We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will.
The systems bending accessed are the ones which handle money approved by congress to be spent in a specific way.
As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public.
Now let’s say there are social security numbers and maybe even social security numbers tied to addresses or even names. This is still not a reason to not allow an audit.
You might say. Okay let’s audit. But people need to be verified. And at this point your argument is watered down to “I don’t like who is doing this”, which is the same bullshit politics we deal with in any tech company and the same bs that only delays results.
If people were actually worried they would not be trying to stop musk. What they would actually be doing is asking for somebody who they politically align with to also have access to the data and perform their own audit, on top of making much if not all of the data public so those with real trust issues can draw their own conclusions.
> We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will.
We do know that they got admin rights to several IT systems. Are you saying that giving admin rights to government IT systems to people with dubious backgrounds is fine, because the guys at the top have been voted in?
> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public.
As appalled as by the fact that the people who are supposedly doing the auditing are completely intransparent, trying to obscure who is doing the auditing and threatening people who are trying to name people involved? Or is that ok for you?
> We really don’t know what data is being accessed.
> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live.
How are you mad it's not public if you don't know what it is? Sure there is data in computers of the Treasury department that should not be public - individuals' social security numbers, personal financial information, etc.
Stop being so pedantic, we have an idea what it is. When I say “we don’t know what it is” is a nice way of saying the things you say it is you have no proof of it being.
How about you give me an argument of why we should not have this sort of audit?
I am also willing to bet there is no situation where it could be done “right” and have the stated outcome Trump and Musk have outlined be okay. Which makes most of your arguments bad faith ones. Given the things already exposed should have all Americans upset.
We should know where our tax money is going. As far as I can tell, the alleged fraud that Musk has been tweeting about was already public info. The viral tweets about Politico, etc, were showing screenshots of public dashboards.
The one place that has famously failed audits year after year is the defense department. We shall see if Musk brings his chopping-block to DoD.
Anyone operating in good faith knows to curb spending, everything Musk has been saying won't make a dent until you get to DoD, Social Security, or health care. And of course, any savings are going to be totally swamped by big tax cuts for the billionaire class.
> Anyone operating in good faith knows to curb spending, everything Musk has been saying won't make a dent until you get to DoD, Social Security, or health care
This isn't accurate. Anyone who's managed a large and complex budget knows death by a thousand cuts is a very real thing. Yes, there may be bigger opportunities in the larger pots of money, but to suggest saving a billion here or few million there isn't worth the time is simply wrong.
Simply having the finances be looked at will have an impact on behavior. I see it in my own personal spending. If I'm not watching it, I spend way more. Now what happens if its not even my bank account the spending takes money out of and no one is paying attention? And then it goes on like this for decades?
> And of course, any savings are going to be totally swamped by big tax cuts for the billionaire class.
Aside from 2020, collected tax revenues did not drop under Trump in his first term, even after 2017 tax cuts. The one exception was for 2020 when the economy ground to a halt due to covid and gdp shrunk by a few %.
The point is, the problem is not that the government needs more money. The government needs pressure to be more effecient with the money it has. Thats the root of the issue that needs solved. Until that is solved, increasing tax revenue (which may not even be needed) won't make any difference whatsoever.
> We really don’t know what data is being accessed.
And you don’t think that’s a problem?
You think that requiring people to have proper vetting to access information that might include personally identifiable information is “political bullshit”?
No. No I don’t. Before all this nobody knew anything. Then Trump and Elon came along and now everybody on the internet is an expert, and has all sorts opinions based off fear.
We have a system. If it is not legal it will be flushed out. The only people who seem to have an issue seem to be ones who simply don’t like the who.
The only enforcement arm is in the executive branch, and we've already got the VP and Republican senators complaining that judges are ruling against Elon's team and suggesting that he just do what he wants to do anyway. Pam Bondi won't stand in his way and neither will whoever eventually becomes head of the FBI.
I think you mean "if we don't like it, it will be lied about and demonized".
DJT & Friends don't exactly have a stunning track record of being truthful.
In fact, I don't think the man ever tells the truth. And I wish that were hyperbole. He literally just makes shit up as he goes along, and his legions of brainwashed followers just repeat what he says and twist facts to try to fit the narrative after the fact.
Biden was a geriatric moron, and I'm sure he looked the other way while people he knew profited from his actions, but this MAGA shit is a grift on a whole other level. This is like stealing the Holy Grail and getting away with it.
I don't believe people who say they demand transparency from the government. If they're not genuinely outraged at Musk's lack of accountability then I don't believe they're genuinely outraged at the Pentagon or Treasury either.
Musk is working for the government and sets an example with his own behavior. If he can't commit to his own standard of transparency then I (and no rational person) would trust him to hold the rest of the government accountable either.
> If they're not genuinely outraged at Musk's lack of accountability then I don't believe they're genuinely outraged at the Pentagon or Treasury either.
I'm skeptical of people who do this, too. I also bet that a lot of people want transparency until they find a flaw that serves them and further transparency would attract attention.
However, this skepticism is mis-placed and off-topic. Re-read the posted comment above. The comment wants more transparency and isn't debating weaponizing the data, which they acknowledge and park as a separate issue.
> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live.
As a taxpayer, I'm offended that more of my money isn't spent protecting it. Clearly it wasn't enough to stop a rudimentary attack. I can give you three good reasons this is offensive to American liberty in an apolitical context:
1. The personal information of federal employees should remain private in respects to the Civil Rights act and the impartiality of hiring all candidates. This is what protects both Democrats and Republicans from having punitive action held against them by political opposition.
2. America's actual itemized expenditure is a matter of national security. Publishing a precise budget lets an adversary (of which America has many) estimate our weaknesses and, if specific enough, predict our intent before we strike. The current system of budgeting rather than begging is safe and can still be audited by both parties.
3. Elon Musk has stated business interests in opposing Apple and Google, both of which have secret testimonies he could access for illegal leverage against them in negotiations. Allowing him unfettered access to government records and defunding regulators is an expressly unfair business advantage that should not be tolerated in any free market.
at the same time, far, far too much stuff is classified not to protect national interest, but to protect the spooks and deep military industrial state neocons from scrutiny.
Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.
The authority of classification rests solely with the executive branch and the policies are established by EO.
A President can absolutely classify and declassify whatever he wants. This has been done a million times.
"It is true that the President has broad authority to classify and declassify, derived from the President’s dual role “as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. The “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant" ...
"Finally, as the district court recognized, the suggestion that courts can declassify information raises separation of powers concerns.... such determinations encroach upon the President’s undisputedly broad authority in the realm of national security."
- The New York Times v. Central Intelligence Agency, No. 18-2112 (2d Cir. 2020)
The only reason the material was not considered declassified in that case was because the possible declassification was "inadvertent" etc etc.
Even that ruling does not go far enough, and I'd be willing to give 10:1 odds SCOTUS would give Pres. full and complete powers over classification
What you are overlooking is the underhanded plays executed by a certain political party to allow one president during one 4-year term to appoint 3 supreme court lackeys in order to ensure no matter what bs went before them, they'd rule in his favor.
The idea of the "unitary executive", a concept that has long been a wet dream of the Federalist Society and other conservative think tanks, is the most decidedly un-American thing I can imagine.
Our country was founded on the idea of 3 co-equal branches of government, who each have the duty and authority to exercise checks and balances against the other 2 branches (trust but verify).
Further, the citizens are supposed to have representatives in the house & senate who act as their voice on issues and execute their will and represent their interests.
Nowhere in this entire framework was there a President with the authority to rule by executive fiat, who has absolute immunity from every law of the land, and who is given free reign to do as he pleases like a bull in a china shop. The President of the United States is not a Monarch and he is not a King. There is no divine bloodline in the US of A. The President should always be answerable and accountable to the citizens of the United States and the other 2 branches of government, and they should be held to account for his/her actions.
The current legal framework is a travesty and a result of a gradual erosion of many foundational principles of our republic that have been ground down since FDR dared to empower the working man 80 years ago. In short, it's an abomination.
And don't give me this "but Biden had that same authority" bs. Anybody who knows anything about politics know Dems are spineless. If a Dem tried to pull one tenth of the shit the Republicans do, Rs would be all over AM radio, Fox News, Breitbart, X, Rogan, screaming at the top of their lungs about socialism or some kind of "takeover" or telling people their country is being stolen from them, or some other boneheaded idiotic conspiracy theory. They know there's always someone to fall for their shit. Remember the guys showing up at the DC pizza place looking for the child sex dungeon in the non-existent basement? Yeah, these geniuses.
It's always the same old shit- rich & powerful people don't like being told "no" by the government. Oh, and they also hate paying the government (we all do, but to them it's an actual insult). This is a tantrum of epic proportions, and all this crap is political theater for people who don't know any better.
As an aside, not a one of them has any problem holding out their hand to get old Uncle Sam's money, nor do they have a problem suckling at the government teet their entire career. Ironic, no?
If half these people knew they were carrying water because some spoiled brat of a man didn't want to pay his taxes or got pissed because they can no longer light a river on fire, they'd tell these gold-brickers to pound sand.
But that can't happen anymore. Everybody is plugged-in. The algorithms that drive engagement drive the feedback loop. People can't even argue anymore, because no one knows what the hell is really going on.
This is what our ancestors fought and died for: Twitter and Donald "I can't even make money running a casino" Trump.
The worst part? These people truly don't care. "Gee whiz, why are all these billionaires building bunkers thousands of miles away from the continental US?" Because they're planning to light the USA on fire and bounce. They don't care if you are a republican or a democrat. They don't care about anything. They got theirs. They raped the system, rigged the system, and that's it. Why? Because, paraphrasing George Carlin, "You ain't in their club, you ain't ever going to be in their club. They don't give a shit about you."
And one half the country is helping burn it all down, while blaming the other half of the country for "making them do it ha ha, see what you get you stupid <insert insult here>", meanwhile, the greatest grifters of all time will be sneaking out the back door with the loot to live out their days sipping mai tais, sailing around on aircraft carrier sized yachts, talking on satellite provided cellphones, and jacking off all day, while we continue to argue with each other about whose fault it is that all the money's gone.
That's a lot of politics I won't be answering about but I think you misunderstand the unitary executive idea.
It's not that the president is the sole power in government! it's that he's the sole power in the executive branch
This means the checks and balances are Congress vs Court vs President. Just like the clerks for SCOTUS don't have any power and neither do the staffers or clerks of Congress, so too do all the members of the executive branch have no power, except for whenever the Pres decides to delegate his power to them.
Even those who argue with this idea (few do) the only other ppl who have power in executive branch are the officials who get confirmed by the senate bec. they are mentioned in the constitution. No one thinks that unelected bureaucrat have any standing whatsoever outside of what's been delegated to them by the President
This does not in any way pertain to ruling by EO! Many things should in fact be done by Congress, but those that can/should be done by the executive branch are under the Presidents full control.
When the executive is also vested with the power of enforcement, then, by construction, it usurps the power of the other 2 branches to check its authority.
Which I think is obvious- a power hungry executive who disputes an attempted check of its authority by one of the other branches can simply decline to enforce.
Ipso facto, unchecked executive power.
Edit: you seem informed, so you should know that issues like these are not new; Andrew Jackson famously ignored the Supreme Court and told them to get bent way back in 1832 after their decision in Worcester v Georgia.
To use a programming analogy, our government's type system has a soundness problem. That means we, as a civilized society, have to follow a few unwritten rules to make sure the system remains functional and doesn't crash. One of those is for the executive to exercise restraint on the technical power they have in the interest of not encountering UB.
No, the greyed-out parent comment is correct. It's an unintuitive and weird legal truth, but it *is* the truth.
- "While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance, in most cases, the White House’s personnel security office makes a determination about whether to grant one after the F.B.I. has conducted a background check. If there is a dispute in the personnel security office about how to move forward — a rare occurrence — the White House counsel makes the decision. In highly unusual cases, the president weighs in and grants one himself."
Why shouldn’t all public transactions be public? IRS and personal taxes may be legitimate since it’s, well, personal, but we are all “shareholders” with equal stake in all other payments. This is the perfect use case for public ledger. We should all have access to all of this data. All outflows should note which bill authorized that expenditure, every bureaucrat that’s involved with spending it. If I’m getting $600 in income tracked as a free citizen, I want the even more accountability for anyone spending that amount on behalf of the government.
There’s almost certainly no clearance requirement for what they’ve looked at already. Maybe HIPAA. I’m not sure why one executive branch org has any more or less right to access this data than any other.
While I am in favour of radically open records for government and private sector alike, consider what hostile governments' intelligence agencies can do with a detailed budget when deciding where to draw the line.
Everything about this should worry patriotic Americans*, because this does look like a fantastic opportunity for everyone else on the planet to spy on your government at the top level.
* also anyone in a country that has a military or economic relationship with the USA: we're still impacted even though we don't have a say in it
This is philosophizing, and it isn't even on topic.
The laws are broken, so regardless of what you think "should" be legal, it isn't. They are being selectively enforced, though, and that's both the problem and probably the thing more worth your philosophical energy. Is that okay, when a criminal operation is too wealthy and influential to be held accountable?
> The laws are broken, so regardless of what you think "should" be legal, it isn't. They are being selectively enforced, though, and that's both the problem and probably the thing more worth your philosophical energy. Is that okay, when a criminal operation is too wealthy and influential to be held accountable?
All the laws have been being selectively enforced for decades. The people who were previously running these departments may have written the right incantations and negotiated a consensus with the departments that are supposed to watch the watchmen, but they had no more accountability to the average citizen/voter than the people who are moving in now.
The voting public no longer cares about "legal" versus "illegal", because they recognise that those categories have no bearing on anything relevant. This has been brewing for years, but the establishment benefited too much from subverting the rule of law to fix it. At this point they've made their bed.
The laws have been selectively enforced and it has led us here, yes, and it does mean that broad support of the bureaucracy has justifiably waned.
Was it okay then, when it was a bureaucratic governing class encamping in the public coffers? Is it okay now, when it's a single vulture capitalist harvesting the public coffers?
What's "okay"? My position is that the current state of affairs is far from ideal, but also not significantly worse than what came before, and so I'm suspicious of the motivations of anyone who's selectively concerned about public accountability now.
To to drain the swamp you probably have to dive into the swamp, or at least get your feet muddy. Every successful reform/anticorruption programme I can think of has involved giving a few trusted people some fairly extraordinary powers - special prosecutors, special judges, special task forces and the like. Sometimes the end result is no better, or is even worse, sure. But I'll take trying something that might work over letting the prior status quo continue indefinitely. And I don't think the system would ever have been capable of reforming itself while staying within its bounds.
OP was philosophizing. Why would anyone need any kind of clearance to access non-classified data. If they’ve been given permission by the head of the executive branch, what more authority do they need?
They had access to both financial and personal data. This included for example social security numbers and bank accounts. Sure, more financial data being public would be nice, but the current dataset as it is can't be made public safely and definitely needs clearance.
By assigning random people with no experience and criminal work history to an internal system with no data restriction on personal information scope? No, that's not how they work. What are you even asking?
Vetting might be a better word, and a more general term, than clearance.
Nearly all the jobs I’ve had working with data have required vetting - including a criminal background check. This is not the same thing as obtaining a security clearance.
Go ahead, put some legislation in place. I'd love to see transparency as the Swedes have where you can see how much tax your neighbour has paid. Or at least how much subsidies which company received. I'm sure rich people will LOVE to know the competition got half what they got... Btw, did Trump's tax returns get published yet?
That's not true. Many government positions and rules require different levels/types of clearance. E.g. the DoD and DHS have entirely different clearances managed by different organizations.
The DoD funds so much scientific research. There are entire budgets that are classified to hide how much we spend on - say - split satellites. Having access to the books of all of these orgs likely would require tons of different background checks and clearances from different organizations under normal circumstances
