the american Century of Humiliation has begun
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Except it’s just gonna be us humiliating ourselves
Self-humiliation
I been saying this
the document says programs affected are “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
Dear lord. Forget drinking it, these people drowned in the koolaid.
When you're so obsessed with your brainwormed culture wars that it leads you to your own destruction.
Accelerationists are gonna be so smug when the USA becomes a smoking heap of shit by the end of the year with this pace
people have been saying Milei is Argentina's Trump but I think we forget that Trump is America's Milei
So he's gonna destroy the economy, but still have a 50% approval rating a year later
We probably should be looking closer at Argentina's fallout to glean what we can actually expect. Starting to feel like Argentina was the beta-test for this similar to Chile with western neoliberal projects.
Neoliberalism may be going the way of Keynesian economics.
I’m not trying to scare you, but all of you need to understand that no matter where you live right now, your job/career is literally hanging on whether Elon Musk gets to cut two trillion from the US federal budget or not.
If Elon gets his way, the US goes into recession. Millions will lose their jobs, and this will spiral to all the other sectors and send shockwaves across the world. Think 2009 GFC - there is not a country that will not be affected by it. Many more will lose their jobs, homes, savings as the economic prospect trends down, especially the export countries.
Crazy that whether I get to keep my job over the next few years or not is literally going to be decided by what Elon Musk gets to do. If you told me this even a year ago I would have laughed at you so hard.
And people still have an undying devotion to this system
Musk is not smart enough to make some of these decisions on his own, and I mean that very seriously. He has the emotional immaturity of a teenager and repeatedly proves it time and time again which puts everyone in danger (goes without saying).
To make matters worse, he’s the richest person in the world so there is no one to hold him accountable. Still has too many people thinking he’s Tony stark, inventing cars and rockets himself and believing he’s self-made. It’s hard to believe this is reality sometimes.
"I'm not trying to scare you" Yeah but
Proceeds to say what they have to say in the most dramatic way possible
this will spiral to all the other sectors and send shockwaves across the world. Think 2009 GFC - there is not a country that will not be affected by it.
As bad as all this is, I'm still getting out the popcorn if Trump goes through with allowing Musk to cut all of that
I didn't realize shock therapy would be done in the dumbest way possible
including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal
what green new deal?! who the fuck is doing the green new deal right now? "hello please direct me to your green new deal adherence offices"
I'm not in the US but one of my fav comments over this on another app said well if they're going to freeze our tax money like this and stop distributing it to social programs and so on, why are we paying our taxes?
It's a good point. A widespread tax strike would fuck this administration up.
While the dollar hegemony remains, unfortunately the US government can literally just print more money and be fine for a while.
Granted that's probably going to implode too if this kind of shit keeps up.
If you are a worker, income taxes are deducted already, right? You don't have a choice. And you don't have the choice to not be paid in Dollars, all the corps only accept dollars.
And in the US there is a ton of private debt (mortgage, healthcare, student loan debt) all help with demand for Dollars.
For the Sovereign (US Federal Government), taxes are one way to create demand for Dollars which they make (first) and allow banks to make.
Please engrave "ha ha hee hee" on my gravestone but make it look like the dates so it reads "born: ha ha, died: hee hee"
Born to ha, forced to hee
"born: ha ha, died: hee hee"
That joke should have been made in a movie or a tv show a long time ago. I'm imagining some obscure 1980s zombie movie and two of the leads are in a graveyard.
"Look! 'Born: ha ha. Died: hee hee.' "
"What?"
"On the tombstone."
"I'm not in the mood for—"
"Look!"
He looks. "I'll be fucking damned."
"I don't think you should have said that in a graveyard."
"I'll be fucking damned. It's gonna be dark soon. We gotta find shelter." Five minutes of screen time later - he's killed by a pack of zombies ripping him to shreds.
So this is what being trapped in the machine as the machine bleeds to death feels like.
I'm at a loss of words. I seriously wonder what this is supposed to achieve. Death to Amerikkka.
inflicting grave wounds on the us economy to root out woke research
You all laugh but now I have to shut down my woke gender ideology factory, and cold starting that equipment is slow and expensive. We are headed for a nationwide woke shortage.
It's the top of the hour right now - and neither CNN nor MSNBC is covering this totally insane and astronomical Trump power grab. I shouldn't be shocked but holy fuck.
I've only watched little of CNN and MSNBC but it seems like their function is to soften everything Trump does to avoid public panic
And WaPo, the NYT, etc too. By tomorrow there will any number of horrible "Who's winning - Trump or the dems?" op-eds or opinion pieces in newspapers, on websites (like MSNBC), Substack articles, etc. It's like the media showing up after a building is set on fire by an arsonist and asking "Gee, who's winning? The arsonist?"
When this piece of shit and apartheid clyde aren't whining about race mixing they're fucking things up for everyone. And this isn't even gonna be the worst part. People really voted him twice Country of over 300 mill and this is the best admin you can come up with
I think this is a mafioso style shakedown. Trump is the don and he's telling the owner of a notable business in the state, Mr. Dems, that a large portion of Mr. Dems' profits need to go to him immediately.
Mr. Dems says "Look, Don Trump, right now I can give you - I don't know the numbers - half of one percent but—"
And Trump says "What? Half of one percent? Listen you worthless fuck. You give me half starting right now or I burn it all down. With you and your family in it."
And - of course - Mr. Dems pays up.
---
In real life - I can imagine the dems quickly acquiesce "for the good of the country" to stop the widespread panic and to stop the chaos and they give Trump - I dunno - $300 billion for his racist deportation program. And Chuck Schumer puts up an weirdly oddly upbeat tweet that the dems talked Trump down from a half a trillion so everything isn't a total loss.
[Edit - I used much better numbers.]
we just started this week what's gonna happen friday? trump and musk having a televised fist fight?
trump and musk having a televised fist fight?
Even better would be [redacted].
It's a two page memo that goes into effect tomorrow and it's causing "widespread panic".
In a two-page document, Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, instructs federal agencies to "temporarily pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance." [...] The memo goes into effect Tuesday.
[...]
Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said the language in the memo is confusing, making its specific effects unclear. There will be widespread panic, Kettl said, as state and local governments as well as the people most reliant on federal-funded grants scramble to figure out if and when their cash flow will stop.
Look at this milquetoast shit when trillions are on the line...
"They say this is only temporary, but no one should believe that," Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in a statement. "Donald Trump must direct his Administration to reverse course immediately and the taxpayers' money should be distributed to the people. Congress approved these investments and they are not optional; they are the law."
---
Full text
The White House budget office is ordering a pause to all grants and loans disbursed by the federal government, according to an internal memo sent to agencies Monday, creating significant confusion across Washington.
In a two-page document, Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, instructs federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.” The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, also calls for each agency to perform a “comprehensive analysis” to ensure its grant and loan programs are consistent with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, which aimed to ban federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and limit clean energy spending, among other measures.
The memo states its orders should not be “construed” to impact Social Security or Medicare recipients, and also says the federal financial assistance put on hold “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals.”
But the document says programs affected are “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
The order may impact at least tens of billions of dollars in payments, said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank.
The memo also states that of the $10 trillion “that the Federal Government spent [in fiscal year 2024, which ended Sept. 30, 2024], more than $3 trillion was Federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans.” It was not immediately clear where those figures came from; the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the government spent $6.7 trillion in the 2024 fiscal year.
A person familiar with the order, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential decisions, confirmed the accuracy of the document and said it applied to all grants. The memo goes into effect Tuesday. The agencies are also required to submit detailed lists of projects suspended under the new order by Feb. 10. Federal agencies must assign “responsibility and oversight” to tracking the federal spending to a senior political appointee, not a career official, the memo states.
“The funding delays are going to prove very difficult for grantees under the impression the money is coming, and have rent and salary payments dependent upon it,” Riedl said. “It seems like a very big deal.”
The memo was reported earlier Monday by journalist Marisa Kabas.
Federal grants support a broad range of recipients and causes. They go to universities for education and research programs, and to nonprofits for health care and studies, among thousands of other purposes.
“They’re taking a broad view of what they mean within this order, and I think that has to mean that it covers everything else other than the things that go to individuals,” said Bobby Kogan, a federal budget expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
Several congressional Democratic aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said they were bewildered by the memo and trying to understand its implications for the federal government.
“They say this is only temporary, but no one should believe that,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said in a statement. “Donald Trump must direct his Administration to reverse course immediately and the taxpayers’ money should be distributed to the people. Congress approved these investments and they are not optional; they are the law.”
The order’s legality may be contested, but the president is generally allowed under the law to defer spending for a period of time, according to budget experts. To comply, though, Trump must make clear though which budget accounts are frozen, Kogan said, and the budget office’s order may not provided sufficient grounds under the law to pause the funding.
Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said the language in the memo is confusing, making its specific effects unclear. There will be widespread panic, Kettl said, as state and local governments as well as the people most reliant on federal-funded grants scramble to figure out if and when their cash flow will stop.
“In two pages, we’ve got what amounts to 60 years of tradition and policies that are thrown up in the air,” said Kettl, who has consulted for multiple government agencies. “For those suffering most, the uncertainty will be immense.”
G. William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the administration should be legally able to pause the money temporarily but would need to submit a formal request to Congress to do so beyond a set window.
Still, Hoagland and other budget experts have expressed concern about Trump’s promises to wrest spending control away from Congress. Hoagland said he fears the deferral could be a precursor to a broader assertion of executive spending power.
“I worry this is an effort to hold back on not implementing the law of the land as it relates to the budget process,” Hoagland said. “And in terms of the impact, it could be huge.”
The Trump administration has also acted rapidly to freeze most public communications by federal health agencies, as well as temporarily pausing foreign aid.
Read the full memo below. If you can’t see it, click here.
Found this on another thread. If it's real it shows that the OPM memo (and a few others) was composed by folks from Heritage Foundation/Project 2025. They didn't scrub the fucking meta data off the PDFs before sending them out. Sources and archived copies of the docs linked from this article. https://www.citationneeded.news/trumps-project-2025-ghostwriters/
I realized I missed something obvious. If Trump gets away with this - it'll surely end basic programs people need to simply survive like food stamps.
i'm not USian, what is the actual practical effects of this likely to be? who does this hurt?
There must be millions of Americans who have jobs that are at least partially funded by the government, but aren't directly working for the federal government. It may also apply to literally every employee of a state government that relies on federal grants. It's highly, highly illegal to do what he's doing. Not to mention the people who rely on the services those workers provide. Healthcare, case management, funding for food assistance, the way it's worded, there is no industry that doesn't touch.
All currently ongoing medical and scientific studies will grind to a halt. Possibly subsidies to industries that have lobbied for those. It's just a truly mind-bogglingly large change. 3 trillion dollars per year. Arts grants. ~~Maybe federal student loan disbursements?~~ Those would be exempt because they go to individuals, I guess?
There are people whose full-time job is grant writing, which means applying for grants from the government for their non-profit organizations.
The other problem is it's very vague.
jesus fucking christ.
it astounds me that the forces of capital are allowing him to do half the shit he's pulled this week. he's planting landmines under every inch of the US economy and they're just fucking letting him?? i know party discipline doesn't really exist in the US but i thought the bourgeoisie filled that void (both as private actors and through shit like the CIA)
The somewhat competent managers of empire died off years ago. We’re dealing with their decadent, lazy, idiotic children and grandchildren.
your Fox News Granddad is running the country now and he doesn't know all that stuff they said was just to gin up votes