Musk now controls all US payments 🚨 | USDA freezes payments to farmers
- Thread starter superrific
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Selling a Pardon would be an official act as President? Humm. I get that under the current alignment it would be impossible to prosecute the crime of selling a Pardon. But if things get bad, that could change.
superrific
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The Supreme Court ruled that no evidence relating to the terms of the pardon could even be introduced at a trial. Thus, it will be impossible to convict for selling pardons unless the pardoned person coughed it up (which wouldn't happen). This was the point on which ACB dissented but she didn't get any of the other 5 to go along.
This is why a lot of what the Supreme Court has done will have to be thrown out. I do not expect us to be bound by this bullshit. So we're going to have to make plans for how that's going to happen.
I've been trying to point out what I thought was obvious (but apparently is not); that illegitimate law has little power when it all comes down to dust. If the Supreme Court turns Trump into an unaccountable dictator, then he will meet the same fate as most dictators (and so will they). That's just the way the world works. There are centuries worth of evidence on this point. Dictators don't retire. That's just not what happens. They rule until they can rule no more, and then if they are lucky they find exile. The relatively few occasions in which dictators were dealt with in the legal system didn't go so well.
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Surely you are talking about billionaires as a class (or as an individual member of that class), not as individuals themselves. I'm sure plenty of billionaires are fine people...
Paine
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Sure. I don’t think any degree of being a fine person entitles them to billions of dollars is all.
As we’ve seen, who is considered a “fine” billionaire can quickly change.
1moretimeagain
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superrific
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How can he resign? He wasn't hired in the first place.
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whaaat? This strikes me as a fall guy/red meat situation. That commentary strikes me as less odious than Rubio's staffer, Darren Beattie, stating:
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Beattie wrote on X in October. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
and
“Britain treats its own native white people far worse than China treats its muslim Uighur population,” he wrote in August of that same year.
and
“I have more respect for Jeffrey Epstein than Bill Barr,” he tweeted in 2020, referring to the infamous sexual predator and former attorney general, respectively. “At least Epstein wasn’t a pussy.” On January 6, 2021, he spent the day on X warning Senator Tim Scott, “BLM,” Ibram X. Kendi, and Kay Cole James to “learn their places” and “take a knee” to MAGA.
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But how much damage did he do rewriting code first?
BlueCheckmark
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He now has a back door into the system. It won’t matter that he was fired, he can get back in regardless. They better be rolling it back to what the system was set at before he touched it. Even then, he would now know if there was any vulnerability inherent to the system. Good to know that the White House assured us earlier today that this crew all passed their security clearances. This shit should be blowing up the airwaves. No wonder Musk was so pissed that the names of people involved were getting out.
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This is actually kinda shocking. That he resigned, I mean...
BlooVooDoo
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He’s 25 and doesn’t have the resources to protect himself and his family for the next 4 decades and neither Trump or Musk will give the tiniest of shits.
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DOGE deputy to oversee powerful Treasury system as Musk demands cuts
The move follows the ousting of a career official who rebuffed attempts to use the payment system to stop federal spending.“…
Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive with ties to DOGE, will become the financial assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, the people said. He replaces David A. Lebryk, who resigned after objecting to Krause’s demands to stop payments on foreign aid — a measure Lebryk resisted as illegal.
Krause’s position will give him control over the Treasury Department system responsible for disbursing more than $5 trillion in annual payments, including for Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and thousands of other measures. Musk has demanded on social media that Treasury unilaterally stop sending these payments, accusing the department’s career staff of breaking the law.
The decision puts Musk’s DOGE in a potential position to make sweeping changes to the federal budget, with implications for tens of millions of Americans.
The payment system, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, contains sensitive taxpayer information, and some former Treasury officials have expressed concerns about granting access to individuals with private business interests. The move has also touched off broad alarm within the Treasury Department, the people said.
“This is the bureau designed to be run by a career, nonpolitical person, but being taken over by a member of DOGE,” said Aaron Klein, a former Treasury Department official now at the Brookings Institution, a D.C. think tank.
“It’s pretty scary — the Fiscal Service is the bureau of the people who cut the checks. They don’t determine who gets the checks. And the data that goes through this is of massive national security consequences.” …”
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Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 attorneys general accusing the president of failing to faithfully execute the nation’s laws when he let DOGE comb through federal computer systems.“… Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who was granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to these categories of officials.
The defendants — President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department — should show cause on Feb. 14 before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.
… Before President Trump took office last month, access was granted to only a limited number of career civil servants with security clearances, the suit said. But Mr. Musk’s efforts had interrupted federal funding for health clinics, preschools, and climate initiatives, according to the filing.
The money had already been allocated by Congress. The Constitution assigns to lawmakers the job of deciding government spending.
“President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,” Ms. James said in a statement. “Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.” …”
heelinhell
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When a reporter asked Trump whether Musk and his "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) task force really needed that kind of access to Americans' sensitive data, the president replied, "Well, it doesn't, but they get it easily. I mean, we don't have very good security in this country and they get it very easily."
www.rawstory.com
'Disgrace': Critics outraged by apparent confession at Trump's latest press conference
President Donald Trump was finally confronted at a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister on Friday about tech billionaire Elon Musk's rapid infiltration of government IT systems — in particular access to the system that handles almost all payments for the Treasury Department...
www.rawstory.com
Mulberry Heel
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Yep. One nice thing for them about hiring all of these very young flunkies straight out of college (or not even college grads) is that they have no resources or probably life and work experience to know how to protect themselves, can be paid less, and are therefore highly expendable. And easily intimidated and manipulated as well.
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Musk has repeatedly blatantly lied or grossly mislead about his “findings” so grain of salt:
I hope at least this is a sign of Musk backing down/moderating his attempt at unchecked control of payments out of Treasury in the face of court orders.
Note his apparent focus on blocking entitlement payments. I agree that the estimated fraud number by whoever “people in the room” are sounds insane — insanely overstated or insane if true, with widely different implications…
I am 100% cool with an audit of the process and improvements in record-keeping but Musk has proven completely untrustworthy in running or reporting such a process — and nothing he has done so far constitutes anything like a proper, professional audit.
In addition, nothing should be implemented on the fly, like weekly or daily updates to the do not pay list that could throw unsuspecting social security recipients into a bureaucratic hell if they are wrongly listed and denied their payments.
I hope at least this is a sign of Musk backing down/moderating his attempt at unchecked control of payments out of Treasury in the face of court orders.
Note his apparent focus on blocking entitlement payments. I agree that the estimated fraud number by whoever “people in the room” are sounds insane — insanely overstated or insane if true, with widely different implications…
I am 100% cool with an audit of the process and improvements in record-keeping but Musk has proven completely untrustworthy in running or reporting such a process — and nothing he has done so far constitutes anything like a proper, professional audit.
In addition, nothing should be implemented on the fly, like weekly or daily updates to the do not pay list that could throw unsuspecting social security recipients into a bureaucratic hell if they are wrongly listed and denied their payments.
- Messages
- 15,159
Musk has repeatedly blatantly lied or grossly mislead about his “findings” so grain of salt:
I hope at least this is a sign of Musk backing down/moderating his attempt at unchecked control of payments out of Treasury in the face of court orders.
Note his apparent focus on blocking entitlement payments. I agree that the estimated fraud number by whoever “people in the room” are sounds insane — insanely overstated or insane if true, with widely different implications…
I am 100% cool with an audit of the process and improvements in record-keeping but Musk has proven completely untrustworthy in running or reporting such a process — and nothing he has done so far constitutes anything like a proper, professional audit.
In addition, nothing should be implemented on the fly, like weekly or daily updates to the do not pay list that could throw unsuspecting social security recipients into a bureaucratic hell if they are wrongly listed and denied their payments.
This makes it hard to believe that Musk has made any actual good faith arrangement with Treasury or that he can be trusted in any of his related claims.