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The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (ta
by insane_dreamer 2y ago
The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (taxpayer) grants and contracts.
Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts more than Boeing--but my point is that it's a huge conflict of interest.
A person receiving very large amounts of money from the government is now deciding which parts of the government should be cut in order to "save taxpayers money".
If this sounds like something that would only happen in a place like Russia, or the DRC, it's because it's something that would only happen in those places.
In other democratic countries you go to jail for this sort of thing (i.e., Nicholas Sarkozy in France--not saying the situation is exactly the same, but there's an actual judicial system in place that doesn't exonerate someone just because they're president, like our SCOTUS did).
- scarab92 2y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2y ago> Trump has stated... ... virtually every position, on both sides of every issue. Come the fuck on.
- scarab92 2y agoOn the issue of whether Musk is allowed to review functions that he has a conflict with, he has only stated that Musk is not allowed to do so.
- ceejayoz 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements... This is a man who sharpies extra lines onto weather maps so he doesn't have to say "whoops, made a mistake in my tweet". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alaba...
- scarab92 2y agoOkay, but the evidence on the other side, the evidence that Musk is enriching himself... is ... what exactly? speculation?
- ceejayoz 2y agoTo be clear, "is there evidence the world's richest person has a profit motivation behind his sudden interest in unpaid public service" is your question?
- scarab92 2y agoYes, though I wouldn't call his interest in public policy sudden. If we're honest this is all just unfounded speculation. Financially, he's likely going to benefit from a deregulatory agenda, but is it enough to offset his investments to get Trump elected (buying Twitter, America PAC)? Who knows Is his work at USAID in any way related to his financial outcomes? Who knows Would he make just as much sitting on the couch while the republicans do their thing? Probably Does he even care about making more money, given he's got more than he can possibly spend already? Who knows. If I were to guess, he's at a point in his life where money isn't his main motivator, and instead he's seeking to make an impact.
- danorama 2y ago“he's at a point in his life where money isn't his main motivator” It seems pretty clear by now that this never happens with billionaires.
- scarab92 2y agoJeff Bezos is chilling on yachts and tinkering with rockets. Bill Gates is giving his money away to charity as quickly as he can do while maintaining effectiveness. Sergey Brin is goofing around with airships. Plenty of examples of billionaries living life rather than focusing on making more money.
- rbanffy 2y agoAnd we believe that because Trump never lies.
- dingnuts 2y agowhen Congress approved DOGE what did they say? want to link to the LEGISLATION that authorizes Trump and Musk to do this?
- scarab92 2y agoIt was created by executive order, not congress. You can find the executive order on the whitehouse website. Technically it's a renaming of the USDS
- ceejayoz 2y agoGood news: you’re right! Bad news: this limitation will be enforced by… Musk himself. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-05/white-house-says-musk-will-police-his-own-conflicts-of-interest https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-05/white-hou... > The White House said Elon Musk, the billionaire leading President Donald Trump’s government cost-cutting efforts, will determine if there are conflicts of interest between his work reviewing federal spending and his overlapping empire of six companies.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago> Trump stated what mental gymnastics are you having to do to believe Trump, who is a proven pathological liar -- I mean, come on, that's not even a question of debate I believe 0% of what Trump says. But even if that were true, it doesn't resolve the conflict of interest story. Gov money being cut from _fill in blank of gov agency_ means that there's more money available for what's important to Musk (corp tax cuts, for example; gov spending that benefits his company, his business interests in China, etc.)
- scarab92 2y ago> Gov money being cut from _fill in blank of gov agency_ means that there's more money available for what's important to Musk Not really. Government spending doesn't need to be balanced like a household budget. Whether or not policies are enacted which financially benefit Musk is not dependenant on whether he can find savings or not. Right now all we have is speculation on your behalf that Musk is acting unethically by ignoring a conflict of interest, versus a public statement from the president that he's not being permitted to do so.
- SmirkingRevenge 2y agoThey are both operating completely outside the bounds of the law here and there's no ethical justification for that at all. You can set your defaults to 'trust Trump/Elon' if you really want to I guess, but that's a highly unreasonable default (to put it mildly). Both have a long and clear public history as bad actors. At it's most benign, this is dangerous clownishness mostly for show, but even that is far too charitable.
- dingnuts 2y agosorry, when did the Senate confirm Musk's appointment?
- arbitrary_name 2y agoYou mean the public statement from a president with a known history of lying to the public and committing felonies? I'm inclined to believe the speculation.
- captainclam 2y agoOh never mind then.
- Herring 2y agoYeah sometimes you can't reason with people because they're dug in. In this case with Trump and Republicans, it's like Catholics being unable/unwilling to deal with pedophile priests, because group loyalty is so important to them. Tribalism is meant to override reason. Get them to turn on their brains first (eg by reflecting on values most important to them), and it becomes much easier.
- nmz 2y agoYeah, like he stated that he wasn't going to do anything that was in project 2025. So that was a lie.
- yoyonamite 2y agoThis sounds like a potential conflict of interest: PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT: Inspection of USAID's Oversight of Starlink Terminals Provided to the Government of Ukraine May 14, 2024 https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6814 https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6814
- scarab92 2y agoImmaterial. The contract value is less than $1 mill per year, and SpaceX initially provided it for free so clearly not designed as a money maker.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> Immaterial. Oh, well if you say so. > SpaceX initially provided it for free so clearly not designed as a money maker. That's literally the same approach drug dealers use. "First hit is free!"
- dialup_sounds 2y agoTrump has stated that immigrants are eating dogs in Springfield, too. Maybe take what he says with a grain of salt. More plausibly, USAID was a focus over the SEC because it had 20x the budget of the SEC and $16b of that goes to Ukraine.
- zelon88 2y agoHe's at USAID because USAID ended apartheid in South Africa, which Elon Musk grew up in. [1] But not just "grew up in" by happenstance. His grandfather selected South Africa and Apartheid specifically for the privileges because they were Nazi sympathizers [2][3]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/africa/elon-musk-south-africa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/africa/elon-musk-so... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_N._Haldeman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_N._Haldeman [3] https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-world-according-to-elon-musks-grandfather https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-world-accor...
- burnerboy 2y agoHe also has massive business operations in China, a country which clearly wants a weakened US. WSJ also reported in October about how Musk has been in regular contact with Putin.
- chinathrow 2y agoAt this point, it looks like Elon went fully rogue.
- kergonath 2y ago> Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. Luckily, that is unlikely to happen again. Now, the broligarchs are in power and the LA times has been captured and turned into a propaganda tool.
- insane_dreamer 2y agodamn those pesky investigative reporters!
- Manabu-eo 2y agoMost of that $5 billion in the LA times article was not received by Musk's companies at the time, and I'm not sure if they ever received the full amount as it was contingent on reaching several milestones in the span of 20 years. A big part of those $5 billion was not having to pay sales taxes on possible future Gigafactory production, for example, but that gigafactory never reached the initally planned size AFAIK.
- rtkwe 2y agoThe big question then is did the incentives then get clawed back. The pattern I'm familiar with says probably not; usually the company building the factory doesn't lose much of anything they were given when they fail to meet the milestones.
- zie 2y agoFirst, it's usually structured that you meet X target, you get Y incentive. Second, what doesn't get clawed back is true of all companies though. So it's not unique to Tesla in any way. Some of it is a loan, I know Tesla had a loan from the govt, they paid it back early if I remember correctly. Plus all of that is in the past. What would be a huge problem is if the federal govt started throwing grant money at Tesla now, while Musk is running around playing in the govt. All that said, I think it's a terrible state of affairs we find ourselves in, but I mean we voted Trump into power, what did we expect would happen? Rainbows and kittens?
- esalman 2y agoThe big elephant is called conflict of interest.