Musk Would Be The 21st Century’s Andrew Mellon— But Worse
By the time the election is over and the final FEC reports are deciphered accounted for, Elon Musk, an illegal migrant from South Africa by way of Canada, will have contributed around a half billion dollars to Trump and Republican candidates for Congress. His America PAC alone has spent tens of millions of dollars boosting MAGA candidates like New Yorker Mike Lawler ($1.5 million). Californian Ken Calvert ($1.3 million), Californian Michelle Steel ($1.1 million), Ohioan Kevin Coughlin ($1 million) and huge amounts, but not yet a million, for Thomas Kean (NJ), David Valadao (CA), Austin Theriault (ME), Marc Molinaro (NY), outright Nazi Joe Kent (WA), Tom Barrett (MI), Paul Junge (MI), John James (MI), Zach Nunn (IA), Nick Begich (AK), Yvette Herrell (NM), Don Bacon (NE)... There are many reasons to oppose Trump. Musk alone is enough!
Aside from spending $450,707 to bolster Kean, Jr in NJ-07, Musk’s criminal PAC put $311,364 into smearing Sue Altman, the only progressive in the DCCC’s Red to Blue program. The DCCC and Hakeem Jeffries’ House Majority PAC are responding to Musk’s flood of cash in many cases, but not in New Jersey. If you’d like to help Sue finance her ground game, you can do it here.
Fortunately, much of Musk’s investment— the ground-game piece— is failing, a result of a spectacularly incompetent, overly-entitled chief executive. But a quarter billion dollars can still go a long way. His latest scheme, clearly illegal, is to bribe voters. On Saturday, he gave a MAGAt in Pennsylvania (John Dreher) a $1 million check and said he will do the same every day from now until the election. What Musk is doing is illegal, even if Merrick Garland is too lame to confront it. And unless we want to embrace oligarchy, plutocracy and/or technocracy as a replacement for democracy, Musk should be punished— and punished enough so that other would-be plutocrats remember and tremble. No fines— nationalization of his businesses and deportation back to Africa. Why? An AP headline over the weekend said it all Judges Punishing Jan. 6 Rioters Say They Fear More Political Violence As Election Day Nears. That’s because the sentences, for the most part, are way too light and won’t deter anyone. I’m not going to call for the death penalty but blanket life-without-chance-of-parole might make would-be insurrectionists think twice. And nationalization and deportation of Musk would probably, for example, calm someone like Peter Thiel down significantly.
Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog— who would make a far better Attorney General than Garland or, likely, whomever Kamala has in mind— wrote Saturday evening that “Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, [the million dollar check scheme] is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): ‘Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both’… See also the DOJ Election Crimes Manual at 44: ‘The bribe may be anything having monetary value, including cash, liquor, lottery chances, and welfare benefits such as food stamps’… For an offer or a payment to violate Section 10307(c), it must have been intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.’”
On Saturday, The Atlantic published an essay by Franklin Foer, What Elon Musk Really Wants, asserting right from the outset that “If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government— not to mention the business opportunity of the century. Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an Ayn Rand novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state— and therefore American life— in his own image. Musk’s pursuit of this dream clearly transcends billionaire hobbyism. Consider the personal attention and financial resources that he is pouring into the former president’s campaign. According to the New York Times, Musk has relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee Trump’s ground game there. That is, he’s running the infrastructure that will bring voters to the polls. In service of this cause, he’s imported top talent from his companies, and he reportedly plans on spending $500 million on it. That doesn’t begin to account for the value of Musk’s celebrity shilling, and the way he has turned Twitter into an informal organ of the campaign.”
Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politico’s tabulation, both companies have won $15 billion in federal contracts. But that’s just his business plan in beta form. According to the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is designing a slew of new products with “national security customers in mind.”
Musk has only begun to tap the pecuniary potential of the government, and Trump is the dream. He rewards loyalists, whether they are foreign leaders who genuflect before him or supplicants who host events at his resorts. Where other presidents might be restrained by norms, Trump shrugs. During his first term, he discovered that his party was never going to punish him for his transgressions.
In the evolving topography of Trumpland, none of his supporters or cronies will have chits to compare with Musk’s. If Trump wins, it will likely be by a narrow margin that can be attributed to turnout. Musk can tout himself as the single variable of success.
It’s not hard to imagine how the mogul will exploit this alliance. Trump has already announced that he will place him in charge of a government-efficiency commission. Or, in the Trumpian vernacular, Musk will be the “secretary of cost-cutting.” SpaceX is the implied template: Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing the affairs of state to nimble entrepreneurs and adroit technologists. That means there will be even more opportunities for his companies to score gargantuan contracts. So when Trump brags that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, he’s not imagining a reprise of the Apollo program. He’s envisioning cutting SpaceX one of the largest checks that the U.S. government has ever written. He’s talking about making the richest man in the world even richer.
Of course, this could be bluster. But it is entirely consistent with the rest of the right’s program for Trump’s second term, which involves dismantling the federal government— eliminating swaths of the politically neutral civil service and entire Cabinet departments and agencies. It is exactly the kind of sweeping change that suits Musk’s grandiose sense of his own place in human history.
This isn’t a standard-issue case of oligarchy. It is an apotheosis of the egotism and social Darwinism embedded in Silicon Valley’s pursuit of monopoly— the sense that concentration of power in the hands of geniuses is the most desirable social arrangement. As Peter Thiel once put it, “Competition is for losers.” (He also bluntly admitted, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”) In this worldview, restraints on power are for losers, too.
With his government contracts— and his insider influence— Musk will become further ensconced in the national-security state. (He already has a $1.8 billion classified contract, likely with the National Reconnaissance Office, and, through a division of SpaceX called Starshield, supplies communications networks for the military.) At a moment when the government is confronting crucial decisions about the future of AI and the commercialization of space, his ideals will hold sway.
At Tesla, Musk assigned himself the title of “technoking.” That moniker, which sits on the line between jokiness and monomania, captures the danger. Following the example set by Trump, he wouldn’t need to divest himself from his businesses, not even his social-media company. In an administration that brashly disrespects its critics, he wouldn’t need to fear congressional oversight and could brush aside any American who dares to question his role. Of all the risks posed by a second Trump term, this might be one of the most terrifying.
Eric Lipton, David Farenthold, Aaron Krolik and Kirsten Grind couldn’t have agreed more: “Musk’s influence over the federal government is extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative… SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies. His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial. His companies have been targeted in at least 20 recent investigations or reviews, including over the safety of his Tesla cars and the environmental damage caused by his rockets.”
They reported that “Trump has vowed to make Musk head of a new “government efficiency commission” with the power to recommend wide-ranging cuts at federal agencies and changes to federal rules. That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest… The idea for an efficiency commission originated with Musk. When he interviewed Trump on Twitter in August, Musk brought it up three times— returning to the topic when Trump digressed into other subjects. ‘I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayer money— the taxpayers’ hard-earned money— is spent in a good way,” Musk said the third time. And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission.’” Trump finally concurred.
Even before getting a formal role in the federal government, Musk has repeatedly called for a broad effort to strike or weaken federal regulations, and to slash federal spending. “If Trump wins, we do have an opportunity to do kind of a once in a lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of the government,” Musk said at a conference in Los Angeles last month.
…[A] criminal law prohibits federal employees and outside advisers who are sometimes considered “special government employees” from “participating personally and substantially in any particular matter that affects your financial interests, as well as the financial interests of your spouse, minor child, general partner, an organization in which you serve as an officer.”
But that has often not prevented problems with outside advisers— even those with much less complicated portfolios than Musk’s. Pharmaceutical industry advisers to the Food and Drug Administration, various studies have shown, often appear to have made recommendations that benefit their corporate interests, as have military contractors tapped to advise the Pentagon.
Musk has hinted at one government efficiency he would like to see: killing NASA’s Starliner contract with Boeing, his main industry competitor.
“The world doesn’t need another capsule,” he wrote earlier this year, referring to the long-delayed Boeing system, which returned empty this month, after encountering trouble on its first human test flight. (He has not addressed if the proposed efficiency committee would take this up.)
Today his spawn spends tens of millions of untaxed dollars to get Trump into power, but Andrew Mellon (1855-1937) may well be looked at as the historical model for Musk if Trump does return to power. Simply put, he used his enormous fortune to exert massive influence over business, government and policy and got himself appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Warren Harding (considered a runner-up to Trump as “worst president ever”). Mellon’s reactionary policies led directly to the Great Depression. His policies— favoring minimal government intervention and deregulation— caused the speculative bubble that burst in 1929. When the Great Depression hit, he insisted that the economy should be allowed to “liquidate,” meaning that failing businesses, banks and individuals should simply be allowed to collapse, typical Republican lack of compassion for those suffering.
Thanks to his banking empire and investments in various industries— oil, steel, aluminum (Alcoa)— he was one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. As Treasury Secretary for over a decade (for 3 of America’s worst presidents), he pursued policies favorable to wealthy elites, particularly through drastic cuts in taxes on the rich. He advocated for the classic GOP “trickle-down” theory and insisted— wrongly— that reducing taxes on the wealthy would spur economic growth. Aside from causing the Great Depression, his policies exacerbated wealth inequality and devastated the working class. Trump brags his own tax cuts were the largest in history. They weren’t; Mellon’s were, especially for the rich. The top marginal tax rate dropped from 77% to 25%. Exactly as Musk’s would, Mellon's personal fortune and business interests overlapped with his role in government. His actions were a classic example of how the ultra-wealthy use their positions to enact policies that help maintain and expand their own wealth.
And where were the Democraps? Basically, they just rolled over. By the time Mellon was appointed in 1921, the Progressive Era (1890s to 1920), which had worked on curbing the power of monopolies and regulating big business, had lost its steam. The 1920 election, in which Harding won a landslide victory, marked a shift toward reactionary, pro-business policies. The Democratic Party was internally divided and less focused on fighting against concentrated wealth, allowing Mellon to enter and then re-enter government with virtually no resistance.
The Democrats were divided between its conservative, pro-business Southern wing and its more progressive Northern wing. This division meant that Democrats were unable to unify in opposition to Mellon's policies or his confirmation. As usual, the Southern Democrats had little problem with Mellon's conservative economic views. And, in any case, there was a broad consensus across the political spectrum that laissez-faire economics were the right path for the country, especially after World War I. The GOP controlled the government entirely for the decade, primarily because the Democrats were lost and divided and unable to offer any kind of alternative that wasn’t Republican-lite.
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