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Musk aides gain access to sensitive Treasury payment system
- wahnfrieden 2y agoWhat's the motive?
- spzb 2y agoThe accumulation of money and power. Same as it ever was.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stevenwoo 2y agoLeverage, stopping payments for Medicare, Social Security and all other transactions until Congress does what Musk wants, probably running government like he did X.
- renegade-otter 2y agoMake everyone unemployed and drop the revenue by 80%? Sounds about right.
- beaugunderson 2y agostopping payments like these, apparently: https://bsky.app/profile/bubbaprog.lol/post/3lh77ekgdas2h https://bsky.app/profile/bubbaprog.lol/post/3lh77ekgdas2h
- treebeard901 2y agoCombined with recent reports of large short positions in the market, it makes you wonder... These articles claim full access. Does that imply the ability to stop certain payments? How much goes to private companies? Is there any overlap between these companies and recent short positions? All interesting questions. If your goal is to cut expenses, presumably your goal would be to have access to turn off the money tap. Because otherwise, what can DOGE really accomplish?
- wahnfrieden 2y agoI understand that legally their access privileges are for non-confidential IT upgrades. However they appear to not be operating under rules-based order and rather "might makes right".
- ty6853 2y agoThey can make a full backup of the payment history. Congress controls the actual tap but the executive has the power to monitor payments administered through the executive branch. Once the corruption, waste, and redistribution payments are traced we can find out how to ensure voters know what needs done to shit-can those programs and jobs.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoIt's all public data. There's even free apis to get live data. What are they hunting for that needs more access than that? Do you believe the data feeds are fraudulent in some way that the balance sheets are not?
- scarab92 2y agoWhen looking for fraud and abuse you want access to the single source of truth, not secondary derived sources. People need to accept that Trump won and is now directly in charge of the executive branch. Imagine holding the belief that a company's CEO should wait until the CFO publishes financial statements to the market to understand how the company is performing. That's what people sound like when they complain about Musk et al querying government databases.
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoThe single source of truth is what's exposed, unless you are claiming that the treasury is manipulating their data feeds to filter out things? I'm not sure what fraud or abuse you are expecting them to find? There's external auditors that audit the books daily, so you're talking about a conspiracy that would be massive to hide a single cent. The treasury doesn't choose how to spend the money. Congress tells them to release x amount for program y, and the general concern is about how program y spends its money once it's released from the treasury. This won't show that at all.
- blandcoffee 2y agoDoes anyone else find it odd, that this type of access would typically require training and/or a background check, yet here we are 12 days after this administration was sworn in? Are there no checks and balances in place? Seems like one side that won the popular vote has taken the entire spectrum of action, regardless if they need to govern for an entire nation.
- ranger_danger 2y ago> Are there no checks and balances in place? All it takes for bad people to win, is for good people to do nothing.
- kcplate 2y ago> is for good people to do nothing Or for good people to run shitty candidates that can’t win the election
- ty6853 2y agoA big purpose of primaries is a sanity check for election suitability. Unfortunately whatever elites shit-canned Biden forgot that they need primaries almost as much as the people do.
- blendo 2y agoIt appears there are no checks and balances in place. Congress could impeach, or the Supreme Court could enjoin (is that the word?), but I see no prospect of either happening soon.
- b0sk 2y agoRemember that they are all controlled by one party, so everyone is willing to look the other way (and cynically, probably cheerleading it)
- nicce 2y agoDidn’t Trump just remove those checks? Or maybe this is something else: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/21/politics/trump-temporary-security-clearances/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/21/politics/trump-temporary-...
- Freedom2 2y agoI was under the impression from a lot of comments from smart HNers when DOGE was first announced that Musk would simply be in a advisory position, or would simply report to someone else and wouldn't have any real access or power. What ever happened to those commenters?
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoI'm surprised. I question the legality of all this. Without congressional authorization, DOGE is just an advisory board. Advisory boards (I presume) don't have the legal authority to do these kinds of things without congressional approval. I presume there's an emergency lawsuit or 20 to stop this; it will be interesting to see how it gets ruled on. Then we'll know just how much trouble we're in.
- cocacola1 2y agoGranted, it’s one step at a time — but what’s to stop them for disobeying the legal order if it’s against them?
- beaugunderson 2y agoyes, here's one example: https://bsky.app/profile/benjaminwittes.bsky.social/post/3lh7hnd6ujs27 https://bsky.app/profile/benjaminwittes.bsky.social/post/3lh...
- BobaFloutist 2y agoThat was the announced plan. Then they renamed United States Digital Service to United States Doge Service and put Musk in charge. I'm not sure how the legality works, but they're doing something different than what they had first stated.
- thrance 2y agoSurely, the oligarch robber-baron will use his unelected position for the greater good and not for personal gains.
- wakawaka28 2y agoIt's funny how people are concerned about things that haven't happened yet, but the same people for 5 years overlooked the Biden/Ukraine bribery scandal which actually happened, along with a bunch of abuses surrounding that. Not least of which is Biden pardoning his whole family for any unspecified crimes they did since 2014.
- rat87 2y agoBecause that hasn't happened unlike Trumps actual crimes. Using fiction to justify Trumps real corruption is ridiculous.
- wakawaka28 2y agoCorruption is corruption. Trump fought every attack against him like a champ. Biden pardoned his whole family to avoid a fight he knew he would lose due to the facts. He can't hide the money trail. He mishandled classified documents as well but he was deemed unfit for prosecution, yet he remained in office quite a while after that. If Trump can be found to be corrupt for real, then let's see. But everything brought against him up to now, from the Clinton-sponsored Russiagate hoax, the insurrection hoax, the cat lady rape hoax, the stealing nuclear documents hoax, and everything else, has been COMPLETE and OBVIOUS bullshit. It pains me to say that it was obvious because I too was fooled by the media on some of these things at one time.
- AlexeyBelov 2y agoSome people cannot and would not accept any evidence, because they already know in their hearts Trump is "a champ".
- Scandiravian 2y agoSomeone's been reading the dictator's handbook. First step when you gain power is to ensure control of the treasury
- panarky 2y agoI thought the first step was to gain control of the media.
- Scandiravian 2y agoThat's during the power grab to prevent the opposition from rallying resistance during the transition. When you have power, you need to establish control of the money to ensure you keep the power
- renegade-otter 2y agoThe media, largely already kissed the ring. Even Putin didn't have it so easy.
- fknorangesite 2y agoRead? They wrote one.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902670
- esalman 2y agoWhy is this flagged?
- basementcat 2y agoThere is a subset of HN users who don’t want us to discuss this matter on this platform.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoSubset of HN who are foes of open society working to enable these looters of open society. The moderation system here is doing incredible damage beyond belief right now, is being exploited by the very worst to suppress exchange of ideas at a key time.
- fknorangesite 2y agoDang included. He could unflag these topics, but has chosen not to.
- basementcat 2y agoDang may be in a vulnerable position. My understanding is they serve at the pleasure of paulg. If dang unflags too many of these, their job could be in danger.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- creatonez 2y agoYCombinator is complicit in creating this coup. Many high ranking involved members are part of the neo-reactionary movement, or 'dark enlightenment'
- renegade-otter 2y agoBecause "running America like a business" is never wrong. Not to mention that this can have GRAVE consequences. If these assholes tank the system and bond payments and such do not go out, it's game over.
- Whatarethese 2y agoWell this surely shows how overpowered the Executive branch is when there is a Fascist at the wheel. Dems wont do shit because thats what they do. They'll tweet though.
- ModernMech 2y agoI really hate this narrative, because Democrats have been fighting against this for a decade at this point. We warned about this at the first impeachment and the second one. Short of armed rebellion, we did everything. Which action would you have liked to have seen happen, which didn't?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agohttps://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-answers-following-report-of-musk-personnel-seeking-access-to-highly-sensitive-us-treasury-payments-system https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-...