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Can the Muskrat shut the United States government?

Sure looks that way. The richest person in the world has turned his wealth into raw power. That's what oligarchy looks like.

Robert Reich Dec 19

Friends,

If the government shuts down Saturday, Elon Musk will be largely to blame.

Musk went on a daylong rampage yesterday against the continuing resolution drafted by House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team to keep the government going.

Musk posted nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers must kill it. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote in one post.

Musk — the richest person in the world — was joined in his posting spree by another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump asked to partner with Musk in an effort to slash government spending and reduce the federal budget deficit.

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Musk’s barrage.

Then, after Musk spent the day telling Republicans not to support the bill, Trump weighed in against it, too. That put the bill on life support.

If this isn’t oligarchy, I don’t know what is.

You may not get access to services you depend on just before the holidays because an unelected billionaire shadow president wanted it that way.

Funding for essentials will be jeopardized — disaster relief, clean water protections, food safety inspections, cancer research, and nutrition programs for children.

Federal workers like air traffic controllers will be required to work without pay just as air travel is about to pick up.

The same goes for members of our military.

Musk effectively blocked a government spending bill by mobilizing his 205 million followers on X and then using his influence on Trump —influence he bought by spending more than $270 million getting Trump elected.

Yet Musk’s concern about the federal deficit seems to disappear whenever Trump and MAGA Republicans talk about passing tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit billionaires like Musk. Tax cuts, I might add, that will balloon the deficit by nearly $5 trillion.

We’re getting a preview of what the next four years will look like — dysfunction in D.C. that will make your life worse, driven by a petulant billionaire with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power.

A billionaire wielding his influence over the rest of us proves we are in a Second Gilded Age.

But there may be a silver lining to this Gilded Age cloud. The lesson of the First Gilded Age is that when concentrated wealth, corruption, and ensuing hardship for average working Americans become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of us, we rise up and demand real, systemic change.

It’s only a matter of time. A government shutdown that hurts average working people, engineered by the richest person in the world, might just hasten it.

What do you think?

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