#oligarchical government

[marywoodartdept]

Death for Dollars: the American Dream

Abby's final post 🎨💥 as the art history blogger dives into BLU’s Art in the Streets fresco—censored in 2011 in just 24 hours after its unveiling in Los Angeles. Why? Coffins draped in dollar bills challenged the cost of war. 💰⚰️ Who decides what art we see? What does censorship reveal? Explore the history, question the motives, and take another look at scandalous art. Read Abby’s farewell post now 🔗 #ArtAndCensorship #StreetArt #graffitiart #BLU #ArtHitory #WhereCreativityWorks

For my 21st birthday, my friend McKenna gifted me a book called The Museum of Scandals: Art That Shocked the World by Éléa Baucheron and Diane Routex. Its one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten. It spans a range of topics but the section on politics has been one of the most intriguing. One piece in particular that has resonated with me is Art in the Streets Fresco by BLU (c.2011). BLU is an…

[rejectingrepublicans]

[political-us]

[tomorrowusa]

Musk may have torpedoed the original House bipartisan continuing resolution last week because it would have regulated his business dealings in China.

House Democrats Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut say their Republican colleagues in Congress caved to the demands of Elon Musk, sinking a bipartisan government funding bill that would have regulated U.S. investments in China. Congress passed a separate stopgap funding bill over the weekend, averting a government shutdown. In a series of posts on X, McGovern said more could have been accomplished. The scrapped provision “would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech — as well as jobs — in America,” he wrote. “But Elon had a problem.” Tesla, run by Musk, is the only foreign automaker to operate a factory in China without a local joint venture. Tesla also built a battery plant down the street from its Shanghai car factory this year, and aims to develop and sell self-driving vehicle technology in China. “His bottom line depends on staying in China’s good graces,” McGovern wrote about Musk. “He wants to build an AI data center there too — which could endanger U.S. security. He’s been bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with Chinese leaders.” SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor, has reportedly withheld its Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan at the request of Chinese and Russian leaders. Taiwan is a self-ruling democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Taiwan’s status is one of the biggest flashpoints in U.S.-China relations.

There's an obvious conflict of interest here. Musk doesn't want to offend China because he's worried that it may hurt his bottom line.

Musk contributed $277 million to the Trump campaign and other Republican causes during the 2024 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Since the election in November, Musk has become a nearly constant presence at Trump’s side, including in meetings with foreign leaders. Trump appointed Musk to co-lead a group that’s not yet formed, but will be tasked with finding ways to cut regulations, personnel and budgets.

At least part of the reason Musk contributed heavily to Trump and other Republicans may be to get them to go soft on China for the sake of his business interests.

[awesomecooperlove]

🇺🇸💵🤔

[existennialmemes]

musk is such a cartoon villain, I'm surprised an irradiated dude in spandex hasn't been summoned to our Universe to maintain balance.

[political-us]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

They are trying to illegally fire tens of thousands of Federal workers at the worst possible time of year. These are middle class to lower middle class people in DC and probably about a third or so of them voted for Trump. Contrary to publican opinion nobody gets rich working for the Federal government, especially in a major city where the cost of living is very high as are mortgages and rents. A disproportionate number of them are African-American, women, and other marginalized people since government employment is a safe haven for them with the added safety of being largely Unionized. To be honest there aren’t a lot of jobs open in the DC area with the pay and benefits of a unionized government job.

Musk is trying to run the government as if it were a business and that model does not apply. Government is not supposed to make a profit or pay dividends to shareholders. The primary purpose of government is to SPEND money to improve the lives and safety of all Americans.

Mass firings will not only ruin the lives of those removed from employment but it will have a ripple effect throughout the greater DC, Virginia, and Maryland area. All retail outlets will suffer immediately from lost business. Community and social services will be strained to the breaking point by hordes of people becoming unemployed all at once. The housing and rental market will collapse. Banks and Credit Unions will be stressed by loss of revenue. Families will dissolve and suicides will increase and so on. For those of you who don’t have sympathy for Federal employees, wait until the inconvenience of having almost no government services available to you strikes home. Think of the benefits that will be cut off. Think of the aid you won’t be able to receive when something goes wrong in your. Wait until you try to call a government agency to correct something to find out it doesn’t exist or is run by a skeleton crew.

You can look up the salaries of the rank and file workers and see it’s not great especially for one of the priciest markets in the country. This is a cold and heartless move which will have a devastating impact on large numbers of real people. It won’t just be in DC because they plan on spreading to field offices around the country so the pain will begin to seep into every county in the nation.

Government is not as simplistic as a business and can’t be run like one or by business people, entrepreneurs, oligarchs, CEO’s etc. Republicans, and other thoughtless people, need to separate themselves from the notion that someone who runs a business can run a country, or even a government agency. Diplomacy for example is much more complicated than a simple business deal. Diplomats spend lifetimes working on treaties and international agreements that will be in effect for decades or even centuries. It takes detailed knowledge of the past, current demographics and their needs, and years of forethought to play out every possible outcome of a treaty. Each word and phrase is excruciatingly analyzed for months or even years to achieve the desired effect and avoid any misinterpretations, misunderstandings, or vagaries of translation.

Treaties and national policy can’t be rationally drawn up by amateurs over a drunken round of golf, or a drunken steak dinner, or an amateurish conference call with the complexities of foreign languages which required highly skilled diplomatic translators who know the particularities of not only the mother tongue but each regional accent and dialect to avoid any posssible faux pas.

Trump and his henchmen are arrogant, poorly educated, unqualified, and often inebriated bigots and racists trying to run the world’s largest and most complex governing body as if it were a chain restaurant franchise.

Have you noticed yet nobody is talking about cutting aid to big energy companies, airlines, big pharma, or virtually any big corporate enterprise. Felon Muskrat says he’s uncovered billions in corruption and waste at every federal agency, in only a week. Felon hasn’t offered one scrap of documentation or proof though and neither had Trump. The media reports their claims of billions in waste and the Republican voters accept it as true. After a few weeks of hearing it in the news many of you will accept the lie as truth simply because you’ve heard it so often.

They are deliberately trying to overwhelm you, distract you, and wear you out. Democratic lawmakers trying to enter the very Federal agencies they fund have been locked out and kept at bay by armed private security wearing no identification and unwilling to state their names. Unwilling to say anything except you can’t enter.

They are pushing back but most of you seem to have forgotten that they became the minority party in both houses of Congress and the minority doesn’t have the ability to win a vote and pass anything or do anything other than protest and try to delay. Fortunately majority labor unions are out protesting in front of all the major agencies being targeted so far. Protests are also happing in some big cities but you’d never know it because it is virtually ignored as always by tv news.

[ghost-in-the-corner]

Rumor has it that Zuckerberg has bought TikTok and they're waiting to release that info officially until after the inauguration tomorrow

If that's true fuck it I'm not staying on TikTok

[republicansaretheproblem]

“And Friday, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department, David A. Lebryk, reportedly resigned after refusing to hand Musk’s lackeys the keys to the government’s entire payment system and the $6 trillion in payments the system processes annually.

The Treasury’s payment system is responsible for delivering trillions in Social Security payments, Medicare benefits and more to millions of Americans across the country. It’s not yet entirely clear what Musk plans to do with this system, which has historically been overseen by a small number of career officials. But a few possibilities have emerged.”

👺 They’re most likely going to cut off any and all payments of any type to whomever they wish to punish and blacklist contractors they don’t approve of. 👺

[laughingsquid]

How Aristotle Predicted the Rise of Oligarchy And a Blueprint for Its Self-Imposed Demise

[awesomecooperlove]

🕵🏽‍♂️🕵🏻🕵🏿‍♀️

[political-us]

[nando161mando]

We outnumber the oligarchs