.

When a senior manager at the Treasury asked why Musk needed access to the highly sensitive system, the manager was immediately placed on leave. He chose to quit, instead. ..The Acting US Attorney for Washington, D.C., fired about 30 US Attorneys who prosecuted January 6 insurrectionists…. Think about that for a moment: The convicted felons who attacked the Capitol have been pardoned and the loyal servants of the Constitution who prosecuted them have been fired. That fact should outrage every American.

At the same time, the FBI fired eight of its most senior leaders. They headed divisions responsible for cybersecurity, national security, and criminal investigations.

The FBI has also fired dozens of agents who worked on investigations of January 6 insurrectionists and asked for a list of every agent across the US who worked on the largest criminal investigation in the history of the FBI. That list will include hundreds—possibly thousands of FBI agents. The implication of the memo ordering the compilation of the list is that those agents may be fired.

Dozens of government websites have been taken offline to be scrubbed of references to diversity, gender, or human attributes that are not white, male, and Christian. (The Census Bureau website was offline, presumably to remove evidence that America includes people who are not white male Christians.) Websites relating to LGBTQ equality, women’s health, transgender issues, and scientific knowledge in general were taken down.

The Pentagon has advised NBC, NYT, NPR, and other mainstream media outlets that they would be “rotated out of the building (i.e., the Pentagon)” to make room for NYPost, Brietbart, and OANN.

All of this is happening as the Economic-Idiot-in Chief has slapped 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. As Hubbell quite accurately notes,

the Canadian auto industry—which is a major parts supplier to the US auto industry—cannot survive for a week with 25% tariffs. The Canadian supply chain will shut down, the American car industry will be severely damaged, and tens of thousands of US autoworkers will be laid off. We aren’t talking about inflation increasing or the cost of eggs. We are talking about tens of thousands of job losses and an economic shock likely to lead to a recession….

Soon, very soon, Americans will be called upon to leave the comfort of their homes and the anonymity of their computer screens to engage in massive, coordinated action to remind Trump and Musk that they are servants of the people, not vice-versa.

There is no longer any way to ignore what is happening, or to “sane-wash” MAGA…..

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Buying Political Office

Americans are about to experience the political results of our new Gilded Age. After some forty plus years of growing financial inequality–where the gap between the rich and the rest has steadily grown–we have inaugurated a government by and for the obscenely rich.

As Heather Cox Richardson recently noted, Elon Musk is expected to have an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Musk–who benefits from government contracts worth billions of dollars–will be in an office adjacent to the White House. (Whatever happened to that old-fashioned notion about the necessity of avoiding conflicts of interest?)

It isn’t just Musk. Other members of the world’s richest men’s club flanked Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. They reportedly included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who are worth almost a trillion dollars combined, were joined by other obscenely rich panderers: the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman; the CEO of the social media platform TikTok, Shou Zi Chew; and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai.

During his confirmation hearing, the billionaire nominee Trump has chosen for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, outlined his plans to enrich the rich (and screw over the poor) during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, telling committee members that extending Trump’s tax cuts for the rich would be his highest priority.

Trump has assembled a cabinet notable for the wealth of his nominees (and equally notable for their lack of relevant knowledge and experience), but as the Brookings Institution has recently pointed out, American governance by the rich rather than the competent has grown significantly at all levels.

The linked study documented three major conclusions, of which only the last is at all comforting:

Altogether, across four election cycles from 2018 to 2024 there were 183 candidates who contributed more than $1 million of personal money to their campaigns.

Republicans constituted 68% of all candidates contributing more than a million to their campaigns.

Most rich people who spend personal money on campaigns lose.

The study’s introductory paragraph asked the pertinent question.

The richest man in the world now sits close to the President elect and uses his powerful social media platform, X, to opine on everything from daylight savings time to visas for skilled workers. As the new administration takes shape, the number of multi-millionaires and billionaires moving to Washington grows. While this is good for Washington area real estate agents, is it good for democracy? Will someone who earns $14 million per day be able to appreciate how important $1,976.00 (the average monthly social security payment) is to millions of Americans?

The obvious answer to the question posed by that last sentence is no. The Brookings article cited a previous study that looked at the political priorities of the rich.

In 2013, three political scientists studied the political views of over 100 rich Americans, whose median wealth was $7,500,000.00. They found large differences between the policy preferences of the rich compared to average Americans. 

Ya think?

Every so often, I cite a musical lyric that seems (at least to me) to illuminate a current political issue. Here’s one: the flower girl in My Fair Lady sings that all she wants is a “room somewhere, far away from the cold night air”–somewhere where she can have “warm hands, warm face, warm feet.” There are far too many Americans who fall into that category–people struggling every day to find lodging or keep the heat on and the car running and the baby fed.

I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires have absolutely no understanding of those struggles, no comprehension of the choices facing millions of America’s working poor–and rather clearly, no sympathy for them.

There are certainly wealthy individuals who do understand that their own ability to thrive depends upon a government that supports an economically stable middle class–who understand that job creation depends upon the existence of a public with enough disposable income to buy their widgets, rather than on the whim of an “entrepreneur” waving a magic wand. Those individuals didn’t share the dias with the fat-cat, self-satisfied billionaires who will have effective control of America’s government and who are interested only in amassing greater wealth and power. Trump’s billionaire toadies have evidenced zero understanding of the purpose of government and no interest whatsoever in the notion of the common good. 

President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, and he was right. President Biden warned us about the coming oligarchy, and he was also right.

Between the White Christian Nationalists and the oligarchs, the next few years will be…challenging. To say the least. 

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What We Will Inaugurate

In a little over a week, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the (dis)United States–an outcome that seemed unthinkable not that long ago. Among the reasons for that outcome was the refusal of millions of Americans to cast a ballot; if turnout had just held steady from 2020, Harris would have won. It’s hard to dismiss suspicion that racism and misogyny were more potent than a desire to keep a mentally-ill felon out of the Oval Office.

Some political supporters saw Trump as a path toward personal gain. As Josh Marshall wrote on Talking Points Memo, many Washington “players” saw Trump as a vehicle for their own ambitions. He wasn’t just old and increasingly worn out, but he also wasn’t particularly invested in what would happen once he was in the White House. His focus was on not going to jail and  exacting vengeance over his foes. As Marshall noted, that disinterest in actual governing leaves lots of openings for people who see an opportunity to direct–and benefit from– government policy. There’s little sign Trump cares. He’s already gotten what he wants.

We see evidence supporting Marshall’s thesis in what currently looks like the “co-Presidency” of Elon Musk. An article in Common Dreams introduced readers to the Mump regime:

Welcome to America’s “Mump regime,” governance of, by and for the oligarchs in which an erratic unelected white supremacist gazillionaire whose new hobby is buying presidents is cosplaying as shadow president to cash in – and fuck kids with cancer – alongside a senile grifter selling everything in sight: Bibles, sneakers, perfume, hotels, cabinet seats, diplomatic posts and democracy itself. Beware: Just to be clear, “We now have a criminal enterprise, not a government.”

The article notes that Trump has assembled a group of billionaires–13 so far–to staff his oligarchy, but notes that Musk is both the richest and most influential.

A likely illegal alien and white supremacist who grew up in apartheid South Africa, made a fortune from a car that kills twice as many people as the industry average, and though foreign-born found a way to power by giving a useful idiot $277 million to become his puppet master. A good investment: Since the election, Musk has made $170 billion, most from Tesla and SpaceX investors eager to see him end all those pesky safety and labor rules that cut into profits.

Buying Trump was so profitable Never-Elected Pres. Musk is already malevolently branching out. He’s threatening people in Congress, including “jackass” moderates of both parties, with unseating them by throwing money at potential primary opponents if they dare to disagree with him. Governing by threat, tweet and financial heft comes so easily to the guy who quickly turned Twitter into a bigot-invested haven for hate akin to “a Munich beer hall hall in 1933” that he’s even telling Germans how to vote – for Nazis. “Only the AFD can save Germany,” he posted in defense of anti-immigrant fascists who want to purify Europe by casting out people it considers lesser, if not subhuman. Weirdly, he did it on the same day 100 years ago Hitler was released from a Bavarian prison, and the New York Times declared him a “tamed…sadder and wiser man” than when he’d tried to overthrow the government.”

It’s difficult to predict how successful the Mump Administration will be in implementing its announced policies. Despite having “served” as President for a term, Trump has clearly learned little or nothing about governance, and Musk (who believes he knows everything) is equally ignorant of the way things actually work. The GOP’s majority in the House is narrow and it’s filled with culture warriors and White Nationalists more intent upon appearing on Fox News than governing. They’re adamantly opposed to anything approaching negotiation or compromise. If the country emerges relatively unscathed by the looney-tune administration taking shape, we will owe that escape to their massive dysfunctions.

Unfortunately, however, even incompetent clowns can do a lot of damage.

I keep thinking of that Mark Twain quote: Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

On Inauguration Day, a number of Hoosiers who might be considered “Mark Twain patriots” will reaffirm our support for and love of our country and for what I have called “the American Idea”–the philosophy animating our constituent documents, and summarized by America’s first motto: e pluribus unum. 

Ours will be a simple message: in our America, government serves the common good, and everyone deserves a seat at the civic table. (You can find more information about that gathering here.)

Join us if you can.

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