Tabby Monday
- Via the AP: Legal experts say Trump official broke law by saying ‘Buy Tesla’ stock but don’t expect a crackdown.
- Via TechDirt: Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Hand Trump A Censorship Machine.
- Via CNN: Trump wants a ‘Golden Dome’ capable of defending the entire US: ‘Strategically, it doesn’t make any sense’.
- Via The Hill: Commerce secretary: No one but ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missed Social Security check. This is pretty insidious, insofar as obviously real people would complain (and rightfully so) if they missed a Social Security check. But getting the faithful to doubt real complaints is a way to empower damage to trusted processes. It is just like the claims that the reasons people don’t like DOGE’s cuts is because DOGE is revealing fraud. Because, again, only fraudsters complain.
- Via Newsweek: Finland, Denmark Issue Travel Warnings For US. These are truly bizarre and troubling times. So much for being a shining city on a hill.
- Via the AP: Trump administration cuts legal help for migrant children traveling alone. Just like Jesus would do, dontcha know! And remember, MAGA is really, truly worried about human trafficking!
- Via Politico: Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest.
The majority of the suspended accounts were “university-associated activist accounts, basically sharing protest information, locations for students to go,” Yusuf Can, coordinator and analyst at the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, told POLITICO. Many of these accounts are “grassroots activists” with their followings in the low tens of thousands, said Can.
[…]
Musk himself said that “the choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets.” He said X would publicly post the Turkish government’s requests.
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Still love that cat!
Techdirt link is pretty scary.
At least one OTB commenter (Andy?) and maybe another stated recently that the States would cover the services that President Musk and First Lady Donalda are ripping from American Citizens. I for one have
complete confidenceno confidence at all that the State of Illinois will immediately cover any delayed or discontinued payments legally due me under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act!I started paying the employee contribution in 1963 when I was 15. There were many times in my career in the landline telephone industry when I was self employed when I paid the contribution charged to both employee and employer.
I sure am grateful that Easy Money Lutnick has the means to assist his mother-in-law if his dream of burning Social Security to the ground is realized. I would not want her to miss a meal.
No, they’re not. They’re concerned with being inundated by little brown children who will lower their districts Good Schools rating. They may worry about their own children being human trafficked, but that’s a different part of the equation. Real concern about human trafficking ends at “my kids are safe; that’s what matters.”
@Mister Bluster: States cannot afford to replace everything that the federal government does. Most ominously, there is no way in hell that they can afford disaster relief on their own.
My takeaway is the commerce secretary has announced the intention to cut Social Security payments.
Was Jesus a refugee?
@Kingdaddy:..States cannot afford to replace everything that the federal government does.
I get that. Apparently there are commenters here that do not.
After thinking about it, it seems to me that going after Section 230 is a shot across Elon Musk’s bow. He’s been Mr Radical Free Speech, but that’s true because it brings him more business, from people who are grifting, or engaging in active measures.
If X can be held accountable for content that’s illegal, they are going to have to police it, or if that’s too expensive, shut down entirely. I would not shed too many tears. A policy like this might well destroy Facebook, too, by wrecking the business model. Again, I would not shed many tears.
However as the piece describes, it would probably cause a lot of other issues with other legitimate speech. But the devil is in the details.
I am kind of skeptical that Senators are as dumb as they sound in public, by the way. I expect them of saying things that they think will sound good to constituents. So sexual exploitation, and so on.
However, one can go to court and get a takedown order, and face very large judgements if you defy that order. As we’ve seen. So, I’m not sure its justified. I’m also sure Durbin knows this. So this whole thing seems opaque to me.
@Kingdaddy:
@Mister Bluster:
Not without a massive hike to state income tax rates, and/or other hikes or new taxes, like sales taxes, and/or fees for services.
Not to mention that decentralizing disaster aid/relief will mean personnel and equipment standing idle for years in some places, and overextended/insufficient in others.
And if states take over FEMA, Social Security, Medicaid, the Dept. of Education, and other functions carried out by federal agencies now, where would federal taxes go and why should people keep paying them? Especially on top of the higher state taxes and fees?
This is one way civil wars/revolutions get started.
@Kathy:
The promise of conservatism has always been that those taxes will go “away” and no one will need to pay them anymore. The fly in the ointment has always been that the several states are unable to support deficits on the order of what the federal can because state-level defaults don’t bring “game over” consequences to the rest of the world.
@Kathy:..where would federal taxes go…
I suspect that Dictator for a Day* Kim Jong Trump can find a shoebox** or two to hold all that revenue.
* There are some who claim that each day of creation in Genesis was 1000 years. Trump likely thinks that he can live that long.
**A tribute to former Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell. (1902-1970)
@Kathy:
State/local taxes combined are mostly in the 9-12% of state GDP range. Rich states tend to be at the higher end, poor states at the lower. Historically, this has been a “hard” limit in the sense that legislatures that exceed it get voted out. For comparison, in modern times the US federal government tax revenue has been in the 19-22% of GDP range. We are currently collecting a bit below that range and spending a few percentage points above it. The feds can make up the difference by borrowing; all but one state constitution forbids borrowing for operating expenses.
If I had no context when I read about Lutnick’s statements, I would have thought he was taking a shot at Trump.
@Kathy:
The Western Governors Association has long discussed plans for an interstate compact to provide the resources to fight wildfires in the event that the feds decide to stop doing that in the western states. Years back, one of Paul Ryan’s goals when he was chair of the House Budget committee was to defund wildfire fighting. He had to drop the idea when the Republican members from western states refused to vote for a budget that didn’t include that funding.
I was working for the Colorado state legislature’s joint budget committee at the time. There was a very quiet meeting between Colorado’s Congressional delegation (all members, both parties) with the JBC where they said that perhaps it was time to look more actively at funding the WGA compact, that they might not be able to stop Ryan the next time.
Is it my imagination or did Trump’s people manage to keep him under wraps for the first month and a half of his presidency? Because the last couple of weeks he seems to have gone full crazy all the time. I think it’s intentional, the more evil shit his people do the better it is for them to have the media focus on his sixth-grade twitter insults.
@Michael Cain:
I forget who, probably Krugman or Delong, pointed out that the Federal government is largely a mechanism for transferring money from wealthier blue states to poorer red. Trump voters may eventually notice if that stops.
My beloved Guv De Useless is proposing to end property taxes. He’s quiet about raising sales taxes to make up the loss. The unmentioned point being that the sales tax is regressive, and also falls on visitors. Very Republican of him.
@Jay L Gischer:
It depends on the Senator in question, of course, but some of them are exactly as clueless as they sound, particularly when it comes to technology. They don’t understand how it works, and they aren’t alone in that. You can hear how someone has tried to illustrate things by what they say (e.g., “the Internet is a series of tubes” fame), but the thing is, for MOST of these elected officials, they rely on staff to do the deep dives and be knowledgeable on topics. Their job is to be an inch deep and be able to talk a mile wide. Reverse for staff: they need to be a mile deep on their subject matter areas, but an inch wide.
@Kathy, Kingdaddy and Mister Bluster: I have successfully brought full pauses to MAGA assertions that Education or FEMA should be returned to the states. My response, unless the Feds are going to give block grants to the states or lower my federal taxes in a way that will allow my state to raise its tax rates to fill in, they are simply reducing or ending my services without reducing my tax payments (we don’t fit in any tax bracket expecting a cut). This has generated more than a few “uh, um” responses. I realize it’s more complicated than my response, but it has caused a few aha moments.
@Michael Cain:
I’m pretty convinced the difference between what is needed and what is possible drives 90% of the activity in politics.
@Lucysfootball:
Did you see today’s kerfuffle about the felon’s portrait?
@Kathy:..kerfuffle…
The only problem I see is that his mouth is shut.
@Jen: I thought of Ted Stevens and “the internet is a series of tubes” when I wrote that. And well, it is not as bad a metaphor as it was treated, however it also demonstrated that Sen. Stevens did not know anything about the Internet and did not use it.
But then, Sen. Durbin has spent his career in the Judiciary Committee. I think he understands legal issues to a fair extent. He might be ignorant of the technology side of the internet, but it might not matter that much. And I have never thought of Lindsey Graham as dumb. Lately I’ve been thinking of him as cowardly and sycophantic, but not dumb.
And there are left-wing groups that would like to cancel Section 230 as well. AOC has advocated the repeal of Section 230.
My knee jerk is to defend Section 230, but maybe I would happily trade it away in return for Net Neutrality, which is where I think this kind of hands-off thing makes more sense.
I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks, so I stopped paying attention. Today, while scrolling on my Twitter feed, I came across this tweet and the link to the original article.
https://x.com/yashar/status/1904212693852291131?s=46
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/
So, how much outrage will there be from the MAGA world about DEI hires and incompetence?
Because accidentally texting the wrong people “war plans” could happen to anyone I imagine.
@Min:
But her emails!
@Jay L Gischer:
Just what I thought when I read that!
@Mister Bluster:
The problem I see is he expects a portrait of himself to not be ugly. That’s like expecting water to not be wet.
@Lucysfootball: I was watching a clip of him today on Bluesky and he couldn’t seem to remember the name of his VP or his VP’s wife.
@Jay L Gischer: I think Dick Durbin is that dumb. I think most of the Senators are. They have to act as if they are subject matter experts in a massive range of things to legislate, and are often delegating to others, reading summaries and repeating them as if they understand them.
And, when tech is involved, somehow their brains smooth over completely. Even if it is about using technology rather than the technology itself.
In the TechDirt article Durbin is saying that Section 230 protects revenge porn. There are laws that attempt to address revenge porn, entirely separate from Section 230.
He is that dumb.
I don’t know what AOC’s objection to 230 is, but I would say that after N years of it being in place, people have found and exploited one of the biggest weaknesses in it — decisions on what user content to show someone are not treated as editorial decisions that the website is liable for.
This allows the boosting and promotion of the most insane, rage-inducing content, so long as no human is picking that specific piece. They merely have to write an algorithm that does so. Even when the algorithm itself is analyzing the meaning of the content.
@Kathy: Having read the article, and assuming the picture for the article is the portrait in question, I do have to agree the artist did not do a particularly good likeness. The portrait is, indeed, terrible. If I were as rich as Trump claims to be, however, I’d simply offer to buy and replace it, rather than complain, if it offended me that much.
Regarding section 230, there ARE valid concerns. It protects stalkers and abusive threats, and gee I cannot imagine why AOC would have an issue with that/s.
Don’t come at me, I understand the issues. But I also think the existence of section 230, as it is written, has really provided space for some really despicable behavior to proliferate.
I don’t know what the answer is, because the first minor attempt to address some of the more negative aspects ended up backfiring spectacularly.
@Jay L Gischer:
Durbin really is that dumb. I’m one of his constituents and we either need to primary him or vote in whatever Illinois nazi, I mean Republican they puke up. Anything would be better than that moron.
He’s gotta go. I wish we could recall him.
@gVOR10: He’s quiet about raising sales taxes to make up the loss.
It’s every Republican governor’s wet dream. Lower a relatively progressive tax with a totally regressive tax. My brother lives in New jersey. When Chris Christie got in he pushed through a large income tax reduction. At that point in time my brother and his wife had a combined income of about $1.2 million (both doctors, specialist in NY metropolitan area). They saved in the range of $15k in taxes. The state didn’t cut spending, but Christie played games with the budget and capitalized a lot of things that should have been expensed and kicked the can down the road. His last year in office the bill came due for all the questionable (aka dishonest) accounting practices and NJ was facing a huge hole in budget. What did they do? NJ always had very low gas taxes. They raised them 23 cents to fix the hole in the budget. The gas tax increase probably cost my brother about $250 a year, but he saved about $15k in income taxes. A family of four making $100k a year probably saved $100 in taxes and will spend an additional $250 in gas costs. It’s the American way. And most of the people in the country are not financially literate enough to understand.
@Mister Bluster:
Trump prefers martyrs who don’t get killed. Jesus was a “loser”.
I suppose reform can be too subtle for some people.
There’s nothing wrong per se with Section 230, only it shouldn’t apply to the data mining companies like Fakebook and Xitter, because they do exercise editorial functions with their recommendations, not to mention with what they choose to show individual users in their feeds “curated” by algorithms that are designed to keep the users in the platform indefinitely.
Back when feeds were chronological and included only people the user followed, the likes of Xitter had a legitimate claim to be a mere carrier of user content. Not now.
@Jen: SESTA-FOSTA wasn’t an effort to fix anything with Section 230 that then had unintended consequences. It was an effort to get those consequences using Section 230 as a smokescreen.
They also don’t care about sex trafficking. They care about hurting sex workers. Whether it’s because they are dirty whores, or because they are opting out of corporate life… not sure. But at least if they are pushed underground, they can be exploited by men.