#felonious musk

[rejectingrepublicans]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

The courts told him to keep his paws off the Treasury so now he’s moving onto the IRS.

[republicansaretheproblem]

[aunti-christ-ine]

I couldn't find this on YouTube, but omg it's an awesome, awesome video if you can hold your nose and watch it on "x" ... *ahem* TWITTER.

Unless, of course, it's already been (surprise surprise) deleted by Sissy SpaceX. Won't hurt to try. 🤷‍♀️

[ghost-oftheriver]

what

[crypticpine]

When Elon Musk does another stupid thing adding to the pile of reasons he shouldn't have money.

[tiggymalvern]

1 through 3 of these are already happening.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5123663-democrats-blocked-entry-usaid/

The lawsuits are coming on many different fronts from so many different groups.

4 is a slam dunk. Trump and Musk are both narcissists who surround themselves with yes men and hate being told that they're wrong. It's not a question of if they'll end up detesting one another, it's only a question of when, and people need to be digging into every little fault line between them tom accelerate it.

5 I know nothing about 😭

“Musk hasn’t been confirmed by Congress. His “department” was never authorized by Congress. No one other than Trump has given Musk any authority. No one knows exactly who Musk’s goons are; they have not been vetted yet are handling some of the most sensitive personal information in the government. Not even Trump has the authority to stop your Social Security payments, let alone your Medicare or Medicaid or unemployment insurance or your food stamp benefits. Yet Musk and his goon squad assert they’re able to do so if they believe those payments are illegal. Musk boasted on his social media site X that he was “rapidly shutting down … illegal payments.” But who is Musk to decide that a payment is illegal?”

—

Why the world’s richest man is messing with your religion, your Social Security and everything else

I realize Democrats are out of power and can’t do much with legislation to stop this. 

I also realize this all happened in 3 days and appears to have caught them flatfooted (though I struggle to accept that nobody knew this was going to happen – DC leaks like wet cheesecloth).

Okay. So what can they do?

Off the top of my head:

1. Members of Congress get the the bus and go to one of these agencies where Musk and his unvetted goons are installing rootkits, stealing our private information, and breaking the law. Tell the press they’re going to be there, and make a whole lot of noise. Force media to pay attention to this.

2. Stop everything in Congress. No unanimous consent, no approval of nominees, absolutely no help. Republicans uniformly opposed President Obama’s popular agenda, it shouldn’t be this difficult for Democrats to uniformly oppose Trump’s unpopular agenda.

3. File lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. Force them into court to defend and justify their plainly illegal actions. Force them to defy judges. Force them to take this all the way to the corrupt SCOTUS.

4. Trump and Musk are weak little boys with fragile egos and this unholy alliance will eventually fracture. Speed that up by talking a whole lot about President Musk.

5. Tell Chuck Schumer to shut the fuck up forever for a minute because his communications team is maybe the worst I have ever seen in my adult life.

I don‘t know that any of these things will actually stop this attack on America from these fascist scumbags, but I am pretty confident it will force the national conversation to be about the coup that was accelerated this weekend, instead of the fucking Grammys.

[filosofablogger]

A Second Gilded Age? Only For The 1%

What happens when wealth and power are at the top of a government?  The 99% become pawns in a game they cannot win.  Today, we stand at the brink of just that … and while numerous people are unwittingly contributing to making that happen, two people are working to turn the Disunited States into a plutocracy that will benefit only the richest and most powerful.  Robert Reich has some history and…

[rejectingrepublicans]

Reminds me of those cell phone batteries that were exploding a while back and those cheap e-bike batteries that keep exploding and burning down houses.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

😖

[republicansaretheproblem]

[gwydionmisha]

Aren't this and his decoy voter registration site illegal?

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-system-is-rigged/

The System Is Rigged

It’s old news that a New York jury found former president Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records before the 2016 presidential election.  He protested that the trial was rigged, naturally.  What else can a guilty man running for the White House a second time say?   His followers need none of his excuses. They are pledged to believe his version of events. A few will admit Trump is a flawed vessel.  They give him their blessing because they are  White Christian Nationalists  who believe he is doing God’s work. The country isn’t leaning in their direction,  however. The alliance between would-be saints and an uber-sinner might be laughable if they weren’t abetted by powerful allies. The names of some of these allies appear in the  April/May edition of Forbes magazine.  Not White Christian Nationalists, they are members of the billionaire club that controls how money flows around the globe. Liquidity allows them to cast long shadows in both local and international affairs and maintain …heavily directorial systems  [that] are fundamentally rigged to the benefit of those at the very top. What they share with White Christian Nationalists is an antipathy to democracy and the notion of one man one vote.  Driven by blind ambitions, these money changers fail to see how much their wealth derives from the governmental structures they seek to undermine.  Where would Elan Musk be without federal subsidies?   And thanks to the holes they have poked in our tax laws many of them, like Trump, can boast that they’ve never paid their fair share.  Not one of them has given  94% of their income to the public good since dinosaurs roamed the steamy forests of the Saraha.  Freed of their social obligations, these entrepreneurs invest their money in schemes to influence international monetary agencies designed to regulate them.  The  Investor-State Dispute Settlement System (ISDS) is an example. One reporter alleges the organization is so degraded that multinational corporations run off with billions of taxpayer dollars. (Victories in the Global Movement Against Corporate Globalization,” by Melanie Foley, Public Citizen, May/June, pg. 10)  Look what happened in Togo.  This small nation introduced legislation to regulate cigarette content in the hope of protecting the health of its citizens. The dream died when the ISDS allowed manufacturers to sue. Knowing these multinationals had coffers many times larger than its national budget, Togo backed down.  A Boston University report on the ISDS also documents the agency’s leniency toward the fossil fuel industry. One of its regulations allows that enterprise to sue based on a claim that cutting carbon emissions harms its financial interests. How rigged is that?  Rather than fight these multinationals directly, the Union of Concerned Scientists has proposed reforms to strengthen the ballot box.  (“Strengthening Our Elections—And Our Democracy,” by Seth Schulman, Catalyst, Spring 2024, pgs. 16-17)  They point out that even the modest reform of well-designed ballots can affect the outcome of elections.  In addition, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) wants to protect our democracy by starting at the top.  He proposes to force Supreme Court judges to recuse themselves if they have apparent conflicts of interest.  His suggestion may have come too late.  The High Court dealt democracy a crippling blow in Citizen’s United.  By a  5-4 decision, it extended First Amendment rights from individuals to institutions. Since then, money has poured into our political campaigns, providing large corporations with megaphones to silence the voices of the people. You bet, Mr. Trump!  The system IS rigged. The wonder is that twelve ordinary citizens who were approved by your attorneys could arrive at a verdict and find you guilty of 34 felony counts. That unanimity makes your rage and the cries of your lackeys who call you a martyr unconvincing. What a majority of us hear is “Send in the Clowns” I do have one regret about the verdict, though, Mr.  President. Neither of you nor I will live long enough to see what history will make of your legacy.

[prokopetz]

What is it with trust-fund-kids-turned-tech-moguls and unwittingly confessing to felony tax evasion while trying to own some rando on the Internet? First Musk, now Mullenweg – like, do these guys see a cute tax filing trick and just automatically assume that they're the first person in the world ever to think of it, without bothering to check whether it's, you know, a federal crime?