Dr Exiled wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2025 3:59 pm
I know you guys don't like someone probing your team's spending and would much rather probe the other team.
1. I don’t think that USAID belongs only to one ‘team’. Both (1) humanitarian efforts abroad, and (2) the projection of American soft power, seem the province of both parties. What’s your rationalization for declaring it otherwise?
2. I consider myself to be on Team Law and Order and Team Constitution. There’s a framework in place for reviewing agencies (a Congressional privilege) and rooting out waste (independent Inspectors General). We don’t have a legally-defined procedure for allowing an unelected tech bro unfettered access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems, OPM’s personnel files or dismantling whole agencies. Just because a guy who took 7 years to build a glitch-ridden electric truck thinks that his donating a quarter-billion dollars to a Presidential re-election fund makes him an expert in determining the viability of whole agencies involved in a thousand tasks that he has no expertise in doesn’t mean that we toss out our legal and constitutionally-established framework, in order to entertain his ego.
For a fellow who always seems so suspicious of government and power at the hands of your undefined ‘elite’, this whole
waving away by you of
an actual powerful billionaire elite just thrashing about without regard to our laws because he was magically gifted his own agency is …
puzzling.
However, shouldn't we welcome the idea that spending is being audited? Shouldn't we welcome cleaning up fraud and waste? There's probably a lot of republican waste, fraud and abuse for the democrats to crow about when found. So, let's have at it. Get the democrat version of DOGE going.
What avenue does any Democrat have to redirect Musk to heavy hitters like DOD? What power of enforcement does any Democrat have right now? You’ve basically watched the new Administration just decide to unilaterally flout the rules, Constitution be damned. You are here stating your approval of that. If you toss out the legal structure, how does anyone else other than those in power play by any rules or effectively challenge the new status quo?
Musk opened up a can of worms and now let's look at all of it, including his government contracts.
I’m sure that he’ll get right on that, lol. : D