octave

Trump/Musk, so f******* dumb that they fired the people who oversee the safety of the nation's nuclear weapons only to attempt to rehire them when they realized their stupidity. Trump officials fired nuclear staff not realizing they oversee the country’s weapons stockpile, sources say This is what happens when you cut with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel.

The Trump administration is composed of mostly billionaires. They do not represent the average person. The wealthy are less likely to need the services of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The likes of Musk do not need this service, they can afford to sue. However, it does suit Musk to take power away from ordinary people. This is especially wrong because Musk seeks to provide financial transactions on Twitter. Musk has everything to gain from getting rid of consumer protection and the ordinary people have a lot to lose. Trump's talent is convincing ordinary people that he has their interests at heart.

The greater point though is that it is obvious that Musk has so many conflicts of interest that he can't possibly be unbiased. Running a financial system whilst having the power to cripple the organisation tasked with regulating financial services is not on. This is more than a conflict of interest it is corrupt.

That is an understatement. Musk is killing off the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while simultaneously moving towards X formerly Twitter offering financial services. It is awfully convenient for him not to have protection for his customers. Elon Musk's vision of turning X into an “everything app” is one step closer to reality with the announcement of a new payments platform. The company's new X Money service is set to launch later in 2025, giving users a digital wallet on X to store money and make peer-to-peer transfers.

You do know that Trump and Musk want to abolish the Consumer Financial Bureau a body that protects the ordinary person from predatory banks and credit card companies? If Trump doesn't seem to give a toss about bank customers being ripped off why would he care about electricity customers being treated with contempt Trump's followers are quite gullible if they believe a bunch of ruthless billionaires are looking out for them. Second Trump administration Consumer Financial Protection Bureau homepage screenshot February 2025 On February 1, 2025, Chopra was fired by President Trump, making deputy director Zixta Martinez the acting director of the agency.[36][37] Two days later Treasury Secretary and former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent was named the agency's director and immediately ordered the agency to halt all work.[38] On Friday, February 7, Russell Vought emailed CFPB staff to let them know he was the acting director.[39] On February 10, Vought ordered all CFPB staff to cease all work between February 10 and 14, and closed the CFPB Washington headquarters.[40][6] In February 2025, the Bureau became a target of the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk-led team carrying out part of Trump's cost-cutting agenda. Staffers gained access to consumers' data.[41] As of February 8, 2025, all pages, resources, webforms and instructions on how to contact the agency by email remain in place on the official website of the Bureau, but its front page displays a deceptive 404 error (not found) message. [42] CFPB workers have accused Elon Musk of glaring conflict of interest.[43] Helaine Olen, from the American Economic Liberties Project, argues that closing down the CFPB "is an overt power grab by Big Tech — and their gain could result in the rest of us losing much more than almost anyone realizes."[44]

Elon Musk's DOGE takes aim at agency that had plans of regulating X "The fact that Musk is now engaged in payment businesses that would be regulated by the CFPB at the same time he's trying to tear down the CFPB puts in sharp relief the conflicts of interests here and how much this disserves the general public," said Richard Cordray, who led the CFPB under President Barack Obama. "The whole situation is rife with conflicts of interest."

FAA Leader Quit Before D.C. Plane Crash—Thanks to Elon Musk The administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Michael Whitaker, resigned from his position on January 20 after repeated demands from Elon Musk that he quit, leaving the agency without a Senate-confirmed leader during a major crisis in the wake of the D.C. plane crash. Musk called for Whitaker’s resignation in September after the FAA chief proposed fining Musk’s company SpaceX over $600,000 in civil penalties for failing to follow license requirements during two launches in 2023. Whitaker told a congressional panel at the time that fines were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”

Ah Trumps America. Montana Considers Becoming First US State To Ban mRNA Vaccine Use meanwhile in Australia Using mRNA technology to prevent cancer and treat disease

This is a humorous statement. As far as I know, Marty does not own a gun however the right wongers on Jan 6 DID build a gallows. I believe their threats were very real and every right-thinking person should strongly condemn these right-wing morons.

Unlike the righties ehh? Jan 6 mob threatens to hang Mike Pence during hearings Share Facebook Twitter

It seems that the area is not big enough for today's larger turbines which require more spacing. The council's policy director Nick Aberle said the site was not large enough for up-to-date wind turbines, which were larger and could generate six times more energy than the turbines at Codrington. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-13/pacific-blue-decommissioning-codrington-wind-farm-port-fairy/104926348

Yep. We are going to visit him in a few weeks (in NZ) and he always lends us a car. I am thinking this time I take the other car.

Here is a picture of a modification my son made to his car. I was amused when he said it had lost value because of "heil damage"

and yet votes for major parties are declining and for minor parties increasing. The steady decline of voters choosing the major parties is reshaping Australian politics Over the past 40 years the share of votes going to independents and minor parties has risen in both state and federal elections. Seismic shift’ from major parties defines 2022 election Almost one in three voters cast their ballot for minor parties or independent candidates in the 2022 federal election, the highest number in almost 100 years, Australia's largest and longest-running study on elections has found. If the AEC is favouring the ALP and Coalition it does not seem to be paying off for them.

I am not trying to be mean but trust me, you don't understand how preferential voting works

Yes because of course Trump doesn't use disparaging language about anyone else. For a man who happily insults others he sure does have a thin skin but this is the hallmark of a malignant narcissist.

It went up because of it's US operations as in the portion of it's business situated in the US. Its US operation may benefit from tariffs but is Australian operation won't While BlueScope is best known in Australia for its Port Kembla steelworks, south of Sydney, the company generates more revenue from its North American operations than in Australia, according to its most recent financials. It has a large presence in Ohio, and could therefore end up a beneficiary of a tariff regime that hinders rivals. Its shares were up 4% earlier on Monday, in response to Trump’s announcement. A BlueScope spokesperson said the company would “continue to work with the Trump administration and the Australian government, as we await further details”. Steel fabricator Bisalloy did not fare so well on Monday morning, with its shares falling 4% in early trading. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.25% by late morning, tracking a sell-off on Wall Street on Friday. The tariff announcement likely created further uncertainty for traders, weighing on overall market sentiment.

So Musk and rumps latest "kill" is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. From its creation until 2017, the CFPB "has curtailed abusive debt collection practices, reformed mortgage lending, publicized and investigated hundreds of thousands of complaints from aggrieved customers of financial institutions, and extracted nearly $12 billion for 29 million consumers in refunds and canceled debts."[41] That figure had risen to $19 billion by 2024.[42] Consumer Financial Protection Bureau I am not saying that it should not be immune from cost-cutting however it seems to me that a billionaire, who can, afford to sue a bank if they are wronged, probably does not appreciate the importance of this organisation to ordinary people who might find themselves wronged by a bank. The running cost of this department seems to be about 500 million a year,(2021) but it has returned 19 billion dollars to consumers in 7 years. Musk is taking a chainsaw to something that he perhaps cannot see the purpose of but this is because of his extreme wealth.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau virtually shut down as DOGE, Russ Vought take over The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) -- the government watchdog charged with safeguarding American consumers’ finances -- has come to a virtual standstill Saturday night, according to an internal email obtained by ABC News. The email sent late Saturday night directs all CFPB staff to "cease all supervision and examination activity" and "cease all stakeholder engagement" effective immediately. The agency’s website shows an error message and its X account was also taken down. The email was sent by Russell Vought, the newly confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget, who is also now the acting director of the CFPB. Vought was an architect of "Project 2025."

Yep Trump’s Buyout Offers Backfire As Federal Workers View It As A “Scam”

Well well, it turns out that USAIDs inspector general was in investigating USAIDs public/private partnership with Musk/SpaceX arrangement for supplying Starlink services to Ukraine. This surely has to be suspicious or at least a conflict of interest. See video (relevant part starts at 5:37) Also FAA fines SpaceX $600 000. Interesting that the head of the FAA "resigned"

'A lot of garbage': Fmr. Republican USAID administrator slams Musk and Trump for gutting agency The thing that Trump and his followers do not seem to appreciate is that providing aid to a third-world country is not just about a wealthy country lending a hand to a poorer country but also about self-interest. Helping an African country with an Ebola outbreak is better than that disease spreading to the US. Australia provides aid to the South Pacific partly because the Chinese wish to endear themselves to the people of this region. It is called soft power. Trump is entitled to change things however it has to be within the law (which it is not) and it is mind-numbingly dumb to go in with a sledgehammer and destroy everything. If I have a medical problem I want the help of a surgeon wielding a scalpel with care not a moron with a chainsaw.

The BBC has two corporate charities. Children in Need is our UK-based charity which provides grants to thousands of projects which focus on children and young people who are disadvantaged throughout the UK. BBC Media Action is our international development charity. It makes TV, radio and multimedia content, and mentors journalists and broadcasters to help people in some of the poorest parts of the world. So which part do you object to? the Children in need or the mentoring journalism in the poorest part of the world Perhaps you should be paying more interest in what Elon and his DOGE teenagers are up to. For a start, there is a massive conflict of interest. Elon and his techno bros have been given access to an extremely sensitive database. Elon is the recipient of huge amounts of money from the government (Space x Telsa etc) He likely has access to information about his competitors. This is a conflict of interest. His band of techno boys don't even have appropriate clearances.