Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Yes, the economist trends towards more factual reporting and less propaganda. Great call.
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Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
271–280 of 411 posts
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
With DACA, Obama unilaterally decided not to enforce laws duly enacted by congress. So what keeps Trump from unilaterally deciding not to spend money duly appropriated by congress?
> With DACA, Obama unilaterally decided not to enforce laws duly enacted by congress. > > So what keeps Trump from unilaterally deciding not to spend money duly appropriated by congress? I had to think about this. What's the point/goal of giving the power of the purse to Congress if it's actually just a slush fund? If Congress can allocate money for the courts, but the executive is the one tasked with execution (DOJ)…
I think the issue is Congress enacting a slush fund and then getting mad that the executive is treating it as such.
Congress does have the authority to direct spending, but doesn’t always do so.
Here’s an example appropriation for USAID:
> development assistance
> For necessary expenses to carry out the provisions of sections 103, 105, 106, 214, and sections 251 through 255, and chapter 10 of part I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, $3,000,000,000
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8771...
If you look at the foreign assistance act it’s extremely broad. That’s how you end up with USAID giving money to AFL-CIO to fund labor movements in Bangladesh. They get three billion dollars to spend however they can creatively fit under the general categories of things like “education.” So what supervisory role has Congress really left itself over that money?
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rather than tearing the system down, let's identify the areas of rampant waste to a degree more lucid than what a news channel or podcast claims. Most areas people claims for alleged waste are legally required/statutory or spindoctored (especially grant topics). Social security isn't waste, but it is on the chopping block. It blows my mind that people are so hungry to hurt so many others and themselves in the process…
We've had since FDR to try and curb the post WW2 federal hyper expansion. Regulations keep growing, our prison population reaches one of the highest rates in world, and we get vanishingly little infrastructure or other benefits for the taxes the common man pays. Patience has expired. There was lots of time to use the scalpel. The doctor never showed up, so the pre med dropout showed up with a sledgehammer, dumb and s…
> Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.
To this, we agree. To better understand a why so many are resisting, I encourage you to read up on Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment, then who has associated themselves with that movement. The overlap in the Executive branch and Trump's more outlandish ideas are substantial. Technofascism and neofeudalism are not acceptable solutions.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Except the real issues are immigration and globalization. The US is a country of immigrants, and has been so since it's inception. H1Bs are not about limiting immigration at all. They are about having a workforce without basic rights and bestow corporations with the power of uprooting an employee's life and banishing them from the land if he even dares stepping out of line. The axes hanging over the regular folk's…
> The US is a country of immigrants, and has been so since it's inception. As JD aptly put it, that’s wrong,[1] but, regardless, so what? America is first and foremost, a democratic republic. Sentimental 20th century notions designed to assimilate the last wave of mass immigration have no binding power on the electorate. Americans are entitled to decide that they’re done with immigration, and it’s the civil service’s…
> As JD aptly put it, that’s wrong (...)
That's a mind-numbing stupid take which is rejected by the faintest cursory ancestry analysis of the US population. The 2020 census alone points out that there is as many german americans as English americans, and I'm not seeing racist anti-immigration rants targeting germans. They are the predominant ethnic group in the Northeast and Midwest regions. If not by immigration then how do you explain their presence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Americans
For a clue, check where Trump's grandfather was from and how he ended up in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Trump
The total number of european americans don't even reach 40% of the population, which is nothing new.
So if not from immigration then how do you explain that fact?
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#275I want to believe these changes can be positive, but the people in charge of enacting them have done nothing but disabuse me of trust and good faith.
> I want to believe these changes can be positive, (...)
What is there to suggest these changes have any positive trait whatsoever? They don't even carry a plausible justification.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I am not sold on these actions being done in good faith, or legally. There’s a lot of evidence of forceful behavior in obtaining access to highly sensitive systems. Also, the government is here to run services, for us, with the money we give it in the form of taxes. Removing all government services in order to save money (and provide tax cuts to the 0.1% richest people and corps.) seems to be based in the belief that…
I have lived experience dealing with selling software to government agencies. I have observed egregious activity, which to my company's government salesmen, didn't cause them to blink an eye. In one case, the DoD budget ran out of money, but the DoD budget for Disabled Veteran purchasing still had money, so we added 10% to the contract and resold through a disabled veteran's LLC, the taxpayer got screwed, the LLC-owner made a 6 figure fee for doing nothing, and we got paid. This, I was told, was literally nothing compared to what else our salesmen had seen! But I was scandalized as an honest 20-something worker bee.
Such a minor case of course. But this is a microcosm of the entire problem. No one cares, no one is incentivized, no one represents the taxpayer. How does a US politician on a $175k salary become worth $80 million after 30 years in congress? The system is rigged, and the majority of the American people see themselves as suckers and are tired of it.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#277"Demolition Crew"? That's a very kind euphemism for a collection of sycophant clowns that have no experience in government. Indeed I could not find a single one that had any experience.
You need experience to preserve and improve a service.
If you want to destroy and sabotage a service, you place incompetent people at the helm.
Even the CIA lists this as a strategy in its sabotage manual.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
High levels of government debt aren't exactly unique to America, however, America has the unique ability to issue it's own reserve currency that other countries will absolutely buy. Also isn't by far the number one government spending item the military? Why aren't they starting there?
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> According to the UST it's Social Security
Social security is reported as 21% of the total spending. It is also financed through a dedicated payroll tax. This means the federal government only acts as an income redistribution system where payroll taxes collected today are redistributed as pensions paid today.
So even though social security shows up so high, it just reflects the income redistribution scheme where the current workforce maintains retirement pensions of workers who retired.
The second largest expenditure is national defense at 15%.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having lived under authoritarianism, I strongly urge you to firmly and swiftly form a negative opinion regarding an executive fully exetcising bypass of the legislature and courts.
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> Ok, but that’s not happening in USA.
It clearly is.
> Trumps stuff is already being blocked.
That's like claiming there isn't a rape problem because a rapist attempts at raping someone is already being blocked.