President Elon Musk
He probably deserves his own thread at this point, discuss accordingly
Musk now has legal access to all the payment data of the US government
tell me again how 44 billions for twitter was a bad investment?
Musk now has legal access to all the payment data of the US government
tell me again how 44 billions for twitter was a bad investment?
Grunching here - that article says Musk has been granted access to it, not that it is legal access. The word "legal" is not even in that article.
Spoiler
it's probably illegal
Lol can you imagine the outrage if Biden allowed Soros access to this information?
Grunching here - that article says Musk has been granted access to it, not that it is legal access. The word "legal" is not even in that article.
Spoiler
it's probably illegal
if there was even a 0.01% chance of this being illegal the guardian would be there with 3 experts telling you as such.
when your sworn enemy talks about something you do they hate and doesn't scream "illegal" you are sure it wasn't.
if there was even a 0.01% chance of this being illegal the guardian would be there with 3 experts telling you as such.
when your sworn enemy talks about something you do they hate and doesn't scream "illegal" you are sure it wasn't.
Do you think this is a good thing?
Like, even if you broadly support all Trump policies, you think this is a good way to implement them?
@chillrob this by politico should clarify things better, the data access has been granted to treasury department employees linked to DOGE (I suppose this means they also do volunteering for DOGE)
Do you think this is a good thing?
Like, even if you broadly support all Trump policies, you think this is a good way to implement them?
I think the totality of all government layouts should be public domain and not even need a FOIA, with the usual state secret exceptions. That btw should include beneficiaries of government debt interest.
all salaries and benefits should be known, every dollar should be traceable, everything should be under constant ferocious supervision of journalists, citizenships, interested parties.
it's quite incredible this isn't ultra majoritarian as an opinion.
if I own a condo I get to know everything about the condo expenses why should it be different for a citizen ot a co-owned entity even if it's a lot bigger?
so no I am not ok with only DOGE having access but ofc it's better if DOGE has access that if it doesnt.
btw I don't agree with all of trump decisions, tariffs with Canada are suicidal, moronic, embarrassing, and I am on record in this very forum claiming trump tariffs policy proposals were so insane, I would have preferred Harris to win (because the Senate was republican)
if there was even a 0.01% chance of this being illegal the guardian would be there with 3 experts telling you as such.
when your sworn enemy talks about something you do they hate and doesn't scream "illegal" you are sure it wasn't.
If any of Musk's minions don't have security clearance, it is definitely illegal.
I have read elsewhere that they have been copying sensitive data onto external users drives to take with them. I'm not sure if this is technically 'illegal', but it's definitely against standard government security policies. I don't know if those are considered to have the full force of law or not.
@chillrob this by politico should clarify things better, the data access has been granted to treasury department employees linked to DOGE (I suppose this means they also do volunteering for DOGE)
Huh, well maybe it is legal if they have all been made official government employees and passed security clearance.
Does anyone know if that is true for Musk himself? If so, I haven't heard of it.
How would you feel about that (Biden giving access to Soros or other high profile business people on the left)?
I felt raped intimately by the state at every juncture for all my adult life. I felt my enemies have commanded all levers of power since I ever dared to investigate who calls the shot.
I feel people dedicated to make my family existence miserable have been calling the shots.
I hate with a passion government, I feel it's the source of most societal problems and the solution of almost none, in it's current iteration.
and I have been further radicalized by covid mismanagement disasters.
so the incremental hatred toward people in power I would feel if Soros was granted access to those data (and the public at large wouldn't) is minimal, as it's hard to hate the government more than I already do.
what I hope is more and more people feel the same as I always did, and maybe at some point we can collectively decide to vastly reduced the size scope and power of government for good, so that we don't feel that way anymore no matter who wins elections
Huh, well maybe it is legal if they have all been made official government employees and passed security clearance.
Does anyone know if that is true for Musk himself? If so, I haven't heard of it.
not made afaik, it's more like they are already employees of the federal government, and they volunteer to help DOGE (which is just a virtual entity with no official designation and so on) from inside.
DOGE has a budget of 0 afaik, musk and all the people collaborating don't get a single dollar for it.
as far as musk goes I think he has sky high clearance already because of his military contracts? maybe I am wrong but anyway I suppose trump did give him the highest clearance possible (not 100% sure though, but given it takes him 3 seconds to do so, why wouldn't he?)
As per link, purportedly by being a director at the International Republican Institute (with Cotton, Romney and others), which receives a lot of money from USAID. I might add that supposedly, once you get the cash you do the **** you want with no supervision, so you basically hire friends and family and so on (or at least that's my expectation for the totality of the beneficiaries of charity especially when they aren't private donors who check constantly how the money is used)
They look like they
there's three kinds of expats you meet abroad
the english teachers/students - people just on a vacation/travel mode - constantly broke, finding the places that serve 50 cent beer etc and usually leave after a year
the young professionals - often formerly of the group above, people who work regular jobs abroad which they found while living abroad and not from their home country, usually making a bit more than the locals and live fairly comfortably but not enough to really accumulate any sort of wealth and certainly less money than what they would earn doing the same work back home
the expat package crew - people sent abroad from their company or organization back home and all the perks included such as housing with staff/security included, international school tuition for children, private car with personal driver etc all while earning at least 1.5x more than they would make doing the same job back home for "hardship"
yes there were a few people overseeing production lines, engineers sent in to lead a local team, etc, but the overwhelming majority of these people on the "expat package" were government and ngo employees
if you meet someone who works for UNICEF or the Red Cross abroad you can be assured they make middle 6 figures and their housing, insurance, tuition, and staff costs are all taken care of - it's pretty astounding to see what those ngo people ad civil servants are paid
I think the totality of all government layouts should be public domain and not even need a FOIA, with the usual state secret exceptions. That btw should include beneficiaries of government debt interest.
all salaries and benefits should be known, every dollar should be traceable, everything should be under constant ferocious supervision of journalists, citizenships, interested parties.
it's quite incredible this isn't ultra majoritarian as an opinion.
if I own a condo I get to know everything about
So you think that because DOGE apparently has access to this info that means it is more “open” than it was if less people had it?
That might be true in an absolute sense, but practically it’s just shifting it from one hand to another without any increase in public visibility at all.
What about DOGE have you seen that makes you think they will be more transparent than the “old” way. Is it the anonymous emails? The lack of any written guidelines for what they are doing? The complete and total refusal to comment on any action they have taken other than to say “we’re following the agenda of the President”?
You wouldn’t even have known about this Treasury thing except the guys who got pushed out made a stink. If they had just caved without saying anything, it would’ve gone undwr the radar because DOGE is totally unaccountable for anything they do because it is not actually a government agency at all. There’s probably a dozen other similar actions taken that no one has any idea about.
So you think that because DOGE apparently has access to this info that means it is more “open” than it was if less people had it?
That might be true in an absolute sense, but practically it’s just shifting it from one hand to another without any increase in public visibility at all.
What about DOGE have you seen that makes you think they will be more transparent than the “old” way. Is it the anonymous emails? The lack of any written guidelines for what they are doin
yes because DOGE at least vaguely reflects my priority: attempt to cut everything and treat government as the enemy not the solution.
DOGE wants to burn down as much government as it can. that's a goal I 100% agree with.
No matter how much they will be limited in their effort, any success they can achieve is incrementally better for my goals.
the general feeling among people that working for the government is going to be a very bad way to live your life is already a splendid result. a parent should be more ashamed if his kid works for the government for all his life (yes a few exceptions in the few actually useful roles apply) than if he is on onlyfan.
I want people to hate and mistrust government as much as possible to reach one day a consensus about reducing it's powers permanently.
as long as DOGE can't infrease expenditure and can only cut (propose cuts actually, the cuts are technically done by others), no accountability is needed. at this point any cut is better than none (yes, even if it touches "actually useful stuff").
do you understand we want to burn it all down?
I think you will be disappointed. This isn’t burning, it’s usurpation. You’re just switching to a despot.
He thinks because he agreed with the short term goal that they couldn't possibly have anything nefarious in mind long term. How cute. It's one of those they'll just have to see it to believe it things.
Incredibly naive. But literally fantasyland.
I think you will be disappointed. This isn’t burning, it’s usurpation. You’re just switching to a despot.
I tried 3-4 versions of an answer that accounting as a non-banmable offense while answering to gorgo as well but I had to delete all of them.
I'll answer only you: we had bad enough despots before, the probability this is worse is really low.
and right-wing technocratic libertarians, those are people o actually know. they don't crave totalitarian controls of our lives they just crave to be truly able to do the **** they want all the times (a laudable desire).
in a world where they rule the smart can find a very decent spot and I don't care about the rest too much.
like children not being mutilated anymore because of their "gender identity" is already a massive success.
like children not being mutilated anymore because of their "gender identity" is already a massive success.
As usual, Luciom bases his worldview on being hilariously misinformed by conservative lying media.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
July 8, 2024—A new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found little to no utilization of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) minors in the U.S. The study also found that cisgender minors and adults had substantially higher utilization of analogous gender-affirming surgeries than their TGD counterparts.
...
“We found that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that U.S. surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care,” said co-author Elizabeth Boskey, instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Lead author Dannie Dai, research data analyst in the Department of Health Policy and Management, added, “Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.”
But in Luciom's mind, it's mutilation, even though those that need this care and don't get it just go on to kill themselves at alarmingly high rates. This, to him, is a better outcome than them getting to be who they believe they are and making him and some others "feel icky about it."
yes gorgon we know you think that enlarging the breasts of a 16y girl is identical to cutting the breasts of a 14y old girl, but the totality of non radical leftists disagree completely.
and the only acceptable number of surgeries to affirm trans gender identity in minors is absolute 0.
you can keep posting literature produced by your tribe and peer reviewed by your tribe, it's value stays as 0 as that's what the intellectual production of your tribe is worth, on any topic.
it's not like if they add some books or commentary to the bible then it becomes true.
same with "gender theory" and everything else in leftism
yes gorgon we know you think that enlarging the breasts of a 16y girl is identical to cutting the breasts of a 14y old girl, but the totality of non radical leftists disagree completely.
You feeling ok there champ? Might want to read the study. 16 year olds and 14 year olds were not in the same cohort in the study. And most minor breast surgeries were reductions on cisgendered MALES. Why are you not mad about those? You are targeting 5 transgender cases instead of 146 cases of "cutting the breasts off" CISGENDERED MALE minors. You sound colossally ignorant here. For good reason.
Your attempt to "other" my opinion by lumping yourself in with some group (I'd imagine you'd get BJ and PB on your team and a few of the other nutty conservatives around here, though, so GO TEAM) is noted with some amusement. You might let others speak for themselves, though. Especially when you sound this unhinged and ignorant.
and the only acceptable number of surgeries to affirm trans gender identity in minors is absolute 0.
And your opinion about that is more relevant than medical experts and the families involved in the LITERALLY 5 CASES because?
you can keep posting literature produced by your tribe and peer reviewed by your tribe, it's value stays as 0 as that's what the intellectual production of your tribe is worth, on any topic.
Where "tribe" is defined as experts in the field.
it's not like if they add some books or commentary to the bible then it becomes true.
same with "gender theory" and everything else in leftism
You don't sound insane at all. Really.
Please tell us more about how you know more about these people than their own families and doctors.
And tell us why they were found to be following the exact same international guidelines as every other country, but the US is evil for it.
“We found that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that U.S. surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care,” said co-author Elizabeth Boskey, instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
You're a real peach, Luciom. Keep digging.
experts in their fields, not a tribe.
this is the author
jfc take the L and go to sleep
yes gorgon we know you think that enlarging the breasts of a 16y girl is identical to cutting the breasts of a 14y old girl, but the totality of non radical leftists disagree completely.
and the only acceptable number of surgeries to affirm trans gender identity in minors is absolute 0.
you can keep posting literature produced by your tribe and peer reviewed by your tribe, it's value stays as 0 as that's what the intellectual production of your tribe is worth, on any topic.
it's not like if they ad
I was already starting to think you are a religious nut and that was already becoming more clear in this post even before you got to the part about the bible.
Lol.
So elon is gonna decide whether or not i get my social security payment. So ****ed up.
