Lies Are the Weaponry of the Techno-Barbarians Storming the Nation

The pace of lies coming from the Musk/Trump administration has increased as steps quicken that are designed to destroy the deep (administrative) state. The billionaire agenda holds that government stands in the way of progress (i.e., wealth growth) and making government irrelevant is the inevitable conclusion of the technology revolution.

They believe institutions based on collective effort (especially the social safety net) are upholding the outmoded governance process called representative democracy. Despite all the rhetoric about government waste, Elon Musk and the DOGE interns are especially focused on the parts of the government that serve working people and the public good.

So the theology of the far right, i.e., that most of the functions of a federal government stand in the way of true ‘freedom,’ necessitates persuading the citizenry of the inherent evils of present-day institutions. The lies and distortions serve that cause.

That, my friends, is the big picture beyond the behaviors of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their enablers. DEI has to go because its premise involves working together, rather than working under a leader. NATO has to go because the old alliances are built upon mutual trust and cooperation. Government employees represent an infected group that believes in a greater good etc., etc. The screw ups that occur due to the loss of institutional knowledge will get played to add to the message that cooperation is bad.

Finally in this regard, there’s money to be made. Those services deemed worthy will be replaced by contractors. This has already happened at the Pentagon over the past few decades, where more than half their budget gets passed on to non-government entities. I’ll bet some of them are real fraudsters, to use a known Muskovian adjective. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is unable to provide an audit of how their money is spent.

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On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.“

Yes, that probably means, “you ain’t seen nothing yet” and a willingness to openly defy the judicial branch of government. But beyond this immediate understanding of his words, I think a case can be made that a message of encouragement for extremists is embedded in that statement. The fact of pardons for the January 6th insurrectionists set a precedent that’s hard to ignore.

Speaking of lawbreaking, the actions of a sociopathic despot include blaming others for what you yourself are carrying out.

Show me where and when public or private programs encouraging inclusion were made illegal. At White House press briefings, reporters sit idly by while officials claim crimes are committed.

Vice President Vance rants (provable falsehoods) at European leaders about freedom of the press (because continental political leaders disassociate themselves with extremists) while the largest world wide cooperative media agency –the Associated Press– is banned from the White House for politely declining to obey a demand.

There are promises by the President that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are not going to be cut, yet the case is being made for those programs' destruction based on erroneous claims of fraud. Leaving your granny sitting out in the rain might be needed while this so-called fraud is tackled.

These claims about our most basic and cherished social programs are easily proven wrong for the simple reason that the Muskovites doing agency “audits” don’t understand the mechanics of governance in the agencies they’re targeting.

Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements, no matter how many times Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation say they are. They are government insurance programs that workers and employers pay into. By law, neither program can increase the national debt. They are headed toward a fiscal cliff because higher income wage earners get a break, and because wealth is considered separate from wages.

Currently, Medicare provides health insurance for around 68 million seniors and disabled Americans, Medicaid offers qualifying low-income Americans health insurance for around 73 million people. The Department of Health and Human Services spends nearly $2 trillion annually, mostly on health insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, making it a prime target.

From Heather Cox Richardson:

• When asked, Americans say they don’t actually want to get rid of government programs. A late January poll from the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research—a gold-standard pollster for public attitudes—found that only about 29% of Americans wanted to see the elimination of a large number of federal jobs, with 40% opposed (29% had no opinion). Instead, 67% of adults believed the U.S. is spending too little on Social Security, 65% thought it was spending too little on education, 62% thought there is too little aid for the poor, 61% thought there is too little spending on Medicare, and 55% thought there is too little spending on Medicaid. Fifty-one percent thought the U.S. should spend more on border security.

Misrepresentations like the “entitlements” language are rife throughout those programs' histories, and now Elon Musk is making impossible-to-prove claims about abuse and fraud.

The claim is made that there are non-citizens collecting Social Security. Easily proven false. Non-citizens working in the US are required to pay into Social Security, but not allowed to collect it. Another whopper concerns people living outside the US getting Medicare benefits; those costs are paid to providers, not patients.

Then there’s the claim by Musk that there are people receiving Social Security payments who are 150 years old. Except that some parts of the Social Security Administration’s computer systems are using COBOL, a legacy code with the kinds of limitations common to the earlier days of programming.

On May 20, 1875, industrialized countries created the International Bureau of Weight and Measures. which established uniform standards of mass and length. Later on, the Bureau established rules for dates as well. The dates’ standard used a starting date of May 20 1875 to honor the creation of the Bureau.

Old versions of COBOL use that date as a baseline. Social Security’s computers use that old version. Dates are stored as the number of days AFTER May 20 1875.

So if Social Security doesn’t know a birthdate (many people have incomplete birth records), that field is empty in its records. Thus there are people who appear to have a birthday of May 20 1875—about 150 years ago.

Lest you have any doubts about their fiscal intentions, consider Elon Musk’s claim:

• “At this point I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve heard of by FAR.”

• “It’s not even close”

Think your Medicare is safe?

• “Medicare is where the big money fraud is happening.”

The Department of Health and Human Services spends nearly $2 trillion annually, mostly on health insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, making it a prime target.

During a hearing last week, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee claimed that since 2003, the U.S. government has issued a staggering $2.7 trillion in improper Medicare and Medicaid payments, including to individuals overseas who were not eligible to receive them.

That $2.7 trillion number? It's the aggregate of ALL improper payments across ALL federal programs since 2003, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from June 27, 2024. (Hint: add up all the federal expenditures since 2003 to gain perspective on that number.)

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The Trump administration is facing at least 70 lawsuits nationwide, according to the Associated Press, covering actions from the attempted elimination of birthright citizenship to the freezing of federal grants and funds – and the accessing of sensitive computer systems and data by unofficial entities.

Needless to say, this has prompted another stream of bs coming at Americans concerning individual judges. The President has been quoted as saying some judges might have to be “investigated.”

Elon Musk responded to Trump’s quote about being above the law by saying:

• Momentum is growing rapidly to impeach activist judges who repeatedly fail to follow the law.

On his Xitter platform, Musk attacked the judge who ordered U.S. health agencies to temporarily restore websites they took offline in response to an executive order by Trump.

• "We should at least ATTEMPT to fire this junky jurist. The notion of having a judge job for life, no matter how bad the judgments, is ridiculous!" Musk posted to his 217 million X followers. He also posted messages claiming the country was being destroyed a "judicial coup."

At a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused judges of "abusing their power" and said the "real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch."

Locally, Rep Darrell Issa is joining a group of righties aiming to take out judges anywhere in the world who displeases the Musk/Trump administration. Such tough talk.

I chose to include this section about judges because of my expectation that a judge will throw out the Justice Department’s quid pro quo with New York Mayor Eric Adams: charges dropped for aiding ICE deportations.

The letters of resignation from the Southern District of New York’s Attorney General’s office from prosecutors who refused to sign off on the deal provide enough evidence for a fair-minded judge to block the deal.

Trump envoy Richard Grenell floats California governor bid — if Kamala Harris runs By Irie Sentner at Politico

• One of President Donald Trump’s top aides said Friday that if former Vice President Kamala Harris enters the race for California governor, he might too.

• “If Kamala Harris runs for governor, I believe that she has such baggage and hundreds of millions of dollars in educating the voters of how terrible she is, that it’s a new day in California, and that the Republican actually has a shot, and I wouldn’t say no,” Richard Grenell told reporters Friday in Munich.

• Grenell is a longtime Trump loyalist who has served as a jack-of-all-trades for the president. As Trump’s U.S. envoy for special missions, Grenell joined Trump in Los Angeles to survey the wildfire damage, traveled to Venezuela for a meeting with President Nicolás Maduro that led to the release of six hostages and was named the Kennedy Center’s interim executive director after Trump purged its old board. During Trump’s first term, Grenell served as ambassador to Germany and briefly as acting director of national intelligence.

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RFK Jr. Is Already Taking Aim at Antidepressants by Kiera Butler at Mother Jones

• When government researchers follow Kennedy’s orders to study SSRIs, they’ll find reams of research, including long-term studies, that have found that the drugs are safe and non-addictive. That’s good news for the 13 percent of American adults who use SSRIs to treat depression and anxiety. In addition to this well-documented track record of safety, manufacturers have closely monitored adverse reactions to the drugs in children and teens. The Food and Drug Administration already requires drug manufacturers to include warnings in packaging because of some evidence that SSRIs can cause a temporary increase in suicidal thoughts in pediatric patients (though evidence on this point is mixed).

• So despite this evidence, what options does Kennedy offer in response to the supposed overprescription of and addiction to SSRIs? In a podcast appearance last July, Kennedy said he planned to dedicate money generated from a sales tax on cannabis products to “creating wellness farms—drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country.” He added, “I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need—three or four years if they need it—to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” The farm residents would grow their own organic food because, he suggested, many of their underlying problems could be “food-related.”

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Protesters target Tesla showrooms in US over Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting by Jasper Jolly at The Guardian

• Protesters gathered outside Tesla dealerships across the US on Saturday in response to Elon Musk’s efforts to shred government spending under the president, Donald Trump.

• Groups of demonstrators up to 100-strong gathered outside the electric carmaker’s showrooms in cities including New York, Seattle, Kansas City and across California. Organisers said the protests took place in dozens of locations.

• While the protests were scattered, they highlighted the risks to the car company of Musk’s close association with Trump’s radical rightwing agenda. Many of the protesters carried placards likening the Trump administration to Nazis – a characterisation that Musk has previously emphatically denied.