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Hit after hit after hit.
Everything that the most devious minds could dream of is happening here in the former United States of America.
We no longer actually have a real government … at least not one “of the people, by the people, and for the people” as President Abraham Lincoln called it in Gettysburg
We have, instead, a group of uber-wealthy people, led by a raving maniac, who want to send the 99% of us into despair and poverty, even death, while they increase their own wealth, and they’re willing to break every law and burn the Constitution to do so. Let’s see what an old friend thinks about all of this …
Musk Rats
They’ve broken into the federal government!
Feeding in government payment systems.!
According to the best source I’ve found on this (Nathan Tankus’s Crises Notes), The Musk Rats have gnawed into unrestricted access to your Social Security number, your confidential bank information, your confidential medical information, and much more.
Boasting about “rapidly shutting down” Treasury remittances.
Tunneling into the health payment systems at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Burrowing into the Labor Department (I have no idea whether they’ve dug into the Bureau of Labor Statistics as yet), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Penetrating the Veterans Affairs systems.
Yesterday, federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly temporarily barred the Treasury Department from abandoning data from its payments system to gnawing Musk Rats, but it’s far from clear this will stop them.
Technically, Musk Rats still retain “read and write” code access because Judge Kollar-Kotelly barred “read only” access. That means they can still stop or alter federal payments.
Note that even after another federal judge — George A. O’Toole, Jr. — blocked Musk Rat’s buyout offer for federal employees until a full hearing Monday afternoon, they continue to urge federal workers to voluntarily leave their jobs or brace for layoffs.
Yesterday, one of them, a 25-year-old coder named Marko Elez, abruptly resigned after apparently racist comments from a dormant social media account were unearthed.
Another, a 19-year-old high school graduate now combing through government information, also runs a business that controls dozens of web domains, including at least two that are possibly registered in Russia. Shock Horror – a Musk Rat!
In other words, the coup continues.
Zoom out and the picture is even worse. You want waste and fraud? Look at what some big corporations and very wealthy people are getting away with.
Tesla’s annual financial report, released Wednesday, shows that although the corporation earned $2.3 billion in the United States in 2024, it reported to the IRS that it owed precisely zero in federal income taxes.
Or consider billionaire Scott Bessent, Trump’s new Treasury secretary (who’s been allowing Musk Rats into the federal payments system).
Turns out, Bessent paid no Medicare taxes on income he earned through his hedge fund (a practice the IRS has deemed illegal).
Oh, and Bessent fully exploited the “carried interest” loophole to lower his taxes even further.
Musk of course won’t recommend eliminating these and other tax loopholes — they caused the government to lose at least $1.8 trillion worth of tax revenue in 2023 alone.
I also doubt Musk will recommend cutting the billions in government contracts and subsidies his own corporations receive.
Or cutting America’s bloated military budget that’s bigger than the next nine countries’ military budgets combined — half of which goes to private defense contractors like Musk’s own SpaceX and Starlink.
And Musk of course won’t recommend that Republicans halt their plans to extend Trump’s tax cuts — which will add at least $5 trillion to the deficit and predominantly benefit billionaires, like him.
Instead, Musk wants to cut the government agencies that protect you but limit the profitability of his corporations.
In addition, because there’s no other place to find anything close to the $2 trillion Musk is promising to cut from the federal budget, I expect he’ll turn to cutting Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, which together comprise roughly 45 percent of the federal budget.
The fundamental issue isn’t the size of the government or how to make government more “efficient.” It’s who our government is for.
Should it work mainly for big corporations and billionaires, including the richest person in the world — or for the rest of us?
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The Free 