It’s like a bank heist and the bank is America

My Sunday movie was The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, an unusual documentary of an unusual person. Mats Steen of Oslo, Norway had Duchenne, a muscle disease. His muscles got progressively weaker. It first showed up about age 2. By late elementary school he was in a wheelchair. He made it to 25. At age 9 he started gaming, his parents allowed it because there was so much else he could not do. But they became alarmed at how much time he played games, sometimes 12 hours a day. At age 17 he started playing World of Warcraft. He created an avatar he named Ibelin, who was big and muscular, all the things he wasn’t in real life. He joined the Starlight community. This was his escape from the prison of his body. He also started writing a blog, Musings of Life, talking about being disabled. By this time he needed special controllers so he could operate his computer with just twitches of his fingers. When he died his parents posted a notice on his blog. They were astonished at the large number of replies from his online community describing what Ibelin had done for them and how much he meant to them. Mom and Dad knew nothing of it. World of Warcraft has detailed archives of what its characters do. From that an animator was able to reconstruct scenes of Ibelin’s interactions with other characters. Instead of text boxes actors gave voice to the characters. Mats’ father thought his son would not be able to love and not have friends. But in Starlight he did. In addition he became quite supportive of other characters and the real people behind them. He became a sort of counselor. One example was a woman he befriended who admitted her autistic son refused to engage with life. Ibelin suggested talking to him within Starlight. That worked. The movie producers visited the mother and son and were able to get their side of the story. When Mats joined Starlight he was just 17. He had some growing up to do. And Starlight helped him do it. This is a beautiful movie of a man who embraced a community and made a big difference in many lives. I highly recommend it. Over the decades I have read science fiction stories in which a person in real life visits or lives in an online world (many much more immersive than our technology can manage right now). Out of those many stories there were some where the person went to the virtual world to escape the physical limitations of their real world. And here’s a real life story of that being done. Most of the stories I read were about what had gone wrong in the virtual world, not about what could go so right. Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported:

Employees at several federal agencies were ordered Friday to remove their pronouns from any email signatures and grant applications, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News. The memos cited two of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive orders, both of which sought to curb diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government. One of the executive orders described DEI initiatives in the federal government as “illegal and immoral” and “radical and wasteful.” Of course, this isn’t true, and it’s clear that DEI is becoming a GOP scapegoat that’s fundamentally built on bigotry.

Also, the CDC website is being scrubbed for certain phrases, such as “environmental justice,” “LGBT,” and “transgender.” Info about trans youth wellbeing are already gone. Emily Singer of Kos reported that Sean Duffy, the new guy in charge of the Department of Transportation, has issued a memo that says the DOT will “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average” as it funds money for commuter rail and bus transit. Duffy gives a reason, something about “restoring commonsense governance and merit-based policies at USDOT” and “eliminating excessive regulations.” But it doesn’t sound commonsense at all, there is no merit, and he seems to be trading one set of regulations for another. And adding a big dose of the far right obsession over babies. Want your road fixed? Have a baby. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote the nasty guy is expanding his empire into financial services. No, I would never take financial advice from anyone associated with him – this is a guy who bankrupted casinos.

Jessica Tillipman, an anti-corruption and government ethics professor at George Washington University, explained to Daily Kos last week that there are no laws stopping a president from profiting off of the people he was elected to serve. Laws were never made to prevent this type of behavior because past presidents typically acted in good faith. “We've always relied on this system of norms,” she explained. “I think people were pretty surprised to see how few restrictions there were on what a president could do because we hadn't seen this before.”

Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

The Washington Post reports that David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department, is quitting after a clash with Musk’s underlings. DOGE has reportedly been pressuring Lebryk for access to the agency’s payment system, which is used to pay out trillions of dollars on behalf of the government. More than $6 trillion dollars flows through the system in question, which administers payments for vital functions like Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, payments to contractors, and federal salaries, among others. “It’s like a bank heist and the bank is America,” a source within the federal government told reporter Marisa Kabas, in response to the Treasury Department incident.

A reminder: the Department of Government Efficiency is not officially part of the government and has no official power. Yeah, this is as nasty and dangerous as it sounds. No one not employed by the Treasury department and with specific authorization should be anywhere near those computers. And this isn’t the only illegal meddling DOGE has been attempting lately. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several people commenting on this story, though most say the same general thing. I will quote Seth Masket of Tusk:

It’s hard to know just how destructive this will be in the long run, but for now, this is arguably the most troubling development in a day of extremely troubling developments. Elon Musk appears to be trying to do to the federal government what he did at Twitter/X: massively disrupt its functioning and drive out experienced employees not on board with his transformations and his personality cult. After a week of trying to push civil servants out of jobs all over the federal government, Musk set his sights Friday on the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems.

Dworkin also included a tweet from Fred Wellman. The nasty guy spouted all kinds of strange theories about why California water sources couldn’t keep up with firefighter needs with the recent Los Angeles fires (correct reason: no water system could have kept up with that size fire). So the nasty guy signed an executive order taking over the California water system, whatever that means. Or maybe this is what it means. Wellman tweeted:

Remember how Trump said he "sent the military in and opened up the water flow" in CA? It appears he forced the Army Corps to just drain reservoirs into recently flooded farmland without telling local farmers or leaders. “In 25 years, I’ve never seen anything like this. I was given no explanation at all.” Rumors are that local Republicans are panicked over this screwing of their constituents. Nothing but chaos meddling in local water management from the White House.

Wellman provided a link to SJV Water, which is where the quote came from. An important question – how did all those Musk people get into the federal building and get access to the payment system? Singer answered that allegedly new Secretary of the Treasury let them in.

A group of unions representing federal employees filed a lawsuit on Monday against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, alleging that he illegally allowed billionaire Elon Musk and his army of unqualified Department of Government Efficiency bros to access sensitive personal information in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. The lawsuit is in response to a Washington Post report, which said that Musk forced out the top career Treasury official in charge of overseeing trillions of dollars of government payments so that DOGE aides could access the payment systems. Those systems are responsible for handling trillions of dollars of tax revenue, as well as disbursing payments for Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, government grants, and more.

Mark Sumner, a Kos staff emeritus, discussed what a coup looks like.

There’s also a type of coup known as an "autocoup" or a "self coup." That's what's happening in the United States right now. Right. Now. In a self coup, the government isn't displaced by some new faction or overturned by rebellion. Instead, the people already in charge of the government expand their power. That can come in the form of refusing to leave after losing an election, refusing to hold new elections, or simply usurping powers that should belong to other portions of the government and putting them under the control of the coup leaders. ... Musk and his team are not only violating laws protecting the privacy of workers and citizens, they are interfering with the operation of programs and agencies authorized, not by executive order, but by law. Their actions are illegal. ... Resisting a self coup is even more difficult. The people who are violating the law and grasping for ever more power are the ones who already hold the capital, already control the military, and already have friends and allies in the legislature.

Standing up to this type of coup takes bravery, because it may mean losing freedom or life. That bravery is sorely lacking. Delaying the challenge only gives the despot time to increase his power. Then removing gets more difficult and costly. The time to defeat a coup is before it starts, which we missed in November. After that the best time is while it is still in progress.

To that end, Democratic leaders should be calling for the arrest of Elon Musk and the removal of his team from government offices; drafting articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; and blocking all Senate votes until action has been taken to restore the executive to its lawful functions. All of that represents a huge risk. But none of it carries the price of refusing to act.

xaxnar of the Kos community noticed a few things about what’s going on that reminded him of something else. A few of the things mentioned: + Entire divisions shut down + Purge of leaders, replaced by loyalists. + Assets set up for looting + PR nonsense that it’s all to increase efficiency + A sense that no one can stop it

This is what it looks like when vulture capitalists descend on a company and loot it. This is a hostile takeover — applied to government. This is what they truly mean when they refer to running government like a business.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Heather Cox Richardson of her Letters From an American Substack:

I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change. But they are not doing that. Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes. [...] ...permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

In the comments, a couple memes posted by exlrrp. The first is by Brendanmcp:

I really am having difficulty wrapping my mind around the fact that a bunch of losers hired by a billionaire, none of whom were elected, are using the guise of a fake government agency to loot our government of money and information, and none of them have been arrested yet.

The other is by Father James Martin:

In its simplest terms, the apparent demise of USAID is the result of the world’s richest man ending a program that helps millions of poor people. You don’t need a Ph.D in moral theology to see why this is an evil. You can just read Jesus’s parables on the rich and the poor.

NoFortunateSon of the Kos community wrote about the phrase that is becoming more well known: F--- Around and Find Out. It means if you do something stupid you will face the consequences. But, as I’ve noted before, the finding out part – the facing the consequences – probably won’t happen to most of those who voted for the nasty guy (yeah, others are already finding out). First some history. For the last three Republican presidents – Bush I, Bush II, and the nasty guy – mismanaged the economy and it was significantly worse when they left the Oval Office. They were followed by Democrats who worked hard to restore the economy. And in all three cases two years later they returned Congress to Republicans, hampering the economic restoration. An example from elsewhere: Berlin was reduced to rubble before citizens questioned the Nazis. Then consider that since cruelty is the point of MAGA, a large number of them are anticipating enjoying the consequences. Add to that the miserable condition of the US news industry. A lot of people get their news through social media algorithms. We know how biased they are. So a great number of MAGA voters will see the price of eggs rise and may notice disappearing neighbors. In that sense they will find out. But, because the state of media, they will not find out that the nasty guy and Musk are the cause. Instead, they will hear the causes that we’re already hearing – those price rises are because of DEI, Biden, or Democrats. Sarah Longwell tweeted:

In two weeks Trump has: -Released the J6 prisoners who violently assaulted cops to overturn an election. -Started a trade war with allies, but gave China a light touch. -Turned over the entire government to the unelected billionaire who ruined this platform—including the Treasury payment system. -Nominated the most unqualified cabinet in modern history, several of whom are actual national security risks. -Blamed a horrific crash on DEI without any evidence. -Added billions to his personal wealth by launching a scam crypto meme. -Purged the FBI of anyone who worked on the J6 investigations. -Randomly wasted a bunch of water in CA and nearly flooded out farmers just so he could act like he was turning on water for the state. What’d I miss?

Hmm... a nickname for Musk... Caligula?