"Musk and Trump’s focus on fraud is nothing new. Fraud has always served as a powerful political trope, one that provides a rationale for cutting government. Accusations of fraud were used to discredit Black elected officials during Reconstruction. Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen was an especially effective trope directed against poverty-based policies."

~ Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan

#Musk #Trump #FederalGovernment #fraud #firings #workers #billionaires
/1

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/musks-fraudulent-fraud-squad

"A recent poll suggests that 70% of Americans believe government expenditures are filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency....

The GOP is now broadly using the fraud trope to justify cutting any popular program. Medicaid is up next."

#Musk #Trump #FederalGovernment #fraud #firings #workers #billionaires #EconomicElites #TaxCuts #Medicaid
/2

"Musk's 'fraud' rhetoric is presented as an anti-politics, as something fresh and exciting. But it is in fact a politics, a very old sort, the politics of oligarchy. As he himself has made clear himself, Musk is a politician with a program. It is to disable the rule of law, leaving no barriers to his oligarchical power. In this scheme, the only parts of government meant to function are the ones used to silence people who point out this obvious truth."

#Musk #Trump #fraud #LawandOrder
/4

James Fallows focuses on how Musk-Trump's bogus fraud claims are justifying cutting vital programs that took years to develop, and people will end up dying as a result. A case in point: "the sudden attack on part of the invisible infrastructure that has kept air travelers so safe in the skies."

"Before last month’s helicopter-airliner collision over the Potomac, the US had gone nearly 16 years without a major airline crash."

#Musk #Trump #firings #AirSafety #FAA
/5

https://fallows.substack.com/p/they-were-careless-people-taking

"An American Airlines flight arriving at Ronald Reagan National Airport was forced to abort its landing to avoid another aircraft Tuesday, officials said, less than a month after a midair collision killed 67 people near the same airport and roughly 90 minutes before another close call between a passenger plane and a private jet in Chicago."

~ CNN

#Musk #Trump #firings #workers #AirSafety #FAA
/6

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/us/reagan-national-american-airlines-go-around/index.html

@wdlindsy
This close call story or that other close call story, I can't keep up.