‘Unelected billionaire Elon Musk has illegally seized control of the payment systems at the United States Treasury’ – not, says 2024 House candidate
By Pam Baker
Our illustrious or maybe I should say notorious, Rebecca Balint or Becca, US Representative to Congress from Vermont, has begun a new program for all of those who subscribe to her newsletter.
She calls them “Rapid Response Alerts” and specifically in her announcement of this new program via email on Tuesday, 4 February, she states that under the “cruel executive orders” from President Trump with the Constitution under attack, we are in an “urgent Constitutional” crisis. She tells us she is “angry, sad, worried but most of all, fired up and ready to take this on”. Then declares she and her cronies in Congress will use every maneuver, tool, disruption to slow down and ultimately stop this “takeover of the government by unelected billionaires”. She wants to protect our “democracy”.
Just three hours and thirteen minutes later she sends another “alert” and states this:
“Unelected billionaire Elon Musk has illegally seized control of the payment systems at the United States Treasury.
This is the system that gets Social Security, Medicare, government salaries, and more to working families every day. This system has sensitive data for tens of millions of Americans.
Vermonters, I see your messages and comments. I know you’re against this invasion of privacy and this kind of hostile government takeover, even if you voted for President Trump.
I will not stand idly by. This afternoon I’ll be headed down to Treasury to protest Musk’s takeover.”
What Ms. Balint fails to understand is shocking, considering the fact that she is/was a former schoolteacher and now a public servant at the federal level.
Let’s start with the fact that we don’t have a “democracy”. We have a Representative Republic. Or Constitutional Republic. As a history and social studies teacher for 14 years in Vermont middle schools, you would think she would know this.
As a sitting REPRESENTATIVE, you would think she would know this. But you would be wrong. She doesn’t know this. She demonstrates this repeatedly. I wonder what 14 years of her students “don’t know” either, because of her ineptitude.
Mr. Musk has not “seized control” of anything. Ms. Balint makes it sound like Musk marched into the Treasury Department and he and his staff strong armed the Treasury Staff into a closet while he gleefully hacked into the computers. While in fact, Mr. Musk was duly appointed as a Special Government Employee (SGE) and serves at the behest of President Trump, as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 202.
These consultants or SGE’s have been around since 1962 and designed to take advantage of experts outside of the federal government. The position can be paid or unpaid. Mr. Musk will be UNPAID. They may only be retained and designated, appointed or employed for 130 days during any consecutive 365-day period.
Elon Musk is not the first one. From 2005-2014 there were roughly 2000 SGE’s in any given year. They serve in a variety of roles. In fact, Huma Abedin served in 2012 as an SGE, working for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Abedin, while working for Clinton as a SGE, had also done consultant work for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm whose client list includes MF Global, a primary dealer in US Treasury Securities. Ms. Abedin also was the assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. As of this past summer, Ms. Abedin is now the fiancé of Alexander Soros, the son of George Soros.
“The president said though Musk has access to the Treasury payment systems, he would be unable to stop payments without his approval,” according to Fortune magazine on February 4th in an article by Sasha Rogelberg. Purportedly, President Trump also stated this, “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval,” Trump said. “And we’ll give him the approval, where appropriate; where not appropriate, we won’t.”
Mr. Musk was appointed by the current, sitting President of the United States of America to perform a specific function. He has not gone ROGUE and become a wrecking ball in the federal government as Ms. Balint has alluded to with her libelous verbiage, although his outcomes may likely feel like that to a certain subset of Washington entrenched elite. He has a team of people to aid him in this endeavor… and they have also been vetted and appointed. They are under the same exact privacy and ethics restrictions that every other government employee has with some exceptions to contractual and conflict of interest issues. Too complicated to detail here, you can use various internet searches to discover this for yourself.
There is no searchable record of any statements made by Ms. Balint when 2.9 billion, that’s almost 3 BILLION records, including Social Security numbers, were stolen in a data hack and then made headlines in August of 2024. No record of any public outcry at that time or since. If Balint is that concerned about our data, why wasn’t she making a public outcry at that time? One would be safe in assuming it is because in fact, she really doesn’t care about the people of Vermont or the country for that matter. She likes to grandstand.
For Ms. Balint to intentionally subvert the truth by using inaccurate and mendacious verbiage as well as insinuation is reprehensible if not actual libel. It appears that she is trying to persuade Vermont citizens that this person, Elon Musk, is a threat to our system of government. A threat to our privacy.
Truly, discerning citizens of the State of Vermont will not be fooled by the misleading and erroneous email by Ms. Balint. The remaining citizens, well, it’s uncertain if they are able to be discerning, because they did manage to vote her back into office last November.
The rest of the discerning public in Vermont have already been very clear in their desires by making the largest state turnover of Democrat to Republican positions in 2024 in the most recent election. If Representative Balint believes she can circulate these statements without retribution, then maybe our work is not done. Our work is NOT done.
Contact Representative Balint. repbeccabalint@mail.house.gov or call her DC office at (202) 225-4115 to advise her of your thoughts regarding her policy, actions and ideologies. Remember to be brief and factual.
It’s clear the citizenry of not only the state of Vermont but of the country, will not tolerate corrupt and devious politicians any longer. But it doesn’t mean we get to “let someone else do the heavy lifting”. You have a responsibility as a citizen to continue to let the elected officials know how you would like them to represent you. REGARDLESS OF whether they do or do not. For if you do nothing… if you ignore… by your inaction, you are COMPLICIT in their machinations. We have the high ground… let’s use it. Go make your voices heard.
NOTE: This written work was created without the assistance of Artificial Intelligence programs. The author is a Windham County resident and 2024 candidate for Vermont House of Representatives.