MUSK is Leaving after Gaining Billions in Future Contracts

  

This article is adapted from a Choose Democracy newsletter email.

I’ve been searching for a metaphor to grasp the meaning of Elon Musk’s departure from DOGE. The closest I can come is an abusive relationship, where the person being harmed makes a significant break from their partner, like moving out, but hasn’t completely ended the relationship.

As a friend, you know all is not well. The threat of violence remains. The relationship is still toxic and dangerous. Still, you applaud the move. You don’t feed your friend’s aching feeling of disempowerment and loss — you feed the courage, the agency and the strength to keep going.

So it’s in that spirit that I want us to take a moment to acknowledge, even celebrate, our collective achievement of a massive, unplanned retreat by the richest person on the planet. Yes, it’s not everything — but if we can only cheer when it’s everything, we’re going to live sad lives.

It must be said: Musk’s departure is not because of the 130-day limit on special government employees. Plans had already been made to blow past that. Sure, Trump will spin this as part of his plan — but we have to stop ourselves from thinking that everything they do is masterminded. The anti-authoritarian side can also be relentless, brilliant, courageous and strategic.

Workers ignoring Musk orders. Institutional resistance to DOGE. Tesla Takedown. Pension letters. All these efforts beat back the salesmanship of Donald Trump hawking Teslas on the White House lawn and the richest man attempting to insulate himself from the people’s will.

This is a collective achievement. And I know, it’s hard to hold any kind of victory in dire times of great loss, but trench warfare tells us that before you can fully stop a thing, you have to slow it down. This is a moment for marking a significant slowing.

A critical retreat, not a total withdrawal

Musk’s 130-day tenure at DOGE was characterized by aggressive cruelty. He eliminated somewhere between 200,000-260,000 federal positions through mass firings, buyouts and early retirements. He didn’t achieve his stated goal of $2 trillion in savings. Even his website, filled with misleading and inaccurate claims, only touts around 8 percent of that goal — and actual verifiable numbers are closer to 0.8 percent. The most casual look at his 31 percent cut of tax auditors at the IRS reveals that the goal isn’t savings — it’s enriching himself and displacing democracy. Predictably the Republican budget is set to explode deficit spending andextract more money from all but the richest people in this country.

Nevertheless, Musk did manage to traumatize people in government, as well as much of the country. He’s walking away having stolen vast amounts of our data, killed investigations into his companies and gotten billions in government contracts — including a staggering $831 billion deal to build a fanciful Golden Dome. 

President Trump is not a reliable source of information — so it’s unwise to take it too literally when he says, “Elon’s really not leaving.” To be sure, the abusive relationship likely isn’t over. But the relationship has transformed starkly. 

After months of sycophant behavior, Musk spent his final weeks repeatedly attacking Trump policy — a violation of the social norms of Trump’s mob loyalty. Musk expressed “disappointment” about Trump’s spending bill. He has apparently withheld $100 million of pledged donations to Republican campaigns. He blasted Trump’s Middle East sweetheart deals that gave preference to Musk’s AI competitor Sam Altman. These open attacks are new and part of a significant growing political distance between Trump and Musk.

While it’s reasonable to doubt how far he is stepping back, it’s notable that a lot of key players in Elon Musk’s team are leaving the White House too. Steve Davis, Musk’s long-time confidant and internal coordinator, packed his bags. Recently fired DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia told Wired Magazine, “Steven was the only person who was across everything” — leaving a massive hole in DOGE’s coordination. Katie Miller, the wife of the anti-immigrant crusader Stephen Miller, is also following Musk out of the White House. She was another critical node, the person who others trusted with the unenviable task of giving Musk bad news.

 

 

Crypto Is a Scam , Corrupt, and Funds Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

 Donald Trump and Elon Musk are moving full speed ahead on a corrupt and dangerous bill to let them issue their OWN private money - which could bring down our entire financial system.

The Senate could vote THIS WEEK so please write  or call your Senators today.

In March, the historically corrupt and dangerous GENIUS Act passed the Senate Banking Committee with five Democratic votes: Angela Alsobrooks (MD), Ruben Gallego (AZ), Mark Warner (VA), Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE) and Andy Kim (NJ).

Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) is the Democratic co-author of the bill, and she was rewarded with a “Crypto Champion” award from the crypto industry, along with Angela Alsobrooks (MD).

Trump is no GENIUS, but he is corrupt. This year, Trump has made nearly $3 BILLION on his corrupt crypto deals. Right after The Banking Committee voted on the bill, Trump launched his own stablecoin (USD1) and it’s already being used to finance corrupt business deals in the Middle East.

Musk is no GENIUS either. DOGE has proven he's a cruel, vicious idiot who slashes essential workers and services and then lies about it. And Tesla's stock crash proves he's no GENIUS at business either.

The GENIUS Act establishes useless financial "safeguards" for the new wild west of Big Tech private currencies (so called “stablecoins”).

It begs for more big financial bailouts when the companies get shaky, and people run to redeem the private currencies for actual cash - the exact kind of run on the banks that caused the Great Depression.

The bill also ignores core consumer protections that apply to the payments we make every day through our debit card or Venmo account. If you get scammed or charged junk fees when using these new private currencies, you may be on your own. (And don't bother calling Kash Patel's FBI.)

It also lacks privacy safeguards to prevent Elon Musk and other Big Tech billionaires from surveilling your transactions. Doesn't that give you the chills?

The bill actually turbocharges a payment system that is already GENIUS for terrorists, cartels, and sanctions targets like Iran and Russia.

It does not close money laundering and terrorist financing vulnerabilities that bad actors can exploit. Recent analyses concluded that stablecoins have become the “new epicentre of crypto fraud” and the “new kingpin of illicit crypto activity.”

For all these reasons, Democrats must stop Trump, Musk and their techbro cronies from issuing their own stablecoins, without any guardrails to protect consumers, to protect national security, or to protect the financial stability of our economy. 

Tell Chuck Schumer and ALL Senate Democrats to filibuster the GENIUS Act.

Bannon Calls Musk Illegal Immigrant

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/us/politics/steve-bannon-elon-musk-feud.html?

Change the NARRATIVE

  

Eric Blanc

Labor Politics 

 

On BlueSky

Changing the Narrative

Wide-scale, attention-grabbing collective actions can drive home to the public the truth about federal workers and the danger of Musk’s cuts. Far too many people don’t know crucially important facts about federal employees and the services they provide:

— Due to Trump’s budget chaos, health clinics across the US have already been forced to close.

— Musk’s reckless operation threatens enormous numbers of Americans. Without federal workers at sufficiently funded agencies, no one in the US would be able to receive benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or workplace safety protections, among many other essential services. Local schools and hospitals all across the country also depend on federal funding.

— Contrary to right-wing claims about a massively expanded federal bureaucracy, the percentage of the American workforce working for the federal government has declined significantly over the past 25 years.

— Billionaires, not federal employees, are hoarding America’s wealth: total yearly pay for all 2.3 million civilian federal employees ($271 billion) is significantly less than Elon Musk’s personal net worth of $412 billion.

— Most federal workers are not rich bureaucrats: 43% of federal workers make less than $90,000 yearly, and 58.8% make less than $110,000 yearly.

— About 60% of the budget for paying federal employees goes to the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security.

— This impacts the whole country: Over 80% of federal employees work in regions other than Washington D.C.

Lessons from the Red State Revolt

How can federal workers win over the public and defeat these attacks on their jobs and essential services? Their best bet is to replicate the tactics that made possible the successful 2018 teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and beyond.

 

 

We, the people, Will Prevail

 https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/we-the-people?

Musk Seeks to Shut Down the Government

 Can the Muskrat shut the United States government?

Sure looks that way. The richest person in the world has turned his wealth into raw power. That's what oligarchy looks like.

 

 

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/can-the-muskrat-shut-the-united-states?

 

Note;  Elon Musk has already received over $10 Billion dollars in U.S. government subsidies.

 

BTW. He was an illegal alien for some 6 years, but not prosecuted. 

Musk Threatens Vice President- Others, now deleted

 Musk Threatens Vice President- Others

Robert Reich, 

Shortly after the apparent second assassination attempt against Trump, Elon Musk responded in a now deleted post: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala 🤔 ????” 

Musk later said his post was intended as a joke. But it could be interpreted as a call to murder Biden and Harris — at least by one of the 198 million followers of Musk who initially received it. Presumably this is why the Secret Service is investigating it.

Under 18 U.S. Code Section 871, threatening a president or vice president or inciting someone to harm them is a felony that can result in a large fine and up to five years in prison. 

Yet even as Musk posted a potential death threat against the sitting commander-in-chief, his multiple defense contracts with the U.S. government have given him access to highly sensitive information. 

Reportedly, Musk has been given security clearance notwithstanding his admitted use of drugs (Musk says he has submitted to random drug testing at the request of the government), including smoking weed in public and using ketamine (for which he claims to have a prescription).

Quite apart from the drugs, when was the last time the U.S. government gave access to sensitive national security information to someone who posted a potential death threat against the president and vice president, even if he later called it a joke? 

Underlying this is a broader question: When in history has one unelected individual held such sway over American national security? 

Musk’s SpaceX has nearly total control of the world’s satellite internet through its Starlink unit. With little regulation or oversight, Musk has already put more than 4,500 Starlink satellites into orbit around the globe, accounting for more than half of all active satellites. Musk plans to have as many as 42,000satellites in orbit in coming years. 

Space X and its Starlink system have become strategically critical to American security. Starlink is providing connectivity to the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Space Force signed a $70 million contract late last year to provide it with military-grade low-earth-orbit satellite capabilities. According to Reuters, the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees U.S. spy satellites, has a $1.8 billion contract with SpaceX. 

This gives Musk — the richest person in the world — remarkable power. Single-handedly, he can decide to shut down a country’s access to Starlink and the internet. He also can also gain access to sensitive information gathered by Starlink. “Between, Tesla, Starlink & Twitter, I may have more real-time global economic data in one head than anyone ever,” Musk tweetedin April 2023. 

Meanwhile, NASA has increasingly outsourced spaceflight projects to SpaceX, including billions in contracts for multiple moon trips and $843 million to build a vehicle that will take the International Space Station out of commission.

Conflicts of interest between Musk’s ventures around the world and U.S. national security abound, and they are multiplying.

When Putin attacked Ukraine, Musk and SpaceX’s Starlink provided Ukraine with internet access, enabling the country to plan attacks and defend itself. (This was not a charitable move by Musk; most of the 20,000 terminals in the country were funded by outside sources such as the U.S. government, the United Kingdom, and Poland). 

But in the fall of 2022, when Ukraine entered territory contested by Russia, Musk and Space X abruptly severed the connectivity. Musk explained at the time that “Starlink was barred from turning on satellite beams in Crimea at the time, because doing so would violate U.S. sanctions against Russia!”

The Dangerous Anti Democracy Coalition _ Reich

RS Seminar- Economic Crisis: The Dangerous Anti Democracy Coalition _ Reich:   Elon Musk and entrepreneur and investor David Sacks   reportedly   held a secret billionaire dinner party in Hollywood last month. Its pur...