Here's another interesting article, too long to quote from:What the Musk is Happening?It’s a catastrophe, but what kind of catastrophe?....Musk associates have been given access to the U.S. Treasury’s systems that control all federal payments, from grants to nonprofits to Social Security checks to salaries of federal workers.The potential for mischief here is immense. The courts may have told the Trump administration that it can’t freeze spending mandated by Congress, but Musk’s people, who haven’t shown much reverence for the law, might well just ignore the courts and not cut the checks.And they could go beyond cutting off programs the Musk/Trump administration doesn’t like. Imagine that you’re a federal contractor who has made campaign donations to Democrats; suddenly the government stops paying what it owes you and brushes off inquiries by saying that they’re working on the problem. Or you’re a federal employee who, according to somebody in your office who has a personal grievance, has expressed sympathy for DEI; somehow your regularly scheduled salary payments stop being deposited into your bank account. Or even imagine that you’re a retiree who canvassed for Kamala Harris, and for some reason your checks from Social Security stop coming.Don’t say they wouldn’t do such things. We’ve seen these people in action, and of course they would if they could.For the moment they probably can’t. The federal payments system is immensely complex, and like most government infrastructure has been financially squeezed for decades. So it’s cobbled together, much of it running on old hardware and even older software, kept functioning thanks to old hands and institutional memory. The 20-somethings Musk is deploying to take over, locking out those old hands and pushing aside the people who know how the system works, almost surely don’t understand enough to politicize payments right away.As Nathan Tankus, the go-to expert on these matters, says,I 100% believe that the primary barrier to Elon Musk gaining control of the Treasury payments system is COBOL.For readers mystified by the reference, COBOL is a very old programming language that was once pervasive in the business world but in which hardly anyone under 60 knows how to program — yet is still widely used in government. (During Covid, the state of New Jersey put out a frantic call for people who knew COBOL to implement expanded unemployment benefits.)But this observation raises another concern. What if the Musk people — Muskovites? — try to muck with systems they don’t understand, believing that they’re super smart and can master everything with the help of a little AI? It’s not hard to imagine the whole federal payments system — including, by the way, servicing of federal debt — crashing.So much damage — to U.S. credibility, to the Constitution and the rule of law, and possibly even to the very functioning of the government. And Trump only took power 2 weeks ago.
Why we've got to get those Musk boys away from the computers NOW! @cwarzel.bsky.social and @chrislhayes.bsky.social, I think you were asking for something like this earlier.
— Cheryl Rofer (@cherylrofer.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 3:17 PM
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Without any apparent authorization, Musk is doing what he did to Twitter, trying to sell everything. I suspect the American national parks are next:I have never been so glad that I'm not on any US Gov't payment list. By this summer, #TheMuskBoys will crash it & 30 million Americans won't get their money. Ever again. Musk will just blame the Dems & walk away.
— Cathie from Canada π·π³️π (@cathiecanada.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 8:50 PM
GSA simultaneously selling 7,500 federal buildings—in the hearts of the downtowns of hundreds of cities across the country—would be a real estate apocalypse. GSA would get pennies on the dollar. Literally every federal agency would have no offices, no storage, no nothing. Downtowns would be barren.
— Waldo Jaquith (@waldo.net) February 4, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Though it finally sounds like the White House might be getting annoyed about Musk throwing his weight around:If GSA sold 7,500 buildings at once, the question is who would buy them. Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union gives us the answer to that: a handful of oligarchs. They'd get billions of dollars in real state for a song, which they could lease back to government for a handsome profit.
— Waldo Jaquith (@waldo.net) February 4, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Maybe the "President Musk" jibes finally got to them:View on Threads
But it actually doesn't matter what the Trump White House does now, the damage is done:Elon Musk is a terrible president.
— Governor Tim Walz (@governorwalz.mn.gov) February 3, 2025 at 4:34 PM
And then this afternoon Trump started babbling about the US taking over Gaza and turning it into some kind of Mar-a-Lardo resort, with millions of Palistinians going to live really nice lives in some other country somewhere else.If Musk gets access to core economic data--and he may already have it--there will be no way to trust any of the numbers going forward. We will have to guess at the truth, much as we do with the Russian and Chinese kleptocracies.
— David Atkins (@davidoatkins.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 8:13 PM
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We’re all in a lot of trouble but this photo is ****incredible****
— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 9:26 PM
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He wants to own the world. He can start with the completely devastated place after he gets rid of those he considers "undesirable." The man has been dreaming of building condos there for years, and expects to make a healthy personal profit.
— Khashoggi’s Ghost πΊπ¦π» (@UROCKlive1) February 5, 2025
The Saudis said forget it:Trump says the US is going to take over Gaza and relocate the Palestinians.
— Rachel Bitecofer π½π¦ (@RachelBitecofer) February 5, 2025
We’re all going to die.
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With the Greenland, Panama, canada stuff, I kept wondering, is there a strategy? but then when Trump said the US should take over Gaza and own it and turn it into an international “Riviera,” one realizes there is no strategy. He is crazy.
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) February 5, 2025
Crazy like a fox, perhaps?25th Amendment
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) February 2, 2025
Trump really knew how to get his humiliating surrender on tariffs out of the news cycle. Just announce an invasion of the Middle East. MAGA!
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 7:16 PM
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Had a dream last night where it turned out that Canada had spent too much time planning for the US to invade, and not enough time planning for what happened if the US just collapsed. In case you're wondering how I'm sleeping.
— Paul Fairie (@paulisci.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 9:06 PM
4 comments:
As the US collapses, gasping and wheezing into a broligarchy, it's good to see that bipartisanship is alive and well. Shortly after meeting with wanted criminal Netanyahu, Trump is babbling on about redeveloping Gaza, an area flattened by Biden's bombs and aircraft. But this demolish and rebuild idea doesn't come out of nowhere. Trump's idiot son-in-law Jared Kushner has been talking about it for a while. Like a good psychopath, Kushner characterized the Gaza atrocities as “a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Meanwhile, the Democrats, with a few exceptions like Raskin and the Squad, continue to snooze as Musk's boys in short pants do to the American government what Dubya's young operatives in the Coalition Provisional Authority did to the Iraqi one. This time, more than a few pallets of greenbacks are going to go missing.
Cap, you are absolutely correct! I had forgotten about the CPA stuff but this is exactly the same hubris and the same level of corruption. What goes around comes around.
Gazas story remains all about the offshore oil. The Palestinians were just in the way of "land owners get the offshore rights". Roadkill.
The phrase above, “humiliating surrender” to describe Trump’s loss to Canada and Mexico in the tariff dispute, sums up the American media and pundit reaction.
Of course Canadian media with the built in distain for Trudeau have to see it as a Trump victory, and time to lean on the panic button for the next 30 days. J. W.
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