Twitter, in a Nutshell

Some mid account, posting a summary, of a news article, which says specifically the opposite of what he’s saying in the tweet…. 21.2K likes. The truth? Doesn’t even register. But it’s red meat for his audience, so…

Where’s Elon’s vaunted community fact-checking service on this one?

The “news”

There really isn’t a way to fix this on this platform. Maybe not on social media at all. But I’m going to start muting a lot more accounts in a last-ditch effort to make this platform useful to me.

Secret Service and ICE break the law with fake phone towers • The Register

Investigations ‘at risk’ from sloppy surveillance uncovered by audit probe

Source: Secret Service and ICE break the law with fake phone towers • The Register

Once again, the UK media is doing the job the US media won’t. This has been the case for several years now. Whatever truth-to-power legacy the likes of Ellsburg and Woodward and Bernstein laid down is utterly washed away now. I smell collusion between the US deep state and ALL US media companies now.

There’s a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo here about how the laws are written and interpreted, versus the departments following their own, internal guidelines. To me, it’s all the same as the situation with privacy laws, and all the privacy policies we click through and agree to every day. These kinds of laws are written to be exploited in specific ways, and designed to be completely obtuse, even to other lawyers. Even if you could somehow look inside these organizations, and prove that laws were being broken by either the government or some Fortune 100, it would take an army of elite lawyers and specialists to successfully litigate it. The end result is the same: “they” are going to do whatever they want, regardless of the legalese they throw down on the desk.

Look no further than the continuing saga of Edward Snowden. He laid several smoking guns on the table, proving that the government knowingly broke their own laws, regarding several of our Constitutional rights. He’s still on the lamb, and Congress has done nothing to change the situation. So, this is nice and all, but, really, who cares? It’s clear nothing can be done about it, or anything like it.

Videos of people absolutely losing it are becoming really, really popular on sites like TikTok. What they show is a society in which a lot of people are at their breaking point at any given time. In my opinion, these kinds of stories — that we are absolutely powerless against a government that is actively, purposely violating the basic tenets of its charter — is a large factor in why everyone is so pissed off all the time.

Tax Exemption for Churches (Is the Wrong Question)

For the many-th time, I see a repost from Twitter on some other social media site, complaining about the wealth of mega-church pastors, and trying to rile people up about how churches should NOT be tax exempt. And, sure, Joel Olsteen’s lifestyle is a mockery of Jesus’ life, but there are only a handful of “mega” churches and “mega church” pastors in this country. Meanwhile, many, many thousands of the so-called 1% in this country pay a lower tax rate (and sometimes, ACTUAL tax) than the average, blue- or white-collar person does.

As a country swimming in debt, we would get a lot more mileage out of calling for meaningful taxation of billionaires and multi-hundred-millionaires before we start worrying about removing tax exemptions for churches and pastors. I think those posts and reposts on Twitter are probably jointly paid for by The Koch Brothers and George Soros, for the class-warfare angle. And maybe Bill Gates, for the anti-religion angle.

Joel Osteen pays taxes on his income. How much of it he has managed to shelter from the IRS is a game played just like all the rest of the 1%. The church, as a non-profit, does not pay taxes, because the money being received in donations cannot be considered a profit to tax. That’s the definition of how non-profit organizations work.

Churches are supposed to be prevented from getting involved in politics. It’s part of the deal in being religiously tax-exempt. (How this works when Presidents and candidates go to churches and make speeches from the pulpit is quite beyond me, but I digress.) If you start taxing churches, then there’s no reason for them not to get heavily involved in promoting particular candidates, and forming political action committees, just like corporations, taking an active role in getting people elected, and lobbying government for favorable treatment.

You may retort that large, corporate churches like the Catholics or Mormons already exert a huge influence on government, and I’d say you’re right, but it’s still less than the average Fortune 100. If we open the floodgates here… With the “war chests” accumulated by both of those organizations? As they say: you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Do the people calling for the removal of tax exemptions for churches really understand what they’re asking for? I don’t think they do.

Cummins, Brought to You by the Letters B and V

Cummins’ CEO just proudly spammed the whole company, announcing that she was “delighted” that the board has approved 3 more corporate officers for the company.

Goodie.

The only way this announcement affects me is to let me know that the company is now spending several more million dollars per year on executive pay packages. And this is happening as I am watching them like a hawk, and expecting them to announce a 3-5% headcount reduction later this year, to jump on the bandwagon that every other big company is riding.

That’s it. That’s the sum total of the impact of this interruption to my workflow. In fact, I have no idea who inside the company is supposed to benefit from this information, or in what way.

This can only be about juicing news for Wall Street, which has nothing to do with people, and everything to do with holding companies. Cummins is just another one of countless companies in the US which is being run by Blackrock and Vanguard, and various investment banks that you may (or may not) have seen printed on your 401K statements. According to Yahoo!, Cummins is 86% owned by “institutions.” Our country is being run by companies, and our companies are being run by Wall Street.

UPDATE 12/8/23: Many companies are announcing layoffs just before the holidays. (What an annoying time to do so!) Cummins offered early retirement buyouts. I’m hoping that this settles the balance sheet to their satisfaction.

UPDATE 1/4/24: Oops. CEO Jenn Rumsey says this settlement won’t affect stock price, business outlook, or even internal compensation. I hadn’t realized that Cummins made so much money year over year to be able to weather a settlement like this without even a flinch. I think this shows that the figure was reached based on Cummins’ ability to pay, rather than some quantifiable harm their actions supposedly incurred. This feels like a political shakedown, by a liberal administration, of a sympathetic Fortune 250, with deep pockets, which happens to make a product that’s politically unpopular with the party’s base.

How The Total State Circumvented The Constitution

Oligarchs, with their financial ability to influence mass media, education, and marketing, quickly proved to be the social force most able to manipulate the public will. With all three branches now functionally subject to the same democratic selection pressures it is no surprise an oligarchy came to achieve hegemonic social force in the United States.

Source: How The Total State Circumvented The Constitution

Combine that with this (spoken of Reagan’s effect on anti-trust, via Robert Bork’s influence):

It was obvious from the start that “consumer welfare” was a scam, a ruse designed to let monopolies flourish and to install “autocrats of trade” on their thrones. Despite its ideological bankruptcy, “consumer welfare” was able to repel its critics for decades, because it had deep-pocketed backers – no different from tobacco-cancer denial or climate denial.

Source: Pluralistic: 15 Sep 2022 California’s antitrust case against Amazon – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

And we have all the elements we need to conclude that the US is now a complete corporatocracy, under the control of our oligarchs, or billionaires.

I remember reading a post on Reddit, a long time ago, by a guy who claimed he was friends with a half-dozen billionaires. The thing that stuck out at me was that Congressmen ask, “How high?” when asked to jump by a billionaire, because the checks they can write for campaign contributions can swing an entire election.

Lisa Kahn may make some headway with modern trustbusting, if given the time to get moving with a second Biden term, but with the Citizens United ruling, it’s only a matter of time until the powers that be get her out of their way through a sympathetic administration.

 

Cummins outlines opposition to Indiana abortion law – Inside INdiana Business

Another one of Indiana’s largest companies is expressing its opposition to the abortion bill signed into law Friday by Governor Eric Holcomb. In a statement shared to employees on Saturday, Columbus-based Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) said it is “deeply concerned” how the law impacts its employees and impedes its ability to attract and retain a diverse workforce in Indiana.

Source: Cummins outlines opposition to Indiana abortion law – Inside INdiana Business

There’s a growing trend of corporations which threaten to take tax monies out of a state unless the state passes laws in a manner they deem acceptable. First of all, if a company will shift operations or holdings to a different state over one particular human rights law, why do they continue to do business with entire countries whose governments have long and terrible records of human rights abuses, say, like China?

Further, if they’re so concerned with social justice and making statements, why do they remain silent on such issues as China’s treatment of Uyghurs? I can’t find any reference to any statement Cummins has made to condemn this unilaterally bad policy. Even if they don’t change actual business practices, the least they could do is show some disdain for the situation.

Second of all, companies are led by a relative handful of people, which are supposed to follow the direction of the shareholders — i.e. banks — presumably to maximize profit. Why should the officers of US corporations get to leverage the enormous resources at their disposal to, in essence, blackmail our governments to pass a law, especially one that has such a dubious connection to profit? I don’t support the Indiana abortion law either, but I also don’t think corporations should be allowed to engage in this sort of strong-arming behavior toward our government. It’s not democracy. It’s corporatocracy.

WeWork Founder Adam Neumann’s New Start-Up Is Backed By Andreessen Horowitz – The New York Times

Mr. Neumann, who has purchased more than 3,000 apartment units in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta and Nashville, aims to rethink the rental housing market by creating a branded product with consistent service and community features. Flow will own and operate the properties Mr. Neumann had bought and also offer its services to new developments and other third parties. Exact details of the business plan could not be learned.

Source: WeWork Founder Adam Neumann’s New Start-Up Is Backed By Andreessen Horowitz – The New York Times

“In the future, you’ll own nothing, and be happy.”

The middle class was born out of the post-war boom, and the iconic thing that defined the middle class was home ownership. Those times are simply gone now, as any economic chart can show. The housing market is experiencing a huge bubble, and what’s left of affordable housing is being gobbled up by private equity and “startup” monopoly power plays like this one. If the US were run by elected representatives, there might be a change to put a stop to this. But it’s not, any more. It’s being run by the very companies who want to own everything, and rent it back to us.

In the very near future, there will no longer be a “middle” class. Not as a category. Of course, there will be people who fit the description, but it won’t be some broad strata like it has been. There will only be people who own capital, and those that labor in it and for it. I suppose it’s just Capitalism, fully-formed, with a capital “C.” It’s weird, but the US is reinventing feudalism, right under the nose of the Constitution. The oligarch billionaires are the new monarchy, the government does whatever they tell them to do.

Big Bottle: The Baby Formula Nightmare

FDA officials see themselves as an elite priesthood, pursuing excellence merely by dint of being at the FDA. From this perspective, there is zero incentive to let new players into the baby formula market when, in their view, there are already excellent quality companies serving the market, such as Abbott Labs, Mead Johnson, and Nestle. It’s true that baby formula is overpriced in the U.S., costing about twice as much as it does throughout much of Europe. But to an FDA official, price is incidental.

Source: Big Bottle: The Baby Formula Nightmare

I mean, of course. How could it have been otherwise?

In my opinion, stock buybacks should simply be illegal at this point. They always seem to be a key part of every story about large corporations crippling our economy, and hurting the average person in favor of the executives running them.

This country was supposed to have been built on Capitalism with a capital “C,” meaning “free markets” should be providing “competition” and settling on appropriate prices. And yet every market of significance in this country is now being run by 2 or 3 large companies, who collude and “stay in their lane,” with governmental regulatory cover to preclude new entrants coming in at a lower price. And if there is a successful startup in some space, as soon as they start making enough difference to be noticed in the public filings of one of the “2 or 3” established companies in the space, they will be “aquihired,” and the FTC and SEC will stroke their chins and say, “ok.” And then whatever made the startup interesting will wither and die, ala Heroku and Salesforce.

Finally, the FDA needs wholesale reform, since this kind of crisis seems to happen a lot. I mean, the relationship between the FDA and Abbott Labs was also behind the rapid Covid testing scandal, where FDA official Tim Stenzel – who had worked at Abbott – then approved Abbott as one of two firms to make those tests, and blocked all other entrants. That’s why rapid Covid tests were both in shortage and much more expensive in the U.S. than they are in Europe. The FDA needs to be broken up so that its drugs and food divisions are separate, and it needs to take its mandate seriously for a resilient supply chain.

When Rockefeller encompassed the core of all of American business, and 25% of the government was funded by the taxes he paid alone, we got serious about not letting large companies run our country. We called it “trustbusting,” and there was a long history of it. I’m doubting that this era of American history is still being taught. We’re certainly not doing it any more.

Why THIS Guy?

Yet Again

You can read the facts of this case through a simple search. Surprise, surprise: They may not be as clear and straightforward as you might think, from this copy. You can see what the prosecution wanted versus what he got. You can make whatever judgement you like about him, his victim, and the legal system.

I don’t particularly care about any of that. At least, not any more.

It’s been six years since this happened. Yet every other month, this guy’s face gets reposted to 9gag, Imgur, and Facebook, et. al, and dragged through the mud again. You may think he deserves this treatment. You may think it’s a picture-perfect case of white privilege, or rich privilege, or rich, white privilege. You may think he never deserves to be forgotten. You might be right, but don’t forget that the legal ramifications of being on the sexual offender registry will follow him the rest of his days, and they are no joke.

According to one site’s statistics, there are presently 463,634 cases of sexual assault per year in the US. In the six years since this case, that’s roughly 2.5 million cases. So my question is: why this guy? Why is this case reposted every few months on every social media site I visit? If you were to trawl through the 2.5M sexual assault cases since this happened, I absolutely, 100%, money-back guarantee that you will find at least one other case that demonstrates presumed privilege better than this.

This particular post was lifted from 9gag. Several of the comments demonstrate the same frustration I have. I once saw it reposted by a friend on Facebook, and asked: why? He came back with, “If it happened to your daughter, wouldn’t you do the same?” And I said, “Maybe, but this wasn’t your daughter either. Why do you feel the need to repost it?” He didn’t have a good answer.

So what’s going on here? It’s weird. Is this being done by the victim? Friends and family of the victim? Is someone getting paid to do it? In this particular case, the account that posted this to 9gag tags all of his posts with “decolonize.” Is it a sockpuppet for foreign agitators? I honestly don’t know, but I’m starting to think there’s a story here. Normal, rational people would have let this go by now.

Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines

Several national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislatures are advancing plans to stop people in states where abortion is banned from seeking the procedure elsewhere, according to people involved in the discussions.

Source: Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines

As I’ve said before, this issue seems perfectly and legally suited to invoking the Commerce Clause to regulate it nation-wide. Congress just needs to sack up and do it, despite the re-election impact, whatever it may be. Take a chance, guys. Lead. Legislate. Make policy. Give it a go. Try it on for size. Just see how it feels.