Trump's Second Term

On the 150-year-olds getting social security, More or Less looked into this one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0kssmgb

Summary; yes, there actually are about 18 million names in the data with apparent ages over 100, but this is a combination of unknown birth dates (the 1875 epoch is apparently a standard), people whose death was not properly recorded, and some who actually are over 100. This was all known already, it was not discovered by Musk.

What is not true is that millions of these people are claiming social security. It would simply cost more than it's worth to tidy up the data. There are tens of thousands of people over 100 in the USA, and a large proportion of those are claiming, but that's correct.

The major fraud associated with social security numbers is that some which have not been marked as inactive are being used, mainly by immigrants to register for jobs; sometimes hundreds are using the same number. In fact this means that the state is benefitting, since they are paying tax, and not claiming social security.
 
Random said:
In secret, many of them are terrified. Way too much is happening way too fast for any sane person to be comfortable with. But Trump is still inexplicably popular with his hardcore supporters, and any Republican politician going against him is almost certainly throwing away their career (to say nothing about the variety of death threats they receive if it looks like they are stepping out of line). If they want to keep their jobs, they need to stay on the Trump bandwagon, even as it gets driven over a cliff.
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Oh, I understand why they're frightened of Trump - what I don't understand is why they've meekly handed their power (and lunch money) over to Musk. These are supposed to be professional politicians schooled in the dark arts, surely they can give the appearance of supporting Trump whilst undermining Musk.

As has been said upthread - "We love and support the king but he has been poorly advised".
 
jreakle
Posobiec: Trump can't violate the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution."This is just textbook fascism.It is antithetical to everything our Founders fought for.
www.threads.net

Joshua Reed Eakle (@jreakle) on Threads

Posobiec: Trump can't violate the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution." This is just textbook fascism. It is antithetical to everything our Founders fought for.
www.threads.net www.threads.net
 
Pixel42 said:
en.wikipedia.org

Oskar Schindler - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist, humanitarian, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews
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Exactly and thank you.

Of course, some folks will disagree with you because they're too stupid to make anything but blanket statements, and here I thought the maga weirdoes were the really stupid ones.

Thank you again for being much, much smarter than them.


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The Don said:
Oh, I understand why they're frightened of Trump - what I don't understand is
why they've meekly handed their power (and lunch money) over to Musk. These are supposed to be professional politicians schooled in the dark arts, surely they can give the appearance of supporting Trump whilst undermining Musk.

As has been said upthread - "We love and support the king but he has been poorly advised".
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But they haven't they are still the bigwigs in their home states.
 
There is a clear line in Fascism before which being part of the movement is optional and done for advantage, and after which it is done to avoid penalties.
If you are a Nazi in phase A (in which the US still is), you are pretty much evil for personal benefit without any redeeming features.
If you are a Nazi in phase B, you might be nothing worse than a rational coward if you at every step do only the bare minimum as to not get arrested yourself.
 
Tero said:
jreakle
Posobiec: Trump can't violate the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution."This is just textbook fascism.It is antithetical to everything our Founders fought for.
www.threads.net

Joshua Reed Eakle (@jreakle) on Threads

Posobiec: Trump can't violate the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution." This is just textbook fascism. It is antithetical to everything our Founders fought for.
www.threads.net www.threads.net
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It's rather more like "L'etat, c'est moi!" isn't it? The king has primacy over parliament. He's saying Trump is absolute monarch.

While I don't see that it's really fascism, yes it absolutely is the antithesis of "of the people, by the people, for the people".
 
Hegseth says firing the JAGs was about making sure they don't exist to be roadblocks to anything that happens.

“Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens in their spots.”

In other words I want lawyers who won’t warn or try to stop us when we order the military to do anything illegal.
 
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Ranb said:
That is not going to work like they think it will, unless all they expect is chaos.
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Well, to be clear, weekly reports are fairly standard in the private sector. What did you get done last week? What obstacles did you face? What's your plan for next week? Properly tailored to how people work, that's just responsible project management. On the surface this seems like a reasonable request.

You outlined most of the reasons why this particular stunt is stupid and wrong. Accountability is a two-way street. People need appropriate notice of how their work will be tracked and need to be provided methods that are compatible with their duties. The government is not just a big private company where everyone is expected to read their emails several times a day and also while at home off the clock.

We already covered why failure to do some specific thing cannot count as a "resignation." You can put it down as insubordination or dereliction, but if you're going to terminate someone for not reporting as instructed, that's your decision. Musk's email didn't include the warning, so perhaps someone who actually knows the law said something to him. This is not a genuine desire to understand government processes. This is just a feeble attempt at a flex. If some low-level guy suddenly has to justify his existence to the CEO directly, "or else," it's just meant to scare people who have otherwise been doing just fine.

There exists a chain of command precisely for the reason that information is best consumed at the appropriate level. In my business I don't give a flying flarp what some assembly technician did last week. I expect them to report to the shop supervisor, who reports to the head of manufacturing, and so forth. They have primary authority. My individual principal engineers report to me, but I work with them directly so I know what they're doing. Elon Musk likes to micromanage in order to feed the illusion that he's an expert at everything. If what you do doesn't make sense to him, then he sees no use for you. Twitter showed us how that strategy wrecks a company, and now we why Musk's companies insulate themselves from his meddling.

And yes, obligations of secrecy apply both in an out of government. Classified work takes place over classified networks. Progress reports are classified. Since Musk was under investigation for violating his security clearance, he can't really be considered knowledgable about how they work and how to organize labor that must respect classification in instruction and reporting.

Elon Musk's official status in the government is still very much a matter of great mystery. He tells some people that he's the Grand Exalted Poo-Bah of all things governmental. But the administration tells other people that Musk is just an advisor with no authority. Heads of departments and agencies are quite within their authority to tell people not to respond to managerial requests outside of their chain of command.

But this is what they want. They want to create chaos and confusion so that any response to it can be styled as malicious. They want to issue illegal orders so that any resistance can be styled as the Deep State's resistance to the Democratically Elected President and contrary to His Majesty's Policy Objectives. Authoritarianism has been around long enough for people who want to do it to realize that mid- and low-level bureaucracy will try to preserve some function of government because they have more fidelity to their niche operation than they do to some distant overlord. Most people operate in government because they believe in the mission of whatever part of it they belong to. People like Musk and Donald Trump don't understand or believe this. To them, government means only power and kleptocracy.
 
Of course he has to fire everyone with oversight and who knows the law. He needs to move fast, because... something. He can't have people telling him his actions are against the law. He's on a mission from the king himself and that's a higher authority than any law. If the rule of law gets in his way then the law just has to yield.

In other news, SpaceX has now declared war on the law of gravity and anyone teaching this so-called theory can henceforth expect to be fired and probably jailed.
 
Tero said:
jreakle
Posobiec: Trump can't violate the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution."This is just textbook fascism.It is antithetical to everything our Founders fought for.
www.threads.net

Joshua Reed Eakle (@jreakle) on Threads

Posobiec: Trump can't violate the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution." This is just textbook fascism. It is antithetical to everything our Founders fought for.
www.threads.net www.threads.net
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Nazi propaganda constantly reinforced the notion that Hitler was the embodiment of the national will.
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Noe existent and dead people are being used to collect pay checks, that's why his email is important.

Elon Musk
@elonmusk

The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!
In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.
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zooterkin said:
On the 150-year-olds getting social security, More or Less looked into this one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0kssmgb

Summary; yes, there actually are about 18 million names in the data with apparent ages over 100, but this is a combination of unknown birth dates (the 1875 epoch is apparently a standard), people whose death was not properly recorded, and some who actually are over 100. This was all known already, it was not discovered by Musk.

What is not true is that millions of these people are claiming social security. It would simply cost more than it's worth to tidy up the data. There are tens of thousands of people over 100 in the USA, and a large proportion of those are claiming, but that's correct.

The major fraud associated with social security numbers is that some which have not been marked as inactive are being used, mainly by immigrants to register for jobs; sometimes hundreds are using the same number. In fact this means that the state is benefitting, since they are paying tax, and not claiming social security.
Click to expand...
It should be noted that the SSA cuts off payments at age 115. The audit in 2023 showed there were about 44K people over 100y receiving payments (out of a population of 100K. The overall error rate was less than 1%, a rate private insurance companies don't even come close to reaching.

Having dealt with the clowns who fall for Musk's crap it is obvious they would never understand the concept of "diminishing returns".
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
Etiher
1) Elon Musk has enough money to personally finance the campaign of any primary challenger to any current GOP member of Congress.
or
2) They perceive that they will have more power once the administration solidifies the USA as a one-party state and thus are willing to cede power in the short term.
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Also, it's very possible that many of them are afraid of their personal safety if they take on the king. MAGA/Nazi have threatened death to those who don't fall in line, and have physically attacked opposition.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Noe existent and dead people are being used to collect pay checks, that's why his email is important.
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I've read that when he took over Twitter one of Muck's great paranoias was that there were "ghost employees" that were on the books drawing salaries but not actually real employees. Of course a con man and cheater suspects others of doing the things he does himself.
 
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