I’m sure our classified financial information is in good hands with these guys.
My first thought was that foreign agents could have a field day with these young guys. I bet somebody already has a plan.
The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover | WIRED
Busily tweeting about how people should blame Trump when the price of tomatoes goes up.
And doing nothing constructive.
What constructive stuff can the minority party do?
March over to the building Elon and friends have locked the employees out of and demand access and explanations, for starters.
Stop being passive-aggressive and actively and vocally oppose what the Trump administration is doing.
Pretty much everything the GOP did during the Obama administration, but with a lot more justification.
There is a rally at Treasury tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb 4. Here’s a thread I started about it.
Or what?
As I have said far too many times in the past, laws and regulations cannot enforce themselves and those that can enforce them are not going to do so.
If this fails, and I am afraid it certainly will, what is the next step?
Keep fighting.
The massive backlash to Trump’s attempt to impound Federal funds, and the judge’s injunction, forced them to back down. We have to keep pushing back.
The alternative is to give up and move to some other country.
What is your suggestion?
True. In any other moment in time up until now, the expectation was that some Joe Rando showing up saying “I come from the guy the Prez said is in charge of things, I’m taking over” would have been tossed out on the sidewalk if not arrested and the Senate and House would sit someone down in front of a committee to give explanations. Nobody did any tossing. Anyone who actually tries to actively resist will be the ones escorted out.
That’s the amazing thing if you think about it from the Trumpist POV… people talked and talked about the Deep State but what I see is a cowed workforce obeying.
The Democrats probably have some small amount of leverage to stop this, and I hope they do – it’s very unlikely the Republicans will be able to pass a spending bill on their own without Democratic votes; Democrats should insist that Musk’s lawbreaking stop before providing any votes. Further, it’s a lot easier to gum up stuff in the Senate – one Senator can do it, like Tuberville did a few years ago. The Democrats should do that every day until this lawbreaking stops.
I don’t know if they’ll do it, and I don’t know if it would work, but Democrats absolutely must use the limited tools available to fight illegality like this.
Well, everyone who has a Republican representative of senator should be absolutely flooding them with calls and emails. They do keep a tally, its a part of how they track reactions.
I’m in Mass, so there’s nobody I can reach out to who isn’t already on board.
This is very true. What we are seeing is basically incomprehensible to this longtime fed employee. I almost feel like those apocryphal native Americans who were unable to even SEE the Europeans’ ships as they were so far beyond their frame of reference.
They also have no clue that they are next.
The best part of the techno-feudalist future is going to be the bit where the techno runs headfirst into the feudalism. All the Tesla stock, bitcoin, Facebook data, and other cyber ephemera is meaningless to the warlord with a gun.
In response to a question as to what the Democrats in Congress can do. My understanding is that the building that was shut down was the one for the US AID and that falls under the jurisdiction of the White House. So it is legal what they did.
The curious thing is that the OP started this thread asking about data protection laws in the USA and how people felt about them. As a European I think I know what they meant, but the question does not resonate at all with the usual Doper. There is the concept of data minimization* I strongly endorse, as, like a blogger I like to read writes, where there is a trough, the swines will come. But this idea of generating and storing as little data as possible is completely antithetical to the current thinking in the USA. And now there you have it: someone who should not have access to all your data (Musk the Swine) has access to all the data the government has access to (the trough), and that happens to be all your data. But it is not the trough you consider to be the problem, at least not judging by your answers. The problem is Musk’s conflict of interests.
There is a problem with Musk’s conflict of interest, granted. But it is not the primary problem. And you don’t see it. Just like with social media. I don’t understand it.
* As an exercise, if you click on that link, compare just the length of the wikiarticles in English and in German (the only languages available) to get an idea of the relative importance this concept is given to in the English speaking world and in the German speaking world.
I live in Massachusetts, too, but I’ve called Senators Markey (617-565-8519) and Warren (617-565-3170), and my US Rep, as well, several times in the last two weeks to urge them to fight Trump’s cabinet nominees with every tool in the parliamentarian’s toolbox, just like the Republicans under Mitch McConnell did in the Obama administration.
It’s easy, only takes a few minutes, and it makes clear, even to politicians who are already on “our side” that LOTS of people are really concerned about this.
That’s optimistic. Think center mass.
Hey, that’s the way Donny wants it.
“At a minimum, 300 babies that wouldn’t have had HIV now do."