This is a sickening article that appeared in The Irish Times about a meeting on Capitol Hill between Congressional leaders and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Why is it sickening? It shows our elected Congressional leaders preening and groveling in the presence of the world’s richest man and a man who is only very rich.
Why an article from The Irish Times? My good friend and executive director of the Network for Public Education Carol Burris is spending the holidays there and sent it to me.
As you read the article, you can feel the obsequiousness that these elected officials are expressing as they wait for the phony Department of Government Efficiency to tell them what to cut.
“Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote,” reported Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who offered a beaming smile that suggested she knew which list she’d be making. “And how we’re spending American people’s money. I think that would be fantastic.”
One wonders what Ted Kennedy or Henry Clay or Lyndon Johnson, during their Senate years, would have made of two billionaires with zero political experience or authority, breezing into the Capitol and explaining to them they had a chance to make the nice list.
Speaker Johnson promised that Thursday’s meetings will be the first of many visits by Musk and Ramaswamy. “We believe it’s a historic moment for the country and these two gentlemen are going to help us navigate through this exciting day. Elon and Vivek don’t need much of an introduction here in Congress for certain and I think most of the public know what they are capable of and have achieved.
“They are innovators and forward thinkers and that’s what we need right now. We are laying the new ground rules for the new Congress in the new year, and we are going to see a lot of change here in Washington of the way things are run. That is what this whole Doge effort is about.”
Should they cut Social Security? Medicare? Veterans’ Healthcare? Grants for higher education? Title 1? Headstart?
Everything is on their chopping block.
How many civil servants will they seek to terminate?
Musk cut 80% of the staff at Twitter. Will he aim to lay off a huge percentage of the people who keep government running?
Musk tweeted a few days ago that government “should be rule by democracy, not rule by bureaucracy.”
How is it democratic to allow two unelected oligarchs to decide which programs should be eliminated? Why do Elon and Vivek–who will never need Medicare or Social Security–get to decide whether the rest of us can keep the programs that we rely on? If they get their way, there will be more people dying of health conditions that could been treated, more seniors eating cat food for dinner.
The politicians eagerly await their marching orders.
Sickening.
