Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

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Gary Childress
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Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Gary Childress »

How the Trump administration could end a century of American scientific dominance


When the Trump administration issued its federal funding freeze in its first days, it was immediately felt as an enormous shock to scientists across the country. And it still is; while the freeze was officially blocked by court order, functionally, it still appears to be in place to some extent, in that the processes by which federal funds are disbursed to universities, government, and industry laboratories are not operating normally. Communication with most federal science agencies is currently difficult if not impossible.
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Are we sure Trump isn't working for our enemies? :oops:
Last edited by Gary Childress on Tue Feb 11, 2025 11:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Gary Childress
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Gary Childress »

How the shutdown of USAID will hurt Americans and empower foreign adversaries

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) he leads are burrowing into the United States government, accessing highly secure information, firing federal employees, and attempting to shut down federal agencies. DOGE access to Office of Management and Budget databases and Treasury data, including the Medicare and Medicaid payment system, has already drawn lawsuits and court orders that temporarily limit those incursions. But perhaps the most immediately damaging of Musk’s actions so far is the rapid closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the decimation of America’s foreign aid sector.

USAID was created by President John F. Kennedy’s executive order in 1961 and later established as an independent agency by Congress. Only Congress has the power to abolish it. As a Congressional Research Service report issued Monday says, “Because Congress established USAID as an independent establishment (defined in 5 U.S.C. 104) within the executive branch, the President does not have the authority to abolish it; congressional authorization would be required to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID.” But that legal restriction hasn’t stopped Musk and his team of young DOGE engineers from placing federal employees on leave or firing them outright. The doors to USAID have been locked and all international staff have been instructed to close their missions and return home.
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Gary Childress
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Gary Childress »

Why DOGE’s meddling at Treasury could have catastrophic consequences for the US economy

Earlier this week, inexperienced officials from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained administrative access to the core payment systems at the US Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Like many Americans, I was shocked. Unlike most Americans, I am in a professional position to understand the potential for catastrophic macroeconomic consequences far beyond the privacy and security concerns suggested in the media and by our elected representatives.

One of the officials with admin access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service was 25-year-old engineer, Marko Elez, who is unlikely to have experience in the arcane, aging COBOL programming language (dating back to 1959) of the bureau’s payment system, and who meets DOGE’s recruitment criteria of having the hunger to make change. Unfortunately, the line between impatience and recklessness is not clear-cut, and any missteps could upend the entirety of public expenditure in the United States.

Elez resigned from DOGE today over allegations of racism, rather than professional competence. His replacement is just as unlikely to have the kind of experience and temperament required to work with the most mission-critical systems in the United States government. DOGE has stated that it wants to recruit risk-takers who want to “fundamentally remake the federal government” at all costs.
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Gary Childress
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Gary Childress »

A former EPA assistant administrator on US environmental policy in the age of Musk and Trump

Last Monday, Elon Musk bragged that he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Is the United States Environmental Protection Agency next?

A three-prong assault by the Trump administration is already taking shape, aimed at staffing, funding, and regulations.

According to a ProPublica analysis, more than 300 career employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have already left the agency since the election. This includes lawyers, engineers, biologists, toxicologists, emergency workers, and water and air quality experts. Last week, nearly 170 employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights were placed on paid administrative leave. Many others are being encouraged to resign or threatened with dismissals.

President Trump signed an executive order in his first week in office pausing funding disbursements awarded through the Inflation Reduction Act or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and although courts have intervened to stop the spending freeze, funding for EPA projects has still not been released.

And by all accounts, Lee Zeldin, the new EPA administrator, is poised to begin rolling back a suite of environmental regulations, touching on everything from meatpacking plant pollution and fertilizer chemicals to coal ash contamination and greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
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accelafine
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by accelafine »

From what I can tell the wokie judges are vetoing his EOs as fast as he's making them.
Gary Childress
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Gary Childress »

accelafine wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 12:08 am From what I can tell the wokie judges are vetoing his EOs as fast as he's making them.
From the sounds of it, that might be a good thing.
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accelafine
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by accelafine »

I thought the US president was supposed to be 'all powerful' :lol:
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Gary Childress wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 12:19 am
accelafine wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 12:08 am From what I can tell the wokie judges are vetoing his EOs as fast as he's making them.
From the sounds of it, that might be a good thing.
Unless the point is to create a constitutional crisis to be fought on grounds of your own choosing. To do that, you want to have a lot of judges issuing stays and then you just refuse to obey or enforce some of them. Be sure to pick only those fights that keep the MAGA blood pumping.

Try that and you quickly find that the rule of law is mostly a matter of conventions, not force - it's all just well behaved people not wanting to break the law. Dictators break it with impunity and then they blame judges and the laws for their transgressions.

This playbook has been written out for a number of years already. Here's the book...
The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics Paperback – 31 July 2012

For the American version of that, with some Paypal mafia tech bro fascism layered on top because money... see the video I linked a couple of days ago and check the description.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
Butterfly Revolution Step 3: Ignore the Courts
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accelafine
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by accelafine »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 1:24 am
Gary Childress wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 12:19 am
accelafine wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 12:08 am From what I can tell the wokie judges are vetoing his EOs as fast as he's making them.
From the sounds of it, that might be a good thing.
Unless the point is to create a constitutional crisis to be fought on grounds of your own choosing. To do that, you want to have a lot of judges issuing stays and then you just refuse to obey or enforce some of them. Be sure to pick only those fights that keep the MAGA blood pumping.

Try that and you quickly find that the rule of law is mostly a matter of conventions, not force - it's all just well behaved people not wanting to break the law. Dictators break it with impunity and then they blame judges and the laws for their transgressions.

This playbook has been written out for a number of years already. Here's the book...
The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics Paperback – 31 July 2012

For the American version of that, with some Paypal mafia tech bro fascism layered on top because money... see the video I linked a couple of days ago and check the description.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
Butterfly Revolution Step 3: Ignore the Courts
That's a very long-winded and messy way of saying 'Everything is a Trump conspiracy even when it isn't'.

Why do you hate him so much anyway? He's a neolibtard like you isn't he? Musk certainly is.
Dubious
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Dubious »

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2025 11:31 pm
How the Trump administration could end a century of American scientific dominance


When the Trump administration issued its federal funding freeze in its first days, it was immediately felt as an enormous shock to scientists across the country. And it still is; while the freeze was officially blocked by court order, functionally, it still appears to be in place to some extent, in that the processes by which federal funds are disbursed to universities, government, and industry laboratories are not operating normally. Communication with most federal science agencies is currently difficult if not impossible.
https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/how-the ... st-heading

Are we sure Trump isn't working for our enemies? :oops:
What if he is! Are America's demented - all those who voted for him - going to shoot him, hang him...or more likely than not, give him a 3rd term! Trump is making it very easy for China to become the next superpower, which also means, it won't be long before Taiwan reverts back to China. How the once great U.S. of A managed to this to itself and to the West as a whole, is unbelievable, almost surreal.
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accelafine
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by accelafine »

Oh well. It's all 'detemined' anyway.
Walker
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Walker »

Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2025 11:31 pm
An unaccountable Us bureaucracy is a no-account, thieving form of government. Since frontier justice is frowned upon these days, accounting accountability is the simple cure for this status-quo scourge. Accountability tips the apple cart and exposes the wormy, rotten apples insulated and fermenting in the dark. Accountability lets the sunshine disinfect the open, oozing wounds of government corruption.

Information is now squeezing out a symphony of harmonious, status-quo, squealing from the politicians, big media (BM), and the minions of unsqueezed squealers who got that way by believing in the usual demonizing propaganda learned from the forces that created The Democrat Party That Hates America.

The government is robbing the people. The robbed people who defend that are confused. Who would choose such self-destruction? A: Those with a penchant.

To paraphrase Trump, what's going on is so ridiculous that a lot of it has to be a front. Rest assured he cognizes a bigger frame of informational reference than you or me.

btw: The word is that Crackhead Hunter had an unelected function in executive branch decisions during the last of the dark days, and months. Could be a rumour, but stranger things have happened on a grander scale, given recent revelations about the Bureaucratic State.

An example of Democrat corruption:
- Teachers' unions overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
- Democrats smile on the teachers' unions in ways that benefit the union.
- As educational results show in test scores, the students need representatives to benefit them.
- This is the aim of Trump and company, which requires taking a flame thrower to The Dept. of Education money laundering operation.
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Walker »

Keyword: Baseline budgeting.

(The implications are obvious)
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by attofishpi »

Walker wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2025 8:04 am
Gary Childress wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2025 11:31 pm
An unaccountable Us bureaucracy is a no-account, thieving form of government. Since frontier justice is frowned upon these days, accounting accountability is the simple cure for this status-quo scourge. Accountability tips the apple cart and exposes the wormy, rotten apples insulated and fermenting in the dark. Accountability lets the sunshine disinfect the open, oozing wounds of government corruption.

Information is now squeezing out a symphony of harmonious, status-quo, squealing from the politicians, big media (BM), and the minions of unsqueezed squealers who got that way by believing in the usual demonizing propaganda learned from the forces that created The Democrat Party That Hates America.

The government is robbing the people. The robbed people who defend that are confused. Who would choose such self-destruction? A: Those with a penchant.

To paraphrase Trump, what's going on is so ridiculous that a lot of it has to be a front. Rest assured he cognizes a bigger frame of informational reference than you or me.

btw: The word is that Crackhead Hunter had an unelected function in executive branch decisions during the last of the dark days, and months. Could be a rumour, but stranger things have happened on a grander scale, given recent revelations about the Bureaucratic State.

An example of Democrat corruption:
- Teachers' unions overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
- Democrats smile on the teachers' unions in ways that benefit the union.
- As educational results show in test scores, the students need representatives to benefit them.
- This is the aim of Trump and company, which requires taking a flame thrower to The Dept. of Education money laundering operation.
..not to mention the corruption that ALL USA presidents have of protecting scum from justice. (pardons)

Well said Walker - so much money ending up in NGO accounts to push the WOKE DEI agenda
Impenitent
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Re: Could Trump and Company Destroy Us?

Post by Impenitent »

all he has to do is refuse to sign the next budget

spending stops

democrats wasting money is double plus good

you say you want a revolution...

-Imp
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