Summary
Elon Musk claims his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is shutting down payments to federal contractors, including a Lutheran charity, asserting it is eliminating corruption.
This suggests DOGE has access to Treasury’s payment systems, though officials have not confirmed the extent.
Senator Ron Wyden warned that DOGE may interfere with Social Security, Medicare, and government contracts.
Musk also called USAID “a criminal organization” that should “die,” amid DOGE’s growing influence over federal financial operations.
The US isnt good for their money. Creditors should demand their debts or threaten legal consequences in the form of international sanctions
US owns most of its own debt.
I see lawsuits flooding the US government for not paying for things they ordered.
jod I hope the shitty military bs has DRM that prevents it from functioning on non payment.
I hate to inform you, but US corporations don’t do that shit to other corporations/ governments. Just look at TVs. All your consumer grade TVs have had smart/LLM “features” shoved into them. They don’t do that on the commercial lines though. Commercial TVs are still “dumb.” Same for computers, cars, and pretty much everything that they can shove electronics in.
They do sell fleet vehicles with all the tracking stuff. They just offer the tracking information to the company as a means of surveiling their employees.
It’s not just suppliers. If you piss off Constellis (remember Blackwater?) and deny it legal remedies, they might be of a mind to do something to Elon as extra-legal as some of the stuff they have done for the US military as a PMC. These companies are used to getting their hands dirty and getting away with it. Not the sorts of people I’d be illegally denying their payments…
Sorry the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.
They would just send back a shit emoji
You guys think we’re gonna get tax returns this year?
I bet we don’t.
Oh please start halting payments to government contractors. This guy starts holding payments to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon he’s going to wind up real Dead real quick
Yep, mercenaries get rowdy when they don’t get paid, just ask Constantinopole.
Or Blackrock
Or Boeing. Boeing certainly seems to not have an issue with taking care of people who are causing them problems.
How much can a hitman really cost?!
1, maybe 2 bananas
There’s always bananas in the money stand, Michael.
A bag of crack and a handgun
With the way things are going, I fully expect them to make a beneficial deal that includes Elon because fuck everything
This is a coup
Can you guys maybe do something about this? You all have guns right, I thought that was the entire point of that part of the Constitution.
Unfortunately the wrong people are the ones with guns, because most of my fellow leftists in this country still believe in the myth that you don’t need a gun if you’re going to live in a country full of people with mental health issues and lack of access to affordable treatment.
the leftists seem to be good with guns, it’s the liberals and progressives who have trouble with them
(to be fair, the left is dead in America)
and which side was interested in guns and militancy, and which side was against guns and militancy?
The point of that was to prevent the need for a standing military. The thought was a standing military would lead to tyranny
Texas used to have gun free towns (sort of, when you entered you left your gun with the sheriff)
Political parties were also a big nono, the runner up was supposed to be VP
Yet, no one’s doing anything about it or can do anything. These people are all powerful now. The White House, the House, the Senate, SCOTUS, Fed. Everything belongs to the Republican Party and they can do whatever, whenever. No checks and balances.
I reject that defeatist attitude. It’s time for tax strike and general strike and mass protests across the country as next step
I think we can pretty much skip the first step, wouldn’t do us much good. Protests planned at every state capital on the 5th.
I got laid off two weeks ago am I supposed to just not work lol, my parents live with me:\
And for people who don’t like that word:
Regulatory capture of the entire United States government.
I bet a ton of them were pro-trump, MIC-type leeches.
This is a great way to end up on the military-indistrial complex hitlist
Raytheon would like to know your latitude and longitude
Care package incoming.
Can only hope he goes for them and not just the small businesses and academia. Something tells me he’ll go for civil facing departments and generally avoid DOD
Contractors handle Medicare.
Contractors run our military
Eh, to an extent. It’s going to be fun watching the military discover just how much of base services was contracting. But they’ll just order privates to do a half ass job and keep rolling. The big problems are the cargo and airline contracts. The Air Force and Navy are about to be very busy with stuff they didn’t want to handle.
Contractors probably have a hand in building your roads, supplying and maintaining your schools (and hospitals?), your plumbing, rail, air transit, power….Ive run out of steam. How is this a good thing? It’s terrifying.
Contractors run Homeland Security as well. You know, the people running the deportations. And they sure as shit won’t do that crap for free.
Contractors build our nukes and keep them functioning
Good to know that our elected officials in the legislative branch are no longer able to create laws that are actually enacted.
This shit is outside the scope of the presidency.
A lot of our day to day military operations run on contractors. This seems like a good way to get more helicopters falling out of the sky.
Musk is himself a giant government contractor via Space X and Starlink. Odds are he’s just trying to clear the board to funnel the money to his businesses. Especially when it comes to defense money!
How is anyone permitting any of these people to have authority?
Because we’re all just people and at the end of the day some person is agreeing to not dispense the funds or not provide aid or to round up individuals … Until there is meaningful pushback by people who actually are carrying this bullshit out it won’t change.
Idk same as how the Nazis managed the Holocaust, at the end of the day thousands of individuals agreed and did their part to exterminate the Jews. Same as how Israel now is committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza with their military and all those individuals are carrying out their orders.
Authority, like many other things in our society, is an emphemeral concept we all agree to. Authority is given when we agree to abide by what that authority says. Same like our laws, sure we have laws against things but it’s not like those actually mean anything if they’re not obeyed by the majority. Nothing stopping you from doming Elon with the a large brick if you got one and can get close enough, you know what I mean?
Trump’s government is basically pay-to-play and Elon paid the most so he gets to do whatever he wants.
It started with a paid horse armor and he we are.
Because yall wanted this by voting for it
I think many didn’t want this because we voted against it
Agreed but not enough.
MOST people were perfectly happy with voting for Trump, or not voting at all.
If you didn’t vote this election then you are the problem.
Yeah, we know, pointing fingers isn’t going to help anything right now. Get out and take action.
Be more specific.
So I was looking at this today. It looks like a combination of serendipity and malicious behavior. The US Digital Service was effectively leaderless on Jan 20 when it was renamed DOGE. That’s the serendipity. But it was already “excepted service” under the president instead of a congressionally chartered agency. So they could (and likely would have) simply fire any leadership.
USDS’ purpose was to fix computer systems all over the government. And it was doing a great job of that. But in order to do that it does get access other agencies don’t. This is where the malicious part comes in. Trump turns them into DOGE and links them with lawyers and HR people. They use their existing access authorization to get into systems and then do HR stuff instead of systems engineering. Furthermore they aren’t currently funded, which means they shouldn’t be operating at all. Their last funding ran out in September.
Trump can just appoint people to it because he has a wide ranging authority to do temporary hires. Another malicious catch though is Musk is clearly operating DOGE but he hasn’t been put on payroll.
This is illegal, and there are lawsuits already filed. But they’re counting on people not understanding the intricacies of the different kinds of federal service to enact their plan. Which to me is pretty transparently to force all agencies to submit to DOGE as a stand in for the White House and an end run around all laws about the civil service. Basically an unconstitutional power grab by the President.
It’s just like when Dumpf would stiff his contractors LMAO 🤣
I wonder at what point people are going to use force to stop this coup, at this point everyone is just watching laws and systems being broken and dimantled with no regard.
Is the media in the US that controlled that their people just don’t see what is happening?
I wonder at what point people are going to use force to stop this coup
Historically, it should start in about 30 days, or so, internally with rapid succession authoritarianism settling in.
Then, it takes a year or so after the first territorial grab. The first one is called “appeasement” strategy.
After that, then the rest of the world bombs us into desolation.
then the rest of the world bombs us into desolation.
Happy to, but you guys have nuclear weapons.
