Oh, I'm sure this ends well.

commondreams.org/news/musk-tre…

'It's a Coup': Musk's DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

"In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system.

He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts' block on the administration's spending freeze. He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend's companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.) He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE's goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.

Owens noted that Musk wasn't "chasing these cuts for their own sake. He's helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself."

"It's nice to believe in a fantasy in which Musk and DOGE work alongside civil servants to improve technology and services for Americans and save a few bucks along the way. But all evidence points to the contrary," Owens continued. "The richest man in the world, whom no one elected to any government position, is seeking unprecedented access to confidential information, including information pertaining to his own business interests, and seems hell-bent on cutting off as much funding as possible for the programs that matter to the rest of us."

I mean if I'm being honest, I don't think Owens criticisms or predictions of potential disaster go far enough. Yes, it's bad enough that a billionaire Afrikaner who literally believes billions of people are useless eaters who can and should be sacrificed for the goals of creating billions of "artificial minds" and escaping to Mars after rich people have burnt the planet to the crisp, has his fingers inside the payment system that supports America's most vulnerable people, and sure it's not at all good that Musk has access to information he can use to make himself even richer. But as long as you're committed to not actually calling Elon on a fascist, it's hard to understand the scope of what's just occurred here.

For starters, there probably isn't a more identifying clutch of sensitive personal information than the Treasury Department payment system; Musk, a literal billionaire nazi supervillain, now has more personal information on the political enemies of the American fascist movement (read: anyone who isn't going for this Pork Reich bullshit) than the fucking FBI and we know for a fact he's a vindictive little fash muppet who absolutely delights in targeting people who criticize or oppose his frankly quite unhinged agenda. If Musk/Trump/America First want to target, detain, or even eliminate whole swathes of their political enemies and people the fash think shouldn't exist, they now have access to more than enough information to start rounding folks up and conducting political purges.

Furthermore, and while this might not be "news" to folks who've been closely following this fascist movement and Musk's (successful) attempts to buy it, this makes it absolutely clear that the guy running this shitshow isn't an elected official at all - it's Musk. The fact is, a government is at its heart, a system of taxation and spending; if Musk and his allies in the tech industry now have their hands on the purse strings (and all the juicy data that entails) they are in all reasonable sense of the words, in charge of the government. Trump might have "won" an election in a rigged oligarchy, but the fascist wearing the pants in this arrangement is very clearly Elon Musk; a guy in a fascist death cult, who can't run a social media company, builds cars that burst into flames, and wants to eliminate vast portions of the media because they make fun of him for being the most divorced man ever.

Given all that, I am once again asking my fellow Americans if they're sincerely planning to just let this all happen for four years on the off chance a party full of collaborators wholly owned by the same rich people that own Trump, may win a potentially hypothetical election in a rigged oligarchy. Or, are you ready to start becoming ungovernable and shut this shit down, knowing that there will be personal costs involved, the fascist police state will respond with violence, and the liberal establishment which is openly musing that they're happy to let you suffer under authoritarianism to teach you a lesson about not voting for them, will be of no assistance whatsoever and in fact will likely help the fash punish you.

The choice is yours, and it's not a good one; but I still hope you choose wisely.

#USPol #Fascism #Treasury #Musk #Trump #SocialSecurity #PoliceState #Coup #PorkReich #AmerikanMusik

The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president,by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.

Everybody I know should read this accurate and enlightening piece...

“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.

Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call "distributive bargaining."

Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.

The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker.

There isn't another Canada.

So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.

Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.

For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”

— David Honig