"Musk is unelected, and it appears that DOGE has no legal authority. As political scientist Seth Masket put it in tusk: “Elon Musk is not a federal employee, nor has he been appointed by the President nor approved by the Senate to have any leadership role in government. The ‘Department of Government Efficiency,’ announced by Trump in a January 20th executive order, is not truly any sort of government department or agency, and even the executive order uses quotes in the title. It’s perfectly fine to have a marketing gimmick like this, but DOGE does not have power over established government agencies, and Musk has no role in government. It does not matter that he is an ally of the President. Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup.”
Letters from an American Historian
"Move fast and break things." The Tech Bros, Bro culture, mob, and "Groypers" all big fans of "manly energies" and the "animal spirits" and "techno-optimism" love this stuff, right? It's like that "We're an empire now" quote from a Bush official, while the rest of us try to figure out WTF these insane office space jocks are doing they are history's imperial actors creating their own realities. And this is also hacker chic in its decadent imperialist phase, right? Makes Mr. Robot seem both overly serious and silly by comparison.
Now, of course, if we were a functioning democracy with laws and real law enforcement these reckless loons would be locked up and an investigations into their obstruction and security breaches begun immediately. But we don't so they won't be, is my cynical hunch.
Stephanie Kelton, the deficit myth economist, makes what's going on at Treasury semi-legible to me:
One, stopping payment on monies already authorized by congress is illegal; against an impoundment control law from 1974 (enacted after Nixon tried to pull something like this). Two, giving an unelected chaos monkey and his band of merry hackers access to the private information of citizens is reckless endangerment; giving it to the guy who just turned a major social media platform into a Neo-Nazi dumpster fire is a coup, an insurrection, an invasion of the basic rights of all Americans.
Call the cops! Call the feds! Freeze his meddling, impound his stolen files, investigate his security breach. SCOTUS did this, allowed this coup and constitutional crisis. They had accomplices and partisan support, sure, but they allowed the coup and constitutional crisis.
Oy! And then if this were not enough some of Grump's performative art-of-the-deal-making....
"Today Trump was clearer: he posted on social media that without U.S. trade—which Trump somehow thinks is a “massive subsidy”—“Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada—AND NO TARIFFS!”
Yeah, meanwhile, Justin Trudeau, Claudia Sheinbaum, Larry Summers, various industry and academic experts, and everybody on substack is trying guess and respond to the cracked logic of Grump's tariff scheme and, for Canada anyway, we now get the scoop: Canada's economy is completely dependent on our markets, Grump figures. (No one else wants their oil or maple syrup?) Grump figures Canada will have to pay whatever he charges them in trade tariffs. And if they don't want to pay tariffs then they can submit to annexation as the 51st state in the US.
The belligerent disregard for Canada's national independence is stunning, if again probably thrilling to the hardcore bully Bro culture mob on X/Twitter.
And there are actually some good reasons, it should be noted, for tariffs; for examples, to protect domestic industries important to national security or to protect the infant development of domestic industry from foreign competition. And all developed rich countries have used tariffs at one time or another, including the US, for these purposes. Economist Ha-Joon Chang argues tariffs are essential to developing economies, to protect them from the growth stunting impacts of large-scale dominating foreign competition, contrary to the insistence of neoliberal free traders. And, historically, to effectuate these goals tariff rates have reached as high as 50% or even 70%.
But none of these reasons, zero, apply to raising tariff rates on Canada or Mexico.
For Grump, none of these reasons for tariffs need apply. He's simply imposing them as a shakedown of our closest neighbors. This is "common sense" to super predator Grump; this is his win/lose domination-or-bust economic model. He reasons Canada and Mexico need US markets, this is his leverage, so screw them. Utterly belligerent monopoly imperialism, without really any discernible America First goals other than dictatorship and, one would think, economic crisis, which is the weirdest part in this whole game. Grump needs to deliver something on the economy (beyond tax cuts) and this is not likely to do it. Quite the contrary.
Tariffs won't increase trade but just make it more expensive for consumers. But his people love the tough-guy bluster, he's fighting for them, he says, they hope, and, well, we're all find out soon enough.
It's a big colossal clusterfuck of bad and what all the billionaires and bigots voted for, no getting around that. Fascism can happen here and is coming for your government services, probably many we never realized were so important until they are gone.
Romanticizing any of this as a risk-taking unleashing of the "animal spirits" for innovation and economic growth and expansion, Techno-Optimism, is pathetic. It's a Big Tech yuppie redux and I'm betting they won't even get that far before blowing everything up. Musk is guy whose biggest tech dream is colonizing Mars because he doesn't think human life on earth will last and now he's in charge of making our government more "efficient." He has no idea, obviously.
USAID is NOT a "criminal organization," which anyway sounds like an over-heated online troll twist on an Israel talking point. USAID provides aid to people around the world contending with impoverished crisis conditions; it makes up less than 1% of the US budget. Targeting it is beneath contempt, and back to their "cruelty is the point" thing.
One of my tired refrains of late, and feeling it again now, is that one about how the Republicans are always insisting the government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it.
No comments:
Post a Comment