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Musk the unelected bureaucrat: “The greatest economic threat we have ever faced !!!”



Photo above - pop quiz: name these 3 "unelected bureaucrats" and guess which nitwit is actually the biggest threat to the American economy.

Okay – the government and media are carping about Musk, in case anyone has been living under a rock. Musk and DOGE and his whiz kid programmers have apparently quickly untangled 20 years of legacy spaghetti code – some of it written by people long dead. THIS is the biggest threat America has ever faced?

I’m no fan of Musk, as my previous columns will attest. He’s a pot smoking, serial baby daddy making, preening narcissist who has conned the government out of billions in subsidies going back to the Obama administration. If you deplore Musk's huge net worth, remember how he got there.

But when some career bureaucrats start phoning the media about other bureaucrats – their new bosses – I take that stuff a grain of salt. That’s the deep state calling.

If we need a recap of unelected bureaucrats who have harmed America’s economy, let’s start with Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. Musk has done more in 7 days to get a handle on budget deficits and the national debt than Powell has in the 7 years since he took office. I challenge anyone to explain how Powell’s policies have helped America. The national debt is growing exponentially, nobody can afford a home or mortgage, and he cynically cut interest rates as a political stunt just weeks before the 2024 presidential election.

Another unelected bureaucrat who should be in the crosshairs is Janet Yellen. The 79 year old former Treasury Secretary. Other than phoning CEOs to cajole them into supporting an increase to the national debt limit, I can’t identify a single thing Janet did. Trump replaced her with Scott Bessant last week.

If we’re concerned about federal spending let’s acknowledge that much of this falls in the laps of the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Secretary of Housing. All appointed, never elected. If these bureaucrats were adding value we wouldn’t have the planet's most bloated military, most unaffordable housing, and a healthcare system which is the laughingstock of the western hemisphere.

I’m under no illusions that Trump, Elon, and his cadre of gray hat whiz kids are going to fix anything important by the end of the month. But the fact that the hundreds of legacy bureaucrats – and unions – are shrieking in outrage might be evidence that decades of malfeasance are threatened.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

"The greatest threat we've ever faced": US Treasury division classifies DOGE staff as extreme danger
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MrGrumpy · M
What is it about American politics that makes you all so bitter? Some of that is spilling over the border here and it isn’t pretty
TinyViolins · 31-35, M
@MrGrumpy If you want to understand American politics, just watch a game of football or soccer.

The two-party system basically turns all elections into a winner-take-all cage match, and nobody wants to see their favorite team lose.
AthrillatheHunt · 51-55, M
@TinyViolins I like your analogy , but it’s not a 2 party system with 2 different teams. It’s 1 team scrimmaging against themselves as shirts and skins. They have us think it’s 2 teams but it’s not .
TinyViolins · 31-35, M
@AthrillatheHunt It's not a perfect analogy, but it drives home the point. Partisanship is a major component of the disfunction we're all having to deal with. People tend to align themselves with whichever side they like best, and that doesn't leave much room for middle ground
MrGrumpy · M
@TinyViolins We have more than 2 parties here but in effect there are only 2. I have been following American politics for many years. It hasn’t been this bad. Almost everybody seem to think they’re smarter than others, want to think the “other” team is conspiring to take them out. It’s been nuts with name calling, bullying, and even threats. People forget they’re all team USA
TinyViolins · 31-35, M
@MrGrumpy Well said. There are a lot of amoral actors trying to manipulate politics for their own benefit. Social media sites benefit from click revenue, so they drum up controversy to get clicks. News networks have paved the way for audience capture that benefits from pandering to a specific group for views. Foreign countries are vying for more power and stand to benefit from US disfunction, so they launch propaganda campaigns. The rich and greedy benefit from keeping people focused on each other while they line their own pockets.

When people can get instant gratification by "winning" or putting others down, there's no real incentive for them to stop and think about all the different layers of complexity
JPWhoo · 36-40, M
@TinyViolins
The two-party system basically turns all elections into a winner-take-all cage match, and nobody wants to see their favorite team lose.
Excellent analogy! Only, it’s not so much that nobody wants to see their favorite team lose, it’s much more that nobody wants to see the team they hate win. Most people don’t love either of the two major parties, but in most cases they hate one of them much more than the other.
AthrillatheHunt · 51-55, M
@TinyViolins the middle ground is the tiniest it’s been in my lifetime.
JollyRoger · 70-79, M
@TinyViolins You definitely 'nailed' the problem.... "party politics" over "policy politics". A bigger problem is that 'The People' in the spectator stands are buying and eating garbage food instead of watching the game as it's being played.... This metaphor bares itself by the low voter turnout in the election.