I'm a Social Security recipient who did pay back an overpayment that was paid to my son who had a mental health disability as a teen. He died in 2012 of cancer and I was disabled the following year. That was when Social Security found the overpayment and I was responsible for it because he had died. The agency negotiated a lower amount and deducted payments from my SSDI over time to complete the repayment. It required several visits to an area office and many hours of interview, documentation and reporting. I worked in nonprofit homecare and hospice as a nurse for many years, keeping me firmly in lower middle class. I'm now one of the 27% for whom Social Security is my sole income. Musk has insulted us, referring to us as "the parasite class". Hitler referred to the disabled and elderly as "useless eaters". I don't see a difference there.
I believe that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the Rubicon that if President Musk and PINO tRump dare to cross will be the beginning of the end for them and their attempt to turn our great country into a fascist state. If they f*ck with these programs that will be their F*cking end. I apologize to all for my explicit language, but things couldn't get more serious..
But Musk is giving the public the impression that the agency is the source of massive fraud
This is frightening when you consider a quote attributed to Josef Goebbels (Hitler's propaganda minister), although nobody can find the actual evidence that he ever said or wrote it:
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it-- and you will even come to believe it yourself.
It's easy to tell when Musk is lying-- if his lips are moving, then he's lying. He's always been little more than a con man with an eye for good companies to invest in but he hasn't invented anything on his own. But if he repeats his stuff enough, he might actually manage to fool people.
Anyone who has even casually paid attention to what has been going on for the last decade or so cannot escape the conclusion that America is now being threatened by an autocratic Fascist takeover. At this time it seems to be going well as it was laid out in Project 2025.
In my mind America must stop discussing this or that political topic (like immigration, social security, tariffs, etc., etc., and start the process of getting Trump and MAGA Republicans out of their offices and impeached. We need bright and creative people to stand up for America and create a solid case against these "people".
Once launched I and (I am sure) millions of my fellow Americans will understand the mistake we made in putting them into office, and will stand tall behind their prosecution.
As I see it, impeaching and prosecuting them is the only hope America has to retain its democracy.
Robert, impeached? The GOP-controlled House will not impeach Trump. And the Trump-controlled DOJ will not prosecute GOP members of Congress. The only recourse is the nearly, so far, 100 lawsuits, and active citizens protesting, driving his approval rating down. That's what got rid of Nixon. It's the citizens who are being hurt by Trump who need to make the solid case against these "people".
It is indeed the citizens, especially the ones hurt by Trump, who must make the difference. But many of them cannot be trusted to do so because they have drunk so much Kool-Aid. Already, conservative media is spinning up a new narrative... that if there are any problems with Trump's policies it will be because Democrats are blocking them and filing lawsuits, not because the policies themselves are unworkable, illegal, and/or unconstitutional. And the Kool-Aid drinkers will believe that, just as they have believed so much else. The billionaire class invested more than 50 years worth of time and tons of money to turn conservative media into the propaganda juggernaut that it is now.
Yes, Trump is a master at shifting the blame. And his supporters buy it. This is why I said elsewhere I want to know who the people are who are showing up at Rs town halls. Did they vote for Trump? If so, they are already calling for Musk’s head.
My sister had a kidney transplant in August 2010 but became eligible for social security disability in mid 1997 when her kidneys started failing. The same with my brother in law. My sister was 37 years old when she started drawing SSI my brother in law at 57. Social Security is a safety net for Americans when they are disabled and no longer able to work. Medicare also pays healthcare benefits when one becomes disabled from kidney failure. All of our working lives we pay into both Social Security and Medicare. It is not an entitlement. Elon Musk is a disgustingly poor excuse for a human being.
The richest man in the world is making deliberate lies to convince Americans that there is fraud and waste in every department. For example he claims that "$20 M was used to bring Sesame Street to Iraq" and "$59 M provided illegal immigrants with luxury hotel rooms in NYC". These are wild distortions of the truth, but were parroted by my member of Congress to justify cuts. We must call them out on the lies.
Am I the only one who thinks Musk and Trump are the parasites? They both rely very heavily on the work of others to feather their nests. And do we really need to subsidize Musk’s businesses if he’s such a genius businessman? He’s the richest man in the world. Why are we giving him our tax dollars? Particularly when he doesn’t think he should have to pay taxes. And Trump is just a flat out grifter. We paid for social security. I started working when I was 14 and I’m pissed I’m just about to turn 65 and will probably end up with nothing.
I continue to be bothered by the use of the language, Department of Government Efficiency & DOGE, as if they reference a legitimate organization in our government. Do we know that? In some writing I see lately, "Department of Government Efficiency" is put into quotes. Better.
Why does this matter? Because when we use this language, we help spread their disinformation.
You say "DOGE--Department of Government Efficiency--is the new name for the U.S. Digital Services."
There is a website for "DOGE" that doesn't look like an official government website. There is a tiny U.S. flag on it and a statement that says it is official. The homepage is a feed of tweets from X. Other pages display data, which we are finding out is bogus. Meanwhile, url links to www.usds.gov do not work nor do they send one to the "DOGE" webpage.
The only webpage on the "DOGE" site that seems in any way departmental is the "Join" page. There, we see language that is official but doesn't make sense. "Join the U.S. Digital Service (DOGE)." This suggests to me that the official name--needed for employment purposes--is in fact the U.S. Digital Service. Of course, the acronym DOGE does not match. Funny business. Let's call it that.
The press helps legitimize Musk when it uses these terms without qualifying them or when it makes sense of them in ways that do not hold up to scrutiny. We like the world to make sense. None of this makes sense, which is an important part of the story.
I have heard Jen Rubin say that she will not refer to this illegitimate program by its name, which after all, is a plug for one of Musk's business investments.
The sheer audacity of Musk's attack on SocSec is something to behold! 20 years ago, we saw the GW Bush sympathy for partial privatization to be a substantial threat to the program, but that was nothing in comparison to what Musk is doing. Almost makes Paul Ryan look good! SocSec does have serious future solvency issues, much of which can be solved by eliminating the FICA limit on payments into the system. The problem is that such would increase the taxes of the petit bourgeois who fund political campaigns, so it's a sensible idea with zero chance of adoption. But the Musk attack is part of the greater "rugged individualistic self-reliance" objective that the right has been pushing for decades. Then what happens to those who aren't able to hold themselves up by their bootstraps? Darwinian selection, a natural thing. Cruelty is the whole point.
“Of course, if you really cared about reducing fraud, you would not cut personnel with a blunt instrument, a move that would risk reducing the number of fraud investigators.”
. . . such as the agency’s inspector general, whom Trump fired on his fourth day in office.
“Perhaps he needs to be reminded of what Reagan said in that regard: ‘It’s not unreasonable for people who paid into a system for decades to expect to get their money's worth—that's not an “entitlement,” that's honoring a deal.’”
And when in his life has Donald Trump ever honored a deal?
Part of the problem is the antiquated systems used by many government agencies. SS is still using Cobal! They need money and resources to bring their operations into the 21st century. That won't happen under this administration. They hope to privatize Medicare, SS and Medicare so by saying they are filled with fraud and waste, and they hope Americans will agree and make their rich buddies richer with government contracts.
To see what the U.S. Digital Service website was/is before it was disabled by Musk, go to the Wayback Machine --https://web.archive.org/
Type in www.usds.gov. It will deliver: "Saved 3,666 times between May 24, 2016 and March 12, 2025." So the Wayback Machine is still capturing the website. But I couldn't get to it. Got this instead:
"An error occurred during a connection to www.usds.gov. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR Error code: PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem."
I've got the democracy chant in my head: "What does a department look like? This is what a department look likes."
I'm a Social Security recipient who did pay back an overpayment that was paid to my son who had a mental health disability as a teen. He died in 2012 of cancer and I was disabled the following year. That was when Social Security found the overpayment and I was responsible for it because he had died. The agency negotiated a lower amount and deducted payments from my SSDI over time to complete the repayment. It required several visits to an area office and many hours of interview, documentation and reporting. I worked in nonprofit homecare and hospice as a nurse for many years, keeping me firmly in lower middle class. I'm now one of the 27% for whom Social Security is my sole income. Musk has insulted us, referring to us as "the parasite class". Hitler referred to the disabled and elderly as "useless eaters". I don't see a difference there.
Trump and Musk are both a lot more than "insulting". If left to their devices they will turn America into a Fascist state.
No difference, Tanny.
I believe that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the Rubicon that if President Musk and PINO tRump dare to cross will be the beginning of the end for them and their attempt to turn our great country into a fascist state. If they f*ck with these programs that will be their F*cking end. I apologize to all for my explicit language, but things couldn't get more serious..
I am with you and sincerely pray you are right.
But Musk is giving the public the impression that the agency is the source of massive fraud
This is frightening when you consider a quote attributed to Josef Goebbels (Hitler's propaganda minister), although nobody can find the actual evidence that he ever said or wrote it:
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it-- and you will even come to believe it yourself.
It's easy to tell when Musk is lying-- if his lips are moving, then he's lying. He's always been little more than a con man with an eye for good companies to invest in but he hasn't invented anything on his own. But if he repeats his stuff enough, he might actually manage to fool people.
The same is true for the orange Adolf and all of his maga disciples in Congress and out.
Anyone who has even casually paid attention to what has been going on for the last decade or so cannot escape the conclusion that America is now being threatened by an autocratic Fascist takeover. At this time it seems to be going well as it was laid out in Project 2025.
In my mind America must stop discussing this or that political topic (like immigration, social security, tariffs, etc., etc., and start the process of getting Trump and MAGA Republicans out of their offices and impeached. We need bright and creative people to stand up for America and create a solid case against these "people".
Once launched I and (I am sure) millions of my fellow Americans will understand the mistake we made in putting them into office, and will stand tall behind their prosecution.
As I see it, impeaching and prosecuting them is the only hope America has to retain its democracy.
Robert, impeached? The GOP-controlled House will not impeach Trump. And the Trump-controlled DOJ will not prosecute GOP members of Congress. The only recourse is the nearly, so far, 100 lawsuits, and active citizens protesting, driving his approval rating down. That's what got rid of Nixon. It's the citizens who are being hurt by Trump who need to make the solid case against these "people".
It is indeed the citizens, especially the ones hurt by Trump, who must make the difference. But many of them cannot be trusted to do so because they have drunk so much Kool-Aid. Already, conservative media is spinning up a new narrative... that if there are any problems with Trump's policies it will be because Democrats are blocking them and filing lawsuits, not because the policies themselves are unworkable, illegal, and/or unconstitutional. And the Kool-Aid drinkers will believe that, just as they have believed so much else. The billionaire class invested more than 50 years worth of time and tons of money to turn conservative media into the propaganda juggernaut that it is now.
Yes, Trump is a master at shifting the blame. And his supporters buy it. This is why I said elsewhere I want to know who the people are who are showing up at Rs town halls. Did they vote for Trump? If so, they are already calling for Musk’s head.
It is not an entitlement, like Barb said. It is my money. I paid into it for 49 years. If you add interest, I will never get back all I paid in.
My sister had a kidney transplant in August 2010 but became eligible for social security disability in mid 1997 when her kidneys started failing. The same with my brother in law. My sister was 37 years old when she started drawing SSI my brother in law at 57. Social Security is a safety net for Americans when they are disabled and no longer able to work. Medicare also pays healthcare benefits when one becomes disabled from kidney failure. All of our working lives we pay into both Social Security and Medicare. It is not an entitlement. Elon Musk is a disgustingly poor excuse for a human being.
The richest man in the world is making deliberate lies to convince Americans that there is fraud and waste in every department. For example he claims that "$20 M was used to bring Sesame Street to Iraq" and "$59 M provided illegal immigrants with luxury hotel rooms in NYC". These are wild distortions of the truth, but were parroted by my member of Congress to justify cuts. We must call them out on the lies.
Am I the only one who thinks Musk and Trump are the parasites? They both rely very heavily on the work of others to feather their nests. And do we really need to subsidize Musk’s businesses if he’s such a genius businessman? He’s the richest man in the world. Why are we giving him our tax dollars? Particularly when he doesn’t think he should have to pay taxes. And Trump is just a flat out grifter. We paid for social security. I started working when I was 14 and I’m pissed I’m just about to turn 65 and will probably end up with nothing.
You make very good points.
I continue to be bothered by the use of the language, Department of Government Efficiency & DOGE, as if they reference a legitimate organization in our government. Do we know that? In some writing I see lately, "Department of Government Efficiency" is put into quotes. Better.
Why does this matter? Because when we use this language, we help spread their disinformation.
You say "DOGE--Department of Government Efficiency--is the new name for the U.S. Digital Services."
There is a website for "DOGE" that doesn't look like an official government website. There is a tiny U.S. flag on it and a statement that says it is official. The homepage is a feed of tweets from X. Other pages display data, which we are finding out is bogus. Meanwhile, url links to www.usds.gov do not work nor do they send one to the "DOGE" webpage.
The only webpage on the "DOGE" site that seems in any way departmental is the "Join" page. There, we see language that is official but doesn't make sense. "Join the U.S. Digital Service (DOGE)." This suggests to me that the official name--needed for employment purposes--is in fact the U.S. Digital Service. Of course, the acronym DOGE does not match. Funny business. Let's call it that.
The press helps legitimize Musk when it uses these terms without qualifying them or when it makes sense of them in ways that do not hold up to scrutiny. We like the world to make sense. None of this makes sense, which is an important part of the story.
I have heard Jen Rubin say that she will not refer to this illegitimate program by its name, which after all, is a plug for one of Musk's business investments.
I like calling it doggy.
I call RFK Jr Dr. Worm.
Thanks for the reminder of Musk's Dogecoin. More here from The Contrarian on cryptocurrency and the Trump administration:
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/tell-me-how-many-bitcoins-are-in?utm_source=publication-search
Hey, President Musk! IT'S OUR FUCKING MONEY. You can't have it.
The sheer audacity of Musk's attack on SocSec is something to behold! 20 years ago, we saw the GW Bush sympathy for partial privatization to be a substantial threat to the program, but that was nothing in comparison to what Musk is doing. Almost makes Paul Ryan look good! SocSec does have serious future solvency issues, much of which can be solved by eliminating the FICA limit on payments into the system. The problem is that such would increase the taxes of the petit bourgeois who fund political campaigns, so it's a sensible idea with zero chance of adoption. But the Musk attack is part of the greater "rugged individualistic self-reliance" objective that the right has been pushing for decades. Then what happens to those who aren't able to hold themselves up by their bootstraps? Darwinian selection, a natural thing. Cruelty is the whole point.
Thx for the facts, Barb. The Musk episode on Joe Rogan where his claims were never probed shows that Rogan is a platform for Trumpist propaganda.
“Of course, if you really cared about reducing fraud, you would not cut personnel with a blunt instrument, a move that would risk reducing the number of fraud investigators.”
. . . such as the agency’s inspector general, whom Trump fired on his fourth day in office.
“Perhaps he needs to be reminded of what Reagan said in that regard: ‘It’s not unreasonable for people who paid into a system for decades to expect to get their money's worth—that's not an “entitlement,” that's honoring a deal.’”
And when in his life has Donald Trump ever honored a deal?
Part of the problem is the antiquated systems used by many government agencies. SS is still using Cobal! They need money and resources to bring their operations into the 21st century. That won't happen under this administration. They hope to privatize Medicare, SS and Medicare so by saying they are filled with fraud and waste, and they hope Americans will agree and make their rich buddies richer with government contracts.
To see what the U.S. Digital Service website was/is before it was disabled by Musk, go to the Wayback Machine --https://web.archive.org/
Type in www.usds.gov. It will deliver: "Saved 3,666 times between May 24, 2016 and March 12, 2025." So the Wayback Machine is still capturing the website. But I couldn't get to it. Got this instead:
"An error occurred during a connection to www.usds.gov. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR Error code: PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem."
I've got the democracy chant in my head: "What does a department look like? This is what a department look likes."
WHO is entitled!?!?