Reply to Question for Republicans. What do you think about Musk being given the access that he's been granted?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think the NYT did a good job with the Elon takeover on today's episode of the Daily. It was really helpful for me to better understand what Musk is doing and also why he's doing it.

An interesting issue they brought up is that Musk's efforts are essentially trying to return us to the spoils system, where every time there's a new president, they fire everyone and then reward their supporters with federal jobs.

The spoils system was mostly eradicated in 1883 with the Pendleton Act, plus additional legislation/regulation since then to create a federal bureaucracy that is mostly staffed by career civil servants, not political appointees.

I do not think Trump or Musk understand the potential downsides to trying to return to that system 150 years later when our society is so much more complex and the federal government so much larger. I know what they think the upsides are, but I don't think they understand how this could impact everything that many people take for granted -- the stability of our financial systems, our relationship to the rest of the world (and our national security), the expectation of the vast majority of Americans that they will have access to things like K-12 education for their kids, interstate commerce, relative transparency from the government on things like how/when/where to pay taxes or what interest rates look like.

And it goes without saying, but I'll say, that of course trying to change this without an act of Congress is probably illegal, but we're in a "who watches the watchers" situation now.[/quote]

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