earthfamilyalpha: January 2025

The previous government we have all known for the many decades is now gone. The Putsch occurred on January 31st when the elected government run by the Rs with the help of their henchmen took over the constitutional government of the United States. Here is the story:

The New York Times reported over the weekend that the Treasury Secretary "gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending."

Politico reports that Secretary Scott Bessent "privately reassured Republican lawmakers Monday that Elon Musk and his team do not have control over a sensitive government system that manages the flow of trillions of dollars in payments, according to five lawmakers in the room for a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill."

Based on that meeting, Musk and his coders were only given "read only" access.

Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall on Tuesday morning dropped this bombshell: He alleges a Musk associate has made changes to the Treasury's payment systems at the code level.

"Overnight, Wired reported that contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to ‘read only’ access to department payment systems, this is not true," Marshall wrote. "A 25 year old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the US government including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments."

“Elon just grabbed the controls of our whole payment system, demanding the power to turn it on for his friends or turn it off for anyone he doesn’t like,” said U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Monday (video below). “One guy deciding who gets paid and who doesn’t.”

U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, "rejected the idea that Musk allies’ access to the payments system was as limited as Republicans and the administration are claiming," as Politico reported.

“Some Republicans are trying to suggest that Musk only has ‘viewing access’ to Treasury’s highly sensitive payment system as if that’s acceptable either. But why on earth should we believe that—particularly when he is saying the exact opposite loudly and repeatedly for everyone to see?” Murray declared.

Controlling the payment process is Control.

And there is so much more.

USAID, the Congressionally created foreign aid agency, was illegally shut down:

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The Trump administration said it would lock U.S. Agency for International Development workers out of their headquarters in downtown Washington DC for a second day on Tuesday as it moved to shutter the agency, prompting two Democratic senators to vow to block confirmations of State Department nominees in protest.

And the Education Department is next:

The Education Department is responsible for distributing federal financial aid for education, and for collecting and disseminating data and research related to schools. The department is also tasked with enforcing non-discrimination policies in schools.

Generally, it supports federal college loan programs and Pell Grants, and also vocational training.

And there are the Firings of the FBI agents who worked up the prosecution of this criminal president. And the Firings of the Inspector Generals without cause or notice to Congress

Firing Civil Service workers without cause is illegal.

The Spoils system which is now being reintroduced by this administration is no longer the law. Under that "spoils system," the main job requirement for most federal employees was loyalty. Sound familiar? And its change took a Presidential assassination and an energized vice president named Teddy Roosevelt to change the spoils policy of Andrew Jackson to the non-partisan civil service of today.

Two major unions representing U.S. government employees filed a lawsuit on Wednesday aimed at slowing the new administration's effort to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers and make it easier to fire them.

The American Federation of Government Employees and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said Trump in a Jan. 20 executive order improperly attempted to block a Biden administration rule shielding federal workers from being stripped of job protections.

Last week, a Federal judge ruled that the actions at OMB are unconstitutional. Yet, the payments have not returned. And who can enforce the orders of the court when the orders are ignored?

There are those who say that the D's bring a knife to a R gunfight. Truth is, it's worse, they bring a Thesaurus. More words, different words, fancier words, harsh words if they are really mad. Soon, they will be bring their Constitutions.

Perhaps the words of Andrew Coyne from our Ally to the North says it better than they do:

Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.

The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable.

We are living in the time of Nero.

And the Putsch Push is On.