The Elon Musk Thread

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Surprised it hasn't been banned in Germany already

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More on that by Alex Nguyen:

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Elon Musk appears to be leaning even further into a full neo-Nazi embrace. Following his social media assault to block a congressional spending bill meant to avoid a government shutdown, the tech billionaire took to X and described the racist, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as Germany’s last, best hope.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” he posted on X early Friday. He was responding to Naomi Seibt, a young German right-wing influencer—the Washington Post dubbed her the anti-Greta Thunberg for her climate change denialism—whose caption in part read, “The presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example.” Similar to Argentina President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” policies, Musk has promised $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending as co-lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor of Germany, dismissed Musk’s remarks in an unrelated press conference on Friday. “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multibillionaires,” Scholz said. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”

The AfD is controversial even among other European far-right parties because many of its leaders are not shy about expressing Nazi sympathies. In May, France’s far-right party led by Marine Le Pen split from the AfD in its European Parliament coalition after the German party’s top candidate, Maximilian Krah, said that a person was “not automatically a criminal” just because they had been a member of the SS, Adolph Hitler’s paramilitary organization.

Conclusion:

He (Musk) previously has shown interest in funding other anti-immigration parties, such as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, in which reports suggest he has contributed as much as $100 million. Musk met with Farage earlier this week at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the donation.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... i-party/

caltrek’s comment: Man, I sure underestimated how dangerous a person Musk would turn out to be.

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Elon Musk’s Boring Company Is Tunneling Beneath Las Vegas With Little Oversight
by Daniel Rothberg for ProPublica and Dayvid Figler, City Cast Las Vegas
January 8, 2025

Introduction:

(ProPublica) Elon Musk’s Boring Company spent years pitching cities on a novel solution to traffic, an underground transportation system to whisk passengers through tunnels in electric vehicles. Proposals in Illinois and California fizzled after officials and the public began scrutinizing details of the plans and seeking environmental reviews.

But in Las Vegas, the tunneling company is building Musk’s vision beneath the city’s urban core thanks to an unlikely partner: the tourism marketing organization best known for selling the image that “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”

The powerful Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority greenlit the idea and funded an 0.8-mile route at its convention center. As that small “people mover” opened in 2021, the authority was already urging the county and city to approve plans for 104 stations across 68 miles of tunnels.

The project is also realizing Musk’s notion of how government officials should deal with entrepreneurs: avoid lengthy reviews before building and instead impose fines later if anything goes awry. Musk’s views on regulatory power have taken on new significance in light of his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump and his role in a new effort to slash rules in the name of improving efficiency. The Las Vegas project, now well under way, is a case study of the regulatory climate Musk favors.

Because the project, now known as the Vegas Loop, is privately operated and receives no federal funding, it is exempt from the kinds of exhaustive governmental vetting and environmental analyses demanded by the other cities that Boring pitched. Such reviews assess whether a proposal is the best option and inform the public of potential impacts to traffic and the environment

Read more here: https://www.propublica.org/article/elo ... versight

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Tesla Sales in Europe Plummet Amidst Elon’s Stupid Meddling

Published February 3, 2025

Tesla sales in Europe are plummeting fast. Electrek reports that, year over year, sales are down 18 percent in the United Kingdom, 31 percent in Portugal, more than 40 percent in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, 63 percent in France, and a whopping 75 percent in Spain. Overall, the takeaway seems to be that Europeans want Elon Musk and his fancy car company to f*ck right off.

Some media outlets have linked the company’s cratering sales to its CEO’s growing unpopularity. That would make sense, since Musk has spent the last several months openly meddling in political systems all over Europe. Musk has used his social media platform, X, to attack European leaders (including the prime minister of Britain and regulators in Ireland), has endorsed a far-right party in Germany that is alleged to have ties to neo-Nazis, and has fostered ties to Italy’s rightwing prime minister. Musk has also attempted to conjure a MAGA equivalent in Europe dubbed “MEGA,” or Make Europe Great Again.

It would appear that Musk’s favorability in many of these countries is quite low. A recent YouGov poll found that most citizens of Germany and the UK thought Musk was ignorant of their countries and should stay out of their politics. Musk and Tesla also recently engaged in a high-profile battle with a number of Scandinavian unions, tarring his image with organized labor on the continent.

https://gizmodo.com/tesla-sales-in-euro ... 2000558496

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Top Democrat Demands Answers on Treasury 'Cover-Up' of Musk Team's Access to Key System
Jake Johnson
February 7, 2025

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden on Friday demanded answers from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after reporting contradicted the department's narrative about the level of payment system access granted to lieutenants of unelected billionaire Elon Musk.

In a letter to Bessent, Wyden (D-Ore.) pointed to a Thursday Wired story revealing that a Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) operative had "write access" to critical Treasury payment systems, despite the Treasury Department and Trump White House's insistence to the contrary.

According to Wired, 25-year-old Marko Elez—who resigned from his position Thursday after The Wall Street Journal inquired into his racist social media posts—"was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the U.S. government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS)."

"Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made 'extensive changes' to code within the Treasury system," Wired added. "The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veterans' pay."

Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote Friday that "if Wired's reporting is accurate, the Treasury Department deliberately misled or outright lied to Congress to cover up DOGE's handling of the nation's most sensitive financial system."

Read more of the Common Dreams article here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/wyden-doge-cover-up

From Talking Points Memo dated February 4, 2025:

Overnight, Wired reported that, contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to “read only” access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I (Josh Marshall) can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/m ... code-base

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The High-stakes Fight at Treasury
by Patrick Reis
February 7, 2025

Introduction:

(Vox) Welcome to The Logoff. Today, I’m focusing on a fight over control of the Treasury Department’s payment system, a legal battle with big implications for our democracy. At stake is Congress’s ability to keep control over government spending, a critical (and constitutional) check on Donald Trump’s power.

What’s the latest? A federal judge on Thursday signed off on an agreement limiting the access that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gets to the Treasury Department’s payment system. For now, only two DOGE employees will be able to view the system’s inner workings, but they won’t be able to make changes or cancel payments.

Back up. What’s the context here? For weeks, DOGE employees have been pushing to access the system — which handles trillions of dollars of federal spending — and sparring with career (non-political) Treasury employees who oversee it. Government employees’ groups sued to block DOGE’s access, resulting in Thursday’s agreement.

What access does DOGE want? Ultimately, DOGE is seeking the ability to unilaterally cancel payments. That’s clear after the New York Times and CNN revealed that Trump’s team had tried unsuccessfully to get Treasury to cancel all payments from the US Agency International Development, the agency Trump has since gutted.

What happens next? The limited-access deal will remain in place while the federal court case goes forward.

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newslet ... xplained

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Is DOGE a cybersecurity threat?
by Richard Forno
February 6, 2025

Introduction:

(The Conversation) The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), President Donald Trump’s special commission tasked with slashing federal spending, continues to disrupt Washington and the federal bureaucracy. According to published reports, its teams are dropping into federal agencies with a practically unlimited mandate to reform the federal government in accordance with recent executive orders.

As a 30-year cybersecurity veteran, I find the activities of DOGE thus far concerning. Its broad mandate across government, seemingly nonexistent oversight, and the apparent lack of operational competence of its employees have demonstrated that DOGE could create conditions that are ideal for cybersecurity or data privacy incidents that affect the entire nation.

Traditionally, the purpose of cybersecurity is to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of information and information systems while helping keep those systems available to those who need them. But in DOGE’s first few weeks of existence, reports indicate that its staff appears to be ignoring those principles and potentially making the federal government more vulnerable to cyber incidents.

Technical competence

Cybersecurity and information technology, like any other business function, depend on employees trained specifically for their jobs. Just as you wouldn’t let someone only qualified in first aid to perform open heart surgery, technology professionals require a baseline set of credentialed education, training and experience to ensure that the most qualified people are on the job.

Currently, the general public, federal agencies and Congress have little idea who is tinkering with the government’s critical systems. DOGE’s hiring process, including how it screens applicants for technical, operational or cybersecurity competency, as well as experience in government, is opaque. And journalists investigating the backgrounds of DOGE employees have been intimidated by the acting U.S. attorney in Washington.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/is-doge-a- ... s-249111

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Efficiency − or Empire? How Elon Musk’s Hostile Takeover Could End Government as We Know It
by Allison Stanger
February 7 , 2025

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Elon Musk’s role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, is on the surface a dramatic effort to overhaul the inefficiencies of federal bureaucracy. But beneath the rhetoric of cost-cutting and regulatory streamlining lies a troubling scenario.

Musk has been appointed what is called a “special government employee” in charge of the White House office formerly known as the U.S. Digital Service, which was renamed the U.S. DOGE Service on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term. The Musk team’s purported goals are to maximize efficiency and to eliminate waste and redundancy.

That might sound like a bold move toward Silicon Valley-style innovation in governance. However, the deeper motivations driving Musk’s involvement are unlikely to be purely altruistic.

Musk has an enormous corporate empire, ambitions in artificial intelligence, desire for financial power and a long-standing disdain for government oversight. His access to sensitive government systems and ability to restructure agencies, with the opaque decision-making guiding DOGE to date, have positioned Musk to extract unprecedented financial and strategic benefits for both himself and his companies, which include the electric car company Tesla and space transport company SpaceX.

Conclusion:

The most dangerous inefficiency of all may be Americans’ delayed response to this crisis.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/efficiency ... t-249262

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A Hostile Corporate Takeover of Our Democracy
by Alex Jacquez, Elizabeth Pancotti
February 5, 2025

Conclusion:

(Other Words) Musk rails against the career federal workers who serve under both Democratic and Republican administrations as “unelected bureaucrats,” but you know them as your mail carrier, your social worker, and your Veterans Administration nurse.

New polling for our organization, Groundwork Collaborative, shows that nearly 60 percent of voters already believe this unelected tech billionaire has too much influence over Trump and the federal government.

The more they learn, the less they like. Musk’s audacious $2 trillion target for spending reductions is infeasible without deep, painful cuts to veterans benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and food assistance, all of which voters find unacceptable by stunning 50 point margins.

Already, scores of lawsuits have been launched against Musk and DOGE’s blitzkrieg through the federal government. Whether they will stop his reckless behavior is one question. Whether he and Trump will listen if they do is another.

Congress must step in and thoroughly investigate DOGE and check Elon’s unbridled power, before he breaks our government and our democracy beyond repair.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/a-hostile-corpo ... democracy

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WSJ- DOGE staffer resigns over racist posts

https://archive.ph/K4uim

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Report: Elon’s Cybertrucks Are Deadlier Than Infamous Ford Pintos
by Julianne McShane
February 7, 2025

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) Elon Musk’s Cybertrucks may look indestructible: hulking blocks of aluminum and steel that appear to be better suited for a space station than a parking spot on a narrow city street. But a new report suggests that they’re actually deadlier than one of the most infamous—and flawed—American cars ever made: the Ford Pinto.

An analysis published Thursday by the auto news website FuelArc found that, in their one year of existence, the approximately 34,000 Cybertrucks on the roads had five fire fatalities, giving them a fatality rate of 14.5 per 100,000 units. That’s 17 times the fatality rate of the Ford Pintos, whose famously flawed gas tank design on the car’s rear end led to 27 reported fire fatalities in its nine years on the road, resulting in a fatality rate of 0.85 per 100,000 units, according to FuelArc.

The authors of the Cybertruck analysis openly acknowledge caveats in their methodology. First off, Tesla—the car’s manufacturer and one of Musk’s companies—has not confirmed how many Cybertrucks it has sold. FuelArc puts its best guess at 34,438, based on “a variety of means, including piecing together public reporting.” Secondly, the five Cybertruck fatalities include the one that occurred in Las Vegas last month outside Trump International Hotel, when an Army soldier fatally shot himself before the car, packed with fireworks, exploded. Musk claimed in a post on X that the explosion was “unrelated to the vehicle itself.” Thus, the FuelArc analysis acknowledges that this fatality is “controversial” since the driver’s cause of death was reportedly a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and the burns occurred after his death.

Conclusion:

Musk bragged around the time of its release that it would “be much safer per mile than other trucks.” But his claims of superiority were quickly disproven, given that Tesla recalled the truck seven times last year alone—an astonishingly high amount—including once over a trapped accelerator pedal that could increase the risk of a crash, estimated to affect more than 3,800 units, according to the NHTSA.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... d-pinto/

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