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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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The reports of DOGE's demise may have been premature. Things apparently move at lightning speed now, so the easiest thing is a timeline of what happened this morning to resurrect DOGE before the weekend.

  1. Elon posts a poll asking if the fired DOGE employee should be rehired: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887867644814020902

  2. JD Vance quotes the poll, giving his support to the fired employee: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633

  3. In the press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, Trump is asked about his opinion. He says 'I don't know...I'm with the Vice President': https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1887950091937530324

  4. Elon says 'he will be brought back': https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887957783783391423

It's like for the first time in my lifetime people said 'no, we don't do that anymore.' And our leaders now share values sufficiently enough that they didn't ignore the sentiment or just listen and commiserate, they actually...obeyed. Pretty much instantly.

I had made a comment earlier today after Elon posted the poll about how the ideal scenario would be to quickly hire him back before the Super Bowl/whatever new developments break on Monday. Beyond that, I don't want to write too much about my own personal opinion because it's fairly scattered as I'm more than a little giddy from surprise at the moment. But, I am interested in your thoughts as this seems positively seismic.

It's like for the first time in my lifetime people said 'no, we don't do that anymore.' And our leaders now share values sufficiently enough that they didn't ignore the sentiment or just listen and commiserate, they actually...obeyed. Pretty much instantly.

There were two comments elsewhere on this topic that I found particularly insightful. The first noted that when this sort of scandal hits someone on the Left, they frequently aren't fired straight away, but are instead "suspended" or "put on leave" pending "further determinations." Then, after a month or two, if the story has died down in the press, those "further determinations" are quietly bringing them back to work. The commenter argued that the right should have taken a page from the left and handled this in a similar manner, rather than openly and fully firing then rehiring.

But the second provided a counter-argument as to why the open rehiring — as opposed to quietly returning from a not-quite-fired status — serves an important purpose. While many people (including on here) have debated just how racist some of the "problem" tweets from Elez were, the vast majority appear to agree that the "normalize Indian hate" one qualifies. And yet, who is one of the key figures, in the timeline above, calling for forgiving and rehiring Elez?

Vice President Vance, whose wife, I remind you, is Indian. Whose children are half-Indian. And yet, he stands on the position that personal tweets, whatever he might think of them, should not cost Elez his job.

What the second commenter pointed out is that this makes this event a clear stand on the part of the Trump administration — with, as you note, plenty of popular support — against cancel culture. A statement in support of that old free speech line (usually misattributed to Voltaire) about how "I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

They need to audit the judiciary. Similar to how the libs tried to smear the supreme court for all of Biden's term. That didn't work out so well, but! there are only 9 justices and only 6ish Republican judges on the supreme court. They probably don't want to piss off the swing votes so that leaves only 4ish to dig up dirt on.

There are over 800 federal judges. Find a dozen or two with serious corruption and you could completely tar the entire system in the media. You'd have enough ammo to just keep releasing discrediting info on them for the whole term as they try to block your corruption purges and the more they attempt to stop things the more they look complicit with the corrupt state bureaucracy.

It's Joever again: Judge blocks Musk team access to Treasury Department records.

Does anyone have the text of the injunction? I've seen some news articles that sort of imply that blocks all political appointees from having access to Treasury records (this would of course prevent the Secretary of the Treasury from having political (read "democratic") oversight of the Treasury)

How about I spare us some time and leave you all with the following graphical representation of the second Trump term. It should work no matter your political views:

/images/17390359749162474.webp

I like this one better:

/images/17390385780296063.webp

That's more pessimistic than what current evidence calls for, IMO.

Does anyone have the text of the [restraining order]?

It's document 6 on this page.

Pending the hearing of the States’ application for a preliminary injunction, the defendants are:

(1) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations;

(2) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and

(3) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.

I don't really understand the procedural issue. The president is the chief executive. Among other things, can view all classified material in the nation, can he not? The treasury is part of his branch of government, isn't it?

Why is his delegate not allowed to audit the treasury? Why do the procedures that he's not following actually matter? He has to appoint several people in various places and file the proper forms to do it, instead? What's the effective difference, other to frustrate the effort?

The president is the chief executive. Among other things, can view all classified material in the nation, can he not?

Classification is a construct by and for the power of the Presidency as Commander-in-Chief. It is specifically for national security information that the President has determined (or someone to whom he has delegated such power to has determined) would be detrimental to national security. Your statements are absolutely correct when it comes to information for which classification is the only barrier to releasing it to someone.

...but classification isn't the only restriction on sharing information. I haven't dug into this lawsuit at all, so I don't know what the specifics here are about, but I'll conjecture that there are statutory requirements on other types of information that don't give the President unilateral authority to share it. I'd have to double-check, but I think, e.g., restrictions on sharing individuals' tax information may restrict the President as well. That is, Congress could (maybe did) pass a law that prevents the President from, say, personally choosing to release his political opponent's tax records to the press. In this case, classification would have nothing to do with it. I don't think there would be an Article II argument that such a statutory restriction would be an unconstitutional impingement on the Executive power.

The plaintiffs’ memorandum of law in support of the injunction is here. I can’t evaluate all of the claims in it (partly because I don’t see a memorandum of law from the defendants. Were they not allowed to submit one? Were they too busy? Did it just not get uploaded?). The Administrative Procedure Act is the big statute in these sort of cases, but it looks like they also cite some privacy statutes that I’m not familiar with. Ironically, the Administrative Procedure Act was passed to shrink the size of the administrative state, but its procedural safeguards are also held to slow down the pace of deregulation as well.

Lawsuit text

Based on the injunction order, it reads as based in risks of "disclosure of sensitive and confidential information" and "[making] the systems in question more vulnerable to hacking." This despite all of DOGE's supposed violations. Yeah, some of those don't necessarily qualify as risking "irreparable harm" but DOGE just chewed through USAID, the plaintiffs would have the argument to be concerned about the harm from sudden unconstitutional freezes of congressionally-apportioned funds. That argument was ignored. Maybe it's that narrow angle/narrow risk of judgment against thing.

Not that it matters. The executive can audit itself and investigate itself for any reason, "arbitrary and capricious" or otherwise, and with Musk's statement, it is otherwise. Treasury employees estimating a minimum of $50 billion a year in fraud gives them probable cause. So it sounds like all this injunction will result in is DOGE coming back with the DOJ as they announce a full forensic audit.

I looked a little at the brief. The APA piece I would need to look more into but it is not the norm of my experience with the APA and I am dubious because they seem to misstate their claim re PII. One of the exception for disclosure of info is to people within the same agency. Per an interview by the treasury secretary Friday the DOGE aligned people looking at treasury payments were actually employees of treasury and therefore they were clearly covered by the exception.

Maybe this fact would’ve been pointed out if this wasn’t an ex parte proceeding but I’m pretty convinced the whole thing isn’t about law at this point.

It was ex parte so one sided briefing.

They should look into this judge. I bet there is some corruption. Also the issue of standing was effectively ignored.

This particular ruling probably wasn't corruption (whether or not the judge is corrupt) but political alignment. And yes, procedural hurdles like standing tend to melt away when the court wants to make the decision.

Oh i have no doubt there wasn’t direct corruption here. But if the judge wants to without a scintilla of legal reasoning prevent the executive from operating based purely on partisan hack grounds, then the appropriate response is “let’s dig into his life and find something to ruin his life.”

Is there a list of all of DOGEs achievements?

x.com/DOGE is their official brag

There's this https://www.doge-tracker.com/

It's not 'official'

Well just immediately this seems to be suggesting that on the basis of 60,000 redundancies the Federal Government will be saving $30 billion. It seems to me just a trifle unlikely that the average employee of these 60,000 is costing the government $500,000 p/a.

Benefits too. Also I suspect their budget math is projecting the savings out into future years. It's unlikely to all be year 1 savings. If you quit this year, we also 'save' what you would have been paid next year too.

It says "annual savings" for that $30B figure on Doge Tracker.

It also says not official data.

It's like for the first time in my lifetime people said 'no, we don't do that anymore.' And our leaders now share values sufficiently enough that they didn't ignore the sentiment or just listen and commiserate, they actually...obeyed. Pretty much instantly.

I've been thinking about this.

Are we... The Man now? Is our generation now old enough and influential enough to wield primary political power, and this is what it looks like?

It depends on your understanding of 'we' but I don't think so. Average age on the Motte is maybe 30? Even JD Vance is 40, and Musk and Trump are older. I think our generation is getting more influential though, and this is at least partly what that looks like.

I would guess significantly higher than 30

Yeah there were a lot of people in their late thirties iirc when this came up a few years ago, so late thirties early forties is the mean I'd guess.

I wonder what it is like to grow up with oldheads all over the internet.

I think early forties is unlikely given there are many much younger people here and only a few in their fifties (maybe one or two in their sixties, but I actually don’t think we have any boomers here, or are least not more than a handful). Average age 31-34 maybe.

This place feels very elder millennial but maybe that is just my projection.

I don't really qualify as a Mottizen since I rarely post and have never effortposted, but I'm here reading every day and I'm a boomer.

Elez’s account, @nullllptr—a misspelling of a keyword in the C++ programming language—was deleted in December, but hundreds of brash, sometimes-sophomoric posts have been archived.

The deleted @nullllptr account previously went by the username @marko_elez, a review of archived posts shows. The user behind the @nullllptr also described themselves as an employee at SpaceX and Starlink.

How is this possible? Twitter specifically does not allow offline viewing anymore or archiving since Elon's buyout. changing the username and deleting the posts should have made the posts permanently and instantly inaccessible. AFIK there is no way to read a deleted tweet.

Some details about the person who uncovered the tweets:

https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1887900053240504519

She probably has intelligence contacts. At a minimum she worked for USAID in Central Asia.

Uncovering these tweets is not exactly rocket science, but it would likely involve a concerted effort to monitor social media, archive it, and tie alts to real people. Which of course the CIA and other intelligence services must be doing.

https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1887900053240504519

Maybe she is just really good at investigative reporting.

Could be, but it seems obvious there’s an IT backend here. How else could she have uncovered the alts and deleted tweets? Perhaps there is a dirt digging service that is not affiliated with any state agency.

AFIK there is no way to read a deleted tweet.

….other than on countless archive sites?

At the very least he should be fired for not having even a shred of common sense. What kind of OPSEC is it to try to rename an account from your actual name?

because making a new account means having to deal with twitter's default restrictions on new accounts , which are very onerous

"does not allow" is not the same thing as "no-one is doing it".

There are still external archives & scrapers. All the progressive lockdowns have done is get rid of the well-behaved ones.

AI, if anything, is making this worse, as it is showing that even illegitimately-obtained data has value.

I've predicted that the DOGE would be highly effective. So far it's exceeded my already high expectations.

Every day, there is the steady drip, drip, drip of taxpayer money being saved. People might scoff at the value of cutting small programs that "only" cost $20 million. But if the average taxpayer pays $500k in taxes over their lifetime, that's 40 people working for their entire lives to give the government that statue of Fauci or whatever else they are doing. Wasting money destroys societal trust.

Not that every fraud and waste is small potatoes. Just today the NIH cut the "tax" that schools like Harvard and Yale are allowed to charge to run their government research. Previously, for example, Harvard grants on average charged 69% above the cost of doing research for institutional overhead. (I think we can all imagine where that ends up). NIH just capped that tax at 15%. This will save $4 billion per year. That's $53 for every one of the 75 million Americans who paid federal income tax last year.

Savings like this are happening every day. So far DOGE has saved $69 billion according to U.S. Debt clock.

But of course they haven't gotten to the biggest sectors of the government yet. They will, and I predict the fraud and waste will be shocking. How much social security is going to dead people, to disability fraudsters, to illegal immigrants, etc...? My guess is a lot. The fraud and waste at USAID was just sitting there for anyone to see, but no one did. Why should other segments of the government be any different?

It's going to get crazy.

Previously, for example, Harvard grants on average charged 69% above the cost of doing research for institutional overhead. (I think we can all imagine where that ends up). NIH just capped that tax at 15%. This will save $4 billion per year. That's $53 for every one of the 75 million Americans who paid federal income tax last year.

If you follow the incentives off a cliff (as happened with health insurance), that means that if they want to retain their $4B cut, that means the new cost of doing research needs to be such that 15% of it is $4B.

If they were willing to just arbitrarily inflate costs, then why would they have stopped at $4B so far?

In any case, 0% is surely best.

You can’t significantly reduce the deficit without cutting “legitimate” Medicare, Medicaid, social security and pork-barrel defense spending, by which I mean spending that is not on the surface fraudulent and is doing ‘what it was intended to do’ by congress (give money to electorally valuable constituencies and create jobs in valuable districts).

Trump apparently just put the DOGE team in charge of auditing defense, so I think your constant drumbeat of "nothing ever happens" may need to be updated just a bit here.

People say this but more and more it is looking like that might not be true. What if there is a lot of waste and fraud in those programs? What if they can cut them without harming grandma? And again, they don’t need to get to a balanced budget. They need to slow the deficit enough to get out of a debt spiral.

What if they can cut them without harming grandma?

How? Medicare likely has lots of fraud on the provider end but social security would have an unusual number of people too old to be alive if there was widespread fraud.

What if 2% is fraud? What if Medicare is 5%-10%? You don’t need a large percentage to be fraud to start having a meaningful impact.

Agreed that investigating social security checks to 120 year olds is likely a net positive. But America having far fewer 120 year olds than countries with known largescale pension fraud problems like Italy and Japan indicates that it's probably a small net positive more than outweighed by population aging.

I'm totally in agreement about medicare. Just think we should temper our expectations.

more and more it is looking like that might not be true

Is it looking that way? Fiscal 'hawks' have been promising for decades that they're going to lower costs without impacting services by cutting fraud and waste and it keeps failing to manifest. What new indicators have surfaced to suggest that This Time Is Different and we really have uncovered the massive fraud that's going to save us hundreds of billions per year? Because penny-wise cuts in the civil service ain't it.

This exactly. Let's put aside the DoD for a second because everyone knows about the waste there.

Many people are nakedly asserting that there is close to zero fraud in SSI and Medicare/Medicaid. I have no idea where this belief comes from. We haven't even looked! USAID was riddled with waste and fraud. It was just sitting in the open for anyone to see. But no one bothered to check until now.

Similarly, the government forgave tens of billions in fraudulent PPI loans.

They let murderers and rapists who were illegal aliens stay in the country when they knew about their crimes and had their addresses.

Would it really be a surprise if they also let illegal aliens, dead people, and scammers collect social security?

They need to slow the deficit enough to get out of a debt spiral.

Yes. If interest rates go down and inflation runs a little hot, then it won't be hard reduce the size of the debt relative to GDP. If DOGE is allowed to work, Trump could end his term having made a significant reduction in debt/GDP. This is not an impossible task.

At least until some judge reverses it all.

Judicial power ultimately relies on popular buy-in. The courts don't have very many divisions. The energy of this moment is so intense that an attempt by courts to stop it would do nothing except damage the legitimacy of the court. A few more "Hawaiian judge" rulings and the administration will begin covertly defying the court. A few more after that, and the administration will openly and brazenly defy the court. This is a civilizational moment and it can't be stopped by some guy in a robe.

The courts don't have very many divisions

This is an anti-civilizational ethos. When you say "fuck the rules, stop me if you can", you can't then complain if people take you up on your invitation. And, uh, the outcome of that is a massive lose-lose.

Gonna suck for you when thenother side wins by 1.5% and starts their "civilizational moment", huh?

They already did. This is the reaction, and we're not even close to it being symmetrical.

No, because that would 5x what is happening now. It snowballs. That's how it works. Like when Trump barely beat Clinton and Wokeness went into hyperdrive. Dems winning by 1.5% and trying to restore Woke hegemony would be the ideal case for the opposition. It's a counter-culture gaining momentum.

There is a genuine "they have made their ruling, now let them enforce it" aspect here.

Okay so a judge says you can't fire them without process. Doesn't stop you from disposing of their work equipment, repurposing their buildings, and basically proceeding along as if they've already been fired.

Okay so the judge doesn't let you freeze their funds. But you can slow walk the distributions, or turn them over to friendly elements within the departments, or earmark them for long term spending goals so they're still sitting there.

For better or worse, Judges have a limited toolbox to impose their will on other branches, and it is thus sort of easy to guess which ones they'll use and route around those.

IF the legislature decides to play along (big IF) then they can also start defunding courts or reshuffling them and making Judges themselves decide its a good time to retire.

Okay so a judge says you can't fire them without process. Doesn't stop you from disposing of their work equipment, repurposing their buildings, and basically proceeding along as if they've already been fired.

Man, you are going to be so pissed when you learn about how constructive dismissal works.

The good news is that if the legislature is on board, they can just rewrite the statutes on these departments and then there isn't any intra-executive conflict needed at all. Want to abolish USAID, just have Congress do it in a one-liner. The courts have long since deferred to Congress' authority over the purse strings.

In fact, the only reason the courts have as much power as they do is that Congress doesn't go back through and amend statutes when they are interpreted wrong. Largely because Congress can't be assed to do much of anything, let alone their core function. So much of the dysfunction of the US government is downstream of that power vacuum caused by a Congress that can't or won't legislate.

Man, you are going to be so pissed when you learn about how constructive dismissal works.

I'll show you my Bar card if you can explain which remedies a court can apply in response to a constructive dismissal/termination claim.

It'll save us all some time.

Point is, a Judge can't really force an employer to keep an employee if the employer really wants to let that employee go. They can impose monetary penalties, but in this case they'll probably be paid happily.

Well first would you agree that the elements of constructive termination would be met and we’re just haggling about remedies?

On to remedies, I think front pay could end up being quite a bit.

Under Whittlesey an ambitious plaintiff could argue they would have likely worked till normal retirement and would be entitled to their entire future pay.

Less ambitiously, a plaintiff still does alright. Maybe it’s in the realm of “pay it to go away”

Maybe it’s in the realm of “pay it to go away”

And this is where I think it'd end up if they kept the person on the payroll but just denied them the ability to actually do their job while the situation was worked out.

Okay so a judge says you can't fire them without process. Doesn't stop you from disposing of their work equipment, repurposing their buildings, and basically proceeding along as if they've already been fired.

The judge right now is saying they can't even put them on paid administrative leave. I'm not sure exactly what that means; if they don't put them on leave but also don't assign them any work nor give them access to any government systems, how is that any different? But if it isn't different, can they hold the administration in contempt?

It depends on the judge but it seems like he is focused on the very narrow cases where a aUS employee is abroad and this will cause them immediate harm. The judge isn’t trying to extend it months but weeks to allow them an orderly repatriation to the US.

This seems like an excuse, and if it were the true reason the TRO could have been narrower.

if they don't put them on leave but also don't assign them any work nor give them access to any government systems, how is that any different?

Sounds like the Japanese method of pressuring workers to quit: stick them in a room with nothing to do, wait for them to quit out of boredom.

That kind of power hara(ssment) is illegal in Japan as of two years ago.

Which is nice in many ways but will cause problems. Japanese employee protection is very strong so power hara was often the only way to get dead weight to quit.

That may be why the penalties are relatively light: small fines and public shaming by being put on a public list.

https://www.kojimalaw.jp/en/articles/0003

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220329/p2a/00m/0op/013000c

Sounds like the Japanese method of pressuring workers to quit: stick them in a room with nothing to do, wait for them to quit out of boredom.

I am fairly sure this would not work with the modal federal government worker. But I'm pretty sure a lot of these people have been "working" from home since COVID anyway.

See NYC schools' 'rubber rooms'- it's easier to reassign teachers accused of sexual misconduct to sit in a room and do nothing all day than to adjudicate the case, so they... sit in a room and do nothing all day.

Here's a cracked interview with someone who was in one- https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2564-what-if-your-job-paid-you-to-do-absolutely-nothing.html

Can't you just assign people to work in Alaska or somewhere they don't want to work instead of firing them.

SDNY judge would say no to reassigning them to Alaska.

More comments

From what I heard, they don't let you just sit on your phone or otherwise occupy yourself. You have to stare at the screen where nothing is going on. Otherwise, I doubt it would work on the Japanese either.

What are they going to do if you ignore that and bring a book in your pocket? Fire you?

One thing I've noticed since I entered the workforce is that you can get away with simply ignoring your boss's stupidest orders surprisingly often as long as you don't confront them about it and pretend you made a mistake if you get caught. They don't notice, or they forget, or they give up on enforcement.

More comments

Somehow I doubt they will just cave to a random Obama appointee from Hawaii, but I'm so glad that you are blackpilled again. For a second it seemed that you were optimistic. It was then that I wondered "has Trump gone too far?"

yeah but many of these people who are fired/quit are going to find other wasteful jobs , and also the severance $ by your same argument adds up to billions of dollars over a lifetime compounded compared to putting the $ in an index fund or something. DOGE will not put a dent in the national debt, but it does not need to. it's an effective rhetorical tool. Trump's successor in 2028 can cite all the cuts under DOGE as progress even if the national debt is still much higher.

Trump's successor in 2028 can cite all the cuts under DOGE as progress even if the national debt is still much higher.

I mean never underestimate the stupidity of the American people etc. etc. but if this really is what they're doing then all this implies is that the Trump administration are charlatans whom the people should hold in utter contempt. If they actually don't even care about the debt what are they even doing? Why are they bothering? Is the only animating principle of the modern American right to indulge their desire to punish the 'establishment' because of whatever chip they have on their shoulder?

I think you're wrong here. I predict DOGE will put a significant dent in the deficit. The fired workers will find other work, dip into savings, rely on their rich relatives, and just consume less. Some may even do something useful with their lives like become a nurse or manage a Panda Express.

But, who knows, maybe this will be the time that betting against Elon works out for the doubters.

Some may even do something useful with their lives like become a nurse or manage a Panda Express.

They absolutely will not do this, those are working class professions. They'll probably become public school admins.

I think you're wrong here. I predict DOGE will put a significant dent in the deficit.

Are you interested in attaching some numbers to your prediction? How much lower do you think the 2025 deficit will be relative to 2024?

Sure! Kalshi has the 2025 deficit reduction estimate at $227 billion, with 33% chance of a $500 billion reduction.

https://kalshi.com/markets/kxgovtcuts/government-budget-cuts

Note: That's just this year. I think the big savings will happen in years 2-4, and this is tilted against DOGE since we still have to digest Biden's last meal.

Nevertheless, despite being very difficult to achieve, I think those predictions are accurate.

For the longer term, instead of deficits, I should predict spending since economic conditions will affect receipts. In 2019, federal spending was roughly $4.4 trillion. In 2024 it was roughly $6.75 trillion, an increase of a staggering 9% per year.

I predict that 2025 spending will be less than in 2024 (80% confidence). And I predict a mid-point of $5.5 trillion in inflation-adjusted spending in 2028.

No, that predicts a reduction in spending, not in the deficit. Whatever savings they do make will no doubt be eliminated and then some by the customary budget-busting Republican tax cut.

maybe this will be the time that betting against Elon works out for the doubters

I wonder about this. Espically because this is a scenario where Elons fate is not even completely in his hands. What happens if DOGE goes as well as it could but it turns out that the GOP figure out in 2028 that MAGA really was just a Trump personality cult and the Dems sweep back into power anyway? Do you think he flees the country? I can't see a world where they don't imprison/Deposses him at least or just kill him.

Dysfunctional infighting between the Texas state government and the federal government that winds up at the supreme court letting Elon off is what happens. Texas may not be a land of enlightened technocrats but it understands perfectly well that sticking up for oligarchs is the best way to get access to their money.

It all depends on how things shake out.The political situation in 2028 is so difficult to predict I do not even bother with the actual prediction just what I think will happen given one of the possible outcomes. I think in the worst case scenario for the conservatives/GOP (IE Trump really is the load bearing figure in the whole movement and it just implodes with him diminished and unable to run again) its very possible the courts are just packed and Texas can't do anything at all. I don't thinks that's likely as I don't think legal action is going to be what happens to Musk but I just don't know.

In practice, democrats getting the kind of majorities that in theory could pack the courts requires getting tons of moderates who would shy away from court packing elected. Now democrats can appoint super partisan judges, but it takes time for the churn to get them the kinds of majorities which allow unbridled lawfare against parties with powerful protectors.

I agree with you 100% I don't think the lawfare angle is likely against someone as powerful and wealthy as Musk. I don't think it would pan out and if it did it would have years and could be undone. I think for a lot of reasons if the Dems come back into power in a big way the "plane crash" , "heart attack" and "car accident" angles are far more likely.

I don’t think Musk really cares that much about that given projection of the future since he considers it probable that the singularity will happen in this term, at least. He’s probably more inclined to believe that Sama beats him to the punch and disassembles his atoms than simply being imprisoned by the next blob-appointed president.

Then it doesn’t really make much sense what he is doing (eg why care about the budget or defanging the bureaucracy if skynet will be here in two years).

Because a better starting point allows the slack to be pulled quicker if you’re not expecting a super-hard takeoff? Although I’m not sure what Musk believes with regard to that.

If you get a singularity soon, then this is all noise.

Elon seems far less on board with the ultra-fast ASI timeline than Sam or the Anthropic guys or even the Deepmind guys and Zuck.

I've had the same thought. I'd say there's a large chance (maybe 15%) that he gets assassinated in the next 4 years. He's taken billions of dollars out of the mouths of extremely corrupt, powerful people. It makes what Epstein did look like child's play. And he hasn't even started with the the DoD yet.

If a Republican doesn't win in 2028, he is toast. And I think it's going to be tough for them. Trump is sui-generis. No one can speak to the rubes like he can.

Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.

Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.

Aren't we all?

Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.

I have said before and believe more so now that him going to jail is extremely unlikely. I think if the Dems rally and reorganize enough to take advantage of Trump being gone and actually win in 2028, then their new leadership would be smart enough to aim for the head with regards to Elon and not risk just imprisoning him.

Musk is a difficult target- this isn't joe schmo clinton associate here.

Elon is both not very good as assessing risk to his person and a very loud public figure. Assassinating him would not be very difficult if you had control of the government and a federal apparatus that supports his death.

And what do you think the result of such an action would be?

Musk gets a page or two in the history books along with thousands of other people across countries and time periods who played the game of thrones, lost and died.

Isn't putting him jail better than killing him since it's a more explicit demonstration of power?

Or is the risk that he would get pardoned and go for another cycle? To prevent that, they might go for the suicide in prison route or torture him via solitary confinement like they did to Bradley Manning and some of the J6 prisoners.

Or is the risk that he would get pardoned

Bingo! Yeah I think history is not really kind to people in the modern era that tried to exile people vs just killing them.

I'm very happy about the direction and I hope it represents a sea change. However, I have strong reservations in this case specifically. He was recently hand-picked to rejigger the government, ostensibly on behalf on the American people. This past summer he tweeted "Normalize Indian hate", and "I was racist before it was cool." At best, this belies his immaturity. He already had a job at SpaceX, and he now has the sympathies of the richest man on the planet. He wasn't cut out for public service, and he'll be fine.

Vance said "I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life". I totally agree, but Vance is being your typical disingenuous politician. Either Musk is hiring kids to oversee the government, or this guy isn't a kid.

In principle, I'm against this specific re-hiring because I think he earned his firing more earnestly than he earned his hiring. It would have been better to issue an apology and do nothing. In practice, I'm just hopeful that more sympathetic cases become the norm. The left will continue to eat their own for some time, so this is a competitive advantage on the right. And the right is probably closer to a humanistic, empathetic understanding of people on this issue. My point is that it has limits.

I support his rehiring because it's the ultimate repudiation of cancel culture, and about time the right grew a spine. You don't win a culture war by accepting the opponent's moral framing or terms.

I agree, it's a welcome development.

At the same time, how would, 'Normalize Israelite hate.' have gone? Maybe Elon would take him on a field trip to Auschwitz.

I mean one of his tweets being quoted in news stories was literally “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”

Pessimistically I assumed this was the one that really got him fired (well, "asked to resign".)

Maybe if the left called him an antisemite rather than leading with the anti-Indian racism the charges would've stuck? Though maybe not, the Elon nazi salute thing passed from the zeitgeist very quickly, especially with the ADL coming out to defend him.

especially with the ADL coming out to defend him.

Can you point me to what they actually said? I can find lots of secondary sources claiming they did, but none containing a quote, and nothing on adl.org.

It seems plausible to me. Maybe something like "calling people who aren't killing Jews Nazis is like, kind of in poor taste, please stop."

https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403

I am not surprised by a primary source getting buried.

Interesting, I was hoping for more detail than that from them. Thanks for digging it up.

This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety.

It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.

In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.

That's fun. Wasn't in the coverage I read.

Is indifference to the destruction of Gaza and Isreal, antisemitic? I guess if the ADL wants it to be.

I get your point. On the other hand, rehiring this guys is probably the strongest at to say, no we don’t do cancel culture anymore.

Somewhat ironically, the more transparently fair and judicious about this stuff the less power you actually have. We’ve seen this play out over the last half decade enough to known for sure. It’s why apologies don’t work. Unfortunately you can’t push against the tide with small reasonable discernments. You end up just breathing more power into the controlling frame.

The best thing to do would have been to not hire this person to this position in the first place.

The second best thing to do is to use the oppprtunity to tell activist journos to shove it.

This way the next time we can ignore them, and the time after that we can fire people justly in an understood isolation from the noise.

The among the worst things to do (in terms of efficacy) would be to tell the journos they’re right this time with their cancellations but not next time we promise!!

rehiring this guys is probably the strongest at to say, no we don’t do cancel culture anymore.

Yeah, I actually love this aspect of it. I might even be glad it happened overall. I do fear the monkeys paw with this one. I'm unsure, and I don't want to get swept up in the moment.

My principle and practice / ideals and realpolitik are in conflict. I could hew to my ideals (ie "yes, its totally reasonable to fire a brand new hire to visible public service who you just found out tweeted 'I'm racist' over the summer"), or embrace the realpolitik ("cancel culture is so toxic that it needs to be destroyed, and a morally ambiguous case is the most effective weapon").

One thing I must say, he really did hate Indians before it was cool.

This was the only correct move. If they allowed an engineer to get sniped through character assassination, it allows the media to effectively end the project. I really want to see JD out there aggressively pushing back with something like "You say his tweets disqualify him from working for DOGE, what jobs do you think he should still be allowed to have? Can he still be an engineer? Is he allowed to paint walls? Do you know ahead of time what jobs he is still permitted to be in, or are you figuring it out as you go?" Maybe we'll see it yet. Maybe he reads my post. A guy can dream.

character assassination

Ah, the old 'character assassination' technique of reading what someone wrote six months ago, it's like Stalin's purges this. It is not some 2021-level neurotic woke cancelling. This was a man being an unrepentant racist last summer. If you want to work for the government, don't self-identify as a racist on a public forum.

  • -13

On one hand, I don't want racists working for federal government. On the other hand, the left had absolutely no problem with racists working for federal government - in fact, they encouraged it and send billions of dollars to racists that couldn't find employment with federal government, too - so giving them veto power over federal appointment, as if their opinion matters now, feels wrong to me too. Any accusation from their side is and always will be only tactical, nothing to do with opposing racism or supporting any value I'd like to support. So I don't see a positive side to jumping at their command.

You don't have to 'jump' at anyone's command. Just come to the conclusion about his suitability for the role in light of his behaviour yourself.

I don't have to do even that. Musk or Trump have to do that. So far they are doing a spectacular job as far as draining the swamp is concerned. That's precisely what I have voted for, and I want them to continue that for the following 4 years. If on the way they hire a couple of guys that said some stupid shit, maybe I won't be 100% happy with that, but provided that they deliver on the rest of the deal, I don't really care.

Why should failure to worship a Democratic sacred cow disqualify you for employment under a Republican administration?

The sacred cow of not being avowedly racist? Pretty sure that's been a bipartisan sacred cow for quite a long time now.

Say thanks to the DIE crowd for slaughtering that cow. Being openly racist has been OK with them for a while now. I hated that. Your crowd didn't, they encouraged it. So, now it's a bit late to pretend it's alive again. If you want to establish a new one, you'd have to prove you are serious about it, and to be honest, I have no idea how the Left could do that, at least not until the current DIE-worshipping generation is out of the picture.

which is why anti-white racism and bigotry is so viciously punished and for so long

I knew someone who made the same point about the Muslim community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site (the one people were calling the 'Ground Zero Mosque'). "Exactly how far away would it need to be before you agree that it is unreasonable to object?"

This validates all the people who were calling DOGE, Elon, and the GOP Nazis, but at the same time…they already thought they were Nazis and always would think that regardless of what happened.

The question is how this affects the normies who don’t really follow politics or news and aren’t the type to flip out over racism charges. Reading the tweets it sounds like basic internet edgelordism, maybe Indians would be the most likely to take great offense, but they’re a tiny electorate soooo, whatever? Elon defended them earlier and has that Akash kid o his team, so it’s probably a wash

But how does this bring DOGE back? Legal obstruction is the main impediment and remains entirely there

As a related aside - are charges of racism pretty much dead now? Feels like calling Trump a fascist nazi for all of the last 10 years only for him to be re elected by even a higher majority = nobody really cares what leftists think about who is racist anymore, at least in America. The print media are dying, elite opinion is shrinking force in politics.

it sounds like basic internet edgelordism

I think this overestimates the average person's familiarity with internet culture. Most people over the age of say, 40, I think would still find these pretty shocking things to say in any context, and with politics starting to de-align on age again these are definitely plausible Democratic voters. It's hard to spin this as a 'charge' of racism when he literally self identified as a racist.

He self identified within a meme format, sort of like all his other offensive and private tweets, but older people probably won’t get that like you said

I mean he only has himself to blame if people don't 'get it'. Don't broadcast yourself endorsing hatred of an entire race! Not that difficult.

When you’re an anon presumably you’re operating under the assumption your only audience is people who do get it though. This information is all coming out in bad faith, to undermine DOGE. Same playbook they used against the truckers, accuse racism to rally opposition

As a related aside - are charges of racism pretty much dead now? Feels like calling Trump a fascist nazi for all of the last 10 years only for him to be re elected by even a higher majority = nobody really cares what leftists think about who is racist anymore, at least in America.

You'd think they would have learned from what happened after Fox "News" spent the better part of two decades calling Everyone and everything left of Reaganism-Thatcherism 'communist'....

Not really the same thing though. As far as conceptual super-weapons are concerned, racist had 100x the power than communist

You'd think they would have learned from what happened after Fox "News" spent the better part of two decades calling Everyone and everything left of Reaganism-Thatcherism 'communist'....

LOL, it's hard to learn from stuff which didn't actually happen.

Now that you mention it it's pretty funny to think of this from the pov of Indians. Vivek got removed from DOGE after his anti-american tweet. Big Balls is removed and then rehired after his anti-indian tweet.

Lomez tweeted this:

It is worth mentioning that many people were discussing the DOGE matter behind the scenes, including many Indians who had the magnanimity to hear Marko out and helped facilitate his rehiring. I won’t name names but these individuals deserve a lot of credit.

Lots of positive developments came of this episode and it is a very good sign that what could’ve ended in acrimony and a scalp for the left, instead ended with the MAGA coalition finding more common ground to grow even stronger.

You don't have to do anything just because people who hate you say you have to.

The Indian people who work with this young man have forgiven him. Reasonable people can make mistakes. They can also forgive and change. But a hate mob howling for blood is incapable of forgiveness and must never be fed.

Is there any evidence this guy changed any of his opinions? These tweets were posted months ago lol, I doubt his views toward Indians have changed very much in the meantime.

Opinions? He was shitposting on Twitter under an alt.

He clearly had no problem working with Indians since no one noticed his "racism" until they mounted a relatively sophisticated cyber investigation into him.

The only reason they do these investigations (which must require significant resources to constantly track, monitor, and archive social media and tie alts to real people) is they think they can just play a "you win" card whenever they dig something up. Turns out, we can just ignore the card and they waste all that time and money on nothing. No one actually cares, it's all fake outrage.

The funniest aspect of all this is the slowly growing realization among the Brahmins -actual subcontinental Brahmins, not just crunchy lefties - that being imported en masse to the USA by visa abuse does not mean acceptance of their presence. The Brahmins have thought themselves so smart, speaking ill of other minorities while sucking up to the majority race, and at the same time turning around to call the majority race idiots who need the guidance of the Brahmins. Turns out its not that the Brahmins needed better shudras to improve their loka, its that the Brahmins weren't entitled to prosperity to begin with.

All is right in the world. Everything has returned to normal. In this moment, there is no doom or ill will: one is given enough room to hope.

The 25 year old who admitted he was racist against Indians is being reinstated by the guy who has an Indian wife and half-Indian kids. Methinks it's eating itself in its confusion.

Ok, but which Indians did the kid mean and which Indians are the guy's wife? If I believe the comments of our resident Indians, there are goodsmart Indians and badstupid Indians, and the former don't have a lot of ethnic solidarity with the latter.

I don’t think there is such a thing as “goodsmart” and “badstupid” Indians. That’s a pretty racist position to me.

Is there any reason at all to believe that Elez’s personal antipathy toward Indians (to the extent that such antipathy is real and embodied, rather than simply a performative internet shitpost) will have any measurable impact on the budget-slashing decisions he contributes to in his role at DOGE? These things are just meaningless online comments. What reason do you have to believe they have any correlation with the quality of his judgment in a professional capacity?

Would you trust a leftist who extensively posts acab, protect trans kids, stale pale male etc. content to do an unbiased job in the government?

Were you concerned about them doing an unbiased job in the government all these years?

Not terribly concerned about either all these years or today. I would expect the guy I replied to to have been concerned, though, which is why I asked.

Who said anything about "unbiased"? I don't recall Trump campaigning on creating an unbiased government.

Also, I was already forced to. The mere suggestion that a "protect trans kids" post, barring other evidence, implies that someone is unqualified for a job related to pediatric gender care would earn you a ban here.

Someone who is racist already has demonstrated a poor judgement of reality.

  • -15

Someone who is racist already has demonstrated a poor judgement of reality.

While I would say being racist is a moral failing - if being racist makes you a poor judgement of reality and unfit for providing input on things outside of race we've got a lot of governments throughout the world and a ton of civilizational knowledge we need to toss in the dumpster, including the US and liberalism.

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