The voters chose it. Those that voted against it lost. The courts have superpowered the executive and he is taking full advantage of it. The system is working as designed.
You had me until "The system is working as designed."
The system is most definitely not working as designed, primarily because Congress has completely abdicated their congressional duty as a co-equal branch of government. Their are good congressional reasons why high-level advisors to the president need to be approved by the Senate. The fact that Musk and his cabal are doing an end run around this congressional requirement by posing as some sort of "special government employee" or whatever is laughable.
Never mind that funding can't just be cancelled because the executive branch doesn't want to spend it, and that is completely contrary to the "power of the purse" that is the purview of Congress.
> Congress has completely abdicated their congressional duty as a co-equal branch of government
The voters also elected people to Congress that are aligned with his agenda, so they are allowing him to do what he wants.
> The fact that Musk and his cabal are doing an end run around this congressional requirement by posing as some sort of "special government employee" or whatever is laughable.
A judge just signed off on it so it seems to be legal.
> that is completely contrary to the "power of the purse" that is the purview of Congress.
Some of us don’t agree with the rampant waste in our government. Some of us also don’t have faith that the system can fix itself without drastic measures like this.
I’ll admit I’m wrong if and when it turns out that I am. Until then, I’m cheering it on.
Rather than tearing the system down, let's identify the areas of rampant waste to a degree more lucid than what a news channel or podcast claims. Most areas people claims for alleged waste are legally required/statutory or spindoctored (especially grant topics).
Social security isn't waste, but it is on the chopping block.
It blows my mind that people are so hungry to hurt so many others and themselves in the process.
“Notably, the views among DOGE supporters differ when it comes to where to draw the line: The first of the three people with knowledge of its work told Semafor the “entire federal government” is up for grabs. The second person suggested the line would be drawn at areas affecting national security and initiatives providing direct benefits.”
So I've been paying for social security my whole life and you think it's a waste and you have the right to take the program away from me? Will I be getting a refund?
FWIW, the US Supreme Court ruled[0] in a famous 1960 case that Social Security is an ordinary income tax and you are not entitled to receive any benefit of that payment, same as income tax. Whether we like it or not, that has been the law of the land for 65 years. Most Americans are simply ignorant of this reality.
> Like 1/4 of everything I make goes to social security.
If you want to be taken seriously, don't make false claims. It weakens your other arguments. Social Security is 6.2% (12.4% if self-employed since the employer takes care of half) on the first $176,100 of your net income (which for the median US taxpayer is on all their income). Medicare is 1.45% (2.9% if self-employed, same as Social Security).
So if you are self-employed, you pay at most 15.3% of your income below $176,100 in combined Social Security and Medicare. That's a lot, but it's not 25%. If you are not self-employed, you're paying 7.65% on income below $176,100 to both Social Security and Medicare which is very far from 25%.
If you're earning over $176,100 your effective Social Security tax rate will drop.
I agree, that was a striking claim to make. Perhaps the person you responded to puts a lot into their 401k thinking it is social security or thinks income tax is FICA?
We've had since FDR to try and curb the post WW2 federal hyper expansion. Regulations keep growing, our prison population reaches one of the highest rates in world, and we get vanishingly little infrastructure or other benefits for the taxes the common man pays.
Patience has expired.
There was lots of time to use the scalpel. The doctor never showed up, so the pre med dropout showed up with a sledgehammer, dumb and self serving as he may be. Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.
> Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.
To this, we agree. To better understand a why so many are resisting, I encourage you to read up on Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment, then who has associated themselves with that movement. The overlap in the Executive branch and Trump's more outlandish ideas are substantial. Technofascism and neofeudalism are not acceptable solutions.
This is silly. USAID was investigating the usage of Starlink in Ukraine, which by the way Musk provided completely free of charge at a time when no one else was doing anything for Ukraine.
DOGE found that USAID has actually spent taxpayer dollars to funding terrorists.
I have no idea how we try to connect these dots to be “personal”. USAID was a sham and it’s been exposed.
I think maybe you're missing the negatives Musk/Starlink did in Ukraine.
And they alleged terrorism. They did not show it, FISA and other courts aren't engaged, and they have Flynn, a foreign agent, making those claims and boosting them.
How did DOGE determine that the funds went to terrorists? Do you know? I certainly don't. I want to know, so we can put the right guardrails in place for the future, and frankly, I don't trust musk at all. He lies whenever it's convenient.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we should be ensuring it's shining everywhere.
I don't know but it sure is interesting that White House is saying Elon Musk will now be reviewing his own conflicts of interest [1] as a man heavily invested in companies with large government contracts or beneficiaries of government incentive schemes.
Or maybe it's just too avoid having to worry about sexually harassing his employees[2].
I’ve heard lots of people say that, and you’re entitled to that opinion. But I have yet to hear a single coherent argument explaining why that’s the case.
I’m open minded but so far all I’ve heard is Musk/Trump haters clanging the alarm that somehow they’re going to take over the government or ruin America or whatever. With no explanation and no facts to back it up.
The evidence is fairly smacking you in the face. Have you seen the number of Executive Orders that Trump has been signing? Many of which are almost certainly to be overturned?
Because your democracy is being run by fiat, and many of those Executive Orders are batshit insane, or just plain illegal. And you seem to be OK with this.
His Executive Order blocking birthright citzenship was blocked. And that is batshit insane - literally thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) would suddenly be affected by that EO.
And DOGE. You know they are going in and changing safety systems at the FAA, right? Insane.
I would be much happier if this was being done with any form of thought behind the actions. Put together a report of the "wasteful" spending and target it. The whole department destruction at the whims of one man is the concerning part. Doubly so given he's appearing to target departments that has "wronged" him in the past.
Cool, so when the fascists have dismantled government and taken over power, at least we might have your apology, although I doubt it even then, you'll just shift the goalposts.
I don't agree with the waste in our government, but Musk has shown himself to be a habitually dishonest individual, so when he says he is out to cut waste, I don't believe him, I think his goal is to target his personal and political enemies while finding ways to redirect funds into his own ventures.
But... you saw that Trump said he wanted to turn the Gaza Strip into an Arabic Riviera and dispossess all the Palestinians... and he wants to take over Greenland, which is not an American territory?
> Some of us don’t agree with the rampant waste in our government.
Sure, there's waste as in any large organization, and streamlining is great. But to say that all US foreign aid is "rampant waste" and USAID should be shut down? Because it's not being shut down because it was "wasteful" but because it's full of "radical leftists" (supposedly).
None of the purges at any of these agencies so far have had anything to go with "government waste". They are based on ideology.
Come on, open your eyes -- they're being pretty open about what this is about.
You do realize that what Musk and DOGE is doing is completely unconstitutional, right? ONLY Congress has the right to spend tax dollars. DOGE has no legal right whatsoever to stop any payments Congress has approved.
A Democratic DOJ could very well arrest and charge Musk for what he is doing.
I didn’t allow anything. But compared with the folks running against him? Yeah, I’d pick him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Get us a real candidate from the Democratic Party and we could have a discussion but Kamala was even less qualified than trump and what many non-Americans seem to miss is that Americans care about policy A LOT. We generally don’t give a shit if our president is a meanie head or says not nice things. In general we care a LOT about what they say they’re going to do.
Trump’s plans for the nation sounded pretty good to myself and a whole heck of a lot of other Americans winning the popular vote, the electoral college, and (my memory is fuzzy) every swing state except 1?
How do you figure Harris is less qualified than Trump? I never heard Harris say she would try to take over Greenland. I never heard her say it's a good idea to inject bleach to get rid of Covid...
Trump supported a violent attempt to overturn the results of an election. In other democratic countries that's called an attempted coup. Not to mention Trump's own attempts to pressure states not to certify the results.
I don't care if Trump has amazing plans or is Mother Teresa and Henry Ford and Benjamin Franklin rolled into one, he is anti-democracy and that automatically disqualifies him, and those who support him should be ashamed of themselves for not caring. (and that's before we get into his character; I kind of liked Trump way back at the beginning, thought he might be a Ross Perot type of guy; but once that recording of him talking about women came out (before the 2016 elections), I lost all respect for him. And all of his actions since then have been completely self-serving. There is no way someone like that should have so much power, not just over the country but as commander in chief of the military.)
So when you have someone who is such a poor character, and who is anti-democracy, policy doesn't really matter.
It took almost 40 years of constant GOP propaganda from things like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. People like the Koch brothers have been dedicated to this goal for a very long time.
People who read "a great deal of" political news, from any source, went for Harris by 8%. People who never read any political news went for Trump by 20%.
Only if political news media is somehow a neutral, purely unbiased source that just tells plain facts, sure. "They are just not informed", "they are stupid", etc. If the media is partisan or biased, the situation reverses, and now the Harris voters are living in some media bubble with their own cnns, reddits and other friendly outposts, and then scratching their heads at the outcome in the end -- "How could this possibly be? All our polls were predicting a win. Maybe if we had 35 indictments instead of 34, that would have tipped the balance, for sure".
Much of Trump's voter base derives from people who distrust the "news". I don't blame them, and those folks would be just as quick to point out the ignorance of DNC voters, a party repeatedly shooting their supporters in the foot every election.
It has been a decades long journey getting here. There are so many contributing factors it is hard to even know where to begin. The most important thing to remember is that about half the country is very unhappy with the way things are going.
