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Musk now controls all US payments 🚨 | USDA freezes payments to farmers

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Bobfripp said:
Yes, I should have said foreign-owned debt.

Still, it's remarkable that Japan is number one. I would have thought China would number one.
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I would have thought so too but I knew Japan was pretty high up there. They buy quite a bit to help their exports. Some of the same reasons that China buys but Japan had more money for a lot longer.
 
Kevin Drum's guess

Elon Musk is building a report writer

The single weirdest thing Elon Musk has done is to take control of the Treasury's payment system. What's the point? Every dollar the federal government spends goes through a bunch of steps to make sure it's legitimate, approved, and due for payment. *After* that's all done, Treasury cuts the checks. It's a purely mechanical process. "Control" of the system gets you nothing.

So what is Musk up to? The conspiracy theorists think Musk is planning to insert himself in this process and simply halt any check writing he disapproves of. But this isn't just illegal, it's wildly illegal. There's just no way Musk could be thinking of doing this.

So what is he doing? Here's a guess: Musk's minions are writing some kind of custom reporting system. If you want to track literally every cent the government spends, this is the place to do it. [...]

So then, what does Musk plan to do with his nifty new reporting app? Beats me. I imagine he's designing it to notify him of discrepancies of some kind. Or to track down every last DEI-related payment. Or create God's own pivot table of regulatory spending.

I mean, who knows? But Musk figures that knowledge is power, and he's not wrong about that. The Treasury payment system might be the ideal high ground for Musk to build a personal source of spending knowledge that's independent of having to ask OMB or agency heads or anyone else anytime he wants to know something. If I were him, this is absolutely the kind of thing I'd be highly motivated to do.

If this is the case, Musk is keeping it hush-hush because he doesn't want anyone to know he's building this independent power center. But there's nothing illegal about it as long as the president and Treasury secretary both approve.
 
OldSchoolBlueBlood said:
Kevin Drum's guess

Elon Musk is building a report writer

The single weirdest thing Elon Musk has done is to take control of the Treasury's payment system. What's the point? Every dollar the federal government spends goes through a bunch of steps to make sure it's legitimate, approved, and due for payment. *After* that's all done, Treasury cuts the checks. It's a purely mechanical process. "Control" of the system gets you nothing.

So what is Musk up to? The conspiracy theorists think Musk is planning to insert himself in this process and simply halt any check writing he disapproves of. But this isn't just illegal, it's wildly illegal. There's just no way Musk could be thinking of doing this.

So what is he doing? Here's a guess: Musk's minions are writing some kind of custom reporting system. If you want to track literally every cent the government spends, this is the place to do it. [...]

So then, what does Musk plan to do with his nifty new reporting app? Beats me. I imagine he's designing it to notify him of discrepancies of some kind. Or to track down every last DEI-related payment. Or create God's own pivot table of regulatory spending.

I mean, who knows? But Musk figures that knowledge is power, and he's not wrong about that. The Treasury payment system might be the ideal high ground for Musk to build a personal source of spending knowledge that's independent of having to ask OMB or agency heads or anyone else anytime he wants to know something. If I were him, this is absolutely the kind of thing I'd be highly motivated to do.

If this is the case, Musk is keeping it hush-hush because he doesn't want anyone to know he's building this independent power center. But there's nothing illegal about it as long as the president and Treasury secretary both approve.
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BlueSmoke said:
I totally agree that it would be useful to vilify Musk as part of the push back campaign. Americans are easily spooked. And it would help to separate Musk from Trump. That combo has got to be separated.
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liberals aren't good at playing these games. However, American should not be the stupid... and nobody looks that bad next to Trump.
 
Now imagine if a Dem did this, putting all that critical information into the hands of a private citizen. Like Soros. The double standard with the Rs makes me want to slap them across the face with a cactus.
 
lawtig02 said:
Yep. This might be Trump’s most obvious feint of all.
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You think he's unserious about emptying Gaza? He undoubtedly is flooding the zone so Musk can raid the coffers, but trump isn't imaginative. trump is blunt, crude, and simplistic. Gaza is a large component of the flood, for sure, but do you really think trump won't send military personnel help bibi eradicate the Palestinian presence in Gaza? ttump is dead serious about the real estate aspect.
 
Healing said:
You think he's unserious about emptying Gaza? He undoubtedly is flooding the zone so Musk can raid the coffers, but trump isn't imaginative. trump is blunt, crude, and simplistic. Gaza is a large component of the flood, for sure, but do you really think trump won't send military personnel help bibi eradicate the Palestinian presence in Gaza? ttump is dead serious about the real estate aspect.
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I don’t think there’s a realistic way to do what he’s talking about. It just makes no sense. The surviving Palestinians will never leave voluntarily. There’s no place to establish a new Palestinian “homeland.” This would take buy in from pretty much the entire western and Arab worlds, and there’s just no chance it happens. But it WILL dominate the news cycle for the next few days.
 
lawtig02 said:
I don’t think there’s a realistic way to do what he’s talking about. It just makes no sense. The surviving Palestinians will never leave voluntarily. There’s no place to establish a new Palestinian “homeland.” This would take buy in from pretty much the entire western and Arab worlds, and there’s just no chance it happens. But it WILL dominate the news cycle for the next few days.
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I think “no chance” is patently false. The obstacles are ever present, but authoritarians with one track minds often care little about buy-in, particularly when they have the biggest guns.

I don’t think killing, or displacing 2 million people is likely, while acknowledging this type of shit has happened throughout human history. More likely, Gaza gets further reduced to rubble, people are forced to flee, Israel expands their borders into resource rich and attractive lands, and further concentrates the remaining Palestinians in a smaller ghetto.
 
Healing said:
I think “no chance” is patently false. The obstacles are ever present, but authoritarians with one track minds often care little about buy-in, particularly when they have the biggest guns.

I don’t think killing, or displacing 2 million people is likely, while acknowledging this type of shit has happened throughout human history. More likely, Gaza gets further reduced to rubble, people are forced to flee, Israel expands their borders into resource rich and attractive lands, and further concentrates the remaining Palestinians in a smaller ghetto.
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I’ll agree the odds of Trump allowing the Gaza genocide to be completed are not 0%. But the chances what Trump is talking about now — relocating the Gazans to a new place built just for them — could actually happen are nonexistent.
 


“
Representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems, according to people familiar with the matter.

The DOGE representatives have been on site at the agency’s offices this week, the people said, and they are looking at the systems’ technology as well as the spending that flows through them, with a focus on pinpointing what they consider fraud or waste. DOGE representatives are also examining the agency’s organizational design and how it is staffed, the people added.

… CMS in particular is a highly politically and economically sensitive agency. It is the nerve center of much of the nation’s complex healthcare economy, with outlays of about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2024, or about 22% of the federal total.

With around 6,710 employees, it oversees Medicare, the health coverage program for older and disabled Americans and Medicaid, for lower-income enrollees, among other areas. Many veteran CMS staffers have worked there for decades.

…
One of the people familiar with DOGE’s work at CMS said that, to their knowledge, Musk’s allies hadn’t yet been given access to databases that include identifiable personal health information of Medicare or Medicaid enrollees. DOGE also hadn’t yet accessed a sensitive accounting system called HIGLAS, or the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System, this person said.

The DOGE access is “read-only,” meaning that its affiliates cannot make changes to the systems, the person added. …”
 
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