Oh Nothing, Just Elon Musk Wanting To Take Over The FAA
And SCOTUS letting Trump break the law!
So kindly of Elon Musk to work for free with his fake chainsaw to help the US cut waste and fraud, like payouts to those countries that are scamming us for vaccines and refeeding bars for children with “severe wasting” / “extreme malnutrition”! Ho, ho, ho. Musk did not get to be the world’s richest man by doing charity, he did it by using billions in taxpayer-buck government subsidies. And before he bought himself a presidency, he was on the verge of losing those subsidies. Over the past few years Musk’s mouth had been writing checks that his ass could not cash, and his Pootychats have made him a national-security risk as well.
In 2023, Joe Biden’s FCC denied Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund after the company wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” in terms of providing rural internet at the promised locations and speeds. And is was no bargain for the rural poors, starting at a minimum of $349 for equipment and $120 a month, plus sometimes a one-time $100 “congestion fee.”
Even the Hurricane Helene victims who qualified for “free” Starlink only got a couple of months comped, and they still had to buy the $349 terminals.
Not popular! But now that his bestie is in office, Elon is trying to once again ride to the rescue (of Elon’s otherwise-slumping businesses), with tax dollars, again. Last week he sent his DOGE team to the FAA, and then yesterday he declared that rival company Verizon was to blame for the spate of plane crashes lately.
“Single digit months to catastrophic failure”? It would almost make the conspiratorially inclined wonder if the mass cuts at the FAA, and one or two whoopsie-daisy mid-air collisions were to hasten that emergency along.
And another whoopsie, Verizon does not run the FAA’s platform, it is currently run by a company called L3Harris. Verizon’s $2.4 billion 15-year contract to update systems, which was rewarded in a legal and normal competitive-bid kind of way, has only just begun, and they haven’t replaced any systems yet. Holy defamation, Batman! The dipshit offered a rare correction:
Correction: the ancient system that is rapidly declining in capability was made by L3Harris. The new system that is not yet operational is from Verizon.
Whoops!
Guess when that DOGE team of SpaceX engineers visited FAA facilities last week they were too busy checking out the DEI boobs to ask the most basic kinds of questions? Also didn’t a GOP investigation already reveal that crashes were caused by pilots being emasculated by how the flight deck is not being called a “cockpit” any more? Whichever it is, it is definitely not the 400 FAA employees (already understaffed!) that Trump mass-fired last month, don’t be silly. Or how there is such a shortage of air traffic controllers that Musk took to Xitter to beg retired ones to return to work. (FAA air traffic controllers have mandatory retirement at 56, because it’s an intense job that needs supreme focus, but … come on back, old people, if you are white men?) Good luck finding somebody clamoring to sign up to be scapegoated for the next crash, or get laid off again by shitpost because somebody is in a K-hole!
A Starlink/SpaceX deal would not just be some balls-out conflict-of-interest spoils-system payola, it also hair-raises YIKES national security issues given Musk’s many late-night yak sessions with Vladimir Putin. Remember how right after Putin invaded Ukraine, Musk “donated” 5,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine, with the help of USAID, ahem? But then according to his former colleague Reid Hoffman, after one of Musk’s murderous-dictator chat sessions, he “bought what Putin was selling, hook, line, and sinker,” and Xitted his own “peace plan,” which was Russia getting the chunks of Ukraine that it wants. Musk claimed he and Pootytimes never talked about Ukraine, but mysteriously and coincidentally after some of their chats, Starlink stopped working in the parts of Ukraine that Putin wanted to take over, Ukraine was forced to retreat, and Musk started huff-extorting how NOW he wanted to get paid: “The hell with it. Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
(It was never for free.)
Anyway, the US government, over a barrel, made some kind of never-disclosed deal to pay whatever Musk was charging for his satellite phones. And then USAID’s Inspector General apparently started probing the shady-ass deal, ISO waste and fraud.
After hearing those Putin-whispered sweet nothings, Musk also started repeating Chinese talking points about Taiwan, too, and cut off Starlink service there, telling a reporter from FT, “My recommendation . . . would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy. And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.” Oh, and during the interview he left that one kid he likes in the backseat of his car for the entire lunch. Shouldn’t that child be in preschool?
Musk has also reportedly been extorting Ukraine some more, threatening to turn off Starlink unless they agree to sign a deal to make them a US mineral colony. Musk denies this, huff-Xitting that Reuters is “second only to AP (Associated Propaganda) as legacy news liars.”
Anyway, all of this is blatantly corrupt a dozen ways to Sunday. Surely the Supreme Court will step in and immediately put a stop to this illegal, hasty, conflict-of-interest-chocked rancid bag of coleslaw? Ho, ho, ho, no! When offered the opportunity to force the Trump administration to at least pay $2 billion in bills that the government owes for goods and services that it already got, NOPE. Chief Justice John Roberts leapt right in to give the Trump administration extra time to keep breaking the law and defying a court order.
So that does not bode well for what’s to come.
But I’ll tell you what is not coming, me getting on an airplane!
[FT archive link/ New Yorker archive link / Washington Post archive link / Law and Chaos]
Russian state media was allowed in the room for the shit show. This was a set-up from the beginning.
OT: President Manbaby just screamed at Zelenskyy in the Oval, accusing him of not being grateful enough. I kind of hope Zelenskyy just walks out and takes his chances on help from Europe. The hell with it, this mineral deal doesn’t guarantee security for Ukraine, why not sell the minerals to the EU?