Oh, I'm sure this ends well.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/musk-treasury-access
'It's a Coup': Musk's DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security
"In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system.
He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts' block on the administration's spending freeze. He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend's companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.) He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE's goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.
Owens noted that Musk wasn't "chasing these cuts for their own sake. He's helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself."
"It's nice to believe in a fantasy in which Musk and DOGE work alongside civil servants to improve technology and services for Americans and save a few bucks along the way. But all evidence points to the contrary," Owens continued. "The richest man in the world, whom no one elected to any government position, is seeking unprecedented access to confidential information, including information pertaining to his own business interests, and seems hell-bent on cutting off as much funding as possible for the programs that matter to the rest of us."
I mean if I'm being honest, I don't think Owens criticisms or predictions of potential disaster go far enough. Yes, it's bad enough that a billionaire Afrikaner who literally believes billions of people are useless eaters who can and should be sacrificed for the goals of creating billions of "artificial minds" and escaping to Mars after rich people have burnt the planet to the crisp, has his fingers inside the payment system that supports America's most vulnerable people, and sure it's not at all good that Musk has access to information he can use to make himself even richer. But as long as you're committed to not actually calling Elon on a fascist, it's hard to understand the scope of what's just occurred here.
For starters, there probably isn't a more identifying clutch of sensitive personal information than the Treasury Department payment system; Musk, a literal billionaire nazi supervillain, now has more personal information on the political enemies of the American fascist movement (read: anyone who isn't going for this Pork Reich bullshit) than the fucking FBI and we know for a fact he's a vindictive little fash muppet who absolutely delights in targeting people who criticize or oppose his frankly quite unhinged agenda. If Musk/Trump/America First want to target, detain, or even eliminate whole swathes of their political enemies and people the fash think shouldn't exist, they now have access to more than enough information to start rounding folks up and conducting political purges.
Furthermore, and while this might not be "news" to folks who've been closely following this fascist movement and Musk's (successful) attempts to buy it, this makes it absolutely clear that the guy running this shitshow isn't an elected official at all - it's Musk. The fact is, a government is at its heart, a system of taxation and spending; if Musk and his allies in the tech industry now have their hands on the purse strings (and all the juicy data that entails) they are in all reasonable sense of the words, in charge of the government. Trump might have "won" an election in a rigged oligarchy, but the fascist wearing the pants in this arrangement is very clearly Elon Musk; a guy in a fascist death cult, who can't run a social media company, builds cars that burst into flames, and wants to eliminate vast portions of the media because they make fun of him for being the most divorced man ever.
Given all that, I am once again asking my fellow Americans if they're sincerely planning to just let this all happen for four years on the off chance a party full of collaborators wholly owned by the same rich people that own Trump, may win a potentially hypothetical election in a rigged oligarchy. Or, are you ready to start becoming ungovernable and shut this shit down, knowing that there will be personal costs involved, the fascist police state will respond with violence, and the liberal establishment which is openly musing that they're happy to let you suffer under authoritarianism to teach you a lesson about not voting for them, will be of no assistance whatsoever and in fact will likely help the fash punish you.
The choice is yours, and it's not a good one; but I still hope you choose wisely.
#USPol #Fascism #Treasury #Musk #Trump #SocialSecurity #PoliceState #Coup #PorkReich #AmerikanMusik
https://www.commondreams.org/news/musk-treasury-access
'It's a Coup': Musk's DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security
"In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system.
He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts' block on the administration's spending freeze. He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend's companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.) He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE's goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.
Owens noted that Musk wasn't "chasing these cuts for their own sake. He's helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself."
"It's nice to believe in a fantasy in which Musk and DOGE work alongside civil servants to improve technology and services for Americans and save a few bucks along the way. But all evidence points to the contrary," Owens continued. "The richest man in the world, whom no one elected to any government position, is seeking unprecedented access to confidential information, including information pertaining to his own business interests, and seems hell-bent on cutting off as much funding as possible for the programs that matter to the rest of us."
I mean if I'm being honest, I don't think Owens criticisms or predictions of potential disaster go far enough. Yes, it's bad enough that a billionaire Afrikaner who literally believes billions of people are useless eaters who can and should be sacrificed for the goals of creating billions of "artificial minds" and escaping to Mars after rich people have burnt the planet to the crisp, has his fingers inside the payment system that supports America's most vulnerable people, and sure it's not at all good that Musk has access to information he can use to make himself even richer. But as long as you're committed to not actually calling Elon on a fascist, it's hard to understand the scope of what's just occurred here.
For starters, there probably isn't a more identifying clutch of sensitive personal information than the Treasury Department payment system; Musk, a literal billionaire nazi supervillain, now has more personal information on the political enemies of the American fascist movement (read: anyone who isn't going for this Pork Reich bullshit) than the fucking FBI and we know for a fact he's a vindictive little fash muppet who absolutely delights in targeting people who criticize or oppose his frankly quite unhinged agenda. If Musk/Trump/America First want to target, detain, or even eliminate whole swathes of their political enemies and people the fash think shouldn't exist, they now have access to more than enough information to start rounding folks up and conducting political purges.
Furthermore, and while this might not be "news" to folks who've been closely following this fascist movement and Musk's (successful) attempts to buy it, this makes it absolutely clear that the guy running this shitshow isn't an elected official at all - it's Musk. The fact is, a government is at its heart, a system of taxation and spending; if Musk and his allies in the tech industry now have their hands on the purse strings (and all the juicy data that entails) they are in all reasonable sense of the words, in charge of the government. Trump might have "won" an election in a rigged oligarchy, but the fascist wearing the pants in this arrangement is very clearly Elon Musk; a guy in a fascist death cult, who can't run a social media company, builds cars that burst into flames, and wants to eliminate vast portions of the media because they make fun of him for being the most divorced man ever.
Given all that, I am once again asking my fellow Americans if they're sincerely planning to just let this all happen for four years on the off chance a party full of collaborators wholly owned by the same rich people that own Trump, may win a potentially hypothetical election in a rigged oligarchy. Or, are you ready to start becoming ungovernable and shut this shit down, knowing that there will be personal costs involved, the fascist police state will respond with violence, and the liberal establishment which is openly musing that they're happy to let you suffer under authoritarianism to teach you a lesson about not voting for them, will be of no assistance whatsoever and in fact will likely help the fash punish you.
The choice is yours, and it's not a good one; but I still hope you choose wisely.
#USPol #Fascism #Treasury #Musk #Trump #SocialSecurity #PoliceState #Coup #PorkReich #AmerikanMusik
'It's a Coup': Musk's DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security
"I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems," Sen. Ron Wyden said.oliviarosane (Common Dreams)
Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (3 Wochen her)
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes •
"It's just funny to me that the mainstream reporting on this mostly focuses on the idea that Musk could fuck around with your social security check. I mean it's not that it's not true, but they clearly aren't willing to cope with the reality that these guys are fascists, and this is literally how you seize control of a faux democratic state and start rounding up "undesirables." The fact that they won't CALL these people fascists, is the only thing keeping them from connecting the dots. I get "follow the money" but if you can raid the coffers for billions WHILE pursuing a fascist agenda and eliminating your political enemies, that's what billionaire nazi supervillains are gonna do."
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes •
I mean it's not that I don't think nazi billionaires are planning on looting the US treasury, or even that I disagree with people who're saying they're crashing the dollar to get rich/obtain more power. It's just that fascists use the whole cow, and constantly searching for reasons why folks in what amounts to a reactionary techno-fascist death cult don't REALLY mean to transform society into a dystopian sci-fi novel about oligarchic fascism is imho, an unhealthy impulse right now.
You're right, it's about the money, but if you don't think it's also about the power, or their intentions to enact a Longtermist (read nightmare dystopian fascist) agenda, you're telling yourself polite fictions. They're absolutely robbing the world, and they absolutely intend to place themselves in permanent control of a fascist police state through force. Both of these things are true; so assuming the fascist stuff is all window dressing and the heist is what matters is just another form of wishcasting.
Look I dunno how many times I have to say this, but this shit is *really* real. We really have hit the end of the line, the planet really is on fire, and we really are at a point where either capitalism goes or billions of people die horribly. The billionaires are embracing fascism and a technocratic-death cult precisely because all of this is true. They've already made their choice; billions of us are gonna die so they can maintain their (capitalist) way of life if they have anything to say about it. And you can't do that in anything that looks like a democracy, even a faux democracy, without altering the social contract in some pretty horrible ways. For over ten years now people have been telling me I'm talking conspiracy theories but dawg, they say this shit in the open, you just have to take them seriously even though it's hard because they sound like Bond villains. How do you march billions of people to their deaths so a tiny handful of nazi billionaires can keep getting richer even as the planet burns? Well you ain't gonna do it DEMOCRATICALLY; people aren't going to CHOOSE to die for your profit margin. So you need fascism, and they have constructed an elaborate belief system and a plan to take over the entire Pig Empire, to justify and enact that fascism.
I get that it sounds like a dystopian fan-fic, but this is reality and it's unfolding right in front of your eyes. And if you're waiting for for-profit, Pig Empire media owned by the VERY SAME fascist billionaires planning to kill you and your family for pennies on the share as the world burns, to TELL YOU that all of this is real - you're a fucking mark. Nothing I'm saying isn't "about the money" - it's literally about ALL of the money; the ability to continue extracting profit on a boiling planet while billions die. Your poverty of imagination and refusal to interpret the news that this is all real, does not change that.
Hallucinationsofasiliconslab •
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes •
LukefromDC •