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Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

> So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.

... and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Checks and balances have been neutralized.

Checks and balances were never tried in the first place. There must have been some assumption of decorum and decency, so strong that whatever loopholes are, have been left wide open.

Without a competent or impartial FBI and AG, there's literally zero chance these people will be investigated.

With a house and senate that fears the president, there will be no impeachment.

And even if they successfully manage to impeach the president, I'm 100% sure Trump will challenge it.

Yeah, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Gonna be 4 very, very long years.

4 years? Trump has been talking about a third term.

“It would be my greatest honor to serve not once but twice,” Mr. Trump told an audience on Saturday. “Maybe three times.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/us/politics/trump-boundar...

I didn't think he would live this long, but he certainly couldn't survive another 8 years, right?... right?

So basically we are down to relying on the cycle of life as the ultimate check and balance. Hopefully he won't appoint one of his sons as his successor like in North Korea.

> Checks and balances have been neutralized.

That seems somewhat inverted - the elected government is creating checks and balances on unelected bureaucrats.

Elon Musk was elected? News to me.

Trump was elected, and Elon was appointed by Trump?

Given the unprecedented power he is wielding he should have been confirmed by congress.

So Musk is one of those unelected bureaucrats you're railing against?

This is proof that people will downvote to silence things they don't like. This is a gross abuse of the spirit of HN. The statement above was factual.

A radical improvement in the national debt at the hands of the world's most competent entrepeneur? I think many people were voting specifically for this. Things are going exactly as advertised.

You are assuming that there will be a radical improvement. That is yet to be seen. I personally doubt it.

They're already projected to save hundreds of billions through the voluntary redundancy scheme implemented last week.

This sounds like a number pulled out of Musk's ass.

It’s wages per year with IIRC 8% of the workers taking the deal.

You are conflating debt and deficit. Cutting the deficit by a few hundred billion dollars will barely impact the rate of growth of the debt, it's not a "radical improvement in the national debt", it's a modest reduction in spending.

"Checks and balances" is a phrase that applies to the ability of the three coequal branches of government to hold one another in check.

By sending in their own unelected bureaucrats

You're in the wrong place for a comment like that. Don't even bother.

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