Congresspersons and Senators Denied Entry to US Government Building

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It doesn't matter if you hate USAID. It doesn't matter if you think the money they spend is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It doesn't matter if you think Musk is a genius and a renegade and superhero all wrapped up into one. None of it matters. What matters are the laws of the United States of America say there is a right way to do things, and Musk is operating outside of those laws right now. He has no legal authority to do what he is doing. So he needs to be stopped and held accountable.



+10109192827483

It is NOT about USAID. It's about letting a rogue agent take over the government and do whatever he wants.

Trump and the GOP can shutdown USAI, it's within their right. But there are rules,. procedures and laws for how to do it. Elon cannot fire employees who are civil servants and command government police forces. GTFO.

Elon does not run our entire government outside of the law.


+ another 10000000000
I'll keep posting this on threads all over the place until I'm blue in the face. It's the process everyone should be paying attention to, not just the outcome. Our democracy is built on a constitution and rule of law, and when you eliminate those, despite being happy with the outcome, you're an ignorant fool.


Come on. This just rings so hollow. Our country has an extremely long history of individual and collective action that breaks or bends then prevailing law—all the way back to the country’s founding fathers who knew they were risking their lives in declaring independence.

This goes all the way from the trivial (Harry Reid intentionally misleadingly insinuating that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat from the Senate floor—and laughing about it no less) to the most important issues (John Lewis and his good trouble).

Indeed, we’re less than 8 years removed from an FBI director leaking stories to the press, an FBI agent altering evidence in a warrant application and, as we speak, purported FBI agents are sharing details with each other on social media on how to anonymously leak information they are not authorized to disclose. My guess is that you are mostly supportive of these ethical and legal lapses (hopefully not on the warrant business), but we are to believe that all of a sudden you really care about the rule of law and process?

The left can’t spend the first Trump presidency declaring that he is such a unique threat to democracy that institutional guardrails should be ignored and then come back and assert institutional guardrails. It just has no credibility.

I’m not happy about violation of the law and institutional guardrails being ignored. But this has been happening for the better part of my adult life dating back to the second Bush administration. Why should we care now? Because this time it is different? Maybe you are right and this is the time to care. But after decades of this garbage, across both political parties, I just can’t…


Come on nothing. You don't burn the entire place down and then claim you give a crap about the rule of law and institutional guardrails. Except for Elon Musk, every single person you mentioned swore to uphold the constitution when they took an oath of office. That's not just for show. It means something. You seem to want to want equate civil rights protest (good trouble) with the utter crap show we have now so you lack all credibility. If the FBI is corrupt (and yes, I believe many of them are) root them out - do the job that you have been elected to do, not hand over the reins to someone who has absolutely no care in the world what our constitution says as long as his checkbook is open for business. This is absurd, and you know it. And yes, I've tended to care about the rule of law for decades now, because I'm not an idiot.


I daresay you're missing the point of the post you responded to. There were people who swore to uphold the rule of the law and then broke it. Like the FBI agents who leaked, or faked stuff for a warrant. Were they punished? I don't know, or did it happen and was it enabled because senior bureaucrats were "terrified" of Trump "destroying democracy." A lot of that stuff happened under Trump 01. So it's hard to have sympathy for your response.

It's pretty clear what the Trump administration goals are for this second term. I cam outline a few of them so far:

1. Musk is serious about reforming the Federal IT system. It was a nightmare for decade and people complained about it for decades and forever tried to "fix it" but nothing ever got done because the bureaucracy cared more about privacy and protection despite not being particularly good at both. It's easy to kill reform through a thousand meetings. If Musk accomplishes in one year what people have tried to do for 30 years, that will be a massive improvement to the overall efficiency of the bureaucracy and government functioning.

2). The administration does not care about classified secrets. You may not like Trump but at least so far everything they've done has been in the name of transparency. We will finally (apparently) really see where all the money is going and what projects and programs are being funded instead of all that information shielded behind a bureaucratic maze of secrecy and opaqueness and "classified secret requiring top clearance" etc cetera. I've a feeling we're going to learn a lot more about what the institutional bureaucracy, whether USAID or CIA or FBI were doing and it's not going to be pleasant. It doesn't mean most people were up to no good. I believe that the vast majority of the bureaucracy in all agencies were law abiding decent people doing their jobs decently, but at a certain level stuff was definitely happening behind closed doors. We saw this with the Mueller investigation into the so called Russian collusion, we saw this with some USAID activity. We saw this with funding at Wuhan. Most people in Congress have no idea what is really going on either. Marco Rubio made that clear in a speech earlier that agencies routinely stonewalled congressional request for information.

All the laws people accuse Musk or Trump of breaking are laws that the agencies used to protect themselves from audits and demands for transparency and it was clearly not healthy. These were not laws for the benefit of the American people. And probably allowed some people to do things they otherwise wouldn't have done.

Yes, Trump and Musk are taking a wrecking ball to the institutional bureaucracy, aka the deep state. But I'm not upset by it. Yet. They may go too far. We will see. The funny thing is that as someone in my mid 40s, I remember all the left wing progressive liberal Democratic college professors ranting against the deep state. It was the Republicans who defended a lot of these activities and demand for secrecy, so it's interesting to see how the tables have flipped. But be careful before assuming you're on the morally higher ground, especially if it's confirmed that Federal agencies were using taxpayer dollars to do genuinely disturbing stuff whether political interference or funding questionable research into bat viruses and then hiding it behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing accountability.


Musk and Trump have done nothing in terms of transparency. Them just keep using the word and you keep believing them. If Musk wanted transparency he would have invited in the Congresspersons. If Musk wanted transparency he wouldn’t be seeking to alienate Civil Service Workers. If Trump wanted transparency he and his team wouldn’t be fire folks at the DON and FBI and instead asking that everything they found be released. If Trump wanted transparency he wouldn’t be trying to tie up everything with every company in lawsuits. If he wanted Transparency then Musk would be a government employee subject to the same laws, audits, and acts as public employees.

They don’t want transparency. They are aiming for distraction.

And plenty of things have been improved by the federal government. Plenty. The reason they don’t move quick and break things is because their things impact a whole lot of people. When you break them chaos ensures. As was apparent last week when Trump and Co tried to freeze grants and spending with no idea how much that touched.


“If they really wanted what they claim to want they would do it my way” is not persuasive. People do sincerely believe in doing things differently (just like you do).

Nobody cared about the rule of law when VP Biden was threatening to withhold $1 billion aid if that Ukrainian prosecutor wasn’t fired...

I’m over it.


+1,000,000
Why didn’t a single Democrat care one iota about your VP’s bribery scheme?

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It doesn't matter if you hate USAID. It doesn't matter if you think the money they spend is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It doesn't matter if you think Musk is a genius and a renegade and superhero all wrapped up into one. None of it matters. What matters are the laws of the United States of America say there is a right way to do things, and Musk is operating outside of those laws right now. He has no legal authority to do what he is doing. So he needs to be stopped and held accountable.



+10109192827483

It is NOT about USAID. It's about letting a rogue agent take over the government and do whatever he wants.

Trump and the GOP can shutdown USAI, it's within their right. But there are rules,. procedures and laws for how to do it. Elon cannot fire employees who are civil servants and command government police forces. GTFO.

Elon does not run our entire government outside of the law.


The odd and concerning issue is Musk making decisions and acting on those decisions without having authority. If this is a cabinet position, then he needs to be scrutinized by Congress, right? That's the mind blowing part here. Is Trump reading classified material and asking Musk to read it with him??? That's definitely not allowed, right? Otherwise, every official can bring the material home and leave it on their own servers or scattered/boxed in various places on their property where people can easily access them. People looked the other way on so many classified document issues, we now have this mess.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Ahhhh

Elon's disinformation crew has arrived, trying to direct the narrative away from HOW USAID was closed to trying to overwhelm the conversation to why USAID was closed. Yawn. This is trolling 101.

Again, DOGE was only established to RECOMMEND changes to the government, not to have unilateral power to close office and fire civil servants. Not even the president can give them that power.


I’m not a disinformation troll, I’m just now learning more about USAID.

Geopolitics is dirty, but reading more about USAID blows my mind.

This is an aid agency.

‘Cuban Twitter’ and Other Times USAID Pretended To Be an Intelligence Agency

Foreign Policy link:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other-times-usaid-pretended-to-be-an-intelligence-agency/


I'm old enough to remember when conservatives thought communism was bad and defeating it should be a goal of foreign policy.


Right. Even if USAID helped the CIA, isn't that good? Why does Musk object, unless he is helping out Putin and his ilk.

This is f'ing bizarre.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Where are the Capitol Police?


USAID is part of the executive branch.

USAID cannot be shut down by Trump and Elon. Only Congress can do that:
"This is an entity that was created through federal statute, codified through federal statute, and something that cannot be changed, cannot be removed except through actions of Congress," Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said, as demonstrators gathered outside USAID headquarters Monday.



I want to understand where each side is exaggerating the issue. There was an EO from President Kennedy for USAID. There was also a Foreign Aid Act. Can someone provide a non-partisan explanation of how USAID and Foreign Aid Act are related. Can other agencies handle functions related to the FAA or must USAID run it?

Crickets.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It doesn't matter if you hate USAID. It doesn't matter if you think the money they spend is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It doesn't matter if you think Musk is a genius and a renegade and superhero all wrapped up into one. None of it matters. What matters are the laws of the United States of America say there is a right way to do things, and Musk is operating outside of those laws right now. He has no legal authority to do what he is doing. So he needs to be stopped and held accountable.



+10109192827483

It is NOT about USAID. It's about letting a rogue agent take over the government and do whatever he wants.

Trump and the GOP can shutdown USAI, it's within their right. But there are rules,. procedures and laws for how to do it. Elon cannot fire employees who are civil servants and command government police forces. GTFO.

Elon does not run our entire government outside of the law.


+ another 10000000000
I'll keep posting this on threads all over the place until I'm blue in the face. It's the process everyone should be paying attention to, not just the outcome. Our democracy is built on a constitution and rule of law, and when you eliminate those, despite being happy with the outcome, you're an ignorant fool.


Come on. This just rings so hollow. Our country has an extremely long history of individual and collective action that breaks or bends then prevailing law—all the way back to the country’s founding fathers who knew they were risking their lives in declaring independence.

This goes all the way from the trivial (Harry Reid intentionally misleadingly insinuating that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat from the Senate floor—and laughing about it no less) to the most important issues (John Lewis and his good trouble).

Indeed, we’re less than 8 years removed from an FBI director leaking stories to the press, an FBI agent altering evidence in a warrant application and, as we speak, purported FBI agents are sharing details with each other on social media on how to anonymously leak information they are not authorized to disclose. My guess is that you are mostly supportive of these ethical and legal lapses (hopefully not on the warrant business), but we are to believe that all of a sudden you really care about the rule of law and process?

The left can’t spend the first Trump presidency declaring that he is such a unique threat to democracy that institutional guardrails should be ignored and then come back and assert institutional guardrails. It just has no credibility.

I’m not happy about violation of the law and institutional guardrails being ignored. But this has been happening for the better part of my adult life dating back to the second Bush administration. Why should we care now? Because this time it is different? Maybe you are right and this is the time to care. But after decades of this garbage, across both political parties, I just can’t…


Come on nothing. You don't burn the entire place down and then claim you give a crap about the rule of law and institutional guardrails. Except for Elon Musk, every single person you mentioned swore to uphold the constitution when they took an oath of office. That's not just for show. It means something. You seem to want to want equate civil rights protest (good trouble) with the utter crap show we have now so you lack all credibility. If the FBI is corrupt (and yes, I believe many of them are) root them out - do the job that you have been elected to do, not hand over the reins to someone who has absolutely no care in the world what our constitution says as long as his checkbook is open for business. This is absurd, and you know it. And yes, I've tended to care about the rule of law for decades now, because I'm not an idiot.


I daresay you're missing the point of the post you responded to. There were people who swore to uphold the rule of the law and then broke it. Like the FBI agents who leaked, or faked stuff for a warrant. Were they punished? I don't know, or did it happen and was it enabled because senior bureaucrats were "terrified" of Trump "destroying democracy." A lot of that stuff happened under Trump 01. So it's hard to have sympathy for your response.

It's pretty clear what the Trump administration goals are for this second term. I cam outline a few of them so far:

1. Musk is serious about reforming the Federal IT system. It was a nightmare for decade and people complained about it for decades and forever tried to "fix it" but nothing ever got done because the bureaucracy cared more about privacy and protection despite not being particularly good at both. It's easy to kill reform through a thousand meetings. If Musk accomplishes in one year what people have tried to do for 30 years, that will be a massive improvement to the overall efficiency of the bureaucracy and government functioning.

2). The administration does not care about classified secrets. You may not like Trump but at least so far everything they've done has been in the name of transparency. We will finally (apparently) really see where all the money is going and what projects and programs are being funded instead of all that information shielded behind a bureaucratic maze of secrecy and opaqueness and "classified secret requiring top clearance" etc cetera. I've a feeling we're going to learn a lot more about what the institutional bureaucracy, whether USAID or CIA or FBI were doing and it's not going to be pleasant. It doesn't mean most people were up to no good. I believe that the vast majority of the bureaucracy in all agencies were law abiding decent people doing their jobs decently, but at a certain level stuff was definitely happening behind closed doors. We saw this with the Mueller investigation into the so called Russian collusion, we saw this with some USAID activity. We saw this with funding at Wuhan. Most people in Congress have no idea what is really going on either. Marco Rubio made that clear in a speech earlier that agencies routinely stonewalled congressional request for information.

All the laws people accuse Musk or Trump of breaking are laws that the agencies used to protect themselves from audits and demands for transparency and it was clearly not healthy. These were not laws for the benefit of the American people. And probably allowed some people to do things they otherwise wouldn't have done.

Yes, Trump and Musk are taking a wrecking ball to the institutional bureaucracy, aka the deep state. But I'm not upset by it. Yet. They may go too far. We will see. The funny thing is that as someone in my mid 40s, I remember all the left wing progressive liberal Democratic college professors ranting against the deep state. It was the Republicans who defended a lot of these activities and demand for secrecy, so it's interesting to see how the tables have flipped. But be careful before assuming you're on the morally higher ground, especially if it's confirmed that Federal agencies were using taxpayer dollars to do genuinely disturbing stuff whether political interference or funding questionable research into bat viruses and then hiding it behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing accountability.

This is all 100% correct.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Where are the Capitol Police?


USAID is part of the executive branch.

USAID cannot be shut down by Trump and Elon. Only Congress can do that:
"This is an entity that was created through federal statute, codified through federal statute, and something that cannot be changed, cannot be removed except through actions of Congress," Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said, as demonstrators gathered outside USAID headquarters Monday.



I want to understand where each side is exaggerating the issue. There was an EO from President Kennedy for USAID. There was also a Foreign Aid Act. Can someone provide a non-partisan explanation of how USAID and Foreign Aid Act are related. Can other agencies handle functions related to the FAA or must USAID run it?

Crickets.


Right? Everyone is so concerned about their side's spin.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It doesn't matter if you hate USAID. It doesn't matter if you think the money they spend is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It doesn't matter if you think Musk is a genius and a renegade and superhero all wrapped up into one. None of it matters. What matters are the laws of the United States of America say there is a right way to do things, and Musk is operating outside of those laws right now. He has no legal authority to do what he is doing. So he needs to be stopped and held accountable.



+10109192827483

It is NOT about USAID. It's about letting a rogue agent take over the government and do whatever he wants.

Trump and the GOP can shutdown USAI, it's within their right. But there are rules,. procedures and laws for how to do it. Elon cannot fire employees who are civil servants and command government police forces. GTFO.

Elon does not run our entire government outside of the law.


+ another 10000000000
I'll keep posting this on threads all over the place until I'm blue in the face. It's the process everyone should be paying attention to, not just the outcome. Our democracy is built on a constitution and rule of law, and when you eliminate those, despite being happy with the outcome, you're an ignorant fool.


Come on. This just rings so hollow. Our country has an extremely long history of individual and collective action that breaks or bends then prevailing law—all the way back to the country’s founding fathers who knew they were risking their lives in declaring independence.

This goes all the way from the trivial (Harry Reid intentionally misleadingly insinuating that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat from the Senate floor—and laughing about it no less) to the most important issues (John Lewis and his good trouble).

Indeed, we’re less than 8 years removed from an FBI director leaking stories to the press, an FBI agent altering evidence in a warrant application and, as we speak, purported FBI agents are sharing details with each other on social media on how to anonymously leak information they are not authorized to disclose. My guess is that you are mostly supportive of these ethical and legal lapses (hopefully not on the warrant business), but we are to believe that all of a sudden you really care about the rule of law and process?

The left can’t spend the first Trump presidency declaring that he is such a unique threat to democracy that institutional guardrails should be ignored and then come back and assert institutional guardrails. It just has no credibility.

I’m not happy about violation of the law and institutional guardrails being ignored. But this has been happening for the better part of my adult life dating back to the second Bush administration. Why should we care now? Because this time it is different? Maybe you are right and this is the time to care. But after decades of this garbage, across both political parties, I just can’t…


Come on nothing. You don't burn the entire place down and then claim you give a crap about the rule of law and institutional guardrails. Except for Elon Musk, every single person you mentioned swore to uphold the constitution when they took an oath of office. That's not just for show. It means something. You seem to want to want equate civil rights protest (good trouble) with the utter crap show we have now so you lack all credibility. If the FBI is corrupt (and yes, I believe many of them are) root them out - do the job that you have been elected to do, not hand over the reins to someone who has absolutely no care in the world what our constitution says as long as his checkbook is open for business. This is absurd, and you know it. And yes, I've tended to care about the rule of law for decades now, because I'm not an idiot.


I daresay you're missing the point of the post you responded to. There were people who swore to uphold the rule of the law and then broke it. Like the FBI agents who leaked, or faked stuff for a warrant. Were they punished? I don't know, or did it happen and was it enabled because senior bureaucrats were "terrified" of Trump "destroying democracy." A lot of that stuff happened under Trump 01. So it's hard to have sympathy for your response.

It's pretty clear what the Trump administration goals are for this second term. I cam outline a few of them so far:

1. Musk is serious about reforming the Federal IT system. It was a nightmare for decade and people complained about it for decades and forever tried to "fix it" but nothing ever got done because the bureaucracy cared more about privacy and protection despite not being particularly good at both. It's easy to kill reform through a thousand meetings. If Musk accomplishes in one year what people have tried to do for 30 years, that will be a massive improvement to the overall efficiency of the bureaucracy and government functioning.

2). The administration does not care about classified secrets. You may not like Trump but at least so far everything they've done has been in the name of transparency. We will finally (apparently) really see where all the money is going and what projects and programs are being funded instead of all that information shielded behind a bureaucratic maze of secrecy and opaqueness and "classified secret requiring top clearance" etc cetera. I've a feeling we're going to learn a lot more about what the institutional bureaucracy, whether USAID or CIA or FBI were doing and it's not going to be pleasant. It doesn't mean most people were up to no good. I believe that the vast majority of the bureaucracy in all agencies were law abiding decent people doing their jobs decently, but at a certain level stuff was definitely happening behind closed doors. We saw this with the Mueller investigation into the so called Russian collusion, we saw this with some USAID activity. We saw this with funding at Wuhan. Most people in Congress have no idea what is really going on either. Marco Rubio made that clear in a speech earlier that agencies routinely stonewalled congressional request for information.

All the laws people accuse Musk or Trump of breaking are laws that the agencies used to protect themselves from audits and demands for transparency and it was clearly not healthy. These were not laws for the benefit of the American people. And probably allowed some people to do things they otherwise wouldn't have done.

Yes, Trump and Musk are taking a wrecking ball to the institutional bureaucracy, aka the deep state. But I'm not upset by it. Yet. They may go too far. We will see. The funny thing is that as someone in my mid 40s, I remember all the left wing progressive liberal Democratic college professors ranting against the deep state. It was the Republicans who defended a lot of these activities and demand for secrecy, so it's interesting to see how the tables have flipped. But be careful before assuming you're on the morally higher ground, especially if it's confirmed that Federal agencies were using taxpayer dollars to do genuinely disturbing stuff whether political interference or funding questionable research into bat viruses and then hiding it behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing accountability.


Musk and Trump have done nothing in terms of transparency. Them just keep using the word and you keep believing them. If Musk wanted transparency he would have invited in the Congresspersons. If Musk wanted transparency he wouldn’t be seeking to alienate Civil Service Workers. If Trump wanted transparency he and his team wouldn’t be fire folks at the DON and FBI and instead asking that everything they found be released. If Trump wanted transparency he wouldn’t be trying to tie up everything with every company in lawsuits. If he wanted Transparency then Musk would be a government employee subject to the same laws, audits, and acts as public employees.

They don’t want transparency. They are aiming for distraction.

And plenty of things have been improved by the federal government. Plenty. The reason they don’t move quick and break things is because their things impact a whole lot of people. When you break them chaos ensures. As was apparent last week when Trump and Co tried to freeze grants and spending with no idea how much that touched.


“If they really wanted what they claim to want they would do it my way” is not persuasive. People do sincerely believe in doing things differently (just like you do).

Nobody cared about the rule of law when VP Biden was threatening to withhold $1 billion aid if that Ukrainian prosecutor wasn’t fired...

I’m over it.


You've got it backwards. And you don't even care.

Why is that?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It doesn't matter if you hate USAID. It doesn't matter if you think the money they spend is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It doesn't matter if you think Musk is a genius and a renegade and superhero all wrapped up into one. None of it matters. What matters are the laws of the United States of America say there is a right way to do things, and Musk is operating outside of those laws right now. He has no legal authority to do what he is doing. So he needs to be stopped and held accountable.



+10109192827483

It is NOT about USAID. It's about letting a rogue agent take over the government and do whatever he wants.

Trump and the GOP can shutdown USAI, it's within their right. But there are rules,. procedures and laws for how to do it. Elon cannot fire employees who are civil servants and command government police forces. GTFO.

Elon does not run our entire government outside of the law.


+ another 10000000000
I'll keep posting this on threads all over the place until I'm blue in the face. It's the process everyone should be paying attention to, not just the outcome. Our democracy is built on a constitution and rule of law, and when you eliminate those, despite being happy with the outcome, you're an ignorant fool.


Come on. This just rings so hollow. Our country has an extremely long history of individual and collective action that breaks or bends then prevailing law—all the way back to the country’s founding fathers who knew they were risking their lives in declaring independence.

This goes all the way from the trivial (Harry Reid intentionally misleadingly insinuating that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat from the Senate floor—and laughing about it no less) to the most important issues (John Lewis and his good trouble).

Indeed, we’re less than 8 years removed from an FBI director leaking stories to the press, an FBI agent altering evidence in a warrant application and, as we speak, purported FBI agents are sharing details with each other on social media on how to anonymously leak information they are not authorized to disclose. My guess is that you are mostly supportive of these ethical and legal lapses (hopefully not on the warrant business), but we are to believe that all of a sudden you really care about the rule of law and process?

The left can’t spend the first Trump presidency declaring that he is such a unique threat to democracy that institutional guardrails should be ignored and then come back and assert institutional guardrails. It just has no credibility.

I’m not happy about violation of the law and institutional guardrails being ignored. But this has been happening for the better part of my adult life dating back to the second Bush administration. Why should we care now? Because this time it is different? Maybe you are right and this is the time to care. But after decades of this garbage, across both political parties, I just can’t…


Come on nothing. You don't burn the entire place down and then claim you give a crap about the rule of law and institutional guardrails. Except for Elon Musk, every single person you mentioned swore to uphold the constitution when they took an oath of office. That's not just for show. It means something. You seem to want to want equate civil rights protest (good trouble) with the utter crap show we have now so you lack all credibility. If the FBI is corrupt (and yes, I believe many of them are) root them out - do the job that you have been elected to do, not hand over the reins to someone who has absolutely no care in the world what our constitution says as long as his checkbook is open for business. This is absurd, and you know it. And yes, I've tended to care about the rule of law for decades now, because I'm not an idiot.


I daresay you're missing the point of the post you responded to. There were people who swore to uphold the rule of the law and then broke it. Like the FBI agents who leaked, or faked stuff for a warrant. Were they punished? I don't know, or did it happen and was it enabled because senior bureaucrats were "terrified" of Trump "destroying democracy." A lot of that stuff happened under Trump 01. So it's hard to have sympathy for your response.

It's pretty clear what the Trump administration goals are for this second term. I cam outline a few of them so far:

1. Musk is serious about reforming the Federal IT system. It was a nightmare for decade and people complained about it for decades and forever tried to "fix it" but nothing ever got done because the bureaucracy cared more about privacy and protection despite not being particularly good at both. It's easy to kill reform through a thousand meetings. If Musk accomplishes in one year what people have tried to do for 30 years, that will be a massive improvement to the overall efficiency of the bureaucracy and government functioning.

2). The administration does not care about classified secrets. You may not like Trump but at least so far everything they've done has been in the name of transparency. We will finally (apparently) really see where all the money is going and what projects and programs are being funded instead of all that information shielded behind a bureaucratic maze of secrecy and opaqueness and "classified secret requiring top clearance" etc cetera. I've a feeling we're going to learn a lot more about what the institutional bureaucracy, whether USAID or CIA or FBI were doing and it's not going to be pleasant. It doesn't mean most people were up to no good. I believe that the vast majority of the bureaucracy in all agencies were law abiding decent people doing their jobs decently, but at a certain level stuff was definitely happening behind closed doors. We saw this with the Mueller investigation into the so called Russian collusion, we saw this with some USAID activity. We saw this with funding at Wuhan. Most people in Congress have no idea what is really going on either. Marco Rubio made that clear in a speech earlier that agencies routinely stonewalled congressional request for information.

All the laws people accuse Musk or Trump of breaking are laws that the agencies used to protect themselves from audits and demands for transparency and it was clearly not healthy. These were not laws for the benefit of the American people. And probably allowed some people to do things they otherwise wouldn't have done.

Yes, Trump and Musk are taking a wrecking ball to the institutional bureaucracy, aka the deep state. But I'm not upset by it. Yet. They may go too far. We will see. The funny thing is that as someone in my mid 40s, I remember all the left wing progressive liberal Democratic college professors ranting against the deep state. It was the Republicans who defended a lot of these activities and demand for secrecy, so it's interesting to see how the tables have flipped. But be careful before assuming you're on the morally higher ground, especially if it's confirmed that Federal agencies were using taxpayer dollars to do genuinely disturbing stuff whether political interference or funding questionable research into bat viruses and then hiding it behind a cloak of secrecy and refusing accountability.


Musk and Trump have done nothing in terms of transparency. Them just keep using the word and you keep believing them. If Musk wanted transparency he would have invited in the Congresspersons. If Musk wanted transparency he wouldn’t be seeking to alienate Civil Service Workers. If Trump wanted transparency he and his team wouldn’t be fire folks at the DON and FBI and instead asking that everything they found be released. If Trump wanted transparency he wouldn’t be trying to tie up everything with every company in lawsuits. If he wanted Transparency then Musk would be a government employee subject to the same laws, audits, and acts as public employees.

They don’t want transparency. They are aiming for distraction.

And plenty of things have been improved by the federal government. Plenty. The reason they don’t move quick and break things is because their things impact a whole lot of people. When you break them chaos ensures. As was apparent last week when Trump and Co tried to freeze grants and spending with no idea how much that touched.


“If they really wanted what they claim to want they would do it my way” is not persuasive. People do sincerely believe in doing things differently (just like you do).

Nobody cared about the rule of law when VP Biden was threatening to withhold $1 billion aid if that Ukrainian prosecutor wasn’t fired...

I’m over it.


Get your story straight. That kind of threat from Biden to Ukraine is exactly what Trump wants to do more of. Aren't you proud of his foresight?
Anonymous


I'm old enough to remember when conservatives thought communism was bad and defeating it should be a goal of foreign policy.

Same. And this is why I now vote for Democrats as alienated conservative who still believes in representative government and the rule of law.
Anonymous
Trump certainly does have the authority to eliminate this corrupted agency.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Trump certainly does have the authority to eliminate this corrupted agency.


He does not, no.
Anonymous
So is Musk not only in charge of all the government funding and not only employees , and not only which agencies get to stay open, but he’s also the head of all federal law enforcement? He gets to direct law enforcement? People were calling him a shadow President but now he’s just an unelected President. What the F?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:So is Musk not only in charge of all the government funding and not only employees , and not only which agencies get to stay open, but he’s also the head of all federal law enforcement? He gets to direct law enforcement? People were calling him a shadow President but now he’s just an unelected President. What the F?


Yep. He has all this authority... because he says so.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Where are the Capitol Police?


USAID is part of the executive branch.

USAID cannot be shut down by Trump and Elon. Only Congress can do that:
"This is an entity that was created through federal statute, codified through federal statute, and something that cannot be changed, cannot be removed except through actions of Congress," Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said, as demonstrators gathered outside USAID headquarters Monday.



I want to understand where each side is exaggerating the issue. There was an EO from President Kennedy for USAID. There was also a Foreign Aid Act. Can someone provide a non-partisan explanation of how USAID and Foreign Aid Act are related. Can other agencies handle functions related to the FAA or must USAID run it?

Crickets.


My understanding is the Foreign Assistance Act required the creation of a single agency to deliver economic aid. Kennedy's EO created USAID for this purpose.
Anonymous
You know what would make America actually great?
If you pos moronic republican dumbasses would learn the very very very basics of how our three equal branches of government are designed to work.
You smooth brained mouthbreathers are too dim to understand anything beyond a monarchy.
Just stop voting. You are too dumb to vote.
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