Elon Musk 1940: Londoners keep dying because Winston Churchill refuses to make peace with Hitler lol

 

Impeachment of judges is pure theatre, that's all, end of story

 

  Musk and Republican Lawmakers Pressure Judges with Impeachment Threats

 

 ... Judicial impeachments are rare and notoriously time-consuming. ... Any such move would be all but certain to fail in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed for a conviction. ...

House Republicans everywhere are taking incoming at townhalls and district office protests over DOGE layoffs and cuts, budget bill is full of more of the same

Republicans fear their big budget win is a 2026 time bomb

... Some Republicans already see signs that the backlash to the Trump administration's "efficiency" efforts is spilling over into opposition to their legislative plans. ... Republicans have been barraged the last week and a half by angry constituents at town halls and protests outside their district offices complaining about DOGE's layoffs and cuts to federal programs. ...       

The lone GOP truth-teller is Thomas Massie, who voted against the budget bill because it puts America at least $56 trillion in debt in 10 years, even with the spending cuts.

America needs spending cuts and tax increases, but Republicans are virtually incapable in their DNA of raising taxes.

 

 

Fascist Musk, Fascist Tesla: The electric car company would have been unprofitable for seven consecutive years through 2020 without selling its phony government carbon credits to other dirty automakers

 

 Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding

... Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers. ... He has been a big beneficiary of national industrial policy, especially Democrat industrial policy, through government funding. ...

About a third of Tesla’s $35 billion in profits since 2014 has come from selling federal and state regulatory credits to other automakers. The credits are given to automakers that meet certain standards, including selling a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles. Tesla is the largest seller of these credits to automakers that don’t meet the standards and want to avoid paying a fine.

These credits played a crucial role in the company’s first profitable quarter in 2013 and its first full year of profitability in 2020, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits, according to an analysis of SEC filings.

With the credits, the company instead reported a $862 million profit.

While Musk has advocated for ending the EV tax credit for consumers, he has said little about these regulatory credits. ...

Nearly a tenth of government money that has benefited Musk’s companies comes from agencies in eight states, including California. ...

In 2016, SpaceX’s success in securing federal contracts prompted rival Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin (and owner of The Washington Post), to say in a company meeting: “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” The Post reported. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”

More.

Musk's many government subsidized businesses are just the currently most prominent examples of American fascism. For bigger ones simply look into the defense industry, the energy industry, or healthcare, or Amazon's early no-sales-tax arrangement which allowed it to become the retail behemoth that it is. President Eisenhower warned us about this long ago, but we're so used to it now that we just take it all for granted.

Real capitalism is swallowed up by the combine between the taxation authority holding a gun to your head, taking your money, and giving it to the corporations.

That's the racket. That's the American way.

Republicans can't take the heat of townhall meetings angry about Elon Musk, RNC official advises curtailing public engagement after just 37 days of Trump chaos, claims the townhalls are astroturfed

House Republicans hit the brakes on town halls after blowback over Trump’s cuts

... “Obviously we’re very aware of those headlines,” a Republican National Committee official familiar with the dynamics said.

“I don’t know that a specific edict is going to come down from on high that they need to stop or anything, but a message I believe has been clearly sent that this narrative should end very soon,” the official said. “Probably the best way for that to happen is no more town halls. Elon Musk’s work still has the administration’s support, period.” ... “Pathetic astroturf campaigns organized by out-of-touch, far-left groups are exactly why Democrats will keep losing.”

 

Independent voters disapprove of Elon Musk's activities by a 2-1 margin

 Reported here:

A Washington Post-IPSOS poll last week found that 49 percent of adults disapprove of the job Musk is doing, contrasting with just 34 percent who approve. 

Notably, while Democrats and Republicans broke along predictable lines, independent voters disfavored Musk by a 2-to-1 margin, 52 percent to 26 percent.

 

Ironically enough, Kash Patel at FBI might, might turn out to be resistance

 

FBI Nominee Kash Patel Warned Elon Musk Is Becoming "One Ginormous Trust"

Kash Patel ripped into Elon Musk in unearthed podcast episodes

 

... “So, what scares me is, like,” Patel continued, “you wanna talk about a monopoly? It is the ultimate monopoly. Is he going to execute the businesses and allow others to compete? On free speech platforms, that is? Is he just going to buy everything up, and then become one ginormous trust—for lack of a better word, a monopoly—which is supposedly illegal under antitrust laws?” MAGA stalwarts such as Vice President J.D. Vance have been vehemently against monopolistic behavior and Trump even ran on a quasi-anti-trust platform. ... 

 

 “What's he going to do with all the data? That's my concern,” Patel said. “The data collection — he's got a global wifi satellite system, in space, for the world: Starlink. He has Tesla, he has, as I said, the SpaceX program, and now he'll have Twitter.” ... 

 

“Do you allow the CCP to have backdoors? Like other companies, like TikTok, has done in the past, and sell Americans’ data? Or provide Americans data directly to the CCP for future use against American and American interests? Those are questions that people should be asking, I think, rather than fixating on the ups or downs of Elon buying Twitter,” Patel said. ...

 

In one post from July 2023, Patel accused Musk of being “big tech colluding with our government to censor our elections,” adding: “Your cheap Titter [sic] posts and your Mickey Mouse clown droppings do not absolve you,” as first reported by The Daily Beast. “You are as bad as FBI/DOJ n you and are making millions from the disinformation campaigns. You are a complete and total fake who cares only about $.” ...

 

 

Kash Patel Tells FBI Staff To Ignore Elon Musk's Demand: Report

The new Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Kash Patel has reportedly told the agency's staff to ignore Elon Musk's request to justify their work or lose their jobs.

"For now, please pause any responses," reads a message sent by Patel on Saturday to all FBI personnel, calling for employees to wait for a coordinated response from the bureau. ...

 

 

 

Now the Trump administration is imitating the most odious revolutionary rhetoric of the Obama administration

 

WH's Karoline Leavitt: Trump "Is Fundamentally Transforming Our Country For The Better"

 

We are fundamentally transforming our country for the better, truly restoring our government, the 27-year old know-nothing says, when they're actually gutting it. 

These people all think they're so smart.

 

They think they're cutting something down to size which is already on its knees. Federal employment today has hardly been lower as a percentage of civilian population in the post-war. The low point was achieved already in 2018. The Leviathan State is a complete myth.

 

If Trump truly restored our government, he'd be hiring dramatically, not firing. 

For all of Trump’s and Musk’s talk of efficiency, their policies will likely slow down the government. The state needs capacity to perform core tasks, such as collecting revenue, taking care of veterans, tracking weather, and ensuring that travel, medicine, food, and workplaces are safe. But Trump seems intent on pushing more employees to leave and making the civil service more political and an even less inviting job option. He bullies federal employees, labeling them as “crooked” and likening their removal to “getting rid of all the cancer.” A smaller, terrified, and politicized public workforce will not be an effective one.

To start, let’s dispense with the notion that the government is too big. It is not. As a share of the workforce, federal employment has declined in the past several decades. Civilian employees represent about 1.5 percent of the population and account for less than 7 percent of total government spending. According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, seven out of 10 civilian employees work in organizations that deal with national security, including departments—such as Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security—that the public supports.

The reality is that the federal government has long faced a human-capital crisis. ...

More.

The country is $36 trillion in debt because it is not taxing enough, and hasn't been taxing enough since Ronald Reagan. We pretend we can borrow to infinity for what we want, but we can't afford it all anymore. That is why they're surrendering to Putin, and taking a meat cleaver to DC.

This is not a serious country, otherwise a South African wouldn't be running it.

 

 

 

 

 

Elon Musk's own version of AI, called GROK, says he is the biggest source of disinformation on X lol

 

Maybe Democrats in the US House and Senate need to sue Elon Musk because they are the injured party

 Judge Tanya Chutkan correctly ruled that the Attorneys General who sued Musk demonstrated no harm to their states.

The interests of Congress are harmed, however, regardless of party, even if most Republicans are too stupid to realize it. Their constitutional prerogatives have been usurped. Being in the majority, however, and servile to Trump, Republicans don't care. Democrats, in the minority, have no other remedy. 

Of course this is partly a political matter, in which the court might refuse to meddle, and that is arguably correct. The remedy is political in that it is to be settled at the ballot box in two years. But that seems like an awful long time to wait for the system to correct itself, and it might not.

It might take a Democrat White House lording it over congressional Republicans in the minority in the future to demonstrate to them what they seem incapable of grasping now, but of course if this stands that will be too late for them to do anything about it.

What goes around comes around, in politics as in life.

What this really is is a constitutional matter. It is about the executive branch using a novel scheme to infringe on the powers specifically reserved to the Congress. Democrats should make that their case. The court system is the traditional place to adjudicate such things.

But given outright Democrat hostility to the constitution, e.g. to the Electoral College among other things, they may just not have the heart for it.

Sad!

 

Judge Chutkan rejects call from Democratic AGs for temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access to federal data

... But Chutkan said that the states hadn’t shown “that they will suffer imminent, irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order.”

“The court is aware that DOGE’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for Plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents,” she wrote in the 10-page ruling. “It remains ‘uncertain’ when and how the catalog of state programs that Plaintiffs identify will suffer.”

Chutkan went on to say that even though the states’ larger case against Musk is “strong,” their arguments at this stage in the litigation were not good enough to satisfy the standard that must be met to warrant emergency action by the court.

“Plaintiffs raise a colorable Appointments Clause claim with serious implications. Musk has not been nominated by the President nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as constitutionally required for officers who exercise ‘significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States,’” she wrote. “But even a strong merits argument cannot secure a temporary restraining order at this juncture.”...

Congressional Republicans are unhappy with imprecise and rash spending cuts and personnel reductions, resulting in violations of the law, mistakes, and human carnage in their districts and states

 Trump faces growing DOGE revolt from GOP lawmakers

... "We all want efficiencies, there is a way to do it, and the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Awful." ... some are quietly fuming that their Constitutional role in controlling federal funds could be steamrolled in the process. The House Republican who spoke anonymously warned that many conservatives are "very constitutionalist" and may be inclined to protect Congress' power if forced to do so. "Even though it's our guy in the White House, if there's a lot of executive overreach, we want to protect the institution of Congress," they said. ...

Democrat Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) is correct: Elon Musk is an unelected interloper, with no authority and no legitimacy who makes a mockery of the appropriations process

 

 Musk exercises nonexistent dictatorial line-item-veto powers over spending and personnel as a "super cabinet" official who was never confirmed by the US Senate like the other cabinet members he now tells what's what.

The whole scheme is illegal and unconstitutional, which is why Trump is now all of a sudden denying that Musk is head of the so-called DOGE, just like Trump hastily made Musk a special government employee after lawsuits were filed on February 3 questioning Musk's authority.

It's an end run around the constitution no less serious than the National Popular Vote Compact, which seeks to neuter the Electoral College.

Trump has been making this bullshit up as he goes and has been since Musk endorsed Trump after the July assassination attempt and then became part of Trump's circle of intimates in August.

The tech oligarchy got front row seats at the inauguration for a reason.

Congress closing in on shutdown deadline with no clear plan 

“We cannot come to a deal where you hammer out gains, losses, but you come to a conclusion and you come to a meeting of the minds,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters. “That should not be subject to some third party deciding that that’s not what they want.”

“We had a deal last year, all of us and so forth, and then there was an interloper with no authority, no legitimacy, nonelected, who said, ‘Don’t vote for it,’” DeLauro said, as Democrats have continued to zero in on tech billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Former S&P sovereign bond unit executive who participated in the Obama era 2011 credit downgrade basically calls Trump's America a banana republic, and DOGE not a proper government department

 WSJ: What about DOGE’s accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system?

Kraemer: We don’t have all the details of what they took and on what basis. It seems highly irregular. People from a department, which is not even a proper government department, that have gone and gotten access to data, that we have to assume is quite, I should say sensitive, which doesn’t belong in the hands of unelected individuals. 

WSJ: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Kraemer: Yes, I think I have seen this. Regimes that don’t respect checks and balances. But they tend to be more in the emerging markets. This is exactly what sets rich and poor countries apart, right? It’s the qualities of institutions, the rule of law, the transparency of decision-making. 

So have I seen this? Yes. But have I seen it in an advanced economy, in an OECD member country? No, I have not.

The whole thing is here.

Elon Musk is the biggest federal government teet sucker in history, the wealthiest man in the world on the backs of American taxpayers, and the biggest hypocrite about it

 

The hypocrite:

Elon Musk: Many Bureaucrats, Like Samantha Power, Are Getting Wealthy At Taxpayers Expense 

 

 

The grifter:

As Musk works to slash federal spending, his own firms have received billions in government contracts

Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.

 

And don't forget the benefit of the government coin in the till for every Tesla purchased: 

I got Elon Musk's Grok to admit that the penny underpins the dollar system and allows it to be more precise, and that for saving $192 million on annual penny production, reprogramming all the accounting software would conservatively cost $5.5 billion LOL

Eliminating the penny would take only 28.6 years to pay for itself ha ha ha ha ha.

 

The cash consumer will pay the cost of the Trump-Musk penny-elimination gambit: Is it the harbinger of a coming cashless tyranny?

"The Amish have been galvanised to head to the polls and turn the battle ground red."

 

The little guy voted for Trump, so naturally Trump is going to screw the little guy, the Amish in particular.

And not mentioned in the story below is the deep resistance to eliminating cash among the denizens of America's survivalist communities. They see this as a control issue, and a potential threat to freedom because you control the cash in your pocket, but not the digital currency in your account. Cross the authorities somehow, and your account can be wiped out with a keystroke.

We already have experienced lawful gun owners and gun businesses being de-banked over gun ownership, among other culture war issues contested by liberal elites using economic coercion.

Meanwhile The UniParty has devalued the 1913 dollar to three cents. If you've only got one, eliminating the penny means you've now got bupkis.

How does the observation go? It's always the Republicans who actually advance the liberalism which the people resist when the Democrats are in control.

Every. Damn. Time.

 

To the extent rounding up occurs more frequently than rounding down, cash consumers would be paying the price for the cost efficiency Trump and Musk are seeking, said Ajay Patel, a professor of finance at Wake Forest University School of Business. ...

. . . people at the bottom of the economic ladder will probably feel the penny pinch the most.

“The individuals paying for this benefit will be those who purchase products and services using cash and will continue to do so going forward because they are either unbanked or unable to access debit or credit cards or a digital wallet,” Patel said. ...

Laura Maike, of Burton, Ohio, notes that the Amish will feel the pinch right now.

“Here in Northeast Ohio’s Amish country, we still use pennies regularly,” Maike said of her area, which includes thousands of generally cash-using Amish. “How would this work for cash-only transactions? It would be impossible to give exact change as the purchaser or seller.”

More.

 

PEW: 54% of Americans express unfavorable views of Elon Musk

Here:

Musk is viewed more negatively than positively overall. More than half of Americans (54%) express unfavorable views of the billionaire, while 42% view him favorably.

• 73% of Republicans view Musk favorably, while about a quarter (24%) view him unfavorably.
• Just 12% of Democrats rate Musk favorably, while 85% view him unfavorably.

 

And then it came to me lol

 

Obama appointed judge, Paul Engelmayer, issues sweeping order banning Musk and his allies from accessing the US Department of Treasury payments system

 Federal Judge Blocks Elon Musk’s DOGE From Treasury System: Order requires those who have accessed payment records without proper security clearance to destroy them

A federal judge in New York temporarily restricted the ability of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access the Treasury Department payment system, saying that doing so was necessary to prevent the potential disclosure of sensitive and confidential information. 

The early Saturday order by Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, precludes officials without proper background checks and security clearances from accessing the payment system through at least next Friday, including political appointees and special government appointees. It also orders any prohibited person who has had access to the records since President Trump’s inauguration to destroy them. The judge set a hearing for Friday.

Some 19 blue-state attorneys general filed the case Friday evening, saying that Musk’s DOGE initiative risks interference with the payment of funds appropriated by Congress. 

Engelmayer said the states were likely to win on arguments that the Trump administration exceeded its authority in allowing broader access to the payment system. He also said the states faced irreparable harm without court intervention for now, including “the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” ...

Well thank God.

None of these people have security clearances. The say so of President Trump is not a security clearance.

Trump appointed judge Carl Nichols stops 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on administrative leave tonight

 

Judge pauses Trump plan to put USAID staff on leave

 

During the hearing, Nichols questioned DOJ attorney Brett Shumate about why the Trump administration needed to place 2,200 USAID workers on leave so quickly.

“What is the urgency of this?” the judge asked.

“The President has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID,” Shumate replied.

I'll say. 

Buying co-president Elon Musk's Starlink terminals and funding Melania Trump's and Ivanka Trump's pet projects is corruption of the highest order.