Elon Musk’s Legacy Is Disease, Starvation and Death

Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. That is what Musk’s foray into politics accomplished.

Atul Gawande, an assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D. in Joe Biden’s administration, told me that during a trip to Kenya last week, he visited the national referral hospital. There’s been a major increase in the number of patients with advanced H.I.V. symptoms, a result of losing access to antiretroviral medication. At refugee camps on the border of South Sudan, food aid has been cut so severely that people are getting less than 30 percent of the calories they need. “It is not enough to survive on, and that has caused skyrocketing levels of severe malnutrition and deaths associated with it,” said Gawande.

Musk apparently did not anticipate that it would be bad PR for the world’s richest man to take food and medicine from the world’s poorest children. The Post reported that he hadn’t foreseen “the intensity of the blowback to his role in politics over the past year.” He’s been doing a series of interviews that Axios called an “image rehab tour.”

If there were justice in the world, Musk would never be able to repair his reputation, at least not without devoting the bulk of his fortune to easing the misery he’s engendered. Musk’s sojourn in government has revealed severe flaws in his character — a blithe, dehumanizing cruelty, and a deadly incuriosity. This should shape how he’s seen for the rest of his public life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/opini...usaid.html

NYT has a hit piece on Elmo's drug use and his brood of weirdly named children.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/el...=url-share

"Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it."

Go, Elon, and Never Darken Our Doors Again

Musk is one of the most malignant people ever to hold a position of influence in American politics. His actions, without exaggeration, have devastated the health and security of American society and directly caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people all over the world, with millions more to follow given the course that he has set.

Musk’s DOGE, which is more or less a conspiracy to destroy constitutional government in this country, has wreaked untold havoc. Perhaps 10 percent of the already badly understaffed federal workforce has been laid off en masse, with no regard to institutional knowledge or experience, much less the constitutional separation of powers. Basic systems foundational to American life, like weather prediction, air traffic control, and disaster relief, are starting to crack.

America’s world-leading system of scientific funding has all but ground to a halt. DOGE, along with Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., has frozen the pipeline of grants that fund a huge portion of scientific research, including new treatments for cancer and other major diseases.

Basic enforcement of the nation’s laws has been abandoned, with Musk gleefully hobbling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because it might have interfered with his plans to offer banking services on his X app.

But the worst damage has been done to foreign aid. USAID has been essentially shuttered (fed “into the wood chipper,” as Musk gleefully boasted), and various programs providing medication and food aid around the world, particularly in Africa, have been halted indefinitely. Huge warehouses are full of rotting food that American taxpayers already paid for but that can’t be handed out. Millions of people are seeing their cases of HIV, tuberculosis, and other diseases rage out of control.

Simply halting PEPFAR, which provided about 20 million people with HIV antiretroviral drugs at a microscopic cost, has already killed an estimated 54,500 adults and 5,800 children. Many, many more will follow. Roughly 1,500 babies have been born HIV-positive every day since January 21, because Musk cut off their mothers’ medication.

Tech bros like Musk and his DOGE minions are unshakably convinced that everyone but themselves is an idiot, government is useless, and any system can be easily transformed or rebuilt from the ground up by a couple of engineers hacking together solutions on the fly. This extreme arrogance, combined with contempt for expertise, is amusing when it leads tech companies to repeatedly reinvent the bus. But applied to the federal government, the result is a Stalin-scale humanitarian catastrophe.

https://prospect.org/power/2025-05-30-go...ors-again/

(May 30, 2025 at 10:43 am)Nanny Wrote: NYT has a hit piece on Elmo's drug use and his brood of weirdly named children.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/el...=url-share

"Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it."

His drug use is the least objectionable thing about him.

Boru

Quote:CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration is demanding an accident investigation into this week’s out-of-control Starship flight by SpaceX.

Tuesday’s test flight from Texas lasted longer than the previous two failed demos of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, which ended in flames over the Atlantic. The latest spacecraft made it halfway around the world to the Indian Ocean, but not before going into a spin and breaking apart.

The FAA said Friday that no injuries or public damage were reported.

The first-stage booster — recycled from an earlier flight — also burst apart while descending over the Gulf of Mexico. But that was the result of deliberately extreme testing approved by the FAA in advance.

https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starsh...70ecf439dd

(June 2, 2025 at 8:15 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

Quote:CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration is demanding an accident investigation into this week’s out-of-control Starship flight by SpaceX.

Tuesday’s test flight from Texas lasted longer than the previous two failed demos of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, which ended in flames over the Atlantic. The latest spacecraft made it halfway around the world to the Indian Ocean, but not before going into a spin and breaking apart.

The FAA said Friday that no injuries or public damage were reported.

The first-stage booster — recycled from an earlier flight — also burst apart while descending over the Gulf of Mexico. But that was the result of deliberately extreme testing approved by the FAA in advance.

https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starsh...70ecf439dd

Well, that’s a relief. I always prefer my vehicles to get halfway to my destination before they break apart.

Boru

(June 2, 2025 at 12:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(June 2, 2025 at 8:15 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starsh...70ecf439dd

Well, that’s a relief. I always prefer my vehicles to get halfway to my destination before they break apart.

Boru

Cape Canaveral to Indian Ocean  -     11,338 miles

Earth to Mars                             -    140 million miles

(June 2, 2025 at 2:01 pm)Sheldon Wrote:

(June 2, 2025 at 12:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Well, that’s a relief. I always prefer my vehicles to get halfway to my destination before they break apart.

Boru

Cape Canaveral to Indian Ocean  -     11,338 miles

Earth to Mars                             -    140 million miles

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this particular rocket wasn’t headed to Mars.

Boru

^ Might be some chunks headed that way...

(June 2, 2025 at 2:34 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this particular rocket wasn’t headed to Mars.

Boru

...and never will.