This is democracy now. democracynow.org I’m Amy Goodman. the top-ranking career US Treasury Department official David Le has been forced out of the agency after he resisted a demand by Elon Musk and his associates at Doge to gain access to the government’s vast payment system, which disperses trillions of dollars in federal payments each year. Trump’s new treasury secretary, the billionaire Scott Besant, ended up giving Musk access to the system, which includes sensitive information about taxpayer social
Security Ian governs contractors, including Musk’s rivals. Musk is also accused of waging a takeover at the Office of Personnel Management, where career civil servants have been locked out of computer systems for more We welcome two distinguished guests. With a cat-democratic strategy, the KUB stacks HPI lines. Muskox Coup is the spokesperson for Justice Democrats and a former senior adviser for the campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamal Bowman. She has also joined us in Washington.
DC by Lindsay Owens,, executive director of the Groundwork collaborative who says there are several reasons Musk wants to control treasury payments none of them are good. kay um Wisher heed, let’s begin with you. hat do you mean that Elon Musk is staging a coup?? So if this story was taking place somewhere in Central Asia or in Africa ,the United States media, the he United States State apartment, atonally institutions would likely refer to this as a billion airier industrialist who donated $300 million to a campaign is installing his personal.
Unelected Billionaire Seizes Control at Treasury Dept. & Other Agencies
loyalist in key parts of the bureaucracy, he plays the playbook’s need to know why a billionaire’s industry government costs and the private sector’s needs. Are’s needs are these the Theas they same as the every America every ornament gives go the a government gives out. Charities. Ionia Do you know this information?? The approver conducted a thorough background check on him. lf, umalfumum, history, toryfoftoum history, eruption fume,
ek using public resources for private gain. Hess one of the wealthiest men in the world and in any other situation this would be called a—uh,this would be called state capture and people around the world would be condemning it but in the United States we are not used to this kind of level of—uh—of creeping authority Arianism, of plutocracy of oligarchy so explicit and we need to—this is a—as Representative Ocasio-rtes. said last night this is a five-alarm fire. Um Senate Democrats need to be communicating to the American people and
Um, last night, there Um, um, it’s called by indivisible action for people to visit their local terminators and/or for them to grind the Senate to a halt to call for investigations and to know why Elon Musk needs this information. Why are they sending it to the, uh, offices of the federal government demanding the private information of citizens all around the country— well, um, I mean, the country? ell,uum,ay none Owens, reasons are good; lay those out. Absolutely out. Yeah, absolutely. So this is the Americans— I mean, they
Elon Musk Staging a Coup? Unelected Billionaire Seizes
tneverve time they’d I’verneverry payment system, so what is the treasury payment system? This is effectively the piece of the federal government that cuts the checks, and they cut a lot of checks. This is $6 trillion a year—money that goes to individuals as Social Security payment seniors, senior payments goes for organizations like Meals on When to to dlunches,lWheels,h money ornament sets ackey programsropayasidegfor key programssupayinghdebts, and don’t breadebteobligationseak obligations.
Really, Ally? Really, literacy ally, um, long Musk has grabbed control of the keys of six trillion in payments infrastructure. There are reasons. First, there are reasons. anting. rsvp The firsts knknowniTI e first vkknownrsis known, sat Pknowledge,tyour knowledge, the spend president tidal spending, uming,um,stop,sfed swum, togewandTthe fed was together, was was so out ragout This wasn’t a violation of the Constitution that the courts intended to say. That’s not happening here: Musk might be circumventing the situation.
Courts are are going straight to the source so that he can continue to stop those payments that the courts said needed to keep ,uh staying online. The second thing that may be happening Here is this could just be a good old-fashioned cyber attack. Elon Musk could be interested in the social security numbers. he tax ID numbers of tens of millions of Americans we know that he has partnered with visa and is considering spinning out a payment system of his own what we may have here is Elon musk’s attempt to get the private information for his own
Elon Musk given access to federal payment system
financial gain The other thing that is incredibly worrying is trillions of dollars, which is a massive amount of money. tiffs…nit o…money… If Elon is unaware of the underlying technology that ensures these payments are made effectively, efficiently, and unintentionally, it could lead to a macro-halt. he m You mean, halt… halt… I mean, this is an incredibly concerning seizure of government infrastructure, but it is also an economically momentous moment.
t in the country, so I couldn’t agree withed. II menthe word coup is the right word to be there, about there, ,and Congressmust,tI mean,vene. If I were eaasenator,r I think the most important thing to do is bring the Secretary of the Treasury to the Senate to answer questions about what Musk haste say ,so the Treasury Department’s Inspector General, who could monitor activities was among the 15 watchdogs who were purged by Pres. ,Trumps Trump is now in charge of overseeing Muss
team yeah musk is in charge so that’s exactly right.. Um,, some of the key choke holds here to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen have been moved out of the way studiously,, um,, exactlyved out of the way,, so President Trump fired the inspector general of the treasury and the top civil servant of the Treasury Department the man who was the acting treasury secretary between the time that Janet Yellen stepped down and Scott basset was,, um,, confirmed by the Senate,, um,, has also been pushed aside
REad more:http://”This is not a smart move – it’s selfish” | Ford responds to Trump’s tariff threat
Um,, resigned over the fact that he didn’t want to give Musk,, um,, a private citizen,, a billionaire,, the keys to the treasury payment system,, so there is very little,, um,, stopping Musk from,, uh,, from taking this over,, um. Trump and Bent really,, um,, you know,, uh,, given him a glide path,, so we’d Shaheed,, where is the Democratic Party on this?? Where are the Democratic senators and Congress members on this?? I mean,, you have Hakeem Jeff who holds an emergency meeting of the Democrats after a judge stops the,, um,, federal payments going out to,, uh,,
know, now, ,theism thee baboon, um, ,um on fedora funding ,so the Democratic, uh, ,h party in Washington is largely asleep at reacting as if they’re kind of a librarian shushing noise, um, in a crowded room. They are believing in the normal, uh, procedures, normal decorum, and normal, uh, that everything here is the normal transition of power and they still believe that what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing is just a libertarian reform of the government, not an oligarchic plutocratic takeover.
of a private billionaire who is seeking to know, uh, potentially seeking to know what his competitors might be doing, uh, with government contracts. Uh, he has private information that, um, Elon Musk has contracts with international governments all across the world. Um, um, the Democratic Party, uh, is not able to put forward an opposition message right now because they think this is normal, and that’s why it’s so important for concerned citizens all across the country to twist the arm of your Senate Democrat and go to their
office If you go to indivisible .or day,, you can find a way to join your local chapter all around the country.. Whether your senator is a Republican or a Democrat or independent,, they need to hear from concerned citizens because the Democratic Party doesn’t move on issues of oligarchy or plutocracy or taking action unless their constituents show up in person and demand that they d hearings ,ace the bully pulpit in media,, and al sound the Senate to a halt until we know why does Elon Musk ha.
Read more:http://Elon Musk’s DOGE commission gains access to sensitive
This information is is someone who motmot elected,, so the Democratic National Committee on Saturday elected the moderate political in insider Martin as chair,, despite calls from voters to urgently switch gears and respond to working people’s needs following the party’s crushing feat .edit a major numbers defeat, but de feats a defeat in November. .What you think of Ken Mar Martin? ere do you think it’s going??Soo the DNC is largely at this point a fundraising vehicle for the presidential campaign.. I hope that Ken
Martin reforms the party to implement initiatives such as the ones I’m describing. g: The Democratic Party should be holding daily press conferences every morning to explain to working-class and middle-class Americans why it might hurt their pocketbooks for Elon Musk to have this information from the Treasury Department and from the federal government’s debt every
day by billions of dollars, cut, and one of the only ways to do that would be to begin to privatize security. This s is what the DNC should be doing now, Ken Martin. Um, we had lots of members of the uncommitted movement at the DNC, who were being personally bullied by their DNC state parties, say that that didn’t happen, and so that was my only personal interaction with him, and he went out of his way to make sure that, um, our uncommitted delegation was treated with respect. Other
n that I don’t know that much about him,, but I’m looking forward to hopefully he can put together a working-class populist agenda for the party that isn’t just a fundraising handoff so Lindsay Owens doge is not a formal government agency,, right? Uh,? Uh, uh, hitch means that it doesn’t fall into any category.. Yeah,, look,, I think when President Trump announced that Elon Musk was going to be running the Department of Government Efficiency,, there was a sort of tempting fantasy that maybe Musk,, awful businessman,, could.
Read more:http://What to know about Trump, Musk and USAID
come i and restore some efficiency in government,, maybe modernize some aspects of government that could use some updating. I mean,, I think with this weekend’s,, um,, seizure of the treasury payment system,, we can be Crystal Clearing putting that fantasy to bodhi’s is Musk determining who is going to get funding in this country,, what programs are going to be funded in this country,, and remember,, Mustn’t a disinterested party here,, as we’ve talked about.. He has many federal contracts himself,, billions of dollars this year..
alone to his company, SpaceX, Tesla and X, formerly known as Twitter, um, but he also is interested in cutting this funding for a very, um, personal reason, which is he is interested in paying for the tax cuts that Congress is teeing up this year. Um, they’re estimating 5 trillion in tax cuts mostly going to the wealthy corporations, and Doge is the entity that is supposedly going to find the money, find the savings to pay for those tax cuts, so I think we can sum it up this way: Elon Musk is going to pay for his tax cut with your Social Security. Really,sReally,
What we’re here for is that Do gehu tattoo, gee is ump and we’re going to have to leave it there and I just want to give a word: sat wo seconds. eco What should people do right now? Now, people should go to indivisible.org, visit their Senate office, and demand an investigation into Elon Musk,
