2025 American Political (ob-?)Scene

J

JRT

Well-known member
The election is forcing much change, and it seems none too early to start the prologue for what is coming next year.
 
David Perdue, Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to China, is a curious choice. He was a senior VP at Reebok, which is not known as a “buy American, shun China” kind of business. He was CEO of Dollar General, the low-price, overwhelmingly imported general merchandise retail chain. He also has a single term of office in the US Senate, something few before him have managed to achieve (incumbent reelection is the norm).

He has two attributes that make him highly qualified for high office in this administration. First, he believes in election irregularities even where courts have found none. And second, he has a quasi-criminal stain on his record for insider trading while serving in the Senate.
 
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DOR said:
Here's one for all you fiscal conservatives out there!

Trump calls for abolishing the debt ceiling
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Well yeah. Donald Trump is economically speaking a Democrat on everything except taxes. I've said it a few times.

As far as 2025, the state of the House of Representatives being so narrowly held is going to make it a completely worthless body as comes to legislation, which means legislatively everything with any sense of partisanship would be coming out of the Senate ex-spending bills because the Senate can't start those. I expect the Executive Branch to therefore be superpowered as comes to getting the actual sh*t that needs done done, which suits Trump fine. I also expect people like Thomas Massie to get vilified by the GOP by the time we get to 2026.

First potential Trump coalition family argument coming as relates to H1-B visas. Trump came out in favor of them and backing Elon Musk who is hard pro-H1-B visas. Some tea leaves on Musk's potential power in the new administration even against some of previously Trump's staunchest allies and supporters like Steve Bannon.
 
CNN said:
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
Trump strips Bolton's security detail upon taking office.
(0 min, 54 sec)
Within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump terminated the Secret Service detail that was assigned to his former national security adviser John Bolton. CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports the details.
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News just coming in that 88 FBI agents involved in criminal investigations of Trump have been fired and then walked out of their offices. Allegedly they were informed that the reason they were being dismissed was precisely because they did investigate Trump! Trump has of course gone on record saying this was not the reason. :rolleyes: This is going to get real ugly! There has to be grounds for a wrongful dismissal case.
 
Monash said:
News just coming in that 88 FBI agents involved in criminal investigations of Trump have been fired and then walked out of their offices. Allegedly they were informed that the reason they were being dismissed was precisely because they did investigate Trump! Trump has of course gone on record saying this was not the reason. :rolleyes: This is going to get real ugly! There has to be grounds for a wrongful dismissal case.
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This destructive power grab is just getting started. They seem to be going after not only the few at the top at FBI & DoJ, but also hundreds of FBI agents who investigated crimes committed on the 1/6 attack on the Capitol. And Musk is making a power grab on the Federal payments system at Treasury.

MSNBC said:
Friday, 31 January 2025
'That's what a banana republic does': Trump's 'dangerous' purge of FBI & DOJ begins
(06 min, 58 sec)
MSNBC's Ali Velshi is joined by David Rohde, NBC News Senior Executive Editor for National Security, and former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, to discuss the breaking news of the firings of a slew of high-ranking leaders at the FBI and Justice Dept. prosecutors tied to January 6 cases.

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Saturday, 01 February 2025
Top Treasury official exits as Musk makes grab for federal payment system
(05 min, 47 sec)
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department announced his retirement Friday after decades of service, following a dispute with surrogates for Elon Musk over the federal payment system through which trillions of dollars are distributed every year. Isaac Arnsdorf, senior White House reporter for the Washington Post, discusses with Rachel Maddow.
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JRT said:
This destructive power grab is just getting started. They seem to be going after not only the few at the top at FBI & DoJ, but also hundreds of FBI agents who investigated crimes committed on the 1/6 attack on the Capitol. And Musk is making a power grab on the Federal payments system at Treasury.
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This piece of shit sums it up. Him and I really should have a face to face, New Yorker to New Yorker, but he is most of all, a coward. As for Musk I'd kick his ass back to South Africa. Oh, wait, apartheid is out of favor. Hmm, even better.
 
Looks like Musk has gained control of the US Treasury Department's payments system, what is euphemistically characterized as the nations federal checkbook. This is potentially extremely dangerous to the ongoing continuation of "the full faith and credit" of The United States, because just one of the things at risk is the US Dollar's continued position as the world's reserve currency, which could quickly evaporate if Musk decides to delay payment on US Treasury debt instruments (bonds, etc.).

Credit = Trust
...can't have one without the other.

Bloomberg_News said:
Monday, 03 February 2025
Musk and DOGE Appear to Have Access to Sensitive Treasury Payment Systems
(01:42)
Elon Musk said his “DOGE team” of government efficiency enforcers is shutting down some payments to federal contractors, suggesting that the world’s richest man may have access to sensitive systems used at the US Treasury Department.
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Never mind.
The Orange Anti-Christ has decreed that all grocery prices will bow down to him, from on top of a mountain of new taxes, er, "tariffs."
 
tbm3fan said:
As for Musk I'd kick his ass back to South Africa. Oh, wait, apartheid is out of favor. Hmm, even better.
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He's not a legitimate American in my book. It seems plainly evident he committed immigration fraud and lied several times on federal forms regarding his status and on his citizenship application back in the 90s.

Now for $290 million in political funding, we have a grifting, goosestepping, sieg heiling illegal immigrant, unelected, exercising powers with no confirmation or oversight, being given full rein to raid and rampage through all sorts of federal office and agencies.

He can fire whomever he wants unchecked, ignoring any law governing and regulating the civil service, access any system, record, or file without regard to sensitivity, security, or classification levels, all the while retaining his roles at his menagerie of taxpayer-funded and taxpayer-subsidized businesses that have sucked on the public teat for the better part of two decades.

He feels he's been victimized and unfairly regulated and fined by the FAA in the past, and demanded the heads of the FAA top brass last fall in a Sept 25th tweet, and was obliged. Nine days into this second term, we get a plane crash with 67 dead. Thanks Elon.
 
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Laws are being broken, but who is going to enforce the law, and against whom?

Is it going to be a constitutionally defined nation with balance of power and rule of law, or is it devolving into rule by law by the elites holding the executive power?

Trump has been elected POTUS, and the SCOTUS has already ruled that except for POTUS' removal from office by processes clearly defined in the Constitution (eg. his finite four year term in office, the 22nd amendment limiting reelections, 25th amendment removal by cabinet, congressional impeachment, etc.) the POTUS, in all actions taken as POTUS, is above criminal law and civil law. And likewise so seems now the power of his agents acting under his authority, and with protection of immunity by the POTUS' executive power. Nobody is going to remove Trump anytime soon. Federal law enforcement and prosecution are (or will soon be) under his executive control, are no longer independent from Whitehouse control. Neither SCOTUS nor Congress have means of enforcing their authority, except by congressional impeachment, which isn't happening.
 
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Kleptocracy...
The serial grifter, convicted felon, and alleged racketeer, and POTUS Don Johnny Trump seems to assert that the US Treasury is now his personal piggy bank and slush fund.

Reuters_News said:
Monday, 03 February 2025
Trump says US sovereign wealth fund could buy TikTok
(01 min, 59 sec)
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund within the next year, saying it could be used to buy TikTok, which faces a ban in the US on national security grounds.
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What else will this "Sovereign Wealth Fund" buy? ...and from whom? ...and at what transaction price? ...and which third party collects their fees from this activity seemingly unsupported by any legislation?

What could possibly go wrong?
 
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CNN said:
Tuesday, 04 February 2024
Musk says naming 6 young men working for DOGE is a crime. 'Wired' journalist responds.
(10 min, 09 sec)
CNN's Erin Burnett speaks to Katie Drummond, the global editorial director at WIRED, about the backgrounds of some of the young men working for Elon Musk to cut government agencies. WIRED reports that the men they identified are young and have little to no government experience.
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Wired said:
Sunday, 02 February 2025
The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover
by Vittoria Elliott

Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”
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"You have committed a crime."

LOL.

Elon Musk publicized the names of government employees he wants to cut. It’s terrifying federal workers

XINrh8L.png
 
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MSNBC said:
Satirday, 08 February 2025
Trump pick for FBI, Kash Patel, took $25k for role in Russia-linked anti-FBI film
(06 min, 10 sec)
The disclosure forms for Kash Patel, Donald Trump's pick to lead the FBI, show a $25,000 payment from a Russia-linked filmmaker for Patel's participation in a pro-Russia propaganda film attacking the FBI.
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Some thoughts on this Elon Musk and DOGE...

So they fired all the people whose job it is to investigate fraud and abuse in the federal government, the inspectors general. Illegally, without the required 30-day notification period to Congress. Why did they need to be gone so fast? What was the hurry?

Meanwhile, we have this billionaire, Elon Musk, who made his fortune in various industries in which either the government is the customer (SpaceX), or there's enormous government subsidies, rebates, and grants (Tesla, SolarCity).

Tens of billions in taxpayer money have flowed into Elon's pockets.

Elon Musk, who already has very obvious conflicts of interest, is now in charge of a quasi-official government agency with no Congressional oversight, the purported mission of which is to tackle fraud and abuse in the federal government.

Any chance here Elon stole from the taxpayers, committed fraud against the federal government, illegally received more than he should have, and this whole DOGE thing is just a smokescreen to cover up his thefts?

I don't know if it's true, but the circumstances here just seem a bit too suspicious.
 
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