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Musk's cuts to foreign aid have led to 600,000 fatalities and counting but corporate media are counting his payout
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Nov. 7-8: Tesla CEO killing even more people than his cars do … Tesla shareholders award CEO of downsliding company a trillion-dollar package and also vote to stab last vestiges of meritocracy to death … Sandwich hurler acquitted of improvised explosive deli attack … Consumer sentiment and job layoffs now in Trumpcession territory …
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On Thursday, the same day that Tesla shareholders approved a pay package that could net CEO Elon Musk a trillion dollars in compensation, we learned that Musk had killed 600,000 people. So far.
Guess which got the most attention?
Working with, around, and over Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump, Musk gutted America’s foreign aid, most notably the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program led by Rubio. Trump gave no notice of the cuts, preventing recipients from making even meager preparations and non-sociopathic countries from stepping up their meager contributions in time.
It was just gone.
In a New Yorker article (free, shhh!), writer and public-health researcher Atul Gawande noted that global deaths attributable to those cuts have now risen beyond an estimated 600,000 people.
Four-hundred thousand of those dead were children. Two-hundred thousand were former children.
That’s more people than have been killed by atomic bombs.
That’s more people than the number of Nazis America killed in World War II.
It’s far more than the number killed every year by Antifa, Black Lives Matter, George Soros, and Hunter Biden combined.
Factor in the numbers who will die in the future due to these cuts and the numbers are too high to conceive of.
What makes the moral calculus so monstrous is the almost trivial amount saved. Foreign aid is a pittance of U.S. spending. It’s only a few pittances of what the average taxpayer forks over to Uncle Sam every year: $24 to keep forking over food to starving people.
Even for heartless fucks, that spending yields massive return on investment in tamping down global stability which, yes, laps up onto our shores. And, yes, America gives gave more than other major countries. But also gives less of what it has than other major countries do.
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And if you click through (as TFN did, because that’s why you’re here) to the academic tracker that runs a rolling estimate of granular causes of death due to U.S. funding withdrawals, the sheer, obscene needlessness of these entirely preventable deaths howls to the uncaring sky.
Here are just some of the latest estimates; showing causes of death, number of additional deaths due to funding loss, and frequency of new deaths:
Adult HIV: 125,745 (3.3 minutes)
Child diarrhea: 99,991 (4.15 minutes)
Child malaria: 42,299 (9.81 minutes)
Infant HIV: 13,385 (31 minutes)
That’s just a sample. And, just by way contrast, in the United States alone, adult diarrhea is responsible for the vast majority of Fox News primetime programming and 93% of Trump’s unscripted remarks.
On the same day this information was being ignored by corporate media, said corporate media focused instead on the vote by Tesla shareholders to award Musk a compensation package meant to compensate for his package reward him if he hits certain benchmarks the way his non-self-driving “self-driving” cars hit people.
Musk will get billions, for instance, if his self-driving taxies succeed, rather than imposing obviously impossible benchmarks such as shutting the fuck up and not impregnating more people for a few weeks.
The pay package was intended, the Tesla board said, to incentivize Musk to perform well. Despite Tesla’s innovative, or possibly outovative, incentive plan, the company is retaining a traditional incentive plan for other employees to do well: Firing their asses if they don’t.
How stupid are Tesla’s shareholders who approved this? Imagine this: You have enough money to buy Tesla stock … and haven’t dumped it yet.
The new package was approved even though most corporate bonus policies are designed not to reward employees who refuse to work full-time, tank the company stock, and kill 600,000 people.
As Elektrek points out, Musk spent $288 million of his own money helping to elect a party that promptly rewrote rules that once helped Tesla compete, costing Tesla an estimated $1.4 billion. Remember that time you did that and your boss gave you a trillion-dollar bonus package? That was cool.
Tesla sales are now falling faster than starving former recipients of U.S. aid. At this rate, his foreign-aid victims are going to outnumber his auto sales.
Tesla’s stock has also suffered from Musk’s self-driving hard-right turn. In fact, while Tesla was once a left-wing darling for promoting sustainable energy, the new pay package is in part an endorsement of his boredom with cars new interest in taking Tesla into robotics and AI.
“What we are about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book,” Musk said Thursday, promoting his foresighted vision with a non-innovative cliche about 2,500-year-old tech.
Musk has a history of saying robots won’t be a threat to humans if governments start making up for lost jobs with what he calls high universal income. This actually is an innovation: A thing Musk is proposing that he’s right about. And they said it couldn’t be done.
As with most Musk innovations, the idea of robots and artificial intelligence allowing humans to enjoy lives of leisure and self-fulfillment — if we pay people despite them not working — was invented by someone who is not him.
As I wrote on Labor Day, economist John Maynard Keynes 100 years ago thought the threat of automated labor was that we wouldn’t know what to do with all our free time. It didn’t occur to Keynes how keen oligarchs are about hoarding, or that oligarchs would never in 100 years share the fruits of automated labor.
But that’s what Musk is predicting. Even though his political work has been toward hoarding rather than sharing the fruits of automation. Just like his new pay package does — it literally siphons off shares from a pool for workers.
He’s right, though: Musk or no Musk, if oligarchs keep eliminating jobs, the only options are going to be violent revolution or taxing those oligarchs for enough money to keep the masses from starving (and, ideally, unfucking our tax and finreg regimens to prevent obscene hoarding like we used to).
At the moment, though, Musk is one of the most prominent butt-headed buttresses standing in the way of shared fruits of productivity, by supporting Trump and the right. And killing 600,000 people as a result.
In fact, Musk’s latest push for high universal income came fittingly in response to Amazon eliminating the jobs of … 600,000 people.
Subway™ Vigilante Acquitted
Sean Dunn, who struck a nine-grain blow for freedom when he flung a salami sub at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, was acquitted by a jury of his peers on Thursday.
Dunn had faced misdemeanor assault charges because a grand jury laughed off U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s attempt to indict him on felony assault charges. Before he threw the sandwich, Dunn said, “Fuck you! You fucking fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city.”
Dunn was able to get out of this pickle and avoid being turned over to America’s unforgiving jalapeñal system thanks to sweet work by his lawyers — or, in Spanish, “avocados.”
Dunn’s actions spoke to America, saying, in effect, lettuce consider how Trump’s authoritarianism has twisted us, forcing us to open-face just how powerfully tyranny can turn even an average man into a muenster. I cheddar to think.
Of course, with his exoneration, Dunn now has the right to sue for false arrest, which he mayo may not. Either way, the incident will still go on his parmesan record.
January 6 Crime Watch
As soon as I forget about tracking the criminal records of January 6heads pardoned by Pres. Donald Trump, a new sixhead pops up.
When Trump issued his wholesale pardon because no one wanted to do the actual work of assessing individual cases, John Banuelos got to skip out on his charge of firing a gun during the Jan. 6 attack. Too bad, because maybe they’d have discovered he’s a career criminal who should’ve picked a different career. Here’s CNN:
He kicked and punched someone who was waiting for the school bus. He tried to push someone out of a moving vehicle. He dragged a woman out of a car by her hair. He bit a boy on the ear. He trespassed in the apartment of a woman who came home to find him there, along with a Doberman Pinscher. He told his girlfriend he would beat her if she called the police.
And that was before Jan. 6, after which he killed a guy before his arrest for Jan. 6ing. None of which is even why he’s in the news again!
He was just arrested again on charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. (Disclosure: TFN was unaware that there are forms of kidnapping and sexual assault that aren’t aggravating.)
In other words, after Trump freed him, one of his January 6 patriots allegedly became a sex trafficker. Just like a certain Trump best friend who I won’t name but whose Files™ remain unreleased.
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So now Trump’s gonna deport him, right? I mean, the tattoos clearly spell out “Tren de Aragau.” (h/t)
Eight Quickies
Consumer sentiment is now at a near-record low. The only segment of the population not stressing? Stockholders.
Layoffs in October hit a monthly high not seen since the depths of the mortgage crash in 2008. Companies announced 153,000 jobs cut in October, with 1.1 million eliminated since January. Inflation, cuts in federal spending, and cuts in personal spending by laid-off federal workers all contributed, as did automation and consumer sentiment, which is now at a near-record low, according to Quickie #1. High universal income any time now, people!
U.S. soldiers and their families could use some defense against the president’s war on needy people who eat food. With Pres. Donald Trump fighting a court order to resume food stamps — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — the Military Family Advisory Network reports receiving 50,000 requests for help. The food crisis is especially important among military families because they matter exactly as much as every other family. #FeedingAmerica.org
Health (sic) and Human (sic) Services (sic) Secretary Robert Fibbing Kennedy, Jr., last month said layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wouldn’t affect inspections of food and drug. In a shocking development, it turns out that might be true! In a less shocking development, it might be true because the FDA is hiring contractors to replace its laid-off workers. Penny-wise and Pennywise!
Looks like commemorating our history is more important when it’s statues of white traitors than plaques about Black patriots. The Trump administration has removed two panels about Black members of the U.S. military from the American War Cemetery visitors center that commemorates the liberation of the Netherlands. The Dutch memorial is run by the U.S., and the administration responded to questions about the Black erasure with (1) some mealy-mouthed bullshit and (2) not responding at all. These people should be tossed into Dutch ovens¹. (h/t)
Remember how Texas redrew its congressional maps to help Republican House candidates next year? They used the 2024 presidential-election results to find where Trump voters were and draw districts that would add five more Republican seats. Uno problemo: Four of those districts are now majority-Hispanic. And the Hispanic vote just shifted back to Democrats on Tuesday. (For instance, in New Jersey, Pres. Donald Trump got 46% of the Hispanic vote in 2024, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) in her successful gubernatorial race got 68%.) Oops. (h/t)
Also in Texas, machinist and union leader Taylor Rehmet on Tuesday got more votes than anyone in a state Senate district that went for Pres. Donald Trump by a margin of more than 17 points last year. Because Rehmet didn’t get a majority, just 47.6%, he’ll have a runoff next year against the top Republican vote-getter, a Christian nationalist and presumed clown. Rehmet’s campaign site — for donations toward beating a presumed clown and freaking the fuck out of Texas Republicans — is here. Tell ‘em TFN sent ya! (h/t)
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who was musical-chaired out of Republican leadership, announced Friday that she’s running for governor of New York, clearly inspired by the successes of Republican candidates in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York. Her announcement was delivered to Democrats by a fat man in a red suit who left it under a tree. “Nominating Elise would be like putting Trump at the top of the ticket next year and hoping everyone survives,” one Republican operative told Politico anonymously because he’s a Republican operative.
Recommended Viewing
My discussion with Team Human creator Doug Rushkoff finally made it online, if folks want to check it out. It’s free here and everyone should be checking out Doug and his team of humans.
Taking Action
If you’ll be in the DC area later this month, there’s three days of events starting Nov. 20 and culminating in a Nov. 22 rally calling for elected officials to push for the impeachment of Pres. Donald Trump on charges of [insert at least one impeachable offense here, you may pick more than one]. (h/t)
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