RealClearPolitics picked up an utterly asinine column by one of the most insufferable leftist pundits in existence, one Robert B. Reich, which appeared at the left-wing Tampa Bay Times, among other publications. In it, Reich, who at one time held a position as the labor secretary in the Clinton administration and is now a college professor at Berkeley when he isn’t posting gibberish on social media, blasts Elon Musk for having the temerity to believe the federal bureaucracy is bloated and unnecessary. Get a load of this bilge: No one better illustrates the sinister consequences of great wealth turned into unaccountable power than Elon Musk. Musk, the richest person in the world, is not only claiming presidential authority to fire federal workers, but he’s posting the identities of those whose jobs he wants to eliminate — with the clear intention that his followers harass and threaten them so they quit. Musk is utterly unaccountable. He has never been elected to anything, but he spent $120 million helping Trump become the president-elect and is now acting as if he’s Trump’s co-president, calling himself Trump’s “First Buddy.” “Unaccountable power?” Musk is now in court and was just denied a compensation package from Tesla, the automaker that he founded, which some 70 percent of the company’s shareholders voted to give him, because a lunatic plaintiff found a friendly Democrat judge in Delaware willing to deny it to him. This might be the wrong week to pretend there is no accountability in Elon Musk’s life like, for example, a tenured college professor who regularly posts lies and idiocies on social media might have. Nor is Musk claiming presidential authority to fire anyone. DOGE, which he and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading up, is a privately funded informal advisory council undertaking examinations of the federal bureaucracy and its effects in creating a $2 trillion annual deficit that has run our national debt to an astonishing $36 trillion. When Musk starts naming federal bureaucrats who don’t create value for their jobs, he’s citing public information available in the public domain in order to start a public conversation about the size, scope, and efficiency of government. Elon Musk isn’t your problem, Mr. Reich. Donald Trump, who was elected by the American people for precisely the purpose of resolving the untenably large, incompetent, and tyrannical federal administrative and welfare states, is your problem. Meaning that the American public is your problem. And you should have the stones to say so. But Reich, being the small man he is (both in stature and in character), reserves his bile for the private citizen rather than the politician or the voters who chose both: After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk turned it into a cesspool of disinformation and conspiracy theories and manipulated its algorithm to give himself 205 million followers, to whom he is now distributing treacherous lies. Can Reich back up this allegation with evidence? I have my doubts about this. In recent days, Musk boosted posts on his website singling out the names and job titles of four federal employees working in climate policy and regulation who have done nothing other than hold titles Musk dislikes. All four targets are women. So? Nobody particularly cares about the names. The job titles are clearly indicative of functions that are outside the proper scope of government and produce little. Reich actually gives that game away by admitting the women in question “have done nothing.” And now, for a sob story, without which no leftist screed can be confected: In one instance, Musk quote-tweeted a post highlighting the role of 37-year-old Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Musk’s repost — “So many fake jobs” — garnered 32 million views, triggering a tsunami of taunts against Thomas, such as, “Sorry Ashley Thomas Gravy Train is Over” and “A tough way for Ashley Thomas to find out she’s losing her job.” Musk apparently took the word “diversification” in Thomas’ title to mean the “D” in “DEI,” which Musk considers “woke.” Thomas (who holds degrees in engineering, business, and water science from Oxford and MIT) is focused on climate diversification to protect agriculture and infrastructure from extreme weather events. Following Musk’s tweet, Thomas shut down several of her social media accounts. “Climate diversification” is not something most Americans believe we need a director of in our government. Our climate is quite well diversified, as it turns out — we have Louisiana and Florida, New Mexico and Arizona, California and Washington, Montana and Michigan, and Maryland and Maine. Hawaii and Alaska, too. Name a climate, and we’ve got it here in America without the expert ministrations of Ashley Thomas at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Which is an organization performing … what function, exactly? Oh, yes — among its charged duties is, apparently, to protect agriculture and infrastructure from extreme weather events. Should we ask the folks in western North Carolina if Ashley Thomas has paid them a visit lately? Will they vouch for the signature work she’s done in keeping their climate diversified? Ah, yes, but she has lots of degrees! This means that Ashley Thomas is an expert and card-carrying member of the managerial class, and therefore it would be unthinkable that her government job might disappear in the way that, say, an oilfield worker’s job might thanks to policy changes brought on by suggestions of “experts” elsewhere in government: In another repost, Musk mocked Alexis Pelosi, a relative of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who works as a senior adviser to climate change at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Nancy Pelosi’s niece should not be paid $181,648.00 by the U.S. Taxpayer to be the ‘Climate Advisor’ at HUD,” the original account wrote. “But maybe her advice is amazing” Musk snarked. Robert B. Reich actually thought it was a good idea to complain about Alexis Pelosi’s utterly insulting do-nothing HUD job in the aftermath of the November elections. Can you get any more out of touch than this? Musk also singled out the chief climate officer in the Department of Energy’s loan programs office and shared the name of an employee serving as senior adviser on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services. I suppose that it would be somewhat significant news to many Americans that the Department of Health and Human Services employs a senior adviser on “environmental justice” and “climate change.” Why a senior adviser? Are there junior advisers as well? At this point you’re welcome to take a break and attempt to conjure up what exactly it is that a senior adviser on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services would actually do all day that the taxpayers and bondholders of the United States of America would find valuable. And you’re welcome to do the same for the chief climate officer in the Department of Energy’s loan programs office. “Don’t make that loan! That guy drives an old Cadillac Escalade and keeps his house at 70 degrees in summer!” In my humble opinion, Musk’s targets should sue him for defamation. Yes, Bobby, it’s a very humble opinion. Not in the way you would describe it, though. Reich is not a lawyer. He wouldn’t make a very good one. Musk’s current targeting is even more dangerous because he has the apparent authority of the president-elect. Although the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” that Musk is co-heading (with Vivek Ramaswamy) isn’t a real department and has not been authorized by Congress, Musk is acting as if it’s real. Earlier, Reich accused Musk of claiming presidential power, and he just scuppered his own argument by admitting that DOGE “isn’t a real department.” Admitting that Musk doesn’t actually have any power beyond that of persuasion of people who do isn’t a very good way to pay off your argument about Musk’s “unaccountable power,” is it? Can you imagine taking a class for college credit from this fussy little fool? I worked in the federal government between 1974 and 1980, first at the Federal Trade Commission and then at the Justice Department, and from 1993 to 1997 I served as secretary of labor. Most of the federal employees I came to know cared deeply about the common good. The vast majority did their work carefully and thoughtfully. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. But ever since Richard Nixon attacked “unelected bureaucrats” as America’s enemy and Ronald Reagan blamed “liberal bureaucrats” for government’s failings, government employees have been scapegoated. And now Trump is preparing to attack the so-called “deep state.” And the American public voted Trump into office for the express purpose of dismantling the deep state, which for at least as long as the time since Reich helmed the Labor Department has done more harm than good while running up such a public debt tab that it’s almost impossible to fathom how it might be paid off. But somehow it’s Elon Musk who’s the problem. The guy without whom the victims of Helene wouldn’t be able to communicate with the outside world, and the guy who’s literally saving the lives of astronauts. The guy whose satellite internet service has arguably saved Ukraine from being swallowed up by Russia. That guy is a villain worthy of Reich’s ankle-biting efforts in the Tampa Bay Times and other zombie newspapers. There is more to Reich’s attack on Musk, but we’ve spent enough of our time with him. Suffice it to say that Robert B. Reich is the last man in America who should be lecturing us on either Elon Musk’s civic participation or the relative value of the administrative state. It would be excellent if he could be persuaded to keep his ravings in that benighted Berkeley classroom. But one thing we know about this little blowhard is that isn’t possible. So we’ll ignore him as best we can. But if you’re a subscriber to the Tampa Bay Times, or one of the other zombie newspapers inflicting Reich’s column on you, you might consider letting them know he’s a waste of space in their paper. Or better yet, drop that subscription and use your money to support a better class of publication. I can supply you with one idea in particular that you might find more rewarding. The post Robert Reich’s Ravings Against Musk Are Pure Lunacy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.