Join each day information updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or comply with us on Google Information!
Final Up to date on: 4th February 2025, 12:36 pm
That is completely bonkers. Even after a bonkers 12 months, or a bonkers 5 years, or a bonkers 9 years, they proceed to shock. Specifically, Elon Musk continues to shock.
Laws — Utterly Gone, Eradicated, by Default
Reportedly, Elon Musk mentioned on a name early Monday morning, simply after midnight, that they need to have interaction in “wholesale elimination of laws.”
If you happen to assume you have to be misunderstanding that, as a result of it might be completely insane to advocate for full elimination of federal laws, right here’s extra:
“Laws, principally, must be default gone,” Musk mentioned. “Not default there, default gone. And if it seems that we missed the mark on a regulation, we will all the time add it again in.”
I’ll allow you to reread that.
That is utterly insane.
There are numerous federal laws — on monetary issues, environmental issues, employee security issues, well being and public security issues, and so forth. These are important for a wholesome and protected fashionable society. With out them, we can have anarchy.
Additionally, how or why does Musk assume they must energy to utterly remove federal laws?!?!? Legal guidelines are made by Congress, and federal businesses are then required to hold out these legal guidelines. Elon Musk can’t simply step in and say “We’re beginning over. There aren’t any extra federal laws. We’ll simply add ones again we shouldn’t have trashed.”
I imply, truthfully, we’re nicely past breaking norms and legal guidelines. We’re into full Wacky Land.
Are there too many laws? Sure, and nobody denies that. Obama had a give attention to getting into and surgically slicing laws with a purpose to enhance society. However this concept that we’re going to utterly, indiscriminately flatten the federal authorities and begin including federal laws again one after the other (by King’s decree, I think about, or Musk’s decree) is past creativeness. It’s the thought of a 1st grader who has been spoon fed MAGA propaganda.
“The general public name was hosted on his web site X, previously Twitter, and included two senators and the Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy,” Huffington Put up stories. That’s proper, Huffington Put up, not The Onion.
“These laws are added willy-nilly on a regular basis. So we’ve simply acquired to do a wholesale, spring cleansing of regulation and get the federal government off the backs of on a regular basis Individuals so individuals can get issues completed,” Musk mentioned, including later: “If the federal government has hundreds of thousands of laws holding everybody again, nicely, it’s not freedom. We’ve acquired to revive freedom.”
FREEDUMB!
Idiocracy, we’ve arrived at our vacation spot.
“Later, Ramaswamy — who briefly co-led Musk’s White Home DOGE undertaking — mentioned, ‘I feel it’s doable now, it’s truly doable’ because of Trump’s second time period and a conservative-dominated Supreme Courtroom.
“Musk replied, ‘If it’s not doable now, it’ll by no means be doable. That is our shot. That is one of the best hand of playing cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t make the most of this finest hand of playing cards, it’s by no means going to occur, so we’re going to do it.’
“‘Now or by no means,’ Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ramaswamy agreed. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) additionally spoke on the decision.”
Goodbye, federal laws. It was good understanding you.
Simply once you thought issues couldn’t get any extra ridiculous, they show you improper.
Full Halt to Humanitarian Support — How Many Will Die?
That is after Musk and his crew shut down USAID, one thing which is able to price numerous lives and is a direct ambush on humanitarian help and reduction in important areas world wide. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wooden chipper,” Musk proudly chirped, virtually like a Nazi basic desperate to see individuals undergo and die. Don’t name this hyperbole — or discover a higher comparability. USAID, established again in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, is “the US authorities’s important worldwide humanitarian and improvement arm.”
“The lack of companies supported by USAID will have an effect on hundreds of thousands of the world’s most weak individuals,” Medical doctors With out Borders writes. “The broad halt in overseas help, coupled with limitations to and an absence of readability round humanitarian waivers, has already resulted within the lack of lifesaving medical humanitarian help and dangerous impacts on affected person communities. Within the final week, MSF’s medical groups have witnessed confusion as clinics and different important companies beforehand supported by USAID had been shut down with out warning.”
USAID “has round 10,000 workers and a finances of practically $40bn (£32.25bn), out of a complete of $68bn in US authorities overseas help spending,” BBC stories.
“The turmoil was felt in nations together with Afghanistan, the place American help has been funding life-saving companies for girls and kids. One midwife informed the BBC that each one medical centres funded by USAID had closed and dozens of staff had informed to remain at residence.
“In Syria, a ‘cease work’ message was additionally acquired by a whole bunch of workers working the Al-Hol displacement camp within the north-east. There, it’s the job of humanitarian staff to stabilise the positioning — which holds 40,000 individuals, largely ladies and kids — displaced from areas beforehand managed by the Islamic State group.”
“Nobody feels protected to go anyplace close to the Ronald Reagan constructing,” one USAID official informed NBC Information. “We simply had Elon Musk name us a felony group. Our safety chief was escorted out.”
“If we had been watching this occur in Venezuela or Malawi […] we’d name it a coup”
This additionally follows Musk and a crew of younger males, together with one school pupil, taking on the federal authorities’s fee system. “The fee system, historically managed by profession civil servants and non-political workers, handles trillions of {dollars} yearly, together with Social Safety and Medicare advantages and tax credit,” USA TODAY writes.
“If we had been watching this occur in Venezuela or Malawi and we noticed a billionaire seize the cash provide and the checkbook of the federal government, we’d name it a coup,” mentioned Lindsay Owens, government director of the Groundwork Collaborative financial coverage group and a former Senate senior financial coverage advisor.
Certainly.
And none of those individuals had safety clearances or approval to entry categorised supplies.
Democratic leaders are saying this might be the most important privateness and safety breach in American historical past. Are you able to consider something that in contrast?
“By Monday, the Senate staffers had concluded that the DOGE staff spent the weekend accessing the Treasury Division’s large federal fee system, Wyden mentioned, together with ‘the private info of a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of Individuals, financial institution accounts and tax knowledge, Social Safety numbers and residential addresses.’”
“We acquired on it, and what’s clear now’s that unqualified and unaccountable individuals have seized management of the circulation of taxpayer funds and a trove of very delicate knowledge, and they’re seizing the instruments they want for a coup,” Wyden mentioned. “The Musk hatchet brigade has infiltrated a gold mine of information that each overseas spy and corrupt actor would like to see. … It’s a prescription for nightmares.”
Moreover, it’s nonetheless not clear why they thought they wanted entry or what they’re making an attempt to do. “A Democratic workers official on the Senate Finance Committee informed USA TODAY on Monday that Musk’s remark suggests a basic misunderstanding of how the method works. The system, he mentioned on the situation of anonymity, is principally the U.S. authorities’s checkbook for funds already accredited by Congress. To search out waste, fraud and abuse, the staffer mentioned, Musk would wish to go to the businesses which might be truly spending the cash.”
“Wyden mentioned the breach poses a unprecedented and unprecedented risk to U.S. nationwide safety given the character of the knowledge contained within the Treasury system that’s now within the fingers of Musk’s staffers.”
Again to the Regs
The extent of madness right here is thoughts boggling. The concept that we’d simply remove all federal laws instantly is so unbelievable that I can’t imagine I’m not sleeping.
Attempt to make a listing for a minute all the issues in your own home, automotive, and workplace/worksite which might be regulated ultimately for client security, public well being, monetary stability, and to forestall cons and scams.
That is madness. It jogs my memory of the excessive schoolers within the Nineties who beloved to make use of the anarchy “A” branding. These guys have taken management of the USA. Really, I’m certain most of these individuals got here to understand anarchy wouldn’t be a terrific resolution. I suppose it’s those whose minds acquired caught on a teenage degree who are actually operating the present.
Chip in a number of {dollars} a month to assist help unbiased cleantech protection that helps to speed up the cleantech revolution!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Need to promote? Need to counsel a visitor for our CleanTech Discuss podcast? Contact us right here.
Join our each day publication for 15 new cleantech tales a day. Or join our weekly one if each day is simply too frequent.
CleanTechnica makes use of affiliate hyperlinks. See our coverage right here.
CleanTechnica’s Remark Coverage