He can create a lot of chaos and panic in the process

Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported of a split in the MAGA world. On one side are the white supremacists who want to get rid of immigrants (at least the brown kind). On the other side is Musk and his pals who got rich through Big Tech and want more immigrants to develop their products. Musk even said:

The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.

Yeah, let’s insult the American worker. Musk’s DOGE buddy Ramaswamy said:

American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. ... A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

That all prompted a lot of arguing between the racists and the oligarchs who want less government and more money in their pockets. In the process H1-B visas were mentioned. Back when I worked in the auto industry as a computer programmer I became acquainted with the H1-B visa system. Several of my colleagues were there on those types of visas. It allows a foreigner to work in a high tech field. An important part of that type of visa is that the visa is held by the company, not the foreign employee. Phil in Denver of the Kos community wrote about his experiences with his own H1-B colleagues. That bit about who holds the visa means the worker is beholden to the company – annoy the boss too much, your visa is terminated, and you could soon be on a flight back to where you came from. Also, it means you can’t search for a better job elsewhere. And that means the worker is exploited, told to work longer hours for significantly less pay. Which means Musk and Ramaswamy are not after exceptional talent, they’re after low wages and compliant workers. Phil agrees:

Am I saying that all H1B hires are green or incompetent? No not at all. I've met many who were quite capable and fine programmers, and even the majority of them who lacked experience struck me as likely to become seasoned pros with time. But I never noticed a preponderance of talent that I did not see equaled or surpassed from domestic engineers of the same experience levels. They are not smarter, they are not more capable, and they certainly are not more experienced. What they are is cheap and pliant and that is ALL that the DOGE crowd and their fellow tech bros care about. And it is all they ever will.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin has a quote I like. It is from Axios and is discussing this MAGA civil war:

The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants. ... While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.

Down in the comments are cartoons and memes that take the DOGE guy’s statements at face value. Member exlrrp quoted Alex Cole:

Rich MAGA: College education is woke! MAGA: Yay!!! We hate college! Rich MAGA: We have to hire educated foreigners because you MFs are too dumb! MAGA: Wait What???

Further down exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats:

So, the bigoted MAGA base put a felon back in the office he tried to steal because he was “everyman” who said he was going to stop immigrants from “taking their jobs,” but they ended up with an immigrant billionaire who’s going to cut the benefits they very much need while outsourcing the jobs they’re not smart enough to do to the immigrants they hate.

rugbymom listed several points related to the situation. I’ll summarize: + There is a conflict between tech bros who want more immigration and MAGAs who want less. + The MAGAs are afraid the DOGE bros will cut their government benefits. DOGE is supposed to hurt only libs and black and brown people, not MAGA people. + Musk has banned his opponents in this argument from X. This is what dictators do. + The nasty guy is ignoring this debate, raising questions of dementia and who is actually in charge. + JD Vance, whose wife is from India, appears to be in hiding. A cartoon posted by paulpro:

CEO: We can’t hire Americans because they’re not educated enough. Student: Educate me. CEO: F--- off.

That confirms it isn’t about talent and is about control and cost. Now that I think about it, that same claim that Americans were insufficiently education for tech jobs was being used 20-30 years ago to explain why H1-B visas were needed. An Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed why Big Tech is cozying up to the nasty guy. The cozying part is being done by donating to the inauguration party. Since minimum donations appear to be one million this will be quite the party – and the nasty guy will expect nothing less than over the top. Here’s what Big Tech is expecting in return: + Clearing the way for AI through business-friendly regulation and not strengthening copyright laws that would reduce access to data to train their AI systems. + Easier energy for data centers. Electricity use has ballooned in the last few years and they don’t want environment efforts to get in the way. + Stop the efforts to break up Big Tech. + Shield Big Tech from European crackdowns on taxes. + Try to make amends after previous badmouthing to fend off the nasty guy’s retribution and keep government contracts coming. Emily Singer of Kos wrote on the same topic and added this:

It’s all an ominous sign that corporate America is “obeying in advance,” a term author Timothy Snyder coined in his book “On Tyranny,” which he describes as a “guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism.” “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given,” Snyder wrote in the book. “In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.” That sure looks like what is happening now, as corporate leaders travel to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and fork over millions so the wannabe despot can throw himself a lavish celebration after he takes the oath of office.

Sinai of the Kos community discussed why the nasty guy tried to put in the spending bill a provision to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling. That bill was voted down in the House. The nasty guy will attempt several things that could add trillions to the national debt – renew the tax breaks he signed in 2017; do mass deportations, which will take lots of money; institute tariffs. Neither the nasty guy nor Musk wants to try to raise the debt limit at the same time as doing all those expensive things. So they tried now to get rid of the debt limit. It was voted down by 34 Republicans because either they saw how badly all this would affect the economy or they’re simple deficit hawks. Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that college and university faculty are telling their international students to be back on campus before January 20 and once there stay there and don’t leave for holiday and summer breaks. The reason is expected travel bans issues by the nasty guy. Faculty don’t want their students caught in the deportation crackdown. Some universities are saying the school will not release immigration status without a warrant or subpoena. In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Seth Masket of TUSK:

Here's the thing. Trump doesn’t and won’t have the formal powers to do a lot of the things he talks about doing. He can’t just unilaterally take back the Panama Canal or buy Greenland or make U.S. states out of Canadian provinces. He can’t just toss Liz Cheney in jail. He can’t just end Obamacare and replace it, or lower prices or hand eastern Ukraine over to Russia. He can’t compel companies to end DEI hiring practices or trans-friendly employee policies. And he can’t simply deport 10-20 million residents with the wave of his hand. But he definitely thinks he can do at least some of this. And more importantly, he can create a lot of chaos and panic in the process.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme from hillsbeanz:

You’re safer in the bathroom with a trans person than any one of Trump’s cabinet picks.

On Christmas john Fugelsang posted:

Jesus was a radical nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, hookers and crooks; wasn’t American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer (M 6:5); but was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a copay; and was a long-haired brown-skinned homeless community-organizing anti-slut-shaming Middle Eastern Jew.