Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

projects.propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 411 posts

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#291

Post by motorest »

rayiner wrote: post #284
motorest wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

There’s many ethnic Germans in America, but there’s almost nothing German in broader American law and civic society. Thats the distinction between the settler population (British people and African slaves, with a relatively small proportion of Dutch, Spanish, and French) and the immigrant population (everyone else). America is a country that happens to have a lot of people of immigrant ancestry. That’s an incidental…

> There’s many ethnic Germans in America, but there’s almost nothing German in broader American law and civic society.

Irrelevant. The disputed fact was that America was not a country of immigrants. The idiotic assertion raised in the parent post is a refresh of the argument that the Mayflower landed settlers and not immigrants, which is nonsense due to the fact that the bulk of the population of the US are undoubtedly immigrants.

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#292

Post by nradov »

3vidence wrote: post #216

Honest question for Americans. What do you think the federal government is doing to make you "poorer" that deserves dismantling the government. US income tax is generally lower than other advanced economies. Housing and medical insurance is mainly a state issue.

Federalism has always been a fundamental, unresolved issue in American politics. At one end of the spectrum some people think that states should be reduced to mere administrative units and all real power should be centralized at the federal level. At the other end some people think that the federal government should only deal with external affairs, and everything else should be left to the states. The issue is largely a matter of ideology rather than about whether it's making us poorer or whether federal income taxes are too high.

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#294

Post by harmmonica »

swat535 wrote: post #236
relaxing wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve neglected any discussion of democracy beyond the executive branch.

Can you expand? I keep hearing on HN about how the US is being "taken over", that there is a "coup in place" and Musk is a "fascist" and so on (I'm not making these up, these are genuine HN comments in this thread and elsewhere). I'd like someone to clearly explain to me, an outsider about why such hostility has been ushered in this community ? Please point me to specifics so that I can understand what law(s) are bei…

Please read this comment from elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42969050. Then go onto Google and read all the details about this person, including what he was given access to; how a federal court upheld his access just earlier today; and then how, hours later, he resigned when his recent social media commentary was discovered.

Quick primer: he was one of only two people who reports to Elon Musk at Doge who had access to the treasury department payment system. There is suspicion (to my knowledge not yet proven) that he had write access to the system, but there’s no debate that he had read access because an actual judge stated he could continue to have access today (judge’s decision was before the WSJ reported on the social media commentary and he resigned).

If I may, when you’ve had a chance to dig into this, would you reply here and give your take? Would you call it a major red flag? And given the contents of the social media commentary, do you see any parallels to 1939? And if you do see the parallels can you at all, I mean in the slightest, understand where the “panic” is coming from? You don’t have to be at your keyboard or phone crying “fascist!” Just wondering if you can see it, even a little bit. I can, even though I think the fascist language has lost most of its punch from overuse.

Note this is just one example of several over the last few weeks. It’s just a very clear one given there is little debate about the facts.

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#295

Post by zimpenfish »

monero-xmr wrote: post #290
zimpenfish wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does a US politician on a $175k salary become worth $80 million after 30 years in congress? Which politician are we talking about here? Or are we being generic? From what I've seen, the majority of people in Congress started off rich because, well, you need to be rich (or at least rich-adjacent) to even consider running.

Chuck Schumer, who has been in Congress since 1998 https://www.lawyersclubindia.com/wealth/chuck-schumer-net-wo...

Not wishing to disparage the good name of "lawyersclubindia" and their guesstimates but OpenSecrets has him at just over $1M in 2018[0] and ThisNation has him at $900k in 2022[1]. (Neither sounds that plausible but they are definitely less shady than "lawyersclubindia".)

The only places that have him in the 10s of $M bracket look like spam content farms who've stolen the majority of their content from Wikipedia.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/charles-schume...

[1] https://www.thisnation.com/politics/people/chuck-schumer-net...

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#296

Post by fzeroracer »

nradov wrote: post #292
3vidence wrote: post #216

Honest question for Americans. What do you think the federal government is doing to make you "poorer" that deserves dismantling the government. US income tax is generally lower than other advanced economies. Housing and medical insurance is mainly a state issue.

Federalism has always been a fundamental, unresolved issue in American politics. At one end of the spectrum some people think that states should be reduced to mere administrative units and all real power should be centralized at the federal level. At the other end some people think that the federal government should only deal with external affairs, and everything else should be left to the states. The issue is largel…

Unfortunately this isn't the dividing issue. The right doesn't actually believe in the division between states and the federal government, it's just a convenient wedge for them to push their power grabs.

That much can be seen via both how they've weaponized abortion and anti-transgender policy. First they move to remove federal restrictions so that states can freely restrict the rights of individuals, then they add federal laws which force blue states to comply either by funding blackmail or through control of the supreme court.

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#297

Post by defrost »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #282
tomrod wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a terrible name the man ruined by choosing, a perfectly cromulent Heinleinian term.

I think Heinlein ideologically is somewhat a fellow traveler with Musk and Thiel types.

In his writing persona, sure.

Not so long ago somebody on a forum made a half decent case that in real life Heinlein wasn't the turned up to 11 pro gun, anti authoritarian, libertarian, et al he projected.

The claim was he kept writing for his fans, paid attention to feedback, and played up the extremes as they sold.

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#298

Post by ZeroGravitas »

emseetech wrote: post #237
Keyframe wrote: post #116

Apparently, DOGE is also meddling with FAA's air traffic control system. I wonder what could go wrong here? https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887233566263967812

They're going to rewrite it in Nodejs and React aren't they?

From the insanely rambling Trump description it sounded like they were going to connect it to starlink because:

> You can't hook up satellites to land and you can't hook up land to satellites.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lhjqtveqxc2x

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#299

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Animats wrote: post #118

What we're seeing happen in the downsizing area is mostly from the Project 2025 policy manual.[1] The just-confirmed head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was one of the major authors of Project 2025. It's worth reading that, at least the key sections. Trump has insisted that Project 2025 is not his policy, but what's happening is close to the manual. The Project 2025 people couldn't agree on t…

Greenland at least was mentioned in project 2025 as having security implications. Trump may have freestyled some extra policy on top of that.

> Concerning Greenland, the opening of a U.S. consulate in Nuuk is welcome. A formal year-round diplomatic presence is an effective way for the U.S. to better understand local political and economic dynamics. Furthermore, given Green- land’s geographic proximity and its rising potential as a commercial and tourist location, the next Administration should pursue policies that enhance economic ties between the U.S. and Greenland.

and

> Established an office in Greenland to help counter China’s claims of being “a near Arctic state” and reoriented its programming across Asia—including establishing a USAID Mission to Central Asia—in line with America’s Indo- Pacific strategy.

Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

#300

Post by ZeroGravitas »

motorest wrote: post #185
wnevets wrote: post #69

Expect a lot more fake stories about fraud and other nefarious doings from these guys to justify their crimes. The exact something happened with twitter.

[flagged]

They're more likely to claim the agency knowingly gave $100 million worth of paperclips to the Taliban as part of a Marxist plot.*

If you're going to make stuff up, why not go big and viral.

* And yes, if you're not keeping up with the news cycle this is a thing that really happened, just with condoms not paperclips.

Post reply on HN