#unelectable

[markfaustus]

[wheredoisign]

Remember when Trump tried to get rid of all the air-traffic controllers like five minutes ago? Well here's Philly:

[hazellvsq]

less discourse about whether the roman campers are child soldiers more discourse about how reyna/jason/percy/frank consistently tried to topple the democratic process of camp jupiter

[intelligentchristianlady]

Who Elected Him?

"Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

"'We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.'" (x)

[neramontagofficial]

Ignoring the fact each member in centcomm is allowed to choose their representative in the committee without any external pressures to it, and has a say on the existence of departments, means they are atleast held accountable, as opposed to your prime baron. The ignoble house is constantly under the pressure of the noble class, whether thorough funding for campaigning, or the threat of physically harm by less morally upstanding members of the noble class. This influences how any given member is going to vote in a multitude of ways, though generally in favor of whatever the noble class of where they represent wants.

...you know the Prime Baron is a member of CentComm, right? If she's uniquely undemocratic then I have bad news about CentComm appointments, especially if we're also considering corpo-state appointments.

Also, do riches not exist outside of the Concern? I know that people seem to assume I have some unfathomable amount of money, but I would assume that campaign funds are a problem wherever democracy and manna coexist.

[ravenkings]

“how could anyone possibly comply with all these ~~laws~~”

if you’re wondering what the game is for these slimy motherfuckers…………

[amandamadeathing]

These are the boys who are helping Elon Musk. Look well upon them. Thanks Damage Report.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 20, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 20, 2024

Remember how American voters so hated Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term written by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing institutions, that Trump said he had nothing to do with it, and then one of its key architects, Russell Vought, told undercover filmmakers that Trump was only running away from the project as political cover? 

It appears Vought was right and the story that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 was, indeed, just political cover. Ed O’Keefe and Major Garrett of CBS News reported today that two sources close to the Trump transition team have told them that they expect Trump to name Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 

Vought wrote the section of Project 2025 that covers the presidency, calling for “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and identifying the OMB as the means of enforcing the president’s agenda. Vought was Trump’s OMB director during the end of his first term and tried to remove the civil service protections that have been in place since 1883 to protect federal workers from being fired for political reasons. That plan, known as Schedule F, would have affected about 88% of the federal workforce. 

One of the first things Biden did when he took office was to rescind Trump’s executive order making that shift.

Like that earlier attempt, Project 2025 leans heavily on the idea that “personnel is policy,” and that idea illuminates the choices the Trump team is making. Trump has refused to sign the official documents required by the 2022 Presidential Transition Act. Those documents mandate ethics commitments and require the incoming president to disclose private donations. They also limit those donations. Without the paperwork, Trump appointees cannot start the process of getting security clearances through the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the team says it is planning to do its own vetting of its candidates instead.  

Claiming they have a mandate, Trump’s people have said they are launching “a hostile takeover” of the American government “on behalf of the American people.” But as voting numbers continue to come in, Trump’s majority has fallen below 50% of voters, meaning that more voters chose someone else than chose Trump on November 5. These results are far from being in “mandate” territory.

The U.S. Constitution charges Congress with writing the laws under which the American people live, and the president with taking “care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Since 1933, Congress has created an extensive system of agencies that regulate business and provide a basic social safety net. Congress will say, for example, that the U.S. needs an agency to protect the environment (like the Environmental Protection Agency, established under Republican president Richard M. Nixon), appropriate money for it, oversee its leadership, and then trust those leaders to hire the personnel necessary to carry out its mission. 

Regulations and social welfare programs and the agencies that provide them are broadly popular—think how hard it has been for members to get rid of Social Security, for example—so Congress trims at the edges rather than abolishing them. As the U.S. budget has grown, they often bear the brunt of accusations that the government spends too much, although what has really caused the budget to operate deeply in the red is the tax cuts for the wealthy put into place by Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.  

Right-wing leaders who want to continue cutting regulations and taxes are newly empowered by Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, and they are turning to a quirk of the government to enable them to work around Congress. 

Since the first administration of President George Washington, agencies created by Congress have lived in the Executive Branch. If, as Vought and others argue, the president is the absolute authority in that branch, Trump can do whatever he wants with those agencies and the civil servants—the bureaucrats—who run them.  

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their plans for cutting the U.S. government. Neither of them has ever held elected office, but they see that as an advantage, not a downside: “We are entrepreneurs, not politicians,” they write. “We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees.” Trump has named them to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. Despite the “department” name, DOGE is not an official government agency—which would require ethics disclosures—but rather an advisory panel. 

Their op-ed begins by redefining congressional authority to create agencies to suggest that agencies are illegitimate. “Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees,” they write, “but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.” This, they say, “imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers.” 

“Thankfully,” they continue, “we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.”

While “politicians” have “abetted” an “entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy,” they write, they will work with the OMB to identify regulations that, they claim, Trump can issue an executive order to stop enforcing. “This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy,” they write. Should Trump want to cut things that Congress wants to fund, they claim that Trump will simply refuse to spend those appropriations, challenging the 1974 Impoundment Control Act that declared such withholding illegal. 

Musk and Ramaswamy reiterated their support for cutting programs that are not currently authorized, although budget experts note that such a lapse is a tool to permit adjustments to programs Congress has, in fact, authorized and have also pointed out that one of the top items on that list is health care for veterans. Cuts to all these programs will naturally mean extensive cuts to the federal workforce. 

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6–3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court,” they write, “DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action.” 

They conclude by asserting that “[t]here is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud,” which is one heck of a conclusion to a blueprint for taking the power of American lawmaking from the Congress, where the Framers put it, and delivering it into the hands of an extraordinarily powerful president acting on the advice of two unelected billionaires, one of whom wasn’t born in the United States.  

In the vein of getting rid of regulations, today the chief executive of Delta Air Lines said he expected the Trump administration would be a “breath of fresh air” after the Biden administration’s consumer-protection laws that he called government “overreach.” 

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate has been confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, with the absence of Republican senators making the confirmations easier.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[hjemne]

The French are so funny because instead of having art as a general category meaning a creation with beauty, they listened to Hegel about there only being 6 distinct categories of art, but then as the world develops people kept on going 'well THIS is artistic, but it's distinct from those other kinds of creative categories' and then adding new categories. Like, my guys, there is beauty to be found in all of mankind's creations. Give up on the number system. If you can get your head around the holy trinity being one god in three forms, you can also get your head around there just being ART despite its many forms. But they won't change because their govt and society are conservative and white supremacist and adding increasingly bizarre numbers of art forms to a Eurocentric and classical model is preferable to any form of fluidity and change in the culture

[dittography-direwolf]

I do love that the only response progs have to "Well why didn't Trump go Full Dictator and eliminate democracy and elections in his first term if he wanted to or could do that?" is to say "He had to wait until his second term when he wasn't worried about reelection!"

Right. He was worried about reelection. In his voting-free dictatorship. He didn't want his poll numbers to go down. In his absolute monarchy.

[marchofthewitchhunters]

michelle federer the woman you are

[gl1tchr]

I love mentioning unions at work and watching every manager turn into a glassy-eyed robot and start spouting off taught union-busting bullet points like corporate zombies. truly fascinating

[kittykatninja321]

Smh the cia of yesteryear would’ve blown up Musk’s car by now

[captainxtra]

Musk Rat’s goons have access to the Treasury.

Pretty sure that’s not legal and congress should be investigating it.

[dr-chibbers]

My friends, we may be thinking that we live in Germany in the 1930s.. and there are many parallels. But that’s only if we let it.

I prefer to think of it as December 8th, 1941: we are shocked, we are outraged and trying to make sense of it all. We feel hopeless, defeated and like we have been betrayed.Fine.. let us think that way.. but let us be like Americans were then. Let those who stand to oppress and marginalize us know that they have awoken a sleeping giant and we are and will be filled with TERRIBLE RESOLVE. Let our righteous anger and desperation to survive wash over the fascists, thieves and rapists like boiling wave! We’re in this for a long fight. It will not be easy, it will not be pretty, and it will not be fun. But we must fight, and we must win. For if we do not, the light of liberty and inclusion will be dimmed and possibly snuffed out in this country for perhaps generations to come.

Let this be our finest hour

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Aggressive tribalism and doubling down on a broken system aside, it's always struck me as a bit arrogant that the "vote blue no matter who" crowd attributes every non-vote/third-party vote to someone who would otherwise support the Dem's chosen candidate but got cold feet at the last minute. My guy, you keep banging on that "lesser of two evils" drum all you want, but I don't think you're gonna like the outcome if you ever successfully convince a lot of the people who voted third party in 2020.