Who Woulda Thunk It?

      Who would ever think that Elon Musk would ever be on the right side of history about anything? He's a guy whose only genius is in conning the federal government into giving him tens of billions in subsidies, tax cuts and contracts so he could blow up rockets on launch pads and cremate his own Tesla customers alive. He fathers a new baby every 10 days with the avowed intention of pumping up white birthrates. He stole the election for Donald Trump by pumping nearly $300,000,000 of his own money and nudged election results in certain battleground states, gave a Nazi salute at his inauguration, humiliated himself with that stunt in Wisconsin, supported Germany's NeoNazi party, sledge-hammered Twitter practically out of existence and through his Nazi fanboy antics lost at least 11% of Tesla's share price.

     And, oh yeah, DOGE.

     But out of all the highest profile right wingers in this country, Elon Musk was also one of the very few who opposed Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill." He hurled verbal brick bats at it over two weeks ago when it was still being debated in the House and even threatened Republican lawmakers who would vote for it.

     Then, after an uncharacteristic two week silence (after his first round of jeremiads cost him $34 billion), Musk came out swinging against the bill again after it passed in the Senate two days later. Trump wearily threatened to deport him. Musk said it was tempting to do... something.

     Obviously, Musk was acting out of self interest. The EV subsidies are a thing of the past (even though he got a nice fat tax break as a consolation prize).  Pointedly, Musk never once mentioned in his Twitter broadsides the bill's actual evils, such as kicking 15,000,000 people off their health coverage, cutting SNAP benefits so that states will have to cover the shortfall, childrens' food assistance is being axed and ICE's budget was just increased by thirteen fold, thereby creating America's first national police force, the realization of John Carpenter's "Escape From" films.

     The tax cuts for billionaires and corporations were made permanent while payments to hospitals will sunset after three years. The list goes on and on.

     It was arguably the most ruinous, most horrible piece of legislation to ever pass through Congress in 95 years (I'm thinking of Smoot-Hawley).  It was rammed through by Republicans in both chambers through reconciliation, with Trump's whip on their backs (He imposed a July 4th deadline as if Congress was a boiler room operation). It was the embodiment of Bill Clinton's famous aphorism about laws and sausages. You don't want to see either of them being made.

      In the reconciliation vote, every Republican in the House with two exceptions voted for it. Only three Senate Republicans voted against it (Rand Paul, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis). This greasy ball of pork fat, this shameless giveaway to the 1%, will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit, according to the CBO, stuff a trillion into the pockets of those least deserving of it while hurting the most vulnerable Americans. It's the biggest add-on to the deficit in US history.

     There's no other way to look at it.

      Fingers will be pointed, blame will be assigned here and there. One could plausibly lay much if not all the blame for this on Lisa Murkowski, who bitterly opposed the bill until crunch time came. Then she admitted, rather defensively, that she was essentially bribed into voting for it after Senate Republicans promised her some carve outs for Alaska. Bur the bill passed in the Senate by a 50-50 vote only when JD Vance voted Yes.

     It passed 218-214 in the House today after Trump bribed people like Byron Donalds and Tim Burchett with autographed swag. (No, I'm not making this up.) Then, just before the final reconciliation vote, Rob Bresnahan, who actually campaigned on ending trading stocks in Congress and who has since become the House's most prolific trader, sold his stock in Centene, some shady brokerage/middle man that provides no real value, and it's profiting off US taxpayers. Until today, anyway. Right after Bresnahan's insider trading panic selling, the company's stock price cratered by 43%.

 

     Thomas Nast would've had a field day with this crew.