- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Reality check: Trump pledged to end the program in 2016.
Called it. When push comes to shove, Trump is always going to side with the ultra-rich.
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President Musk wins again.
Its actually very worrying.
He’s already killed a budget bill and defied a MAGA bread and butter policy issue, for his obvious benefit, back-to-back with zero real pushback. His bounds seem basically unlimited.
Defied MAGA bread and butter
Lol, he’s done with MAGA. He got his term, he has no further use for his supporters or their agenda. Discard them like toilet paper.
It’s not like he wanted his fan base to ever be let into his country clubs.
I’m predicting that Musk will be fired within a year of Trump’s reign.
Didn’t r/legaladvice have an ongoing betting pool of who was going to get fired next?
Maybe we need to start one here.
It’s not obvious Trump can fire him. Musk didn’t only contribute to the Trump campaign, but also brought in tech billionaire friends. Earlier in the year, the GOP National Convention was running on pocket change. It’s quite possible Musk brought in the cash they desperately needed, and they expect a return on that investment.
Trump might have needed a reminder about who is actually in charge.
Trump doesn’t care about the Republican party. Nor does he honour agreements. Hell use them while they benefit him, financially or otherwise. Then dump them when it suits him to. He expects loyalty, he doesn’t give it. The question is will this happen before or after musk gets what he wants. Or if musk just wants power and has not got a single objective.
He can ignore the little people. He can’t ignore the people who saved his campaign. Even though this is his last term (probably), they can chew him up in other ways if he doesn’t fall in line.
Screwing over investors is his second favorite thing, right after screwing over contractors.
Right but now he’s playing with the big boys. This isn’t like when “Trump <whatever>” fleeced some rubes, now Trump is in deep with the oligarchs of the modern gilded age.
That’s the thing isn’t it? You can’t actually buy political influence, the closest you can get is the wink and nudge.
The only lever they have is threatening to not donate again.Trump doesn’t care if they donate to the GOP again. He’s not running again. Musk and friends have served their purpose, or very nearly so. The promise of their donations can be leveraged to get the votes needed to ensure appointments that can help keep trump in power or out of jail at the end of his term, be they administrative, judicial or military.
Money can be useful to power, but it’s not itself power.
"Hey, Clarence, how you doing? Virgina doing OK? Good, good. Hey, I was just thinking, my wife and I were going to use the yacht this weekend, but we had something else come up. It’s all stocked and fueled, and it’d be a shame if it went to waste. Would you and Virginia like to get away? Ok, excellent, I’ll let the crew know.
“Oh, and Thomas, you know that big ruling on Trump’s boarder plan? Yeah, make sure it doesn’t go the President’s way. Yes, of course, I’ll make sure there’s plenty of eyebrow torture porn on the shipboard theater.”
They have plenty of levers against Trump.
Trump can always try murder as an official act, that should keep people in line.
In that example, he doesn’t actually care about a wall. How does a wall benefit him? He cares about diverting money to his pocket, maintaining power, and staying out of prison.
The supreme court already gave him personal immunity for most acts he takes while president. He could literally order Thomas arrested for corruption and there’s nothing the court could do to him.
Musk has utility while he potentially helps secure votes on appointments that matter for significant goals, but securing those appointments is also desirable for other Republicans, so musk isn’t key to those plans.
The supreme court already gave him personal immunity for most acts he takes while president.
Not how that ruling works. The Court gets to decide what is and isn’t an official act, and can do so arbitrarily. The Court just might take issue with murdering any members of the conservative wing.
They can expect whatever they want but they have nothing to offer anymore. Trump will keep grifting the rubes and can’t run in any elections where funding would matter.
Unless musk has some blackmail or some other leverage.
What would stick on Teflon Don?
The guy is literally a pedophile, serial rapist, felon, obvious idiot, demented and drug addled. He could be the lovechild of Hitler and Stalin, born in the Congo, openly sworn fealty to Xi, Putin and the Satan, it wouldn’t matter.
Money is hardly their only lever.
Unless it’s a bullet, Trump is going to be inaugurated on Jan 20.
As far as the SCOTUS has said, he can do a lot more than firing, which is my biggest concern…
You can’t fire your owner.
Depends on how brazen Trump gets. If he executive orders Elon and the Executive Orders all of his money goes to him directly, yeah… Trump can fire Musk.
Remember fascism is a concentric cone. If Trump decides he doesn’t want Musk, only his money, he will.
Right. This is a lesson the Russian Oligarchs keep learning the hard way. Anytime Putin wants their money, they fall out a window and their assets are forfeited to the state (Putin).
Trump was always going to side with moneyed interests. Though he is certainly racist, he doesn’t care about his supporters or what they want. His in-group is crass wealth.
Trump didn’t even hesitate to kiss the ring. Immigration is his number one issue. He killed the bipartisan bill to run on it. Elon snaps his fingers, and Trump publicly supports his pro-immigration position, which legitimately devalues American workers to create indentured servitude for highly-skilled workers from abroad. The H1B guys were the ones working at Twitter until 2am, while their boss was on drug binges, and sleeping in cots in their offices.
I don’t think Trump even kissed Putin’s ass this much. I hate Trump, but I never thought of him as not having balls, especially against a fucking moron like Elon.
The president made a statement, and trump agreed.
America’s ultra racists crying in tears
Followers aren’t abandoning Trump over one issue. TBH Elon will probably tamp this down by manipulating Twitter.
But this is a preview of things to come, as Axios notes.
TBH Elon will probably tamp this down by manipulating Twitter.
He already is. He’s demonetizing any right wing chuds that oppose him on this and they’re melting down over it. It’s hilarious.
Also me, though. I was hoping H1B visa status would die a well deserved death. It’s basically indistinguishable from indentured servitude and causes massive issues in having a free and equitable labor market.
I don’t personally agree with any limits on immigration but if we’re going to have limits then everyone we admit should be treated no different from a citizen in most ways - they shouldn’t be tied to specific employers or anything else that will cause domestic wage deflation.
Fuck Trump with a rusty dildo - but I was hoping he, and not Elon, came out on top in this one.
They’ll forgive him as soon as the deportations start.
Looks like Musk has the dirt on how the election was actually won. He has all the leverage he needs.
Or trump just sides with the money. It’s not always a conspiracy and it’s a disservice to believe there is.
I think it is exactly this simple: money.
The entire congress can be bought either outright or with the threat of a primary challenger that is extremely well funded. That will get whoever the ultra-rich wants in line.
We are entirely screwed. I hope I’m wrong though.
I had a conversation with a coworker about this a while ago. He said that something he liked about trump was that he already had money so he wouldn’t be able to be bought. I said that he has it exactly backwards. The kind of people who amass that amount of wealth in our society have felt the power of large wealth firsthand and know that more money is always better for them. Increasing the number in their bank account becomes exponentially more important, the higher it goes. The wealthy have proven their utmost allegiance to wealth, so they’ll be the first to sell out.
There’s an exchange in The Simpsons that has never stopped being relevant:
- You know, Mr. Burns, you’re the richest guy I know. Way richer than Lenny.
- Oh, yes. But I’d trade it all for a little more.
Imagine betting that your prepper neighbor with 30 guns won’t buy a 31st gun “because he already has so many”.
The man sent a literal mob to attack the capital, has been convicted of multiple crimes, and openly admitted to more. Teflon Don doesn’t care about dirt.
Not necessarily. Trump can’t pass legislation without Republican support in Congress, and those peope have their own values (and bribery goals). All of this before he takes power, and his power is only good for the next two years anyway.
Why two years? You think at the midterm Congress is gonna flip? Why not four assuming there’s still a presidential election…
Thermostatic voting
Thermostatic voting relies on fair and open elections, which there is no guarantee of in the US with the incoming congress and executive branch.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States
💲💲💲
No
Correct. He has the dirt on how trump rapes children.
We all already do, and the electorate didn’t care.
That’s why they voted for him.
Musk does apparently have a spy network, too. There was a podcast series on it…Elon’s Spies.
350 million people in the US and none of them are talented enough for this guy. The government had 350 million chances to educate and professionalize, and here we are outsourcing to India because Musk isn’t happy with the current crop.
Lmao
H1B workers kept Twitter from imploding. They couldn’t quit unless they had a new job lined up. They couldn’t complain about having to sleep in the office or they might get deported.
Native US workers could just walk out.
This is why Muskrat loves visa workers
That’s because this crop doesn’t want to work for tree fiddy and on 4h of sleep every day. How is he gonna wipe his tears with money if he has to pay people?
We don’t want to work for him or for what he’s offering.
And of course is has nothing to do with talent and training at all, the US (and many others) created the system where you put yourself into huge debts to get the education the companies need from you, and then they also don’t want to pay you a wage that will allow you to live comfortably and crawl out of that debt.
So then they buy the government and arrange for people with similar education, who are more desperate, less informed of labour laws and unable to switch jobs when they get here.
Right?
Let there be no mistake, it’s not about talent so much as it is about keeping wages low. Many tech companies do this explicitly, especially since interest rates rose and investing money stopped being free.
Anecdotally, I was at a company and was instructed not to hire in the US. I could choose Montréal, a few countries in Europe, or Isreal.
US was off limits, not enough budget.
Many of them have been doing this shit since the 90s. When I read about how “we no find coderz in the U.S!” I know it’s complete horse manure. I suppose there are some niche fields where it might actually be hard to source certain types of engineers or what have you.
But seriously, programming? You cannot find that locally? GTFO with that…
For a brief blip there I hoped that agent orange might actually blow up H-1B, even if for the wrong reasons, but this outcome (moneyed interests calling the tune) is entirely expected, I guess. Even if his racist base haaaaaates it.
Of course because hes a subby wubby bottom cuck boy so he does what master says
Hilarious, south african oligarch imports talent to exploit instead of hiring American and the people who voted for his puppet are shocked. Literally everyone tried to tell them it was a grift, so if we all gotta suffer I’m going to be laughing at them the whole way.
Sadly, it will not really register with most voters, not just because they’re largly ignoring political news:
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/26/politics-cable-news-ratings-trump-ap-poll
But because everyone is stuck in their own little filter bubble of podcasts, algorithmic feeds, influencers and such that color everything.
Wow, he didn’t even wait until inauguration to stab his dipshit cultists in the back…
Oh, so technically this is a repost of https://lemmy.world/post/23634989
The URL has already been posted, but Axios ninja edited the article as events unfolded, as they tend to do. I’m treating this as a new development, but mods, please delete if you think that’s prudent.
Thanks for the follow up
President musk clicked his fingers and his trusty hound Trump bounded to his side
Now his minions will struggle to change their rhetoric to figure out how they agree with him.
Like I told my buddy earlier. Give Murdoch 2 weeks and they’ll fall in line.
Oh no damn that sucks; sad I thought he cared about you :(
Because in Trump’s mind you can deport them after you burn through them. The shocking part would be if Trump wants to give them citizenship.
there it is
All the Trump/Musk hate aside, this is the correct decision in this case. So good job, broken clock.
It absolutely isn’t. H1B visa holders are basically indentured servents. It’s an absolutely awful policy to tie immigration to a persons employment status with a specific employer (or another employer willing to accept the paperwork of maintaining H1B employees which you must find rapidly of you lose your job).
We have skill based immigration and I’d much rather these H1B applicants got in under that and could choose to move jobs if their employer is abusive. As it is many H1B visa holders end up trapped in underpaid overworked positions for fear of needing to suddenly relocate their lives again.
Agreed. If donvict ended H-1B, it would probably end up being the only good thing he ever did. Ideally, it’d be ended, then augmented with some system that expedites encouraging/getting people here and having permanent status, with no ties to any corporations.
That second part I doubt donvict would do because he’s a racist, but if H-1B was ended, we’d see what kind of pressure builds up to balance things out by permanent immigration. If it becomes a real need where talent for things like programming hits some breaking point[1], companies can lobby to have immigration expedited w/o indentured servitude. Let’s see if they do that…
[1] again, even typing this out…LOL. How many people are/were being cranked out of coding bootcamps? Did all those people disappear? Where are all the people getting laid off going? If the industry would stop discarding people past some stupid arbitrary cut-off on age - egregious, pervasive ageism is NORMALIZED within the software industry - if you want everyone to have 10 years experience with a certain constantly shifting set of tools/languages, but want them in their twenties, with no spouse and no kids and no other obligations, willing to work wayyyyy beyond 40 hours for no compensation, you’ve just done a self-own and have no one to blame but yourself. Going out to industry press/social media/government and declaring that you cannot find the talent locally is obviously concocted BS.
I now know so many people that have been chewed up and spit out by the industry and mostly it’s because they were too unwise to do a very human thing and age beyond their mid-30s. It gets sharply worse in the 50s. Not because they don’t have the education and the experience. It’s because they have a life outside of work, have relevant experiences they can bring to bear (making younger management often look bad in that process) and are not quite so malleable as someone in their early 20s.
Ok, so the MAGA people are correct?
It’s not that they’re correct - they just happened to be on the right side of this issue for terrible reasons.
I want skilled immigrants to have more rights - they want them to not exist - both I and a lot of MAGA folks think H1B visas are bad but for extremely different reasons.
