Political Roundtable Part XXXIV

[montestewart]

Continued from Political Roundtable Part XXXIII

[bsilver]

I think the stock markets will crash tomorrow. Even though this tariff ridiculousness will cost me, it will be interesting to sit back and watch the show.

[Zonkerbl]

Well, no one invests in us automobile stocks, so the impact on the overall market will probably be small. Feel bad about the us auto jobs we'll lose though

[closg00]

Who would have thought that Elon Musk was going to be Co-President with Trump? What Elon is doing "should" have resulted in his (and his henchmen"s) immediate arrest by the FBI, I am absolutely horrified beyond imagination.

[Wizardspride]

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[DCZards]

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It’s called “chickens coming home to roost.”

[Zonkerbl]

Elon says Trump is going to shut down USAID. How? He doesn't have the authority to. But I get it, USAID is a good example of unelected bureaucrats "going native" and going insane with the power to allocate taxpayer money. It would be good to shake things up there, but I also have a lot of friends who work there and they deserve better than this, frankly. Trump doesn't care, of course, but good and decent people should.

Clown show really. Musk and his wannabe SS troops show up at USAID without a clearance demanding access to classified files. WHOEVER GIVES HIM SAID ACCESS WOULD BE GUILTY OF TREASON. What did he think was going to happen?

[Zonkerbl]

Here's an interesting court order. Of course it's an Obama appointed judge so it's possible Trump's admin will find some excuse to ignore it.

https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/state-of-new-york-et-al-v-trump-tro-2025.pdf

[pancakes3]

re the legality of Trump's attempted buyouts and return-to-office mandates of fed employees as part of his purge, i don't think anyone has a clue what's going to happen but there's been speculation

re buyouts: the gist of the offer is probably valid, but there's virtually no chance that the promised severance gets paid; the deal is that you can "accept" the resignation offer, and you'll be able to do 0 work for the next 9 months while collecting your paycheck. there are all sorts of weird, illegal, and arguably unconstitutional waivers buried in Elon's resignation offer, like you waive your right to appeal to MSPB, that would make it difficult to have any remedy if Elon just decides to stop your payment (I wonder why it was so important to Elon to gain access to Treasury's payment system). And even if it's illegal, how many wronged employees will be able to afford the enormous legal fees to litigate out the various items (was the offer legal, were the individual waiver clauses legal, was it legal to not make severance payment, does Elon have authority under DOGE, what is DOGE, etc.)?

re: return-to-office, the big sticking point is that telework has been negotiated through collective bargaining agreements, and many teleworkers are part of public unions that negotiated those CBAs. the unions might be better equipped and more inclined to litigate on workers' behalf than to litigate the resignation issues, but even still, workers will still have to return to office during the pendency of litigation. this also opens up the door for SCOTUS to do something really wonky like abolish public unions (as a part of the classic Roberts two-step, where he makes a "reasonable" delineation first, like "only" getting rid of public sector unions, and then 3-4 years down the line hits us with the real decision now that he has "precedent" to get rid of unions entirely).

tl;dr, it's not good.

[AFM]

U.S. tariffs on Mexico will be put on hold for a month, starting today, President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X. Mexico has reached a series of agreements with the Trump administration, including reinforcing the northern border with 10,000 Mexican National Guardsmen to counter drug trafficking, specifically fentanyl. The United States is also expected to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons into Mexico. “Our teams will begin work today on two areas: security and trade,” she said.

[Zonkerbl]

U.S. tariffs on Mexico will be put on hold for a month, starting today, President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X. Mexico has reached a series of agreements with the Trump administration, including reinforcing the northern border with 10,000 Mexican National Guardsmen to counter drug trafficking, specifically fentanyl. The United States is also expected to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons into Mexico. “Our teams will begin work today on two areas: security and trade,” she said.

ah so it was just a shakedown

well our credibility is trashed now

[Wizardspride]

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[verbal8]

U.S. tariffs on Mexico will be put on hold for a month, starting today, President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X. Mexico has reached a series of agreements with the Trump administration, including reinforcing the northern border with 10,000 Mexican National Guardsmen to counter drug trafficking, specifically fentanyl. The United States is also expected to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons into Mexico. “Our teams will begin work today on two areas: security and trade,” she said.

ah so it was just a shakedown

well our credibility is trashed now

It was trashed when we re-elected Trump

[Zonkerbl]

It seems strange to me that Trump is just letting Elon run things and speak on his behalf. I guess there is a natural pecking order among billionaires, and Elon does have much more money than Trump. It makes sense then that Trump would bend the knee to someone objectively superior to him. I'm sure that's why Elon is behaving the way he is, because he knows he is better than Trump, and Trump has to do what he says.

[pancakes3]

Or Trump is a 78 yr old man who never had a strong interest in governance to begin with

[queridiculo]

Can we talk about this?

https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

Tech note from a numbers guy — and Martin Luther King

Until the Elections Assistance Commission gets updated figures from the states next year (and, under Trump, I doubt we will ever get those numbers), 3,565,000 votes lost to Harris is the estimate I would present in my role as a forensic expert in a courtroom as the lowest conceivable suppression factor.

I rarely make a big deal about my own credentials but, since the election, the Web has been flooded by amateur, arithmetic-defying speculation about computer hacking and other unsupported twaddle. Best to stick to hard, verifiable data. And that’s what I do.

For two decades, I was a forensic economist for government agencies including the US Justice Department; taught statistics at Indiana University; provided expert calculations of vote suppression for the ACLU, NAACP, and RainbowPUSH and won the Global Editors Award for my data journalism on vote suppression measurements for reports done for Al Jazeera, BBC, Rolling Stone and The Guardian. The numbers you get here are exactly what I’d present to a Federal court. In other words, kids, don’t do this at home…calculating the “un-count” requires expertise.

I make this point for another reason: The theory that “Elon Musk messed with the voting machines” is, unconsciously, unintentionally racist. With few exceptions, these silly speculations come from those who simply ignore not just the millions of votes officially reported as suppressed, their theories also ignore the horrifically painful experience of Black people turned away from the polls.

Here is a photo of Jessica Lawrence in tears, moments after her 92-year-old grandmother was tossed out of an Atlanta polling station, into a storm, because she’d been wrongfully purged. Any speculation about the nefarious cause of Trump’s must not leave out Jessica’s grandma nor the millions of other citizens of color who were wrongly barred from their ballot.

[pancakes3]

Can we talk about this?

https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

Tech note from a numbers guy — and Martin Luther King

Until the Elections Assistance Commission gets updated figures from the states next year (and, under Trump, I doubt we will ever get those numbers), 3,565,000 votes lost to Harris is the estimate I would present in my role as a forensic expert in a courtroom as the lowest conceivable suppression factor.

I rarely make a big deal about my own credentials but, since the election, the Web has been flooded by amateur, arithmetic-defying speculation about computer hacking and other unsupported twaddle. Best to stick to hard, verifiable data. And that’s what I do.

For two decades, I was a forensic economist for government agencies including the US Justice Department; taught statistics at Indiana University; provided expert calculations of vote suppression for the ACLU, NAACP, and RainbowPUSH and won the Global Editors Award for my data journalism on vote suppression measurements for reports done for Al Jazeera, BBC, Rolling Stone and The Guardian. The numbers you get here are exactly what I’d present to a Federal court. In other words, kids, don’t do this at home…calculating the “un-count” requires expertise.

I make this point for another reason: The theory that “Elon Musk messed with the voting machines” is, unconsciously, unintentionally racist. With few exceptions, these silly speculations come from those who simply ignore not just the millions of votes officially reported as suppressed, their theories also ignore the horrifically painful experience of Black people turned away from the polls.

Here is a photo of Jessica Lawrence in tears, moments after her 92-year-old grandmother was tossed out of an Atlanta polling station, into a storm, because she’d been wrongfully purged. Any speculation about the nefarious cause of Trump’s must not leave out Jessica’s grandma nor the millions of other citizens of color who were wrongly barred from their ballot.

interesting read but Nevada, Michigan, and PA didn't pass voter restriction laws. it probably contributed but I don't think voter suppression is the sole reason, or even primary reason Trump won.

[pancakes3]

There's been a slate of incredibly evil news lately, like Trump wanting to annex Gaza to build condos and golf courses, but this just seemed particularly baffling, and deeply unpopular

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/04/did-elon-musk-delete-free-irs-tax-preparation/78193236007/

[Zonkerbl]

Turning Gaza into Trump branded golf courses is just cartoon villain mustache twirling shirt. Is he trying to get us killed? Is he deliberately provoking a terrorist attack?

[Wizardspride]

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