2:00PM Water Cooler 2/5/2025 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether.

Readers, I awoke with an especially nasty head cold yesterday, which I am still fighting today, so this Water Cooler will end when I creep back to bed, there to drink plenty of fluids. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, BHI–Thompson Island (restricted access), Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States. Includes a far-off airplane.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. DOGE: New lawsuit from Public Citizen on DOGE data “access.”
2. DOGE goons have write access to Treasury’s payments system (Tankus, Wired, Marshall, but not Taibbi).

Look for the Helpers

Saving datasets (1):

Saving datasets (2):

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

DOGE

Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, and Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO v. Scott Bessent, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service (PDF) [UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA]. I am encouraged by Public Citizen’s involvement. Readers will recall that in fighting TPP — a fight they won! — Public Citizen was an absolute honey badger. Here is the Plea for Relief, where (a), (b), and (c) repeat in simplified terms the Counts:

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs pray that this Court:

a. Declare that Defendants’ decision to implement a system by which Elon Musk or other DOGE-affiliated individuals may access the Bureau’s records and obtain personal information about individuals and taxpayers contained there is unlawful.

b. Enjoin Defendants from continuing to permit such access or obtain such personal information.

c. Enjoin Defendants to ensure that future disclosure of individual records will occur only in accordance with the Privacy Act, the Internal Revenue Code, and the SORNs [System of Records Notice, placed in the Federal Register] applicable to the system of records at issue.

d. Grant any temporary, preliminary, or permanent injunctive relief necessary to protect the privacy of individuals whose information is contained within the system of records.

I have two quibbles. First:

This Court has statutory jurisdiction over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331, because this action arises under the laws of the United States, namely, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. §§ 702, 706.

Readers will recall from my previous DOGE post that Lexology took a different view. Recall the DOGE is a temporary organization under the rechristened United States Digital DOGE Service, which is in the White House:

The APA governs federal agencies’ rulemaking and adjudication processes. Entities within the Executive Office of the President that solely advise and assist the President are exempt from the APA. DOGE’s advisory role likely places it outside the scope of the APA

This is the only justification given for the Court having jurisdiction. Do any real lawyers out there have thoughts?

Second, the case pertains only to access, not giving DOGE goons admin privileges for the entire system. It does seem to me that if indeed DOGE’s raison d’etre is indeed “advice” — hard to believe, with Elon’s constant drumbeating, but assume so — then there is no reason at all for DOGE to have admin privilges, which exist to change things, not to undestand and proffer advice about them. Readesr?

“Afternoon of Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: Changing the Treasury Payments Source Code & the Treasury’s ‘DOGE’ gag order” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. Tankus on Odd Lots; first breakthrough to the mainstream. “A source familiar with the situation reports to me that: ‘They are also doing a lot more to protect [Marko Elez, the dude with admin privileges]. As an example: there is a gag order on BFS IT personnel right now. They are not permitted to discuss “DOGE”, even in discussions internal to the Bureau. I have never seen anything like this before. Marko Elez’s unchecked behavior throughout the most sensitive payments infrastructure in the United States is something they are working very hard to protect.” • I hate to quote Talking Points Memo, but we must all pull together on this–

“Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base” [Talking Points Memo]. “Overnight, Wired reported that, contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to “read only” access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system.” Presumably there is a source code control system such that Elez’s changes can be rolled back? Somebody should find out….

“Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: “Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. “One source is aware of this letter and explicitly denied it late yesterday: ‘Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now and it has the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for IT Operations instructing the team to disregard all previous instructions and assign Marko read/write privileges for the database. Thus, one way that this letter could be technically true in a bizarre and wildly dishonest sense is that by first having ‘read-only’ access and then having ‘read and write’ access, they could be said to have ‘read-only’ and ‘read and write’ access simultaneously. But probably the United States Treasury is just lying… [T]his source says, regarding the fact that the letter does not mention Marko Elez, states ‘That’s definitely a purposeful evasion.’ In any , the situation remains extraordinarily, incomprehensibly dire as they continue to have ‘read and write; access. According to a source familiar with the situation a senior IT employee shared a schedule of blackouts (system outages, typically for maintenance which can include system code changes) for the Payment Automation Manager (PAM), International Treasury Services (ITS) & the Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) to Marko Elez. Recall that PAM is the primary way for the Treasury to send payments, having sent 4.7 trillion dollars last year.” • Public Citizen should obviously amend their cases immediately to prevent this. (I’m starting to think at “access” is one of those words; it prevented the story from advancing for three days. I should also note that a lot of Tankus’ stuff is single sourced, so he and we need more greybeards to step forward. Here from Office Space is the least bad scenario (since there are no policy or Constitutional implications):

[embedded content]

And one of the worst:

Britain: we have to understand wtf we’ve done. We’ve allowed one of Trump’s closest allies have access to our entire NHS data systems. This is the CEO of Palantir telling shareholders that ‘when it’s necessary to scare enemies & on occasion kill them’ https://t.co/Ty876UxO7Y

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) February 5, 2025

“Scare enemies & on occasion kill them”? Smile when you say that, son. Though Karp doesn’t smile _{MR SUBLIMINAL Boeing; OpenAI}.

“Treasury Department Letter to Members of Congress Regarding Payment Systems” [U.S. Department of the Treasury]. “Treasury has no higher obligation than managing the government’s finances on behalf of the American people, and its payments system is critical to that process. In keeping with that mission, Treasury is committed to safeguarding the integrity and security of the system, given the implications of any compromise or disruption to the U.S. economy. The Fiscal Service is confident those protections are robust and effective. Therefore, expanding on efforts that began under the prior Administration, Treasury has been undergoing a review of these systems to maximize payment integrity for agencies and the public.” • Which would be why David Lebryk resigned.

“Nation Shrugs as Godzilla Eats Washington” [Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. USAID triumphalism: “On NBC, former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official Michael Schiffer wailed that the beheading of his former organization would cause national security to ‘erode.’ His quote came as USAID’s budget has been cracked open and Americans are leafing, transfixed, through its colossal library of crazy-ass contracts. From $39 million for ‘Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation’ to ‘Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh to “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion’ to a ‘TransFormation Salon’ to a pre-Taliban plan to help ‘Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,’ it’s a bottomless pit of ‘I don’t want to pay for that.’ A trip through USASpending.gov led me to an “art therapy” contract whose deliverables include things that look like (but can’t be, of course) suggestive pics of queer teenagers… If we close the door on such work, the former USAID official Schiffer said, ‘America’s Enemies Will Rejoice.’ Joe Scarborough called USAID ‘the ultimate soft power.’ Look, I like a good trans mani-pedi third-floor Mumbai walkup as much as the next person, but I’m not sure it’s a national security line item.” This is very funny, but at the same time I know exactly what it is, because I did it 2003 – 2006: It’s singing in chorus (as I called it then) or dogpiling (as we call it today). The prurient element adds a sort of locker-room collective frenzy to the whole mishegoss. More: “MSNBC was one of many outlets to describe USAID as a ‘humanitarian‘ organization today — the Morning Joe graphic is a frowning waif-child — even though the world knows it to be a transparent CIA proxy used as cover for intel shenanigans. How can they think this is the smart play?” • Finally Taibbi says something important. Look, I like a snarky takedown as much as the next person — they’re fun and easy to write — but how come Nathan Tankus, Wired, and (gawd help us) Josh Marshall are eating Taibbi’s lunch on the ginormous story of DOGE’s read/write (admin privileged) access to our trillion-dollar payments system?

“Trump and Musk demand termination of federal office leases through General Services Administration” [Associated Press]. “One of the next moves in President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping effort to fire government employees and curtail operations is using the agency that manages thousands of federal employee worksites around the country to cut down on office space. Last week, regional managers for the General Services Administration, or GSA, received a message from the agency’s Washington headquarters to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, according to an email shared with The Associated Press by a GSA employee. The order seems to contradict Trump’s own return-to-office mandate for federal employees, adding confusion to what was already a scramble by the GSA to find workspace, internet connections and office building security credentials for employees who had been working remotely for years. But it may reflect the Trump administration’s belief that it won’t need as many offices due to its efforts to fire employees or encourage them to resign.”

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Vaccines: MMR

Babe wake up:

I once did surgery on a guy who had mumps 50 years prior. His testicles looked like someone had microwaved them, chewed them, spit them out, and then shoved them back in his scrotum. That is what mumps does to testicles. Vaccines prevent this from happening.

— Ashley Winter MD || Urologist (@AshleyGWinter) February 5, 2025

Can a doctor in the readership confirm?

Lambert here: Much is now back.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts