Vote empowered our richest man

Dear Editor,

Friends and neighbors I have a request to make. If you voted republican in this last election, congratulations on your wins. Did you, though, think you were voting to empower the world’s richest man to hack into your personal information and data including medical information and social security numbers? Taking control of the U.S. payment systems is not protecting the American people from waste or fraud but exposing us to great risk.

I called and emailed our congressional representative, Lisa McClain, urging her to not allow this gigantic security breach to go unchecked. I got a very prompt response, nice job on that, but the response was to downplay the gravity of this transfer of legal operations to unvetted shadow players. In her response, she called Musk’s action an “audit”. Taking over the computer systems that process payments throughout the government, which is what was done, as I understand it, is not an audit, but an illegal take over of a system that was set up to have checks and balances with auditors in place as part of the system. These checks and balances are what makes our system of government function in an effort to distribute power and not have it focused in one person. The person who has focused that power now is not even an elected official, but one who has a lot to gain through his multiple government contracts, who contributed $290 million to get the current president elected and gain access for himself. I’m talking of course of Elon Musk.

I understand that US representatives communications systems have been flooded with thousands of calls by people insisting that our data and information be secured and not in the hands of a super wealthy man and his minions with multiple conflicts of interest and motivations that are not in the best interest of the American people.

This is not a partisan issue. Democrat or Republican, please add your voice to those who want to maintain a balance between branches of government and not see our representatives roll over and give the power of the purse to Elon Musk. Here is our representative’s phone number in Washington: Representative Lisa McClain: 202-225-2106

Thank you
— Miriam Marcus
Lum