Saturday 23rd of November 2024
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the fox in charge of the henhouse?......


Putting Elon Musk in charge of the new US Department of Government Efficiency is problematic. Can the richest man on Earth avoid conflicts of interest while heading the charge to cut government spending?

A lot has been written about the budding friendship between President-elect Donald Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk.

 

Musk and Trump: Ethical concerns and conflicts of interest
Timothy Rooks

 

What seemed like a strange pairing has turned into a job opportunity for Musk and, in the past week, the two have been seen together in Palm Beach, Florida, ringside at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York and eating McDonald's on a jet.

Before the election, Trump announced he would put the South Africa-born Tesla CEO in charge of a government efficiency commission. Last week, Trump made it more concrete and confirmed the new agency will be called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

What is Musk's new job?

Since it will be a new agency, no one really knows what it will do and what authority it will have. In the end, it will likely be a small advisory group that operates outside of the government without any real regulatory authority. What it is likely to have is influence and a loud mouthpiece in the form of Musk.

The Department of Government Efficiency aims to slash the US federal budget — which totals roughly $6.8 trillion (€6.4 trillion) in fiscal 2024 — by $2 trillion in an effort to permanently downsize the federal government, cutting bureaucracy, regulations and wasteful expenditures.

Though Musk is known for cutting costs at his own businesses, reducing federal spending will be a big challenge. The project is supposed to wrap up by July 2026.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.dw.com/en/elon-musks-role-in-future-trump-administration-raises-ethical-concerns-conflicts-of-interest/a-70809011

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without the US navy…”

         Gus Leonisky

cutting the fat....

Billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are sharing details about how their newly created Department of Government Efficiency — which isn't an official government department — plans to take aim at paring federal spending, with the two writing in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Wednesday that they are aiming to cut $500 billion in annual spending.

The announcement of DOGE has raised a host of questions, from whether Musk and Ramaswamy will have the authority to make changes in federal spending, typically controlled by Congress, as well as the group's powers and how it will operate. Musk and Ramaswamy provided answers to some of those questions in their opinion piece, arguing that President-elect Donald Trump has the authority to cut spending authorized by Congress. 

While Musk and Ramaswamy said they "expect to prevail" in cutting costs, there have been plenty of examples throughout the decades of efforts aimed at reining in federal spending, which have had only limited results. For instance, President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s tapped businessman J. Peter Grace to recommend reforms, resulting in about 2,500 recommendations for cutting spending, most of which were never implemented. 

Musk has suggested slicing $2 trillion in annual federal spending, an amount experts say is unrealistic given that most of the nation's $6.7 trillion in yearly outlays is spent on Social Security, Medicare and the military. 

But in the Wednesday opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that their initial aim will be to cut "the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/musk-ramaswamy-doge-500-billion-spending-where-they-will-cut/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without the US navy…”

         Gus Leonisky