Well, this doesn’t sound good. https://www.theverge.com/policy/612933/cfpb-tech-team-gutted-trump-doge-elon-musk
And while I don’t really have an opinion about whether ICE should be allowed to operate in NYC jails, the Eric Adams quid pro quo sounds pretty corrupt. (I do wonder how someone like Adams gets elected in the first place.) https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trumps-border-czar-tells-eric-adams-butt-nyc-mayor-breaks-vow-help-ice-rcna192201 In case you can’t read the article at The Verge: The technology team at financial regulator CFPB has been gutted The terminations leave a gaping hole in the oversight of financial institutions and tech firms venturing into financial technology. by Lauren Feiner <https://www.theverge.com/authors/lauren-feiner> Feb 14, 2025, 8:20 AM CST Lauren Feiner <https://www.theverge.com/authors/lauren-feiner> is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. Around 20 technologists at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were fired on Thursday evening, gutting a team that specialized in understanding Big Tech’s entrance into financial products, three sources familiar with the matter tell The Verge. It follows an earlier round of layoffs of mostly contractors and probationary employees on Tuesday, as reported by <https://www.wired.com/story/dozens-of-cfpb-workers-terminated-in-after-hours-firing-blitz/> Wired, representing the latest cuts to an agency with oversight over a field that one of Elon Musk’s companies is trying to enter. Musk, who now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has announced plans for his company X to enter the payments business <https://www.theverge.com/news/599137/x-money-payments-service-2025-launch> , which is an area the CFPB oversees for potential consumer harm <https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-finalizes-rule-on-federal-oversight-of-popular-digital-payment-apps-to-protect-personal-data-reduce-fraud-and-stop-illegal-debanking/> . In a copy of a termination letter obtained by The Verge, the CFPB acting chief human capital officer Adam Martinez references President Donald Trump’s executive order <https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency-workforce-optimization-initiative/> instructing the Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency to help cull the federal workforce. Around 7 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, members of the technology team received the termination notices in their personal emails. One member of the team — who like others in this story spoke on background to candidly share their experiences — said the email didn’t come until about 20 minutes after they noticed they were locked out of Teams and Outlook on their work phone. “We can’t investigate firms or supervise firms if we don’t understand the technology we’re investigating.” “The people on this team were the kind of senior people — sometimes at Big Tech firms, sometimes at premier universities — that hiring teams fight tooth and nail over,” says Erie Meyer, who served as chief technologist at the CFPB during the Biden administration. Meyer resigned last Friday, surprised that as a political appointee, new top officials hadn’t asked for her resignation already. She was again surprised to learn that emails to her former colleagues announcing their termination on Thursday still copied her now-defunct work email. Meyer, who previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission and before that co-founded the US Digital Service — the group that Trump has refashioned into DOGE <https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/20/24348330/the-united-states-digital-service-is-now-doge> — hired technologists to the CFPB that could embed across the agency and lend their expertise in everything from research to enforcement. “When I arrived at the bureau, it became immediately clear that Big Tech’s expansion into consumer financial products and services was a trend we needed to be extremely careful to address before it became a crisis,” she says. “We can’t investigate firms or supervise firms if we don’t understand the technology we’re investigating.” Now that expertise has been ravaged from the agency in one night, and the agency’s former technologists fear that consumer complaints will go unanswered, and companies will be able to get away with shady practices by obscuring them with technical complexity. “Most investigations have some elements of technology, whether it’s an algorithm, a model, some sort of AI, or just data systems,” says one former member of the technology team. “They will claim that it’s too burdensome, or it’s not possible to produce the data ... And having someone at the table who understands the databases, who understands the technology at hand is really crucial to being able to push back.” The CFPB technologists’ backgrounds in the private sector also helped them understand where to look for information in technical systems, says another former staffer. “When you’re a regulatory agency of 1,500 people trying to find out information about hundreds of companies, and each company is ten times your size, the amount of information that is conceivably there, and the techniques available to shroud the useful evidence are so enormous, that having the specific experience of developing the kind of technology that you’re investigating means that you can get the evidence more quickly, you can understand what it means very efficiently, ” they say. “And, you can push back if a big company tries to steamroll an investigation or tries to misrepresent what is actually happening to consumers.” This is especially helpful when it comes to looking at tech firms, which have entered the financial services sector and often already have a vast array of data on users that could potentially be combined with their spending habits. “I would say a single one of these Big Tech firms is bigger than the top five big banks combined,” Meyer says. The CFPB has managed to take on some of these massive companies. It fined Apple and Goldman Sachs $89 million <https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/23/24277710/apple-goldman-sachs-cfpb-fine-charge-disputes-system> for allegedly misleading iPhone consumers about interest-free payment options and sued Zelle and the three banks that own <https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/20/24325923/cfpb-zelle-lawsuit-widespread-fraud> it for allegedly enabling more than $870 million in consumer fraud. DOGE has gained an unusual level of access to agency data In the course of investigating, the CFPB collects vast amounts of information on companies, which now may be at risk of being accessed by DOGE staff. A recent lawsuit <https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69624412/1/national-treasury-employees-union-v-vought/> by a federal workers’ union claims that Trump administration official Russell Vought demanded DOGE be given access to non-classified systems at the agency. This level of access is unusual and concerning, a source told The Verge, noting that even senior officials at the agency would typically have to provide a business justification to access data held by the agency. What kind of information does the CFPB maintain? A document provided to congressional staffers briefed on the CFPB this week notes that the agency has information on enforcement actions and investigations, as well as market research that could include business plans. If that data is accessed without appropriate guardrails, the document warns, it could create unfair competitive advantages for a company like Musk’s X, which plans to move into payments services <https://www.theverge.com/news/599137/x-money-payments-service-2025-launch> . The information would include sensitive consumer data, regulatory compliance information on other financial institutions, and insider information that could be used unfairly, the document notes. The White House has insisted <https://x.com/TaylorPopielarz/status/1887214423586013539> that Musk would step back from any work that presented a conflict of interest, but his business dealings are so vast that X’s payments project presents just one example of how his interests could intertwine with the agencies DOGE is trimming down. When the CFPB collects confidential information during an investigation, companies provide it with the understanding it won’t be shared publicly, says one of the former staffers. “Absolutely there is information that we have that would be beneficial to someone who might be launching a company in the payment space,” they say. Consumers will also likely feel the hit, now that former staffers say the portal for consumer complaints is likely not being monitored anymore. The agency would receive complaints when consumers were locked out of their bank accounts after data breaches, for example, and could often get their issues addressed within days, the former staffer says. “There is nowhere else” for consumers to go, they say. “They could potentially go to the state attorney generals, but they just don’t have the same capacity.” Asked if they would take back their job if it came back on the table, the second former technology worker said they would. “I took this job because it was by far the best opportunity I had to help as many people as possible, as much as I possibly could,” they say. “It’s such an impactful job that, yeah, I would definitely take it, provided I felt that I had the capacity to continue helping people.” Despite the slashing of the government workforce in the past couple weeks, this worker believes that’s still possible. “The spirit of the kind of person who is stepping up to help others at their own expense is embedded in almost every federal worker, and there are still plenty of those folks kicking around.” From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Jason McKemie Sent: Friday, February 14, 2025 1:53 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. I couldn't agree more. I like the analogy of Congress being like a dog pretending it didn't poop on the living room rug, although I think that is probably being unfair to dogs. One of the few good things I could see coming from all of this is if they axed or severely hobbled BEAD. I think it is a terrible, unnecessary program, and the standards for what is underserved / unserved are just insane. On Fri, Feb 14, 2025 at 12:01 PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com <mailto:khoh...@kwom.com> > wrote: I’m OK with eliminating wasteful spending and trimming the federal budget, but Congress should stop authorizing future spending, and cancel programs they no longer support. A lot of this is what used to be called “pork barrel”. They are happy to see Elon Musk wield the axe rather than be accountable to voters. Congress is relinquishing its constitutional power of the purse because they are a bunch of cowards. It also seems that “fraud” now means “stuff I don’t like”. But actual fraud like perpetrated by the current mayor of NYC or the former governor of Illinois is OK. The whole claim of waste/fraud/abuse is a cover for eliminating the civil service and reverting to the spoils system. Not that there isn’t a whole bunch of wasteful spending and probably some ineffective civil servants, but that’s not what this is about. It will be interesting to see if BEAD gets the axe, or just gets reprioritized as less fiber and more satellite. ACP was probably a case of doing it the right way, Congress elected not to continue funding it (or was too busy bloviating and grandstanding). Congress appropriates funds, often via the pork barrel method, and then acts like they had nothing to do with it. Gee whiz, who authorized this wasteful and fraudulent program, who will save us from ourselves? Oh, thank you Elon, the ultimate unelected bureaucrat, for doing our job so we can continue to avoid accountability. Congress is like a dog who pretends he didn’t poop on the living room rug. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of Jason McKemie Sent: Friday, February 14, 2025 11:11 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. Good article. Also, good luck having a reasonable discussion about these sorts of things with many of the people who support this regime. You're just overreacting or playing into the leftist conspiracies if you bring up facts and reason. If people on both sides of the political aisle don't wake up and pay attention to the things that matter here, we're in for a very rough ride. I'm not sure what happened to the center, I guess it is easier for the unscrupulous to divide and conquer. On Fri, Feb 14, 2025, 9:33 AM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com <mailto:khoh...@kwom.com> > wrote: Civil servant purge, return to pre-1900 patronage system. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/doge-civil-servant-purge/681671/ As far as tariffs, why does nobody point out they are a tax? Basically like a sales tax or the European VAT except imposed at the wholesale level. Money goes to Treasury like any other tax. Europeans have all those social services to counter the fact that VAT is a regressive tax, it hits working and middle class harder than the rich. The Atlantic article may be behind a paywall, so here’s the text: There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing How regime change happens in America By Anne Applebaum <https://www.theatlantic.com/author/anne-applebaum/> February 13, 2025, 3:12 PM ET Despite its name, the Department of Government Efficiency is not, so far, primarily interested in efficiency. DOGE and its boss, Elon Musk, have instead focused their activity on the eradication of the federal civil service, along with its culture and values, and its replacement with something different. In other words: regime change. No one should be surprised or insulted by this phrase, because this is exactly what Trump and many who support him have long desired. During his 2024 campaign, Trump spoke of Election Day <https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/maidison-square-garden-election-fraud/680429/> as “Liberation Day,” a moment when, in his words, “vermin” and “radical left lunatics” <https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-authoritarian-rhetoric-hitler-mussolini/680296/> would be eliminated from public life. J. D. Vance has said <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/27/trump-schedule-f-national-security/> that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” Steve Bannon prefers to talk <https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/2017/02/23/03f6b8da-f9ea-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html> about the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” but that amounts to the same thing. These ideas are not original to Vance or Bannon: In the 21st century, elected leaders such as Hugo Chávez or Viktor Orbán have also used their democratic mandates for the same purpose.. Chávez fired 19,000 employees <https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/05/07/how-venezuela-ruined-its-oil-industry/> of the state oil company; Orbán dismantled labor protections <https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/how-civil-service-purges-have-played> for the civil service. Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought, the newly appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the original regime-change blueprint—are now using IT operations, captured payments systems, secretive engineers, a blizzard of executive orders, and viral propaganda to achieve the same thing. This appears to be DOGE’s true purpose. Although Trump and Musk insist they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/trump-musk-oval-office.html> . Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/elon-musk-companies-conflicts.html> . Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. The destruction of the modern civil-service ethos will take time. It dates from the late 19th century, when Theodore Roosevelt and other civil-service reformers launched a crusade to eliminate the spoils system that dominated government service. At that time, whoever won the presidency always got to fire everyone and appoint his own people, even for menial jobs. Much of the world still relies on such patronage systems, and they are both corrupt and corrupting. Politicians hand out job appointments in exchange for bribes. They appoint unqualified people—somebody’s cousin, somebody’s neighbor, or just a party hack—to jobs that require knowledge and experience. Patronage creates bad government and bad services, because it means government employees serve a patron, not a country or its constitution. When that patron demands, say, a tax break for a businessman favored by the leader or the party, they naturally comply. Until January 20, American civil servants worked according to a different moral code. Federal workers were under instructions to respect the rule of law, venerate the Constitution, maintain political neutrality, and uphold lawful policy changes whether they come from Republican or Democratic administrations. They were supposed to measure objective reality—evidence of pollution, for example—and respond accordingly. Not all of them were good administrators or moral people, but the damage that any one of them could do was limited by audits, rules about transparency, and again, an ethos built around the rule of law. This system was accepted by everyone—Republican-voting FBI agents, Democratic-voting environmental officers, the nurses at veterans’ hospitals, the air-traffic controllers at LAX. What precisely replaces the civil-service ethos remains unclear. Christian nationalists want a religious state to replace our secular one <https://bookshop.org/p/books/regime-change-toward-a-postliberal-future-patrick-j-deneen/18824066?ean=9780593086902&next=t&affiliate=12476> . Tech authoritarians want a dictatorship of engineers <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/trump-musk-doge-engineers/681580/> , led by a monarchical CEO. Musk and Trump might prefer an oligarchy that serves their business interests. Already, DOGE has attacked at least 11 federal agencies <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/elon-musk-companies-conflicts.html> that were embroiled in regulatory fights with Musk’s companies or were investigating them for potential violations of laws on workplace safety, workers’ rights, and consumer protection. The new system, whatever its ideology, will in practice represent a return to patronage, about which more in a minute. But before it can be imposed, the administration will first have to break the morale of the people who believed in the old civil-service ethos. Vought, at a 2023 planning meeting organized in preparation for this moment, promised exactly that. People who had previously viewed themselves as patriots, working for less money than they could make in the private sector, must be forced to understand that they are evil, enemies of the state. His statement has been cited before, but it cannot be quoted enough times: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said <https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga> at the time. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains … We want to put them in trauma.” The email Musk sent to most employees in the federal government, offering them a “buyout”—several months’ pay, in exchange for a commitment to resign—was intended to inflict this kind of trauma. In effect, Musk was telling federal workers that he was not interested in what they were doing, or whether they were good at it, or how they could become more efficient. Instead, he was sending the message: You are all expendable. Simultaneously, Musk launched an administrative and rhetorical attack on USAID, adding cruelty to the hostility. Many USAID employees work in difficult places, risking terrorism and violence, to distribute food and medicine to the poorest people on the planet. Overnight, they were told to abandon their projects and come home. In some places, the abrupt end of their programs, for example those providing special meals to malnourished children, will result in deaths, and USAID employees know it. The administration has not acknowledged the dramatic real-world impact of this cut, which will, if not quashed by the courts, result in relatively minor budgetary savings. On the contrary, Musk and others turned to X to lie about USAID and its alleged waste. USAID did not give millions of dollars in direct grants <https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5290282/politico-subscriptions-usaid-x-musk-trump> to Politico, did not fund the visits of celebrities <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m12wl0jwpo> to Ukraine, did not send $50 million worth of condoms <https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/12/politics/some-of-the-things-that-i-say-will-be-incorrect-musk-backs-away-from-false-claim-of-usd50-million-for-gaza-condoms/index.html> to Gaza, and did not pay $84 million to Chelsea Clinton <https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chelsea-clinton-84-million-usaid/> . But these fictions and others have now been blasted to hundreds of millions of people. Information taken from grant databases is also being selectively circulated, in some cases fed to internet trolls who are now hounding grant recipients, in order to smear people and organizations that had legitimate, congressionally approved goals. Musk and others used a similar approach during the so-called Twitter Files scandal to discredit researchers and mischaracterize their work. But the true significance of USAID’s destruction is the precedent it sets. Every employee of every U.S. department or agency now knows that the same playbook can be applied to them too: abrupt funding cuts and management changes, followed by smear campaigns. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which safeguards bank customers against unfair, deceptive, or predatory practices, is already suspended. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, which mostly manages student loans, may follow. Within other agencies, anyone who was involved in hiring, training, or improving workplaces for minority groups or women is at risk, as is anyone involved in mitigating climate change, in line with Trump’s executive orders. In addition, Musk has personally taken it upon himself to destroy organizations built over decades to promote democracy and oppose Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence around the world. For example, he described <https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888574212316582230> the journalists of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who take extraordinary risks to report in Russia, Belarus, and in autocracies across Eurasia, as “radical left crazy people.” Not long after he posted this misleading screed on X, one RFE/RL journalist was released from a Belarusian prison <https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/g-s1-48479/belarus-prisoners-released-american-white-house> after nearly three years in jail, as a part of the most recent prisoner exchange. Putting them all together, the actions of Musk and DOGE have created moral dilemmas of a kind no American government employee has faced in recent history. Protest or collaborate? <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/> Speak up against lawbreaking or remain silent? A small number of people will choose heroism. In late January, a career civil servant, Nick Gottlieb, refused to obey an order to place several dozen senior USAID employees <https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/dozens-usaid-career-civil-servants-put-administrative-leave-rcna189539> on administrative leave, on the grounds that the order violated the law. “The materials show no evidence that you engaged in misconduct,” he told them in an email. He also acknowledged that he, too, might soon be removed, as indeed he was. “I wish you all the best—you do not deserve this,” he concluded. Others will decide to cooperate with the new regime—collaborating, in effect, with an illegal assault, but out of patriotism. Much like the Ukrainian scientists who have kept the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant going under Russian occupation because they fear catastrophe if they leave, some tech experts who work on America’s payment systems and databases have stayed in place even as Musk’s team of very young, very inexperienced engineers have demanded illegitimate access. “Going into these systems without an in-depth understanding of how they work both individually and interconnectedly is a recipe for disaster that will result in death and economic harm to our nation,” one government employee told my <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-security/681600/> <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-security/681600/> Atlantic <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-security/681600/> colleagues Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost. Eventually, though, if the assault on the civil service is not blocked, the heroes and the patriots will disappear. They will be fired, or denied access to the tools they need to work, or frightened by the smear campaigns. They will be replaced by people who can pass the purity tests now required to get government jobs. Some will seem silly—are you willing to say “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico”?—and some will be deadly serious. Already, the <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/trump-administration-job-candidates-loyalty-screening/> Post <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/trump-administration-job-candidates-loyalty-screening/> reports, candidates for national-security posts in the new administration are being asked whether they accept Trump’s false claim to have won the 2020 election. At least two candidates for higher positions at the FBI were also asked to state who the “real patriots” were on January 6, 2021. This particular purity test is significant because it measures not just loyalty to Trump, but also whether federal employees are willing to repeat outright falsehoods—whether they are willing, in other words, to break the old civil-service ethos, which required people to make decisions based on objective realities, not myths or fictions. To show that they are part of the new system, many loyalists will also engage in loud, performative behavior, designed to attract the attention and approval of Trump, Musk, Vought, or their followers. Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., wrote a missive addressed to “Steve and Elon” (referring to Musk and his associate Steve Davis) in which he vowed to track down “individuals and networks who appear to be stealing government property and/or threatening government employees.” If anyone is deemed to have broken the law “or acted simply unethically,” Martin theatrically promised to “chase them to the end of the Earth.” Ostentatious announcements of bans on supposed DEI or climate-change projects will similarly threaten civil servants. Late last month, the Air Force removed videos about the Tuskegee Airmen and the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, the first Black and female Air Force pilots, from a training course. After an uproar, the videos were put back <https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2025/01/27/air-force-reinstates-course-with-tuskegee-airmen-video-after-outcry/> , but the initial instinct was revealing. Like the people asking FBI candidates to lie about what happened on January 6, someone at the Air Force felt obliged to deny older historical truths as well. Eventually, demonstrations of loyalty might need to become more direct. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama points out <https://www.persuasion.community/p/schedule-f-is-here> that a future IRS head, for example, might be pressured to audit some of the president’s perceived enemies. If inflation returns, government employees might feel they need to disguise this too. In the new system, they would hold their job solely at the pleasure of the president, not on behalf of the American people, so maybe it won’t be in their interest to give him any bad news. Many older civil servants will remain in the system, of course, but the new regime will suspect them of disloyalty. Already, the Office of Personnel Management has instructed <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/politics/trump-order-discrimination-federal-hiring.html> federal employees to report on colleagues who are trying to “disguise” DEI programs, and threatened “adverse consequences” for anyone who failed to do so. The Defense Health Agency sent out a similar memo. NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the FBI have also told employees who are aware of “coded or imprecise language” being used to “disguise” DEI to report these violations within 10 days. Because these memos are themselves coded and imprecise, some federal employees will certainly be tempted to abuse them. Don’t like your old boss? Report him or her for “disguising DEI.” Want to win some brownie points with the new boss? Send in damning evidence about your colleagues’ private conversations. In some government departments, minority employees have set up affinity groups, purely voluntary forums for conversation or social events. A number of government agencies are shutting these down; others are being disbanded <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/trump-anti-dei-orders-target-federal-employee-groups-rcna189212> by organizers who fear that membership lists will be used to target people. Even private meetings, outside the office, might not be safe from spying or snooping colleagues. That might sound implausible or incredible, but at the state level, legislation <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/texas-red-state-surveillance-book-bans-abortion/679950/> encouraging <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/texas-red-state-surveillance-book-bans-abortion/679950/> <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/texas-red-state-surveillance-book-bans-abortion/679950/> Americans to inform on other Americans has proliferated. A Texas law, known as the Heartbeat Act, allows private citizens to sue <https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bounty-law> anyone they believe to have helped “aid or abet” an abortion. The Mississippi legislature recently debated a proposal to pay bounties to people who identify illegal aliens for deportation. These measures are precedents for what’s happening now to federal employees. And the fate of federal employees will, in turn, serve as a precedent for what will happen to other institutions, starting with universities. Random funding cuts have already shocked some of the biggest research universities across the country, damaging ongoing projects without regard to “efficiency” or any other criteria. Political pressure will follow. Already, zealous new employees at the National Science Foundation are combing through descriptions <https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/02/04/national-science-foundation-trump-executive-orders-words/> of existing research projects, looking to see if they violate executive orders banning DEI. Words such as advocacy, disability, trauma, socioeconomic, and yes, women will all trigger reviews. There are still greater dangers down the road—the possible politicization of the Federal Electoral Commission, for example. Eventually, anyone who interacts with the federal government—private companies, philanthropies, churches, and above all, citizens—might find that the cultural revolution affects them too. If the federal government is no longer run by civil servants fulfilling laws passed by Congress, then its interests might seriously diverge from yours. None of this is inevitable. Much of it will be unpopular. The old idea that public servants should serve all Americans, and not just a small elite, has been part of American culture for more than a century. Rule of law matters to many of our elected politicians, as well as to their voters, all across the political spectrum. There is still time to block this regime change, to preserve the old values. But first we need to be clear about what is happening, and why. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of Robert Sent: Friday, February 14, 2025 9:12 AM To: af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. Just published by the Republican congress is a Tax plan that lists 4 TRILLION dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations Stop kidding yourself... This is a coup. With the cuts to working class benefits hitting those who voted in this government they know that unless they completely run elections in two years there is no way they stay in power.. So they have two years to destroy democracy as we know it. Sovereign wealth fund? That's going to be where the SS money goes... Yeah I have this flu and a very dark outlook right now... On 2/14/25 5:42 AM, Adam Moffett wrote: I am trying to reserve judgement on DOGE until the documentation of the fraud, waste, and abuse is disclosed. Right now we really only have statements from Elon and from Whitehouse staff. I don't know why we should immediately have faith in their words. Also, while I applaud any excising of fraud, waste, and abuse, a $65 billion savings or a $100 billion from tariffs barely move the needle when we have budget shortfalls now measured in trillions. Every little bit helps, but there will need to be some hard changes to avoid a major financial crisis. The problem is Medicare and Social Security by the way. Retiring baby boomers and lower birth rates post baby boom have caught up with us. We can keep pretending that 3 billion for emergency room service for illegal immigrants is the problem, and while we fight about that the bus will keep driving towards the cliff. We might actually have to raise taxes, increase SS withholdings, and overhaul healthcare (in one way or another). We may also need to make legal immigration easier so we can get a workforce sufficient to support our retirees. And most of those immigrants will come from "shithole" countries because people aren't going to make an effort to emigrate from a country where things are going well. None of those are things people can get elected on, and none of them are easy for our two parties to agree on the correct paths for so I may just go full prepper and stockpile for the impending depression. -Adam _____ From: AF <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> on behalf of Steve Jones <mailto:thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, February 10, 2025 3:01 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. praise kek I love watching the mental gymnastics of the musk haters. Its like a group of karens who drank the pituitary gold from a pile of shaved incels, then smoked some shit ditch weed and started trying to do a spoken word. If you could capture that level of retard, amplify it by a magnitude of ten then filter it through a coconut coffee filter and feed it to a retarded goat with a lisp. The shit that goat took would be on par. I sometimes say "self, lets go to twitter and see what they have to say today" And oh boy, do the soys not let me down, ever. On Wed, Feb 5, 2025 at 6:21 PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com <mailto:khoh...@kwom.com> > wrote: Kekius Maximus? -----Original Message----- From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2025 6:14 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. But he is a great emperor. -----Original Message----- From: AF [mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> ] On Behalf Of Bill Prince Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2025 3:39 PM To: af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. Elon Musk is a terrible president, besides the fact that no one voted for him in any venue. Almost as bad as vice president Trump. and we were not considering the Nazi salute so much as his elevation of the AfD in Germany. The Germans have every right to be scared of Neo-naziism. bp <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> On 2/5/2025 2:26 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: > The 20 year olds from X that President Musk is dispatching to > dismantle government agencies have been dubbed the "Musketeers". > > As far as the salute, I took it as Elon just being socially awkward, > but rather than just say you guys took it the wrong way, he had to go > and make a bunch of Nazi jokes (like I did Nazi see that coming). > Plus he's supporting AfD in Germany. I still think he was just being > nerdy Elon, but he doesn't make it easy to defend him. > > -----Original Message----- > From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On > Behalf Of ch...@go-mtc.com <mailto:ch...@go-mtc.com> > Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2025 4:12 PM > To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com > <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. > > With respect to swasticar.... > I have seen photo montages of Obama (both of them) Taylor Swift, Nancy > Pelosi and others with a right arm outstretched, palm flat facing > downward.... > > When does it become a Nazi symbol? Is it only based on who is doing > it? Is the angle of the arm an issue? Is there some kind of > acceptable arm vector coordinates that qualify? How about finger > arrangement, if you do a Vulcan salute does that get you off the hook? Wrist angles? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Bill Prince > Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2025 2:47 PM > To: AFMUG > Subject: [AFMUG] OT: We have names for certain cars. > > > My wife and I have have names for certain cars. > > Prius = Cheese Wedge > Cybertruck = SUT (Stupid Ugly Truck) > Tesla (in general) = Swasticar. > > > We also noticed that the Tesla Density (TD) in Palo Alto ,CA is maybe > an order of magnitude above what we see in Saratoga, CA (in which the > TD is so high that you can't swing a cat without hitting a Tesla. > > -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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