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Elon Musk and the American Spirit
Democrats see Elon Musk's trillion dollar fortune as a problem to be taxed. They're missing the bigger picture.
Center Right
RealClearPolitics - Homepage
Is It Bad That Elon Musk Has a Trillion Dollars? Yes
Center Right
Just as the 'poverty line' determines what's required for basic living, we need a 'wealth line' to show when extreme wealth becomes harmful, says economist and philosopher Ingrid Robeyns
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The Dispatch
Team Capitalism, Not Team Elon
The SpaceX IPO has made him a trillionaire, for now. But he’s not ‘hoarding’ wealth.
Center Right
The New Republic
Senate GOP Moves to Blow Taxpayers Dollars on Pointless DOD Move
The Senate is moving to officially green-light Donald Trump’s expensive rebrand for the Department of Defense.Buried deep in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s annual defense authorization Tuesday was a measure to redesignate the Department of Defense as the “Department of War.” The measure would also change the titles and acronyms for the secretary of war, assistant secretary, and under secretary, as well as the names of other programs and offices that use the word “defense.” Another clause would ensure that all laws, documents, and records referring to the department or secretary of defense would be understood to apply to the secretary of war. Of course, the Trump administration has already been using its own made-up name for months. So Pete Hegseth is sure to have his new desk placard already.The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated that a statutory name change implemented throughout the department could cost up to $125 million in taxpayer dollars. Trump has made it clear he’s willing to spend millions to make the United States look tough—but in reality, the president appears to be caving to our country’s purported enemies. As The New Republic’s Indigo Olivier pointed out: Trump’s rebrand may be stupid and expensive, but at least it’s honest.
Left
Democracy Now!
Major Antiracist Rally Held in Belfast to Condemn Anti-Immigrant Riots Egged On by Elon Musk
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman is in Belfast, where several days of racist riots have targeted immigrants and ethnic minorities with violence, threats and property destruction. It is the third consecutive summer of organized mob violence against immigrants in Northern Ireland, with roots in the extant paramilitary structures that remain there after decades of sectarian warfare. Our broadcast from the Northern Ireland capital features guests Sinéad Marmion, an immigration lawyer, and Patrick Corrigan, the Northern Ireland director of Amnesty International UK. Both were among the tens of thousands who attended a recent rally in Belfast condemning racism and standing in solidarity with immigrants. “The vast majority of people in Belfast, as across Northern Ireland, are antiracist and very welcoming to the people who have come here to make their lives from around the world,” says Corrigan. “We wanted to send, most importantly, a message to them, to say, 'You are welcome. This is your city. This is your home, just as much as it is ours.'” As mob violence drives residents from their homes and leaves many fearing for their lives, “it’s the community that has picked up the pieces. It’s women in the community, it’s migrant women in the community, that have organized and mobilized the response. And our authorities have been left wanting,” says Marmion. “We have political parties that are stoking the flames and encouraging what they call a 'legitimate concern on immigration,' … and the conversation, resultingly, is always toxic.”
Far Left
Raw Story
Economist warns Musk's trillionaire fortune is a 'grave threat' to democracy worldwide
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last week, and now a prominent economist is warning that his unprecedented wealth poses a grave threat to human freedom in the US and across the globe.In a column published by The Guardian on Tuesday, Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman argued that Musk’s enormous fortune is fundamentally at odds with a democratic system of governance because it gives him “the power to stifle competition, the power to shape public discourse, the power to influence policymaking, the power to buy elections, the power to stall social progress,” and much else.Zucman noted that wealth concentration is even greater now than it was during the original Gilded Age, as the top 0.00001% now have fortunes large enough to “buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US.”The economist added that while Musk—whose infamous destruction of the US Agency for International Development is projected to kill millions of people in the coming years—makes a particularly compelling villain, trillionaires would be a major problem for democracy even if they were of a more benevolent variety.“No one should want to live in a society where one single individual can be worth $1 trillion, no matter their personal virtues,” Zucman emphasized. “Such levels invariably skew power, distort markets, and sap our democratic ideals.”The best solution to this crisis, Zucman said, is to “create an unavoidable minimum tax on their wealth” that will “make it impossible for the super-rich to pay less tax than middle-class workers—a matter of basic equality before the law.”“It is time to break decisively with the perverse logic in which retirees, the poor, or immigrants are expected to balance the budget,” Zucman concluded, “while the rich are to be allowed to live tax-free in their own parallel society. There cannot be a law more lenient for the rich and powerful than for the rest of us. If ever there was a time to act, it is now.”Zucman’s thoughts on extreme wealth and democracy were echoed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who on Tuesday published an essay on his Substack page where he likened President Donald Trump’s White House cage-fighting matches to the kinds of spectacles put on by Roman emperors before noting ominous similarities between the US today and the Roman Empire.“While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex,” Krugman wrote, “there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar?”Gautam Mukunda, a professor at the Yale School of Management, similarly warned that Musk’s newly minted trillionaire status was bad news for American self-governance.In a Monday column published by Bloomberg, Mukunda pointed to the vast sums of money being spent by billionaires in US elections, which he noted “dwarf what candidates can raise themselves.”And like Krugman, Mukunda saw disturbing parallels between the US today and Ancient Rome.“Marcus Crassus was the richest man in ancient Rome,” he explained. “So rich that, by Plutarch’s account, he thought no man truly wealthy unless he could pay an army from his own purse. He spent that fortune bankrolling Julius Caesar and building the triumvirate that sidelined the Senate and, in fact if not in name, overthrew the republic.”
Far Left
BizPac Review
Elon Musk gets dealt blow by Biden-appointed judge days after becoming trillionaire
A judge dismissed a lawsuit from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI accusing a rival of trying to steal trading secrets — three days after Musk became […]
Far Right
Democracy Now!
"Land Grab": Trillionaire Elon Musk Sued in South Texas to Block SpaceX's Takeover of Wildlife Refuge
Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on Friday with the largest initial public offering in stock market history for his rocket and AI company SpaceX. The company is based in South Texas in a city controlled by Musk known as Starbase, which SpaceX has used for rocket launches since 2014. Environmental and conservation groups recently filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block a land swap approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that would give SpaceX more than 700 acres of a national wildlife refuge in South Texas. With Starbase, “SpaceX has already burned down dozens of acres of wildlife habitat, is dumping polluted water on our beach, has sent rocket debris into our communities, into communities in Mexico,” says Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, which is part of the lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Elon Musk is using our impoverished community as his laboratory to blow up dangerous experimental SpaceX rockets.” While groups like the South Texas Environmental Justice Network are organizing opposition to Musk’s operations in South Texas, local officials are ignoring constituents’ complaints that SpaceX is degrading the environment and their quality of life, says Hinojosa. “We’ve seen elected officials take money from SpaceX here and lobby in favor of more bills that benefit SpaceX.”
Far Left
Raw Story
'Troubling reports' point to Kash Patel having 'personal slush fund' of taxpayer dollars
A top House Democrat is accusing FBI Director Kash Patel of running a "personal slush fund" of taxpayer dollars to pay loyalist agents in his inner circle.Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Patel — obtained exclusively by MS NOW — alleging the bureau chief has doled out more than $1 million in illegal "bonus" payments to agents on his personal detail and his Director's Advisory Team."We have been receiving troubling reports that you may be using part of the budget of the [FBI] as a personal slush fund to make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlawful 'bonus' payments to loyalist MAGA henchmen who have engaged in misconduct," Raskin wrote to Patel.NOTUS reported in May that the Director's Advisory Team has been referred to internally as a "payback squad" tasked with building politically motivated cases — including one modeled on the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.Raskin's letter says nearly $8,000 payments were made to multiple agents every two-week pay period — even for those already at the federal salary cap — "circumventing the mandatory maximum pay caps established by statute." Some payments, the letter says, bounced back from exhausted accounts.The letter also raises the question of why agents might need to be bought off. "It is not clear whether these bonus payments have simply been a corrupt attempt to slide cash to friends or whether they are also meant to ensure the silence of the agents who witness your inebriation and accompanying professional negligence and misconduct," Raskin wrote.That's a reference to reporting by The Atlantic alleging Patel alarmed colleagues with excessive drinking and unexplained absences. Patel sued the magazine for $250 million; The Atlantic stands by its reporting.The FBI did not respond to MS NOW's request for comment.Minority Democrats have no power to compel the FBI to hand over documents — but could gain it if they retake the House in November.
Far Left