D.epartment O.f G.overnment E.nshitification

Thanks for making it national news, major national media. Good work.

Literal supervillainy.
- Some orphans will take matters into their own hand
  
  Caucescu 2: Electric Boogaloo

- The richest man on earth who receives tens of billions in taxpayer money, government incentives, and tax breaks to build cars and blow up rockets over the Caribbean. He is a fucking parasite setting our/NASA money on fire. (In addition to straight up getting money from government he also gets money routed through NASA contracts)
- If my disabled ass can ever get the energy and motivation to go to a protest I want to have a sign that compares what I receive in a year with SSDI, Medicaid, and HUD housing to what just Elon receives in federal money for his businesses. Now who's the parasite?
  
  Great idea. Hijacking -
  Hey, all of you. Stop feeding trolls. They are propagating the truly dystopian lie that the US is actually accomplishing a real energy transition, with or without Musk.
  "Cleanest energy economy in the world" (JD Vance, 2024 VP debate, gaslighting the public into thinking Republicans haven't successfully held us back from clean energy at every possible turn.)
  It's a russian muskbot or unwilling stooge. The brief account history is literally full of republican and russian defense. Don't let them fill lemmy with stupid arguments. It distracts from the real conversations.
  Downvote, and either ignore entirely, or if needed talk around the troll to everyone else listening.
- Elon is evil and rotten to his core.
- Sir, you spelled Felon Musk wrong.
  
  Please stop with the childish name calling.
  If you want to make Musk look bad, just point out the many illegal things he's doing.

This only ends one way, with nooses and guillotines. It is up to the people how quickly it ends.
- I pulled up next to a guy the other day and the passenger looked like Elon at first glance. My first thought was if I could shoot him in the face and escape long enough to at least make a few phone calls. That's how much this guy deserves to be deleted. I'd risk my life to end it all.
  
  Elon Musk is ultra paranoid for a reason. He has 20 bodyguards on a normal day and also has a secret service detail. He is not an easy target.
  
  He learned from trump, steal from children
- Yep. C'mon America. How long you gonna let these nazis fuck you?
- Nah, this ends with America so bankrupt that states split up from the federation. Maybe, just maybe, the workers unions will be strong enough to claim one of these new countries, but most likely it ends with seperate kingdoms, each ruled by a different billionaire.
  
  That is the goal, I think.

I'm sure he'll be super bummed about it whenever he wakes up from his latest k-nap.
- I’m getting sick and tired of updating my The Ballad of the Techno-Prophet: A Decade of Deception

Did they actually cut it off? (Even if temporarily?)
- Yeah, I am not doubting that this happened, because in the mix of callousness and incompetence on display, it isn't unlikely. But a source would be much appreciated, still.
  
  Here's a Snopes review of what I think is the same specific topic.
  It mentions nothing about these being orphan support payments, but rather, these being possibly incorrectly typed SSNs that resulted in their recordkeeping systems assuming, based on the information tied to those SSNs, that the borrowers were, say, 11 years old, when in actuality they were not, and the SSNs had just been inputted incorrectly, even if all other borrower information was accurate.
  They also didn't stop these funds, as they were already given out. They're simply "reviewing" them.
  
  We don't need sources, we just go off vibes

I'm really interested to see any reputable articles confirming this. Google searches didn't show anything, 1 press conference on Reddit, 1 instagram post
- https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/how-jeff-bezos-made-peace-with-donald-trump/
  https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/g-s1-29665/la-times-editor-resigns-presidential-endorsement
  https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5161480/trump-media-threats-abc-cbs-60-minutes-journalists
  https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/media/cbs-news-trump-60-minutes-legal-threat/index.html
  You're going to see a lot of news stories falling through the cracks in our modern Trump-friendly media landscape.
  
  For those experiencing the same confusion as myself: those are not sources for the orphan/survivor benefits story, they're possible reasons why the media might not be reporting the story.
- https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/no-more-loans-to-babies-or-the-dead-elon-musks-doge-backs-sbas-crackdown-on-fraudulent-loans/articleshow/119435488.cms
  It’s stopping direct loans applications by people under 18, nothing about actual payments. When are dumb fucks going to learn Tweets aren’t sources?
  I’m so glad the leftist plan to beat the right is be as completely critically illiterate as they are. Just cede the movement to the maniacs now because once the conspiracy theorists take root it’s a short stroll to leftist QAnon
  
  I agree 100%. We need to move past believing things just because they got our world view.
  
  I'm also interested in verifying this. Unfortunately, the article you linked to references young people getting sba loans not social security payments. It then repeats old news about very old people getting social security benefits.
  
  Whatever gets shitlibs to help storm the Capitol, but in a based way

Is there a source for this, I'm genuinely interested in reading more about this but can't find a source.
- It's a screenshot of a tweet, I don't know what further proof you could want. Did you not see the blue checkmark? /s
- I can't find much except for a weird indiatoday article and the original Xhit: https://nitter.space/elonmusk/status/1904030373899616736#m
  I don't understand the association he's making between Social Security and the Small Business Administration. At first glance I don't see any indication the SBA does anything with children outside of funding childcare centers?
  It sounds like they check your credit for a small business loan, so they would presumably take your SSN and I guess check it against the database?
  But then they check your credit anyway. It's not like the Social Security database is the safeguard for an unsafe loan. We have ~~identity leaks~~ credit agencies for that. If he had proof of children or 'immortals' actually getting these loans in any numbers he would show it. Why can't a 17 year old run a company anyway? If 20 year olds can dismantle the government...
  If an elderly small business owner dies, and the company is still held by his estate... wouldn't his loan still be attached to his SSN?
  And if an underage orphan receives ownership of a small business through estate, would their SSN be attached to these loans, even if the company was operated by a third party regency?
  
  Dudes just mashing buttons on a calculator like a toddler. He’s not checking math.
  
  My experience with estates would be you'd need to file for an EIN for the estate and the loan would be a liability against the estate. So to close the estate out you'd need to clear out any liabilities and remaining capital or property given to beneficiaries. You might have heard of cases where people have to sell family homes to clear debt against the estate .
  But with Musk is hard to even try to follow a train of thought. And his level of misunderstanding of how anything in the government works is pretty mind-blowingly wrong.

The money THEOR PARENTS PAID INTO AND WORKED TOWARDS. They are literally entitled to it. It is their parent money!!!

How much does an orphaned 8 year old get a month from social security? I would assume that all goes directly to the orphanage or foster home?
What is he supposed to pay his own rent and not drop $2k on Paw Patrol.
- If I remember correctly, the money goes to a guardian for the benefit of the child.
  20 years ago I knew someone who's husband was on a motorcycle and was run over and killed by a commercial truck driver (I think he was falling sleep or something.) She was a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids at the time. In the end between the settlement and the social security, she was able to continue to stay home to raise the children and college wasn't going to be a problem either.
  I haven't thought of that family in years. In typing that out, I'm realizing that the American dream is still alive and well! Kids just have to be ready to sacrifice one of their parents to get it.
  
  But that kid wasn’t orphaned. And I’m guessing that kid wasn’t getting social security. It’s possible parts of the settlement went into some kind of trust fund which the child wouldn’t have access to until reaching a certain age, or however else it was structured.
- I don't know about orphaned, but my guardians got $300/month in the 90s because my mom was on social security disability. And when I was still with my mom, I think she got $700/month on social security disability. That's with me included?
  Obviously this is different from what orphans would get, and 25+ years ago. But if Musk had stolen it from us then, our situation would've been even worse...and it wasn't great to begin with. Even back then, with my mom having an incurable disability, she had to be careful of how much money extra she made from odd jobs lest they take it all away (people on disability aren't allowed to save or have above X amount in income or the benefits will be revoked). And apartments in the area were $700/month, and we weren't in section 8 housing so all of her benefits went to rent--and that was before utilities, food, etc.
  From what I've heard, similar restrictions are in place now. Nobody's getting a plush ride on benefits, ever, and it's a struggle to even get on them to begin with. Even with things that are 100% disabling and incurable.
  
  I've heard that before and it still baffles me. People on disability aid have to maintain poverty to or else be subjected to greater poverty. It sounds like an obvious joke from Futurama. Except it's real and the joke is the system.
- Doesn't have to be an orphan. My grandparents adopted me and I got $600/mo. from dad's Social Security (80s money) until I graduated high school. He was a WWII vet, so I'm sure that played into it a bit.
  
  When I was in college, I received no money for aid because my parents made too much. My friend, whose mother had abandoned him to be raised by his extremely wealthy grandmother, was still considered to be getting $0 of parental help, so he got tons of federal aid.
  I worked full time through college; he didn’t. He loved to argue that free college would be “regressive” because rich kids wouldn’t have to pay for it.
- Musk should get prison time for this. But instead he will bs rewarded from Republicans for saving money and when the rest of social security checks stop coming in, yet they keep taking the money from our pockets, where exactly will all that money go?
  Trump and Musk about to rob us of our social security benefits and what you bet part of it ends up in Puntins pockets.

Warning everyone that I could not find a source for this and this Twitter post isn't any evidence in itself. So if you're saying I told you so, then you're just as susceptible as the people who believe $300m was being sent to 11yos without any explanation.
- I found two sources for this info.
  https://en.as.com/latest_news/bad-news-for-social-security-beneficiaries-this-new-proposal-would-stop-payments-to-170000-people-n/ says:
  Who could see their Social Security benefits stopped?
  Government Executive reports that the SSA memo proposes ceasing payments that are made to people without Social Security numbers. While people without an SSN are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits of their own, there are scenarios where they can accept benefits on behalf of an eligible person who does have an SSN as that person’s “representative payee.”
  A link in that text goes to https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/03/ssa-weighs-axing-payments-170000-beneficiaries/403740/ and it gives an example:
  That task could be arduous, as finding payees is already so difficult that at times the agency turns to institutional payees like child welfare agencies, said Romig. SSA staff also have to assess the suitability of payees.
  “Say you’re a kid and you don’t have a payee for a while — they stop paying the benefit until they sort it out,” she said of the potential for interruptions to benefits.
  It may be that the OP read that and extrapolated it to mean orphans would be cut off ... which may or may not be true.
  
  Those are for SSA, not SBA. They don't explain why SBA would be brokering business loans with 11yos. There is likely a valid explanation here, but the media doesn't need to get up in arms until more details are available.
- You think children are getting undeserved money from the government.
  I think children are getting money from the government.
  We are not the same.
  </meme>
  Regardless of evidence provenance, children need to be our most sacred class of people, followed by the elderly and disabled. It shouldn't even be a question about how and why we take care of them, we just fucking should.
  Misinformation is real, so I see part of your point, but the people outraged at this are WILDLY different from the people outraged that kids might be getting money they don't "deserve". Can we not just be nice to each other? This isn't actually a zero-sum game.
  
  No, I actually think SBA lenders are not sending any money to 11yos. I think this is most likely a record keeping error.
  I do also think the Twitter post is confusing SSA and SBA. The SSA sending social security I am 100% for. SBA lenders sending money to business I am also 100%, even if they are 11yos. I just think it is highly unlikely that in a single year, banks decided to loan an unprecedented $300m to 11yos and that those thousands of loans all had mismatching names with their SSNs.
  I'm just saying everyone shouldn't go rallying behind this person who is making claims without any evidence. It's just as dumb as DOGE.

thats the american way.
- Something about bootstraps and extreme individualism because real red blood 'muricans something

Musk saying the words “social security” might have been the best thing that could have happened tbh. A conservative family member of mine was at an Indivisible meeting today - I think the republicans might be in for a bit of a shit show, if you can believe it
- Even when they get their SS canceled, they will praise him. They will say...."Well, he said there will be pain and hardship. But the good times are coming. The lord has a plan".
  
  You’re not wrong in general, I should clarify. This family is of the affluent, fence-sitting variety conservative. They couldn’t be assed to do anything because it hadn’t hit them yet. This did. This is someone who will genuinely be turned imo.
  Quick edit here, I just got done talking with them. They told me what finally pushed them over was talking to a friend of theirs whose kid has autism. Their kid hadn’t been able to sleep at night with all this shit going on. Apparently that really got to them. So - my takeaway here is, keep the dialogue open. If you have a story to tell, keep sharing it. You never know who it will reach.
  
  They won't though.
  There's this constant kneejerk response here and everywhere that "oh we've seen it all before" and "they didn't do anything then, they won't do anything now". It's understandable. It's relatable. It's even inevitable. The apathy, the exhaustion, the despair.
  But the reason people still get upset is because there are still things to be upset about. New people find new reasons all the time. The reason most of this is so shocking to many is because it actually hasn't happened before.
  None of this has. Not to them. Not here. Not in our lifetimes. So many things are changing that it's hard to keep up, but many people have enjoyed a geographical, demographical, or economic distance between themselves and their society's problems.
  Social security has always been the "third rail". It's killed careers for even approaching the idea of reform. It is - literally, by every single definition - the taxpayer's dollar. If you want things to change, you need to take advantage of moments like this. Don't spread apathy.
  Spread outrage. Spread the word. Americans are about to be economically kicked in the family jewels at every level. Trade, tariffs, taxes, business regulations, labor protections, health insurance, federal jobs, government contracts, social security...
  There will be people who will "accept the hardship", but there are far more people who will be pissed at seeing politics hit their bank account. Their lives. Their families.
  Help them understand why it's happening. Help them understand why it needs to stop.
  
  Many will, some won’t. It’s the 10% in the middle we need to wake up and turn the tide.
- I'll believe it when I see it.

Please, Smithers, who are they going to complain to? Their parents?

They've also cut PEPFAR. PEPFAR is a program which, among other things, provides antiretrovirals to people with HIV/AIDS in poorer countries. Approximately twenty million people, including half a million children will now start to slowly die without access to these drugs.
- For comparison's sake, Hitler killed 13.6 million people. History is very likely to end up remembering Trump as the single deadliest regime in history.
  
  That's some Heritage Foundation level of undercutting Hitler's death toll.

Elon after labeling orphans as fraudsters and taking away their survivor benefits that they are entitled to and deserve: "God, I just sniffle I don't understand why people hate me crocodile tears"

Need to see a better source than a tweet that I can't find.
- I can't find any sources or reporting on this. Not to say it's not happening but can't even find some dumb Musk tweet about this

Hanlon is currently using his razor for other purposes.
- At SOME point persistent, weaponized incompetence has to be attributed to callousness or evil.
  
  are we all idiots then? because all i see is a bunch of scholars talking about how wrong this all is.
- Hanlon’s Razor has never applied to fascists.
  
  Yeah, but your fact totally ruins my joke.

https://naacp.org/actions/tell-congress-reject-harmful-funding-cuts
https://www.commoncause.org/actions/tell-congress-keep-elon-musks-hands-off-our-social-security/

Who knew musk is a pos........I knew....Elon musk and Donald Trump are destroying America's image and it ability to be a world power

The best part is how his efficiency improvements will cost the government half a trillion dollars 😆
- Efficiently extracting tax dollars into private bank accounts.
- It'll result in Musk's douchebag billionaire buddies not getting the extra tax scrutiny. It's a feature not a bug.