Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a $1.83 trillion budget deficit last year. Unsustainable. Musk thinks he can cut a trillion in spending. Good, let’s see what he comes up with. His experience at Twitter showed him that three quarters of the people employed there were useless at best.

But Twitter is no longer making money so not sure about this statement.

Anonymous wrote:They are loving it on conservative Reddit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He's infiltrated OPM, the US treasury, has access to Social Security information, which means information on pretty much every worker in the United States.

Is this something you support? And if not, what do you plan to do about it? This is a Pandora box you opened.

Despite all that, Democrats are most focused on USAID. That's what matters the most to them.

Anonymous wrote:We had a $1.83 trillion budget deficit last year. Unsustainable. Musk thinks he can cut a trillion in spending. Good, let’s see what he comes up with. His experience at Twitter showed him that three quarters of the people employed there were useless at best.

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At this point it ai beyond obvious that structures and process have been used to entrench the status quo. Congress nor the American voter have the stomach to make needed changes.

An American citizen (immigrant!) is working to improve serious problems. *If* somehow he manages to deliver, it will be one of the greatest gifts ever received by our country. Entrenched interests have had decades to fix these problems. They’ve failed. Might as well try this. Just give him and his team a blanket pardon before Trump leaves office.

Do you think maybe that Musk himself might have some entrenched interests of his own? Or do you think he’s doing this out of the goodness of his heart?

Of course the potential exists that he has his own entrenched interests. But I’m told time and time again that government employees are not the enemy, but rather noble civil servants seeking to serve the public good. Perhaps Musk can be given the same deference?

Again, does this particularly bother me? I don’t think so (this doesn’t mean I’m a fan of it, either). If he can actually slow down the spending after decades of drunken spending by Congress on both sides, the outcome might be worth the pain. I just know that I don’t trust anybody in Congress to actually be able to deliver on meaningful, impactful government reform.

Less than 100 years ago the British Empire was the mightiest the world had ever seen. Today they are on an apparent irreversible path to irrelevance and inability to care for their own people. I fear the same fate awaits us absent drastic change that cannot be delivered from within the system.

If it’s all going to sh*t anyways, might as well try something unconventional.

Sure. But he would need to do so by applying for a government job and going through an interview process, background check, reference check, etc. and then, after proving himself trustworthy, undergo a security clearance before having any sort of access to this information. Same for “Bigballs” and the rest of his teenage friends.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

To answer your question the Federal bureaucracy sits squarely under the Executive Branch. It belongs to that one of the three branches of the government, it does not sit under Congress or SCOTUS. Which is why, for example, agencies and bureaucrats routinely deny to answer questions in Congressional probes. It can be legitimately argued by constitutional scholars that some of the laws Congress passed affecting the bureaucracy are actually unlawful. The constitution makes clear the Executive branch runs the government, not Congress or SCOTUS.

That is most likely why there's this state of paralysis and no real confidence in lawsuits doing anything more than temporarily halt the EOs affecting the bureaucracy.

As for OP's question, I don't consider myself a Republican but I approve most of what I see Musk doing if just because all his actions is bringing far more transparency into an extremely opaque system of agencies and unelected senior bureaucrats.

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a $1.83 trillion budget deficit last year. Unsustainable. Musk thinks he can cut a trillion in spending. Good, let’s see what he comes up with. His experience at Twitter showed him that three quarters of the people employed there were useless at best.

According to an internal email sent by Elon Musk to employees, X is 'barely breaking even,' citing stagnant user growth and underwhelming revenue. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, a deal financed in part by $13 billion in debt.Jan 27, 2025

New York
CNN
—
The social media platform formerly known as Twitter is worth almost 80% less than two years ago when Elon Musk bought it, according to estimates from investment giant Fidelity.

Yeah, a real success story.

Tesla is next…