Ah, the little people have power!

I have so many newsletters coming into my email, it sometimes means I skip a few for a day or so.

But today I just watched The Contrarian's live coffee report of 3 judicial decisions that were against the executive and doge orders. (I didn't take notes, but they said they all happened within 90 minutes of each other.

I read about the disgraceful US statements at the UN, to side with lying Putin about the Ukrainian war.

Then I read about people getting together in the UU church groups across the US to have a sense of spirituality and power against the forces that are hampering so many good actions.

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From Choose Democracy  dated Feb. 26, 2025 8:44 am

Cracks are showing.  And while the news reports on Musk's cruelty and incompetence, they miss a lot of the resistance that's making the cracks. And with it, a chance to understand how power works.

Over the weekend, unelected Elon Musk and his rogue crew sent out messages to federal workers asking: "What did you do last week?" in 5 bullet points (even from folks on vacation!).

On social media, Musk wrote, "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation." 

...Across the country, thousands of courageous federal workers wrote and advised each other to REFUSE to reply to those emails.

Soon the unions — NTEU, AFGE, CFPB — followed suit and told workers they should ignore the email completely. NTEU's advisory had a huge headline: "DO NOT RESPOND TO ELON!" The ball was rolling.

By now the Department of Defense joined in and told its people to ignore the memo. Finally, even some of Trump's own people — sycophants like Kash Patel (FBI), Marco Rubio (Secretary of State) and Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence) — told their staff to not comply.

This is how noncompliance works. It's a chain reaction of smaller to bigger dominos — the smaller ones knock down the bigger ones and on and on until the bigger dominos fall.

What we just saw is the largest mass noncompliance with Elon Musk (so far!).

This is the general direction we need to go. Musk says jump — and we all say "nope" and return to our lives.

Notably, traditional press mostly only caught the story once Patel and Rubio joined in. The resistance starting from workers and unions went unnoticed and largely unreported.

...But there are signs of cracking everywhere. On this situation, lawsuits against this whole charade and the 21 DOGE workers who quit in protest ("We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.")

Hopefully others who haven't quit learn the art of digital sabotage against DOGE.

 Meanwhile, protests continue at town halls and outside legislative offices. Find actions nearby from Build the Resistance.

And then there's the debt ceiling and government funding bill. For folks having trouble assessing what's proposed, we find this chart very telling — an assessment from the Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy:

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Hurricane Helene didn't only reshape our landscapes in western North Carolina (WNC), it continues to impact many lives!

Local people are helping each other as best they can. Swannanoa Communities Together just reported this (which we already knew.)

In January, 5000 people in WNC lost temporary shelter from FEMA TSA (hotel vouchers). Many people still have nowhere to go. Many are sleeping in cars. We are working hard to support families in stabilizing and finding new homes, but it is a long, hard process for people who don't have a safety net.

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Ok, I've still got more newsletters to read, and haven't even opened Bluesky yet! But I need to go wash my car. Since it's getting warmer as I sit here, today is the day! It's 65 outside already and due to get close to 70!

Our non-government and some legal considerations

 It's not exactly politics. It's in the realm of it though.

Thanks, Jay Kuo (some excerpts from his The Status Kuo newsletter)

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To my mind, the greatest threat right now is this: Elon Musk and his goons have taken over critical payment systems at the Treasury Department. This is a DEFCON 1 moment for our government. An unaccountable private citizen, who is also the world’s richest man acting under authority of a would-be dictator, apparently has admin—not just read-only—access to the very lifeline of our Republic: the money.

With such access, Musk has effective control over trillions of dollars of payments each year, and he could terminate some or even all of these at the flip of a switch. This includes our entire social safety net of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps. This puts tens of millions of American who rely on government support at great risk. Already he is threatening to selectively determine which programs are “wasteful” and cut off the money to them.

Yes, this is illegal.

Many lawsuits have been filed against DOGE, but I’m watching one closely. It’s by Public Citizen, filed on behalf of three plaintiffs: the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union. The suit alleges that the personal and private financial information of the plaintiffs’ members was illegally accessed by young Musketeer coders over the weekend.

The Public Citizen lawsuit names as defendants the Treasury, its Secretary, and the Bureau of Fiscal Services, which granted access and even admin rights to Musk’s team. This is smart. The lawsuit goes after these defendants in particular because, if ordered by a court, they are the ones that have the power to revoke the access they granted earlier to DOGE.

We aren’t powerless. We can understand, analyze, plan and resist, our eyes fixed squarely on the prize of keeping our Republic. Each of us can play a part in our own way. If you’d like to support my efforts to keep us moving forward, consider becoming a voluntary paid supporter.

Can Musk Be Stopped?
A high profile lawsuit by Public Citizen takes aim at the DOGE takeover at Treasury.

There’s a lot of activity by both Trump and his co-president Elon Musk these days, and it can feel overwhelming. Every time we turn around, there’s some new horror. (Wait, Trump wants the U.S. to take over Gaza?!)

Our natural inclination when bombarded with so much is to curl up, cover our heads and hope it ends soon. Rather than give in to this impulse, however, I want to help chart a path through. To do that, we need to prioritize among the many assaults upon our system and understand clearly what is being done and how we can help.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this. To my mind, the greatest threat right now is this: Elon Musk and his goons have taken over critical payment systems at the Treasury Department. This is a DEFCON 1 moment for our government. An unaccountable private citizen, who is also the world’s richest man acting under authority of a would-be dictator, apparently has admin—not just read-only—access to the very lifeline of our Republic: the money.

With such access, Musk has effective control over trillions of dollars of payments each year, and he could terminate some or even all of these at the flip of a switch. This includes our entire social safety net of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps. This puts tens of millions of American who rely on government support at great risk. Already he is threatening to selectively determine which programs are “wasteful” and cut off the money to them.


When I first heard about the lawsuit, the first question I had was, “What’s the legal hook?” By this I mean, what specific laws were broken, and under what statute or law would a court have the power to step in with an injunction?

That’s what I want to cover today. It’s important that we’re all on the same page about our rights as recipients of federal money and payers of federal taxes, and how Musk and DOGE have violated those rights and must be brought to heel.

The relevant facts

I want to first lay out the facts as alleged in the complaint and as updated with a bit of what we’ve learned since.

On the day of his inauguration, Trump issued an Executive Order that renamed the U.S. Digital Service a “temporary organization” called the U.S. DOGE Service (same acronym of USDS). Agency heads were directed to “take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems.”

Note the key words “to the maximum extent consistent with law,” a concept I’ll address later. If DOGE is not acting consistent with the law, then they are also outside of what this EO permits. Note also the word “unclassified,” which will matter more in other cases involving classified records at USAID. If DOGE gained access to classified matters, it is also outside the authority of the EO. But that’s a subject for another time.

Though Trump did not formally name Musk as the USDS Administrator, his leadership of DOGE is a matter of numerous public statements by Trump. , Not to mention, Musk has been acting like the administrator, so it’s really Musk we’re talking about here, as well as the people he has brought in from the private sector to help him carry out his takeover.

Sometime after Trump was elected, and continuing through his inauguration, DOGE reps approached Treasury Department officials seeking access to the payment system. A lifelong civil servant at the Fiscal Services Bureau named David Lebryk heroically refused that access. After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was confirmed by the Senate, he met with Lebryk and put him on administrative leave. Lebryk then announced his retirement after 35 years of service.

On Friday, January 31, 2025, Bessent granted DOGE reps full access to the federal payment system. Musk brought in his people, which included a cadre of young programmers barely out of high school, and they took over the system entirely. They immediately had access to view the personal, private information of tens of millions of recipients as well as the tax return information of tens of millions of federal taxpayers.

But it went beyond merely having access to such confidential and private information. A report by Wired magazine confirmed that the DOGE group acquired not just “read-only” access but actual “admin” privileges to the entire payment system and are busily rewriting code on it. Musk himself indicated on Twitter that “the @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down” certain “illegal payments.”

That’s right: An unelected man is making decisions about which congressionally authorized payments should go through and which intended recipients should and should not receive the money they were promised.
...

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall reported yesterday, the DOGE team at Treasury...

Phrases like “freaking out” are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changes are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., a not-live environment) but have already been pushed into production.

I’m going to set aside the constitutional question of separation of powers for the moment. There are other cases addressing the big question of which branch of government, the executive or the legislative, gets to decide what to do with our tax money. The long-settled answer is that Congress holds the purse strings, and so it should be the case that Trump can’t just order the flow of money to stop, nor can someone like Musk do so on his behalf.

But here, Musk hasn’t actually done that yet. What he’s done instead is gain access to the information and has threatened to shut off payments. The injury to the public by Musk and DOGE, at least so far, is to our legal rights over our private financial information.

The Public Citizen lawsuit gets to the heart of this by alleging violations of the Privacy Act.

The Privacy Act was passed in 1974 and governs the collection, maintenance, use and dissemination of personal identifiers. We’re familiar with most of these. They are the kinds of things we’re taught never to give out to strangers, such as your name, date of birth and social security number. Generally when people try to get these from you, they’re trying to rob your identity or steal from you.

The Privacy Act, as the Public Citizen complaint notes, protects sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse, including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it.

The specific language of the statute prevents the disclosure of an individual’s record to any person or other agency unless the individual to whom the record pertains consents or some kind of statutory exception applies. Because there was no consent given in this case, the only question is whether some kind of exception kicks in.

The complaint notes two of those exceptions, NEITHER of which apply to non-employees of the Treasury like DOGE who have no official duties:

“those officers and employees of the agency which maintains the record who have a need for the record in the performance of their duties”; or

the “routine use” of the records as described in the agency’s “System of Records Notice” or “SORN.”

The Treasury’s SORN, last updated and published in February 2020, covers at least three kinds of records that are sensitive and private: payment records, debts to the government, and electronic payments to the Federal Government. With respect to these, the SORN specifies that “routine use” refers only to “employees whose official duties require access are allowed to view, administer, and control these records.”

These records can’t be for the “routine use” by DOGE members, who aren’t employees with official duties at Treasury.

SORN are taken very seriously from a transparency standpoint. If an agency wants to make any change to its SORN, it must prepare a notice in the Federal Register “of the existence and character of the system of records.” And at least 30 days before publishing a SORN, an agency must “publish in the Federal Register notice of any new use or intended use of the information in the system, and provide an opportunity for interested persons to submit written data, views, or arguments to the agency.”

That of course didn’t happen here either.

IRS information:

The Treasury is subject to the confidentiality requirements of the Internal Revenue Code, which are laid out by statute at 26 U.S.C. § 6103. That section provides that “[r]eturns and return information shall be confidential” and cannot be disclosed by a federal officer and employee unless authorized by statute. As with the Privacy Act, the officers and employees of the Treasury Department may access return and return information if their “official duties require such inspection or disclosure for tax administration purposes.”

Again, not applicable to the DOGE crew.

The power to stop this

It’s one thing for defendants to be found in violation of the Privacy Act and the Internal Revenue Code for having granted Musk and DOGE access to our payments systems and all the personal sensitive financial information within them.

It’s another to take that violation and turn it into something the court can act upon.

Thankfully, Congress thought of this, too. In a general sense, the government is supposed to act by way of established administrative procedures. So it’s not surprising that there’s something called the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that specifies what can happen when they don’t.

Under the APA, courts are empowered to set aside agency actions that are unlawful, arbitrary, capricious or an abuse of discretion. If the court agrees that the takeover was any of these, it can order the Treasury to shut off access to the federal payment system to Musk and his team. In their complaint, the plaintiffs have alleged facts and laid out a solid legal foundation for why the takeover was all these bad things. From there the court can issue an injunction.

I was hoping by yesterday to hear that the plaintiffs have moved for a preliminary injunction. This is especially true now that Musk has ratcheted up his dangerous rhetoric and a planned migration of the system is set to occur this weekend, raising the risk of system failure given all the new code that was illegally added recently. As a bit of a legal primer, recall that a preliminary injunction will issue if the plaintiffs demonstrate a high probability of success on the merits, there is a risk of irreparable harm should an injunction not issue, the “balance of equities” comparing the harm to the plaintiffs versus the harm to the defendants, and if the injunction serves the public interest.

The law is on the plaintiffs’ side, and the whole nation is at risk because of the defendants’ actions. And when you think about it, for defendants, what real harm is there in preventing DOGE from having access while the case proceeds? That Musk won’t be able to cancel some more funding illegally? An injunction would maintain the status quo ante, which reduces the harm all around and serves the public interest.

While the parties prepare to battle it out in court, the public response is growing. Opponents of Musk and DOGE held a large rally outside the Treasury Department yesterday evening, where many members of Congress spoke out against this coup by the broligarchs. In government topplings of years past, takeovers involved seizure of government properties including TV stations and military command centers.

In the coups of today, the takeovers instead involve control of computer and payment systems, which would allow the plotters to hold the nation hostage and usurp power from other branches of government. This is precisely what has already happened as the executive has sought to impound congressionally authorized funds.

A federal district judge has yet to weigh in on the specific crisis at the Treasury, but it likely won’t be long before one does. Given the factual record, the applicable law, and the risk of real harm to the country, a preliminary injunction is probable in my view.

But what if this administration ignores the court’s decision? So far, the White House hasn’t demonstrated any willingness to defy a court order, choosing instead to rescind unconstitutional memos while still hollowly claiming victory. And it may not be willing to take things too far to help out Elon Musk, whose overreaching and bluster already threatens to outshine Trump’s.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, hopefully before Musk has burned it down. If you’d like to help Public Citizen right now in its courageous fight to save our democracy, you can donate using this link. https://donate.citizen.org/page/59137/donate/1?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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AOC is correct that Trump is very much like the Wizard Oz — a great deal of his power is in the myth. Ezra Klein says for Trump to be the King he wants to be — he needs us to believe he has that power. Ezra's encouragement: Don't believe him. (The Irish Prime Minister said it another way, in response to Trump's floating the atrocious idea of seizing Gaza, "I always adopt the approach when it comes to the U.S. administration of: judge them based on what they do and not what they say.")

Our federal government is gone - for now

Letters from an American, Feb. 3, 2025 (my title above)

Billionaire Elon Musk’s team yesterday took control of the Treasury’s payment system, thus essentially gaining access to the checkbook with which the United States handles about $6 trillion annually and to all the financial information of Americans and American businesses with it. Apparently, it did not stop there.

Today Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press reported that yesterday two top security officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) tried to stop people associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing classified information they did not have security clearance to see. The Trump administration put the officials on leave, and the DOGE team gained access to the information.

Vittoria Elliott of Wired has identified those associated with Musk’s takeover as six “engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college.” They are connected either to Musk or to his long-time associate Peter Thiel, who backed J.D. Vance’s Senate run eighteen months before he became Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Their names are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran, and they have little to no experience in government.

Public policy expert Dan Moynihan told reporter Elliott that the fact these people “are not really public officials” makes it hard for Congress to intervene. “So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world,” he said. Law professor Nick Bednar noted that “it is very unlikely” that the engineers “have the expertise to understand either the law or the administration needs that surround these agencies.”

After Musk’s team breached the USAID computers, cybersecurity specialist Matthew Garrett posted: “Random computers being plugged into federal networks is obviously terrifying in terms of what data they're deliberately accessing, but it's also terrifying because it implies controls are being disabled—unmanaged systems should never have access to this data. Who else has access to those systems?”

USAID receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Intelligence agencies must now assume U.S. intelligence systems are insecure.

Musk’s response was to post: “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” Also last night, according to Sam Stein of The Bulwark, “the majority of staff in the legislative and public affairs bureau lost access to their emails, implying they’ve been put on admin leave although this was never communicated to them.”

Congress established USAID in 1961 to bring together the many different programs that were administering foreign aid. Focusing on long-term socioeconomic development, USAID has a budget of more than $50 billion, less than 1% of the U.S. annual budget. It is one of the largest aid agencies in the world.

Musk is unelected, and it appears that DOGE has no legal authority. As political scientist Seth Masket put it in tusk: “Elon Musk is not a federal employee, nor has he been appointed by the President nor approved by the Senate to have any leadership role in government. The ‘Department of Government Efficiency,’ announced by Trump in a January 20th executive order, is not truly any sort of government department or agency, and even the executive order uses quotes in the title. It’s perfectly fine to have a marketing gimmick like this, but DOGE does not have power over established government agencies, and Musk has no role in government. It does not matter that he is an ally of the President. Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup.”

DOGE has simply taken over government systems. Musk, using President Donald Trump’s name, is personally deciding what he thinks should be cut from the U.S. government.

Today, Musk reposted a social media post from MAGA religious extremist General Mike Flynn, who resigned from his position as Trump’s national security advisor in 2017 after pleading guilty to secret conversations with a Russian agent—for which Trump pardoned him—and who publicly embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory. In today’s post, Flynn complained about “the ‘Lutheran’ faith” and, referring to federal grants provided to Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations, said, “this use of ‘religion’ as a money laundering operation must end.” Musk added: “The [DOGE] team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”

In fact, this is money appropriated by Congress, and its payment is required by law. Republican lawmakers have pushed government subsidies and grants toward religious organizations for years, and Lutheran Social Services is one of the largest employers in South Dakota, where it operates senior living facilities.

South Dakota is the home of Senate majority leader John Thune, who has not been a strong Trump supporter, as well as Homeland Security secretary nominee Kristi Noem.

The news that DOGE has taken over U.S. government computers is not the only bombshell this weekend.

Another is that Trump has declared a trade war with the top trading partners of the United States: Mexico, Canada, and China. Although his first administration negotiated the current trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, on Saturday Trump broke the terms of that treaty.

He slapped tariffs of 25% on goods coming from Mexico and Canada, tariffs of 10% on Canadian energy, and tariffs of 10% on goods coming from China. He said he was doing so to force Mexico and Canada to do more about undocumented migration and drug trafficking, but while precursor chemicals to make fentanyl come from China and undocumented migrants come over the southern border with Mexico, Canada accounts for only about 1% of both. Further, Trump has diverted Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents combating drug trafficking to his immigration sweeps.

As soon as he took office, Trump designated Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and on Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded that “all options will be on the table” when a Fox News Channel host asked if the military will strike within Mexico. Today Trump was clearer: he posted on social media that without U.S. trade—which Trump somehow thinks is a “massive subsidy”—“Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada—AND NO TARIFFS!”

Trump inherited the best economy in the world from his predecessor, President Joe Biden, but on Friday, as soon as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump would levy the tariffs, the stock market plunged. Trump, who during his campaign insisted that tariffs would boost the economy, today said that Americans could feel “SOME PAIN” from them. He added “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.” Tonight, stock market futures dropped 450 points before trading opens tomorrow.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum wrote, “We categorically reject the White House’s slander that the Mexican government has alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any intention of meddling in our territory,” and has promised retaliatory tariffs. China noted that it has been working with the U.S. to regulate precursor chemicals since 2019 and said it would sue the U.S. before the World Trade Organization.

Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau announced more than $100 billion in retaliatory 25% tariffs and then spoke directly to Americans. Echoing what economists have said all along, Trudeau warned that tariffs would cost jobs, raise prices, and limit the precious metals necessary for U.S. security. But then he turned from economics to principles.

“As President John F. Kennedy said many years ago,” Trudeau began, “geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends, economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies.” He noted that “from the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar,” Canadians “have “fought and died alongside you.”

“During the summer of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged your great city of New Orleans, or mere weeks ago when we sent water bombers to tackle the wildfires in California. During the day, the world stood still—Sept. 11, 2001—when we provided refuge to stranded passengers and planes, we were always there, standing with you, grieving with you, the American people.

“Together, we’ve built the most successful economic, military and security partnership the world has ever seen. A relationship that has been the envy of the world…. Unfortunately, the actions taken today by the White House split us apart instead of bringing us together.”

Trudeau said Canada’s response would “be far reaching and include everyday items such as American beer, wine and bourbon, fruits and fruit juices, including orange juice, along with vegetables, perfume, clothing and shoes. It’ll include major consumer products like household appliances, furniture and sports equipment, and materials like lumber and plastics, along with much, much more. He assured Canadians: “[W]e are all in this together. The Canadian government, Canadian businesses, Canadian organized labour, Canadian civil society, Canada’s premiers, and tens of millions of Canadians from coast to coast to coast are aligned and united. This is Team Canada at its best.”

Canadian provincial leaders said they were removing alcohol from Republican-dominated states, and Canadian member of parliament Charlie Angus noted that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario buys more wine by dollar value than any other organization in the world and that Canada is the number one export market for Kentucky spirits. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario has stopped all purchases of American beer, wine, and spirits, turning instead to allies and local producers. Canada’s Irving Oil, which provides heating oil to New England, has already told customers that prices will reflect the tariffs.

In a riveting piece today, in his Thinking about…, scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder wrote that “[t]he people who now dominate the executive branch of the government…are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation.” “Think of the federal government as a car,” he wrote. “You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.”

On Friday, James E. Dennehy of the FBI’s New York field office told his staff that they are “in a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy.” He vowed that he, anyway, is going to “dig in.” 

Thank you Heather Cox Richardson for Letters from an American, Feb. 3, 2025

Closer to home.

 Is North Carolina being played by Elon Musk and the PAC he's behind for Trump?

Here's an article (August 7, 2024)  about state agencies investigating this.

  Multiple state agencies are looking into...

On Facebook a few weeks ago, there was a clarification that certain links to supposedly register you to vote, were fake. They only collected your information. I'm always glad when smart Facebook readers catch these things.

That's the action  that is being investigated by the following:

“North Carolina law makes it a crime for someone to fail to submit a voter’s registration form if that person has told a voter that they would be submitting the voter’s registration form,” elections board spokesman Pat Gannon said.

 America PAC is backed by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who tops the Forbes list of world billionaires, as well as several other wealthy tech industry insiders. The group didn’t provide a statement when reached for comment.

Gannon said the elections board itself doesn’t have the power to file criminal charges but could refer the case for prosecution, depending on what its investigation discovers.

 The North Carolina Department of Justice is also looking into America PAC but has yet to begin a formal investigation, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Josh Stein confirmed this week.

Stein, a Democrat, is running for governor this year. The state elections board is also led by a Democratic majority. And the complaint into America PAC and its pro-Trump activities that kicked off the investigation was filed by a Democratic activist from western North Carolina, David Wheeler (who leads a liberal PAC called American Muckrakers)

 

So I say again, watch the puppet masters of the Republican party...among whom are many billionaires looking out for their interests. Are there puppet masters in the Democratic party? I imagine so, but the thrust of their campaign is to retain the constitutionally designed democratic republic that we currently have... i.e. democracy.

Remember the cliche' "Follow the Money."

Incidentally, tRump will be appearing in Asheville NC today. Downtown has closed lots of roads near the convention center. Considering Asheville is known to be a liberal blue town, I'm quite certain lots of MAGA folks from around the county will appear. Of course I'll stay away!

But I do hope the Blue Wave people have a counter-demonstration outside the talk! And I can't wait to see what our local news shows. On the local news last night, the local Democratic headquarters said they are not planning any demonstration. The news still showed a clip from the last time tRump came to Asheville, there were angry protestors going against each other. The city of Asheville says nobody has asked for a permit to have a demonstration.

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And another footnote, I watched CBS's Sunday evening show "Sixty Minutes" finally last night, and there were some interview clips with Biden. Biden quoted Trump at one point. And the show cut away from the interviewer completely with a "correction that Trump made to that quote later." This smacks of how our news is so bent due to Trump's minion's heavy hands. I shouted at my TV! Incidentally, (loving that word) I don't know if the splice was done by CBS or by local TV editors...anything is possible.

_________________

And today is also the anniversary of Social Security! Thank you Frances Perkins! (See Letters from an American today!)

Today's quote:

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. -Peter Singer, philosopher and professor of bioethics (b. 6 Jul 1946)

Private rich citizen makes his own decisions about war in Ukraine...

Something I didn't know...and hope you want to know...

and please read to the last to see update

The following text is from "Letters from an American," Sept 9, 2023

On Thursday, excerpts from a forthcoming biography of Elon Musk by historian Walter Isaacson revealed that Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off [Starlink] coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast” after learning that the Ukrainian military was sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives at the Russian naval fleet based in Crimea. After talking to Russian leaders, who said they would respond with nuclear weapons—later events suggest this was a bluff—Musk shut off Starlink, the drone submarines lost the connectivity they needed to find their targets, and the weapons simply washed ashore.** (NOTE BELOW COMMENT REGARDING THIS)

According to Isaacson, Ukrainian officials begged Musk to turn the coverage back on, but he refused, saying that Ukraine “is now going too far and inviting strategic defeat.” He told U.S. and Russian officials that he wanted Starlink to be used only for defense. Then he offered a “peace plan” that required Ukraine to give up territory to Russia and reject plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Later, he again disabled Starlink coverage in the midst of a Ukrainian advance.

Isaacson portrays Musk as frustrated by being dragged into a war. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” Musk told Isaacson. “It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.” Since the story broke, Musk has defended his unwillingness to be in the middle of a war.

But Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, pointed out on Musk’s own social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that the same Russian fleet Musk protected went on to fire missiles at Ukrainian cities, killing civilians, including children. Russia is also attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure for exporting grain, which threatens the price and availability of food in Africa.

The privatization of the functions of government in the U.S. has given a single man the power to affect global affairs, working, in this case, against the stated objectives of our own government. Republican leaders eager to push that privatization have made their case by turning voters against taxes, although the tax cuts put in place since 1981 overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and corporations, permitting a few individuals to amass fortunes: Forbes, for example, estimates Musk’s net worth at $251.3 billion.

On Friday the Internal Revenue Service announced that increased federal funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and the help of artificial intelligence will enable a new push to go after 1,600 millionaires who owe at least $250,000 and 75 large businesses with assets of about $10 billion apiece that owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the plan “goes to the heart of Democrats’ effort to ensure the wealthiest are paying their fair share.” It also goes to the heart of the idea that billionaires must not be able to impose their will on the rest of us by virtue of their monopolization of key aspects of our infrastructure. Still, Republicans continue to argue for private investment according to market forces. Opposing taxes and the government programs they fund, they have clawed back as much of the new funding for the IRS as they have been able, and they continue to call for more cuts.

This week, as a fight over funding the government by the end of the month looms, the implications of the parties’ different visions of government could not be clearer. "

Heather Cox Richardson

** NOTE UPDATE from CBS Sunday Morning interview with Isaacson, correcting the earlier statement..."In fact, as Isaacson has acknowledged, that's not quite what happened. Starlink wasn't running in that region in the first place," says interviewer, David Pogue, "but when Ukraine asked for service there, Musk did decline to activate it." Sept. 10, 2023 interview.