#incompetence

[sucka99]

[overdramatic-tits]

Locking myself in a tower until further notice

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinkwhump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Once again, I find myself arriving at the weekend with a giant backlog of links, triggering a linkump, the 15th such dumpage, a variety-pack of miscellany for your weekend. Here's the previous editions:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with the latest incredible news from KPMG, the accounting and auditing giant that is relied upon as a source of ground truth for a truly terrifying share of the world's economy. KPMG has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and corruption. They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission:

https://memex.craphound.com/2001/12/05/reason-4332442-not-to-ask/

The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Don't miss the DJ remixes (and the Nokia ringtone!) that the internet thoughtfully provided when KPMG decided that it didn't want the world to know about "Our Vision of Global Strategy":

https://web.archive.org/web/20011128153057/http://corporateanthems.raettig.org/

Now all this is objectively very funny, a relic of the old, good internet from one of its moments of glory, but KPMG? They were already enshittifying, even in 2001, and the enshittification only intensified thereafter. Nearly every accounting scandal of the past quarter-century has KPMG in it somewhere, from con-artists selling exhausted oil fields to rubes:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

To killer nursing homes that hire KPMG to audit its books – and to advise it on how to defeat safety audits and murder your grandma:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

And they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

I mean it when I say this is stranger than fiction. I included it as a plot-point in my new finance crime novel The Bezzle (now a national bestseller!), and multiple readers have written to me since the book came out a couple weeks ago to say that they thought I was straining their credulity by making up such an outrageous scandal:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).

Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.

And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin

KPMG denies this. KPMG denies everything, always. Like, they denied creating "power maps" of decision-makers in the Australian government to target with influence campaigns in order to win contracts like this one. Who knows, maybe, this one time, they're telling the truth? After all, the company whose employees gather to sing lyrics like these can't be all bad, right?

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

https://everything2.com/title/KPMG+corporate+anthem

You may find it strange that I'm still carrying around the factoid that KPMG once threatened to crush a blogger for linking to its terrible corporate anthem, but that's just my "Memex Method," which helps me keep track of literally everything that seemed important to me through most of my adult life:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

One of my favorite quips from the very quotable Riley Quinn is that "leftists are cursed with object-permanence" – that is, we actually remember what just happened and use it to think about what's happening now. The Memex Method is object permanence for 20+ years worth of stuff. A lot of those deep archives never see use, but there's a surprising number of leading indicators buried in the stuff that happened in years gone by.

Take James Boyle's 2014, XKCD-style comic about the experience of driving a notional Apple car:

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/11/07/apple-updates-a-comic/

Apple, it turns out, spent the next decade working on just such a car, and while that car has now been canceled, Boyle's comic correctly anticipates so much about the trajectory Apple's products took. It's uncannily accurate – real "don't invent the torment nexus"/"cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion" stuff:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn't be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Here's the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don't own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP's printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP's own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.

But while you aren't allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP's shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.

What's more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.

I'm sorry, this is just more torment nexus shit, the kind of thing you'd expect to drop on Apr 1, not Feb 29, but I guess this is where we are. I can only conjecture as to whether HP's businesses strategists are directly taking direction from my novella "Unauthorized Bread," or whether they're learning about it second-hand from a KPMG consultant who converted it to Powerpoint form and charged $1,500/day for the work:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

All of this cartoonish villainry is the totally foreseeable consequence of a culture of impunity, in which companies like HP and KPMG can rob, cheat, steal (and sometimes even kill) without consequence. This impunity is so pervasive that the exceptions – where a rich criminal faces real consequences – become touchstones: Enron, Arthur Anderson, Theranos, and, of course, FTX.

FTX was arguably the largest-scale corporate crime in world history, stealing more than $10 billion dollars, mostly from rubes sucked in by hype and Superbowl ads. When news that FTX founder and owner Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was in for a lengthy prison sentence made a huge stir, because criminals like SBF usually walk away from the wreckage with their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune.

One of the very best commentators on cryptocurrency scams generally and FTX/SBF in particular is Molly White, whose Web3 is Going Just Great feed is utterly indispensable. White's newsletter, "Citation Needed," dives deep into the wrangle of SBF's sentencing:

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-52/

Bankman-Fried's parents – prominent law professors at top law schools – helped brief the court this week on their son's punishment. According to them, SBF faces 100 years in prison, but should be sentenced to 5.5-6.5 years at the most. Why? Because he is a vegan, who is not greedy, and feels remorse, and cares for individuals (recall that SBF presented himself as the avatar of the batshit "effective altruism" philosophy while privately admitting that he used this as a smokescreen).

The most bizarre note in the 100-page filing is SBF's mother declaring that her son is an "angel of mercy," apparently unaware of the grisly meaning of that term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_mercy_(criminology)

America's prisons are a travesty and I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but that's not the argument SBF's parents are making; rather, they're arguing that their special boy doesn't deserve the treatment America metes out to poorer, less white people who merely steal hundreds or thousands of dollars. A crook who steals ten billion should be handled the way a casino handles a whale – with concierge service.

The problem is, there are so many of these remorseless, relentless crooks that there's no way we could scale up that white-glove treatment when we finally round 'em all up and make them pay. Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik tells us about the ransomware attack that shut down America's pharmacy system last month:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-03-01-zoomer-hackers-shut-down-unitedhealthcare/

The attack brought down Change Healthcare, part of the monopolist Unitedhealth, which serves as the "pharmacy benefit manager" to a vast swathe of American pharmacies. PBM is one of those all-American finance scams, a middleman garlanded with performative complexity put there to make you feel stupid for asking why independent pharmacies all have to pay rent to this malicious, unaccountable – and now, manifestly incompetent – gang of crooks.

Tkacik's breakdown of this scam – and how it rendered Americans' ability to get the drugs they depend on to go on breathing – is characteristically brilliant. Tcacik is fast emerging as my favorite Explainer of Scams, a print version of John Oliver or Adam Conover. You may recall her work from my post last week on how private equity has taken a wrecking ball to America's hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

I always try to finish these linkdumps with some upbeat news to carry you through the weekend, and this week brought two genuinely wonderful – and totally underreported – pieces of amazing news.

The first is that Starbucks has sued for peace in the war against its workers' unions. Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized in recent years, but not one of them had a contract. Instead, Starbucks had waged dirty war on their own workers, from denying gender-affirming care to unionized employees to simply shutting down whole stores after they voted to unionize:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/14/starbucks-union-company-threatens-that-unionizing-could-jeopardize-gender-affirming-health-care.html

But the workers held fast and after years of this, Starbucks has caved, promising contracts for all unionized stores and an end to its campaign of terror against workers seeking to unionize more of its stores. In a postmortem for Jacobin, Eric Blanc rounds up "seven lessons from Starbucks workers' historic victory":

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/starbucks-sbwu-contract-bargaining/

This is the kind of listicle I can get behind. According to Blanc, the Starbucks unions won by deploying worker-to-worker organizing, a tactic that many of the new unions that are shaking up formerly impossible-to-organize jobsites are using (Blanc has a book about this coming from UC Press called "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Unionism Can Transform America," so he should know).

Other tactics that made the difference for Starbucks unions: new digital training and support tools and partnering with established unions for support and infrastructure. Blanc also calls out the success of "salting" – the venerable but largely disused tactic of union organizers applying for a job at a non-union shop in order to organize it.

Blanc also mentions government policy, including the outstanding work of NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a shrewd and committed tactician whose understanding of the technicalities of labor law have let her push for bold measures. For example, in Thrive Pet Care, Abruzzo is arguing that when a company refuses to bargain in good faith for a contract with its union, she can step in and order them to honor the terms of a contract at comparable unionized competitors until they produce a contract of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Abruzzo is one of several smart, competent tacticians in the Biden administration who are working to kneecap corporate power. Another is Rohit Chopra, chair of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, who just announced another bold, important initiative that will help Americans fight corporate corruption and get a fair deal:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-03-01-public-option-credit-card-shopping/

Chopra is taking aim at credit-card comparison sites that purport to show you where you can get the best deal. If you're an affluent person who doesn't carry a balance, this might not matter to you, but if you're an average working stiff, high interest rates can gobble up a massive share of your paycheck. What's more, credit card margins are higher than they have ever been:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/credit-card-interest-rate-margins-at-all-time-high/

The most expensive credit cards come from the big, monopolistic banks, but you wouldn't know it from the leaderboards produced by Credit Karma, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and Bankrate. All of these sites take bribes from the big banks to list their credit cards above those offered by credit unions – who are typically 10% cheaper than the big banks' cards.

The new CFPB rule prohibits this fraudulent ranking, but the Bureau is going even further. They're using their administrative powers to force banks to report their rates to the Bureau, which will publish them on a publicly funded, neutral website – what David Dayen calls "a public option" for shopping for credit cards.

This policy makes a perfect bookend to the last CFPB initiative I wrote about here: a rule that forces banks to allow you to transfer your account to a rival with a couple of simple clicks, importing all your history, payees, and everything else you need to switch to a better bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Combine that ease of switching with reliable information on which banks will give you the best deal and you get something that will directly transfer millions and millions of dollars from giant, wildly profitable banks to low-income people who've been tricked into paying them punitive interest rates.

So that's it, this week's linkdump. I promised you I'd end on a high note, and I did it. The world may be full of all kinds of terrible things, but workers and regulators are scoring big, muscular victories in battles where the stakes are real and important. Have a great weekend – we've earned it.

And remember!

The time is now to lead the way, We share the same the idea That may win by the end of the day. Our strength is here to stay. Identity, one energy, One strategy, with sympathy. These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option

Image: Stacy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/notahipster/4402860361/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[scanost]

Hey Y’all! I just put up a single on Spotify! It would be supa cool if y’all checked it out…

[blueiscoool]

In the Moscow region, Russian cops decided to demonstrate their driving skills and of course you know the rest.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

ELMO TANKED THE GOVERNMENT

TCinLA

Dec 19, 2024

The truth is that Elmo Muck, who apparently considers himself the unelected co-president after spending $150 million to elect Donald Trump, is an Unreconstructed Afrikaner White Supremacist and Broderbund Nazi, whose father took the family to South Africa from Canada because he supported and believed in Apartheid, who has no knowledge of how American politics and government actually works. But his Dunning-Kruger score is so high, he considers himself a genius about everything.

He has little understanding of how anything else actually works, since he’s really an uneducated moron whose “degrees” are phony. His reputation as the “Chief Engineer” comes from his access to his dodgy family’s dodgy fortune made in the dodgy Blood Diamond and Conflict Gem scam in the days of Apartheid, which allowed him to buy other people’s good ideas then steal the credit.

Elmo has now managed to tank the government before his alleged co-president, Felon34 - who seems to believe he became president on November 5 - even manages to take the oath of office next month.

After the bill to provide 84 days of funding to the government and prevent a shutdown at midnight this Friday was released, Elmo wrote on Xitter (that’s pronounced “Shitter”), “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”

Given that the World’s Richest Man could fund primary challengers for every member of The Party of Broken Toys in the House from his couch money, the Broken Toys sat up and listened.

Within hours, Felon34 and Corporal Couchfucker followed their leader and condemned the bill, which the Party of Broken Toys then duly tanked.

Felon34 might be coming into office with his highest favorable rating ever, and feeling untouchable after winning the popular vote by a whole 1.52%, but his favorable rating is still only at 46 percent. And that is before the government shuts down over Christmas and New Years.

Elmo then posted on Xitter that “the people (me) have spoken.”

This from the man with a 65% negative poll rating from the people he claims to speak for.

The action now piles the immediate possibility of a government shutdown atop the already high-pressure negotiations over the funding measure, leaving the Right Reverend MAGA Mike in that position traditionally known technically as Up Shit Creek Without A Paddle.

Reverend Mike didn’t have the votes to pass a Continuing Resolution without Democrats - which is why so many shiny Democratic presents were hanging in that Christmas Tree - and now he doesn’t have the Democrats, who are busy passing the popcorn as they watch the shitshow, and he still doesn’t have The Gang That Cannot Work And Play Well With Others, plus he knows there’s at least one assassin out there packing a Motion to Vacate, for use on January 3, 2025.

Government shutdowns - and failed attempts to avoid them by the Broken Toys that 75 million mouthbreathing morons voted for - are now increasingly likely to be the torpedo amidships that sinks Felon34's First 100 Days Honeymoon. They will not be able to fix this once with a full-on vote for a budget, and - assuming they can orgnize a government capable of voting for one limited CR - they will be doing this again and again this year.

That’s actually a Good Thing.

The problem is, most of the Broken Toys are ignoramuses who have no idea how government actually works. They have no understanding of or appreciation for history, so they have no way of becoming knowledgeable about governance. Florida representative Anna Paulina Lunatic went so far this afternoon as to announce she was going to vote against the emergency relief money a majority of those who voted for are in need of after the hurricane that swamped Florida. More importantly, they do not want to govern; they hate government. Thus, they have no ability and no desire to run a government and they don’t care that they don’t know how.

Reverend Mike not only has no majority support from his fellow Broken Toys, he has no support from the alleged leaders of the GOP, Felon34 and Corporal Couchfucker. The Corporal was asked several times this afternoon whether he supported Reverend Mike; he failed to reply to any of the multiple questions other than once to say “Have a nice day.”

Felon34 and Corporal Couchfucker were unable to get their candidate, Senator Skeletor, in as Senate Majority Leader. Assuming there is one of the Broken Toys they think would be a better speaker, what makes them think they could get the rest of the Broken Toys to vote for that candidate?

What happens if the Broken Toys get rid of Reverend Mike on Friday, January 3?

If memory serves about how well they worked and played with others after dumping Kevin McCarthy, they won’t have a Speaker on Monday, January 6, and won’t have a government, so who will be there to accept the Electoral Vote count to declare Felon34 and Corporal Couchfucker being voted into office?

And what are the odds they’re still trying to find their ass with both hands by January 20 and there is still no Speaker, no organized House, no budget to pay for the Chief Justice to administer the oath of office that day?

Government shutdowns that happen while there is no Speaker of the House and no way to elect one, assuming there was anyone in the Party of Broken Toys with the ability to deal with things if they did get elected, are even harder to deal with than the normal shutdowns brought about by The Gang That Cannot Work And Play With Others

With no government and no government operating budget, that also means there is no Massive Deportation since there is no money to build the camps, or pay for the ICE storm troopers.

And without a Speaker to organize the House and create the government, there is no Senate to vote on and confirm the Collection of Clucks that Felon34 has nominated to destroy America.

You know, the thought of there being no legal government at this particular point in history suddenly looks better and better.

Yes! Let the Broken Toys continue to shoot themselves in the foot!

All hail Elmo - the man who knew so little he was able to fuck up the government beyond all recognition, all by himself.

Elmo. The man who tanked the United States. It takes real genius to pull that off.

[jangillman]

[thethinkingman]

[to-fall-or-not-to-fall]

marvel doesnt know what women are, episode 1

so rn specifically im talking about the absolute travesty they made of jane's character (far from the only thing wrong with the dark world or marvel in general)

thor 1- look! a career-driven, strong female character! big brain scientist! and not even a superhero with an absurdly hypersexualized outfit!!!

tdw- bad. very stupid because marvel cannot write a woman decently past like one movie without killing her or completely destroying her personaity as an individual. DOCTOR jane foster literally studies the bifrost, and if her buddy erik selvig could work with the tesseract then she can definitely figure out a way to detect the questionable energy coming off of the aether, another infinity stone.

or like. she could have used her eyes and seen it was something unfamiliar and not immediately pOKED IT WITH NO THOUGHT FOR THE CONSEQUENCES because she is a brilliant scientist who knows not to go around absorbing random magical parasites??

later on- asks odin who he thinks he is to his face. again, one would assume someone as smart as her might have reasonably retained the bare minimum of information from thor about what his father looks like or at least noticed the amount of shiny armor he was wearing and thought, "hmmm maybe he is perhaps someone important whom i will not immediately respect for no reason just so the writers can make me look stupid to progress the plot"

but like again the writers are incompetent so no chance of that happening

THEN there is the bit where thor's entire plan to save her from the aether hinges on loki's help. and her first reaction is literally to slap him despite the fact that hes been presented as literally the only mage both powerful enough and willing to help her

and she doesnt even consider that hey, this guy invaded my planet and at some point in the very near future i will be in close proximity to him on a flying vehicle, perhaps i should not make him angry??

wtf marvel

(luckily for her loki was not as evil as marvel thinks. ill probably go off on this another time but y'all should read If Thor Didn't Have Plot Shield by Kadorienne on ao3, it's flipping amazing)

in conclusion, fanfics are better bc i get to see the characters actually be characterized lololol

ok bye

[savagechickens]

Ideal Team.

And more work.

[softysofao3]

I know it's been weeks but the JD Vance Doughnut shop video still haunts me. The amount of people who fucked up with that is astounding.

First, the preparation.

They could have contacted the owners before going. The owners might have been there, and the employees would have had warning about filming. A little research would have helped.

If you have a candidate who finds social situations difficult, prep them! I assume based on the video that it was the first time he bought doughnuts from a shop like that. They should have given him more material than just the "two dozen doughnuts, please." They could have practiced the encounter amongst themselves or JD could have done a practice stop in another doughnut place without the cameras.

Knowing him and throwing him in a semi-hostile new social setting is not a way to go. As someone who struggles with social situations, having someone film me like that would be a nightmare.

He should have had a script ready. Instead of awkwardly asking each employee how long they had worked there, he could have asked about the best things about working there. Or just anything about the product.

If you don't know how to order an assortment of doughnuts, tell them you want 1/2/3 of each. Or ask them for their favourites. Or ask about the best sellers. Anything other than "whatever makes sense".

Then the posting of the video. How the hell is someone in the year 2024 posting a video where someone explicitly states they don't want to be filmed, without AT LEAST blurring their face???? That's just basic decency people!

And who watched the video and thought the impact would be positive???? How did that video ever get released?

To my understanding (not from the US) the entire purpose of these videos is to show that the candidate is like an ordinary person. They have respect for other people, even minimum wage workers in the food industry. The JD Vance video shows the exact opposite of that. He seems to be lost among the regular people, and doesn't have any interest in what he's buying or the people serving it. I don't think I could have scripted a worse video if I tried.

I don't understand how they fucked it up that bad. Having a candidate who is not natural in these situations is not necessarily bad, but then you need to handle it better. The bar was on the floor, but they somehow still limboed under it.

[thepersonalwords]

Superficial knowledge is potentially more dangerous than ignorance. It gives a false sense of security encouraging an ignorant man to persevere in his efforts that can result in huge damage.

Eraldo Banovac

[heartsmade4more]

A lesson can look a lot like a loss. A new beginning can look a lot like a setback. Exploration can look a lot like uncertainty. Growth can look a lot like incompetence. Vulnerability can look a lot like weakness. Life isn't what happens to us. Life is how we choose to look at what happens to us.

Eddie Pinero

[dailybehbeh]

Behbeh

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Chaos

December 19, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

On Wednesday, Elon Musk instructed congressional Republicans to walk away from a bipartisan agreement to fund government operations through March 2025. Congressional Republicans dutifully obeyed Musk even though he hasn’t a clue about the consequences of his actions. Musk ordered Republicans not to pass “any bill” until Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025. If Republicans follow Musk’s command, there will be no government funding for a month (at least)--from Friday, December 20, 2024, through Monday, January 20, 2025.

If that happens, chaos will ensue.

The urge to pick a newsletter headline of “President Musk” or “The Musk Administration” was strong. But, in truth, Musk is not in charge; he is an agent provocateur of chaos. Musk lobbed a political hand grenade into the GOP congressional caucus and ran in the opposite direction.

There is much to unpack in today’s events, which will dominate the headlines for days (if not weeks). So, let’s examine today’s events to understand the chaos that Musk has inflicted on the GOP and the American people.

How the budget process is supposed to work.

There is a rhythm to the federal budgeting process that is more honored in the breach than in the observance. Understanding that rhythm is key to understanding just how disruptive Musk’s order to Republicans will be.

Congress has the “power of the purse.” “Section 9 of Article I states that funds may be drawn from the Treasury only pursuant to appropriations made by law.” See Congressional Research Service, Introduction to the Federal Budget Process.

The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the President to gather requests from agencies for funding, which are then collated into a consolidated request for funds that is submitted to Congress. The President is required to submit the consolidated funding request at the beginning of the calendar year. President Biden submitted the FY 24-25 request in March 2024.

The federal fiscal year is October 1 through September 30. In a perfect world, the budget would be passed by Congress before the beginning of the fiscal year (i.e., October 1).

Taken together, the above deadlines drive the schedule set forth below:

For clarity, the “bipartisan” funding bill killed by Elon Musk on Wednesday was the bill for the fiscal year October 2024 through September 2025.

Continuing resolutions—a patchwork remedy when Congress fails to pass a budget

In reality, Congress rarely passes a budget “on time” to begin the new fiscal year (Oct – Sep). To keep the government running in the absence of a budget, Congress passes a “continuing resolution” that funds agencies at the funding levels of the prior fiscal year.

As of 2022, the federal government had operated under continuing resolutions for all but 3 of the last 46 years. See General Accounting Office, Federal Budget: Strategies to Manage Constraints of Continuing Resolutions

The current continuing resolution expires this Friday, December 20, at midnight.

What happened on Wednesday

On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced they had negotiated a continuing resolution that would have funded government operations until March 14, 2025.

The GOP House caucus is a fractious majority that has failed to pass budgets or continuing resolutions on their own at any point in the 118th Congress. So, Speaker Mike Johnson has relied on majority support from Democrats to pass continuing resolutions and budgets during the 118th Congress.

Because Mike Johnson needed help from Democrats to pass the bill, Democrats were able to include new spending in the continuing resolution for the following items (per CBS News)

Disaster relief “$110.4 billion in disaster aid: $29 billion for FEMA's disaster relief fund; $8 billion for federal highways and roads; $12 billion for the Community Development Block grants and disaster relief.”

Baltimore Bridge Rebuilding

Health care policy extenders and reforms

Transparency in ticket and hotel prices

Transfer of ownership of RFK Stadium to the District of Columbia

As usual, some member of the GOP House caucus objected to the continuing resolution, but passage seemed assured because Jakeem Jeffries promised to deliver sufficient Democratic support.

Elon Musk tweets, “This bill should not pass.”

On Wednesday, Elon Musk tweeted that “This [bill] should not pass” and that “no bill” should pass until Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2025. Musk also tweeted that

Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years

It is not clear whether Elon Musk understands that the bill he killed was designed to keep the government open until March of 2025. In tweets throughout the day, Musk betrayed a shocking but unsurprising ignorance of the federal budget process or the consequences of the federal government not having money to operate. See Politico, Elon Musk fueled backlash to spending plan with false and misleading claims.

Per Politico,

Musk didn’t seem to think a government shutdown would have significant consequences for the country. He responded “YES” to a post that read, “Just close down the govt until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days.” Another Musk post said a shutdown “doesn’t actually shut down critical function.

While it is true that some “critical functions” will continue during a shutdown, many critical government employees—like US military members—will not be paid even though they are expected to remain on duty. About 800,000 workers went without pay for a month during the last shutdown (2018). Although Musk could survive without a bi-weekly paycheck for a month, millions of Americans could not.

Trump reacts, rather than leads

Trump remained on the sidelines of the budget debate until after Musk tweeted “This bill should not pass.” Trump posted a statement that “Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried.”

But then Trump threw a curveball. He also posted, “Unless the Democrats terminate or substantially extend the Debt Ceiling now, I will fight 'till the end.”

Increasing the debt ceiling is something that does not need to be done until June of 2025. But Trump doesn’t want a debt ceiling increase to happen on his watch. We know this because Trump said so in a post on Truth Social:

If Republicans try to pass a clean Continuing Resolution without all of the Democrat ‘bells and whistles’ that will be so destructive to our Country, all it will do, after January 20th, is bring the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration,”

The reason that Trump wants to force a debt limit increase under Biden is that Trump needs a debt limit increase to pay for the proposed extensions of his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. See The Hill, Lawmakers caught off guard by Trump debt ceiling demand.

Per The Hill,

And in a post on X, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) accused Trump of wanting Democrats “to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem.”

“Shorter version: tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas,” he added.

The fallout

Trump looks like he is subordinate to Elon Musk.

JD Vance has been “disappeared.”

Musk has—for now—seized momentum from Trump as the dominant political force in the second Trump administration.

It is difficult to see how Mike Johnson survives as Speaker—or why he would want to. Johnson has been humiliated and back-stabbed by Trump and Musk. Mike Johnson’s credibility with his own caucus and Democratic counterparts is non-existent. It is a waste of time to negotiate with Johnson.

The chaos caused by Musk foreshadows a second Trump administration with unelected, unaccountable billionaires mucking about in the people’s business. What could go wrong?

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[tomorrowusa]

Yes there is a double standard in the news media AND among members of the public.

Democrats are held to a higher standard. Democrats are always expected to act like grown-ups while Republicans are allowed to wreck institutions of democracy while getting only a perfunctory tsk tsk.

If Biden gave a bizarre and semi-coherent speech like this the media and users on social media would go into convulsions of disparagement. But because it came from Trump, the general feeling is that "it's just Donald being Donald"...

...and that doesn't even touch on fact checking.

The House drama is another case in point. One candidate for Speaker, Gym Jordan, turned a blind eye to sex abuse as an assistant coach; and the leader of the anti-McCarthy coup, Matt Gaetz, has an appetite for girls under 18. Republicans are like the villains in their own QAnon conspiracy folklore.

Jen Sorensen, an American national treasure, touched on this double standard in a cartoon.

With the emergence of every new revelation of GOP idiocy, incompetence, or downright treason, publicly ask what the reaction would be if a living Democrat had done the same.

Don't let membership in the GOP excuse people for being anti-democratic dickheads.