2:00PM Water Cooler 2/6/2025 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether.

Readers, my head cold continues, as does my stuffed-up stupidity and whinging. Ugh. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Davidson College–Main Campus, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, United States.

“Country diary: A bird that had existed only in my imagination becomes vividly real” [Guardian]. “We’ve come to church this morning in search of a fictional bird… So far my only sighting of the UK’s largest finch has been in my Collins Guide to British Birds…. Something moves near the top of an ash by the church tower. There, on a leafless branch, sits my first ever hawfinch. A hunk with buff breast, slightly darker crown and a warm cinnamon back with the slate-grey wing patches that tell me it is a female.

She’s eating something – most likely a yew berry. Unaffected by the toxicity, she’ll make light work of the seed inside the red fleshy aril with her specially modified bill, capable of exerting a force in excess of 450N. For a bird with a reputation for being elusive, her Latin name, Coccothraustes coccothraustes (the kernel-crushing kernel crusher), has the all subtlety of a sledgehammer. Looking at her hefty bill and thick-set body, I can’t deny that she is manifestly – and magnificently – real.” • They found the bird!

In Case You Might Miss…

1. DOGE as a revolutionary NRx (neo-reactionary) project.
2. DOGE seeks to avoid FOIA.
3. DOGE given sysadmin privileges at Office of Personnel Management with days of the Inaugural.
4. An atmospheric Turner.

Look for the Helpers

“Dog’s sudden illness reveals region’s generosity” [Ashland Daily Press (SD)]. • Dog gets a wheelchair…

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

Trump Administration

“DOJ sues Illinois, Chicago over ‘sanctuary city’ laws” [The Hill]. “‘The challenged provisions of Illinois, Chicago, and Cook County law reflect their intentional effort to obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and to impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,’ the lawsuit states.” • Unsurprising, since sanctuary cities are a form of “nullification” of which John C. Calhoun would be proud.

DOGE

“Software, Sovereignty and the Post-Neoliberal Politics of Exit” [SAGE Journals (BP)]. Fight through the academic prose on this one: “This paper examines the impact of neoreactionary (NRx) thinking – that of Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman in particular – on contemporary political debates manifest in ‘architectures of exit’… Approaching NRx thinking just a few years ago might have been a mildly diverting exercise; a chance to ‘connect some philosophical ideas … using some very silly right-wing nutjobs who were nevertheless … interesting’ (Sandifer, 2017: 1). As MacDougald (2015) describes, NRx writing often appears as ‘little more than a fever swamp of feudal misogynists, racist programmers and “fascist teenage dungeon masters,” gathering on subreddits to await the collapse of Western civilization’. As such, it reads like ‘all the awful things you always suspected about libertarianism with odds and ends from PUA culture, Victorian Social Darwinism, and an only semi-ironic attachment to absolutism’. However, post-2016, as Sandifer (2017: 1) expresses it in her own inimitable style, ‘everything went to shit’ and suddenly these otherwise ‘batshit crazy’ ideas, associated software projects and social prototyping experiments began to manifest across a whole range of global cultural, political and technological imaginaries. As hard as it is to fathom, NRx thinking now forms a significant part of the theoretical universe that contemporary political figures and ‘proto-theorists’ such as Dominic Cummings (in the UK) (Cummings, 2020; Lewis et al., 2002; Mulhall, 2020; Volpicelli, 2020; Wolf, 2020) and Steve Bannon (in the US) (Goldhill, 2017; Gray, 2017) draw upon and are attempting to promulgate into mainstream political discourse. As Nagle (2017: 53) explains it, supporters of NRx ideas seem to have been more adept at ‘heeding the ideas … of … Gramsci’s theory of hegemony’, especially via social media (Daniels, 2018), than have those on the left more usually associated with them (Mouffe, 2019).” • This was thrown over my transom a few days ago; and today, this–

“Subject: Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries” (PDF) [anonymous]. Interesting memo, embedded for distribution at the end of today’s Water Cooler. “Rather than operating as an ally of the Trump administration, Musk has hijacked its ambitions for his own purposes. His rapid takeover of federal infrastructure mirrors the broader ambitions of the neoreactionary (NRx) movement—a small group of Silicon Valley elites who reject democracy and seek to install a “CEO Monarch” to rule by technological and financial dominance. This network includes Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, David Sacks, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. Once considered fringe, purveyors of this ideology have now been embedded into the core of government operations. Musk’s maneuvering demonstrates a long-standing strategy of this elite class: not dismantling government, but replacing its power structures with ones they control. DOGE has not reduced bureaucracy—it has privatized it. Treasury has not been made more efficient—it has been placed under a billionaire’s influence. TikTok has not been secured from foreign threats—it has been delayed so Musk can position himself as its gatekeeper. President Trump, far from asserting dominance over the administrative state, may now find himself hostage to Musk.” • Normally, I don’t care what confirmed enshittifiers like Thiel, Andreessen, Srinivasan, Sacks, Yarvin et al. think, as long as they stay in their cuddle puddles; none of these rich dudes are as insightful as they think they are (and all are subject to “Big Man” syndrome, where nobody says “No” to them, which gradually poisons their worldview of that is actually feasible). And normally Lambert the Cautious wouild prefer to connect many more dots before any pronouncement. I remain cautious because I don’t know the provenance of the piece, although it doesn’t read like it was produced by the DNC. The remedies — “Launch Immediate Congressional Investigations; II. Strengthened Conflict of Interest and Ethics Recommendations” — are very weak — What, no General Strike? — suggesting to me it comes from the NGO ambit, from a shop like Indivisible. I will say it’s the first piece I’ve seen that gives an account of DOGE’s extreme speed and secrecy. Know your enemy (and that goes for MAGA, too. Which side do you thing Thiel and Andreessen were on in the H1B fight?) Oh, and before anybody screams CT, what this looks like to me: “The first FlexNet I’ve seen that attempted to seize state power.” NOTE Adding, it’s nice to have another explanation for Mush’s frenetic behavior than Special K: By this account, he must see himself as point man for an actual revolution; I would imagine Lenin has a lot of short nights in 1917, too.

“‘What Musk is doing is illegal’: Bernie Sanders slams DOGE gutting agencies” [CNN]. • Yes, that’s the point. See above.

“Musk’s Brazen Cost-Cutting Campaign Is Annoying GOP Senators, Treasury Staff” [Bloomberg]. Exremely deceptive headline, because way too bland: “Bessent, a figure of the traditional finance world, is more on board with the Musk crew’s mission than has been widely understood. As Bessent was building out his team in December, he interviewed Tom Krause, who is now a member of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to a person familiar with the matter. Krause is now digging into Treasury’s systems and data. Among the topics they discussed during the interview was the very mission in which DOGE is now engaged, the person said. A group of roughly half a dozen GOP senators reached out privately to the White House to object to Musk’s accessing of Treasury systems, according to people familiar with the conversations. The senators indicated that the moves went beyond DOGE’s stated mission to save the government money. Yet the secretary they voted to confirm was involved in planning the moves now underway, even recommending Krause for the special government employee status he now is using to plumb Treasury’s servers.” • Lends some credence to the idea broached by alert reader hamstak that DOGE started work early, and somebody badged one or more of the “programmers” in before official project launch.

“Musk’s DOGE agents access sensitive personnel data, alarming security officials” [WaPo]. Another blandly deceptive headline: “Agents of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to highly restricted government records on millions of federal employees — including Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions — as part of a broader effort to wrest control over the government’s main personnel agency, according to four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments…. Records obtained by The Post show that several members of Musk’s DOGE team — some of whom are in their early 20s and come from positions at his private companies — were given ‘administrative’ access to OPM computer systems within days of Trump’s inauguration last month. That gives them sweeping authority to install and modify software on government-supplied equipment and, according to two OPM officials, to alter internal documentation of their own activities.” Yikes. More: “Meanwhile, morale has plummeted, said three OPM officials, as DOGE agents have clashed with senior career personnel. One official recalled a recent meeting in which a young DOGE team member began screaming at senior developers and calling them ‘idiots.’” Seems to be going well. More: “At least six DOGE agents were given broad access to all personnel systems at the OPM on the afternoon of Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, according to two agency officials. Three more gained access about a week later, they said.” And: “A former U.S. security official said DOGE’s access to Treasury’s payment system is alarming, describing it as a comprehensive map to U.S. expenditures encompassing highly classified programs and purposes. The agency said this week Musk’s agents have “read-only access.’”

“Day Seven of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: “Yours and WIRED’s Reporting is Actually Doing Something”” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. Does DOGE operative Marko Elez have read access (the press), or read-write (the blogs): “A source familiar with the situation who I asked about the current circumstances and the latest state of play of ‘read only’ versus ‘read and write’ had this to say: “Again, it’s a distinction that doesn’t matter too much to me. He shouldn’t have access to this almost 5 trillion dollar payment flow, even if it’s ‘read-only.’ He shouldn’t even be at Fiscal Service. None of this should be happening and it’s only going to get worse the longer ‘DOGE’ is here and the more they learn about what they can do and get away with.” In other words, while it’s good news that they are reacting to our reporting, the situation still remains catastrophic at best and we can’t relent until this has been resolved.”

“The blatant lie behind Elon Musk’s power grab” [Vox]. “‘We have $36 trillion of national debt growing at a rapid rate,’ the billionaire investor Bill Ackman posted on X Tuesday. ‘All Americans must therefore make their voices heard loud and clear about how much they support DOGE, Elon and our president’s efforts to help our country. We cannot let DOGE fail as our country is rapidly on the path to insolvency.’ There are many reasons to reject this argument. The United States is not going to become ‘insolvent’ any time soon. And preserving the rule of law is likely more important to our nation’s long-term well-being than slashing federal spending…. DOGE, meanwhile, is ostensibly focused on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. But it is not mathematically possible to offset entitlement spending or tax cuts by eliminating such waste (and identifying fraudulent or wasteful disbursements in advance is easier said than done). Musk has claimed, without evidence, that there is $1.7 trillion in annual waste and fraud — a figure that nearly matches the size of the federal deficit. Yet when DOGE has actually tried to name specific examples of ‘wasteful’ spending, it has offered up programs that have negligible budgetary costs.” • And not, say, the Pentagon. Or the CIA’s black budget. And I long for the day when Stephanie Kelton is Treasury Secretary.

“DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA” [404 Media]. “The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a records transparency law commonly used by journalists and lawyers to hold government accountable. Instead, DOGE is asserting that rather than reporting up through the Office of Management and Budget as the United States Digital Service did for years, it is reporting through the Executive Office of the President and to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Under OMB, it was generally subject to FOIA. Under the White House Chief of Staff, records it creates are generally not subject to FOIA.” • Hi, Susie [waves].

Oh for a moment of blessed silence without Elon’s yammering:

So that’s alright, then:

Press Sec clarifies that Elon Musk will self-determine when there is a conflict of interest involving him and DOGE.

— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 5, 2025

“DOGE Teen Owns ‘Tesla.Sexy LLC’ and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers” [Wired]. And the deck: “Experts question whether Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who has gone by ‘Big Balls’ online, would pass the background check typically required for access to sensitive US government systems…. Davi Ottenheimer, a longtime security operations and compliance manager, says many factors about Coristine’s employment history and online footprint could raise questions about his ability to obtain security clearance. ‘Limited real work experience is a risk,’ says Ottenheimer, as an example. ‘Plus his handle is literally Big Balls.’” • I’m sure Coristine will do very well. It’s curious we don’t know how many hires DOGE has. They’re presented as a small, elite crew, but “Big Balls” argues against that. 100? 1000?

“The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover” [Wired]. “[Luke Farritor] is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.” • A fascinating project, and one could wish that Farritor had continued as a scholar, instead of joining an neo-reactionary FlexNet.

2024 Post Mortem

“‘Uncommitted’ leaders stand by 2024 strategy after Trump floats Gaza takeover” [NBC]. “Even inside the Harris campaign, there was dissent about whether she needed to take a more aggressive stance for Gaza. A Harris organizer who worked on youth turnout said that senior campaign officials gave them an order: When they sent out mass volunteer or fundraising emails and people replied by asking about Gaza, they were told to mark it as ‘no response.’ The result? They seldom ended up engaging with voters on that issue. ‘We also didn’t create a new category for Gaza responses out of fear that category would be leaked. Instead we were told to mark them as ‘no response,” the organizer said, faulting top Harris campaign leaders for failing to address the issue. ‘The only ‘clowns’ out there are those who were in senior leadership and decided to abdicate on this issue, who silenced a Palestinian speaker at the DNC, and who told us to ignore it every time a voter asked us about Gaza.’” • So the Democrat regulars arranged to lie to themselves in their own polls. Reminds me of a continuing character in Nicole Hollander’s classic series Sylvia, “The Woman Who Lies in Her Journal”:

“Oh, right. Like you never thought of it.”

Democrats en déshabillé

“Democratic polling finds Elon Musk is unpopular” [Politico]. “New internal polling, conducted on behalf of House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, found Musk is viewed negatively among 1,000 registered voters in battleground districts. His approval rating is upside down (43 percent approve to 51 disapprove) and his favorability is even worse (42 percent favorable to 51 percent unfavorable). And the survey was completed between Jan. 19-25 — before some of Musk’s more extreme moves as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency. Pollsters asked respondents for their thoughts on ‘the creation of a government of the rich for the rich by appointing up to nine different billionaires to the administration,’ and found 70 percent opposed with only 19 percent in support — a stat that suggests Democrats have landed on a message that could gain traction with swing voters.” • But what about the good billionaires? Anyhow, I say “ride it out and wait for the midterms.”

“Democrats’ phones bombarded with calls to ‘fight harder’” [Axios]. “Congressional Democrats’ offices are being inundated by phone calls from angry constituents who feel the party should be doing more to combat President Trump and his administration.” But: “‘There has definitely been some tension the last few days where people felt like: you are calling the wrong people. You are literally calling the wrong people,’ said one House Democrat.” • But that’s a familiar tension, isn’t it?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“DEI Is a Failure Because the Civil Rights Movement Wasn’t About Elite Diversity” [Zaid Jilani, The American Saga]. “Not every critic of DEI is motivated by white resentment. Many people criticize these programs because they have little positive impact on diversity, anyway, and there’s a bunch of evidence that diversity trainings can actually make people more prejudiced.” Turning DEI into a self-licking ice-cream cone, since more prejudice requires more training. More: “The reality is that DEI is only tangentially related to the rights and opportunities of minorities. The civil rights movement was not about diversifying corporate or government offices with a few black or brown faces in places of power. It wasn’t about diversity trainings where employees roll their eyes as someone hired by HR lectures them for three hours about their privilege. It was about redistributing power to the masses of people who don’t have it, including white people.” • So it would be nice if we didn’t roll back civil rights too.

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!

Transmission: Covid

“Nearly 30% of cats, dogs owned by COVID patients had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies by 2021” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy]. “Nearly 30% of cats and dogs belonging to COVID-infected patients in central Texas tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, signaling previous infection, from 2020 to 2021, according to a study published yesterday on the preprint server bioRxiv.”

Variants: H5N1

Oh good:

Both severe cases of #H5N1 – including the death in Louisiana, and the teenager in critical condition in Canada- were D1.1 genotype viruses. This has now been detected in dairy cattle, where most of the infections in humans have been occurring (previous dairy spillovers were w/… https://t.co/05wyTbqyk9

— Abraar Karan (@AbraarKaran) February 5, 2025

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts