Will Musk be the next Trump?

[Tero]

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday that Amy Gleason is the administrator for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
Gleason, a top Musk adviser, is a former official at the U.S. Digital Service.

[Brian Peacock]

Thunderf00t again

TFoot is good at pointing out the silliness and stupidity, and at sneering of course, but he's not convincing anybody who isn't already convinced and he isn't offering a perspective that goes beyond "Musk is an incompetent hypocrite." Which might be true in some respects, but still seems to be working for him. At the end of the day DOGE isn't really about Elon - he's just the brand ambassador.

[Tero]

Eficiency in IRS by firing tax collecting staff. In the only modern and efficient department in the gov't

At the behest of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, the IRS reportedly plans to lay off up to 6,700 employees, and the cull began last Thursday. Those affected include over 5,000 workers handling auditing and collections, despite assurances from IRS managers that positions critical to tax filing season have not been impacted. Many of them are probationary employees who have been working for the federal government for less than a year and are not entitled to severance.
The Biden administration showed that investing in the US Internal Revenue Service can be a boon to tax revenues, hiring new agents — and focusing enforcement on the highest earners.

The layoffs might only be the beginning: Trump has also proposed the creation of an “External Revenue Service” funded by tariffs, reportedly with the intention of replacing the IRS. It sounds far-fetched, and Trump famously floats a lot of extreme ideas that never come to fruition. But any further significant reduction in the IRS workforce, however, could lead to a corresponding decline in tax collections — especially among the wealthiest Americans who have recently been targeted for tax enforcement.

...But in the 2023-2024 leap,

much of the increase came from enforcement activities against people making over $400,000 per year, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. That suggests that stepped-up IRS enforcement played a prominent role.

The agency collected about $1.1 billion from just 1,600 of those wealthiest Americans with unpaid tax debts in fiscal year 2024, up from $38 million the year before. That money was only recovered because the IRS finally had the required staffing levels to investigate, helping to make some progress in closing an estimated $696 billion gap in unpaid US taxes.

None of that has proved enough for the Trump administration to save the jobs of the thousands of IRS workers now facing layoffs. Reducing the IRS workforce at a time when revenues and efficiency have been increasing may ultimately backfire

https://www.vox.com/politics/401578/mus ... um=bluesky

[JimC]

Trump assisting the mega rich to reduce their taxes? Say it ain't so!

[Brian Peacock]

Trump assisting the wealth creators to reduce their taxes? Say it ain't so!

[Svartalf]

they don't create the wealth, they just funnel it to their own bank accounts

[pErvinalia]

Marxist!

[Svartalf]

I prefer to be a revolutionary marxist than to just wait for them to tinkle on me

[Tero]

Musk finally finds corruption. It is Jamie Raskin. An outfit working the now removed USAID had an office in his district. Politicians are crooks, so Raskin got some of the 160 million funneled to Global Communities to be sent as so called "aid."
https://raskin.house.gov/2025/2/raskin- ... -elon-musk

[Tero]

Musk was on Joe Rogan promising to take my social security.
https://bsky.app/profile/esa88jarvi.bsk ... efiamj722j

[Tero]

Links to DOGE accomplishments.
https://www.emptywheel.net/portfolio-it ... debunking/

[Tero]

[L'Emmerdeur]

Musk is a perfect fit for the Trump White House. Contemptuous malevolence and deep, abiding dishonesty.

'DOGE Tries to Do Math Again and Makes $86B Mistake'

It is just not adding up for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The controversial service updated its “wall of receipts” Sunday and now claims to have saved U.S. taxpayers an “estimated” $105 billion—yet, its own website tallies a much smaller number.

DOGE’s three savings groups add up to approximately $19 billion, by its own count, with an estimated savings of $8 billion for canceled contracts, $10 billion for nixed grants, and $660 million for terminated leases. This, by DOGE’s math, has somehow saved $652.17 per U.S. taxpayer—another figure that appears to be vastly inflated.

Musk’s team has been watched with an especially critical eye since its debut receipts wall was riddled with errors last month—most notably that it was claiming to have recouped $8 billion in savings by nixing a DEI contract actually worth just $8 million.

DOGE quickly amended that mistake and others, but is yet to provide answers for why its “estimated savings” are so much higher than what they can show proof for on its website, which updates receipts weekly but promises to soon update in “real-time.”

A bombshell report in The New York Times revealed this weekend that DOGE has been claiming credit for contract cancelations that are decades old in some cases. Among those briefly on DOGE’s site: $53.7 million in claimed savings for a U.S. Coast Guard contract that was canceled in 2005 when George W. Bush was president.

The Times alleged DOGE has been removing erroneous “savings” from its wall of receipts just to replace the mess-ups with new errors. While the growing number of contracts is daunting for the average American to scrutinize, the mistakes are not getting past experts who have long tracked government spending, like Lisa Shea Mundt from The Pulse of GovCon consulting firm.

“These are not savings,” she told the Times. “The money’s been spent. Period. Point blank.”

[Tero]

Even though Elon is getting a profit, the issue with a transgender child turned him into Evil Elon.

Why does Elon Musk support Trump?
For a long time Mr Musk, who became a US citizen in 2002, resisted efforts to label his politics - calling himself "half-Democrat, half-Republican", "politically moderate" and "independent".

He says he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and - reluctantly - Joe Biden, all of them Democrats.

But in recent years he's swung behind Donald Trump, who is a Republican.

Musk told media company the Daily Wire his transgender daughter was "killed" by transitioning, and that he "vowed to destroy the woke mind virus". He is now estranged from his daughter.

Musk officially endorsed Trump for a second term in 2024 after his attempted assassination and became one of the campaign's foremost backers and influencers.

He became critical of the Democrat party's stance on a number of issues, including the economy, immigration and gun control - decrying many of its policies as "woke".

Mr Musk also repeatedly claimed that freedom of speech, enshrined in the first amendment of the US Constitution, would be under threat with another Democrat government.

He appeared at several Republican rallies in the run-up to the election, raised millions to fund a political action committee to help re-elect Trump, and frequently voiced his support for Trump in posts on X.

Mr Musk's America Super PAC also ran a controversial $1m giveaway to voters in battleground states in the last weeks of the campaign.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61234231

[NineBerry]

I don't believe it is the main reason. Just one of many aspects,