"I suppose I have to explain why this makes the US a shittier place to live, given the “savvy” cynicism I’ve seen about how it’s all rotten here already. Tech companies, padding their bottom lines, have made their experiences worse, a phenomenon so widespread and well-recognized that now there’s slang for it. Whether the scandals are scams, child predation, worker exploitation, or violations of user privacy — pick your poison — Trump has offered tech a way to buy itself out of consequences. That makes life tangibly worse for everyone who isn’t a billionaire.

There are those who will say that this is good — that the corruption is happening in the open instead of the shadows. But public, open corruption allows even more rottenness to fester in secret. Consider all the strongman governments; besides their advances in bribery, what did they innovate? Silicon Valley’s leaders fashion themselves as titans of industry, but what they’re really building is a golden age of grift."

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/20/24346317/trump-gangster-tech-regulation-corruption-grift

#USA #Trump #BigTech #TechRegulation #Billionaires #Plutocracy

U.S. lawmakers want Christianity in classrooms
https://apnews.com/article/trump-religion-school-ten-commandments-9159f412c4f47ad421551885093a4a22

* Trump/GOP support school choice
* expand taxpayer-funded vouchers for parents to send children to religious schools

Charter schools
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/110608529417350253
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/113153575049972534

#USpol #Trump2 #GOP #fascism #authoritarianism #Project2025
#billionaires #BetsyDeVos
#PublicEducation #SchoolChoice #SchoolVouchers #PrivateSchools #CharterSchools #HillsdaleCollege
#ChristianRight #antiLGBT #Chistofascism #transgenocide

"Donald Trump was inaugurated president on Monday by a Chief Justice most people couldn’t name or recognize. But up in the VIP seats, looking down like an approving collective of Greek gods, were six tech billionaires whose companies practically everyone knows: Elon Musk (Twitter), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook/Instagram), Tim Cook (Apple), Sundar Pichai (Google), and Shou Zi Chew (TikTok).

The media has tended to focus on the net worth of this half dozen, using rusty words like “oligarchy,” in homage to their vast wealth. But their power penetrates much deeper than that. It is literally in my pocket as I write this: their host of apps that dominate our every waking hour, their dominance and control over the very appliance that most now get their news and entertainment from, where they do their banking, receive their advertisements, connect with their friends, date and buy stuff.

Oligarchs are nothing new, but these six men have a power over us that is more intimate than other billionaires. They collectively build, run, and control what can only be likened to an appendage of our own human bodies, a new organ that most can’t imagine losing or losing access to.

I call them the appistocracy.

The power these apps command is so awesome that not even their owners are fully in control. Attempts to rename the companies consistently fail. To any ordinary person, “X” remains Twitter; “Alphabet” remains Google; and “Meta” remains Facebook. The rebrands fail because these apps have lodged themselves so deeply in our minds that unlearning our conception of them is about as realistic as unlearning a native language. They exist in some timeless, platonic realm of ideas. These companies might as well try to rebrand the concept of a tree."

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-appistocracy-inaugurates-trump

#USA #Trump #BigTech #Oligarchy #Appistocracy #Billionaires

Super good analysis about billionaire worship.
That’s a reason I didn’t hear when US was discussing why Trump won.
Perhaps because that stuff is almost like an air you breathe while you walk around..
#billionaires #worship #media #narratives #history #uspol
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IVemKfIVqWY

Make robber barrons scared again.

#AntifaAF #billionaires #Capitalism

So a billionaire donated $10 million.
Nobel prize okay?

What is this obsession with these loaded pop singers?

Besides, Amazon and Google are donating 10 million too. Meta 2 mill. Again, not heading praise; fact checking.

#TaylorSwift
#Billionaires
#Trump
#LAFires

Inhaltswarnung: Extreme sycophancy and unsolicited adulation Zum Öffnen/Schließen klicken

Caruso narrowly lost the mayoral election to Karen Bass. This is how he would've responded to a disaster. He hired private firefighters to protect his Pacific Palisades shopping center, then complained about lack of water from the hydrants. Firefighters were using it to save lives & prop. Many #billionaires are self-serving. He could've helped save the elementary school, library, grocery store... He claims to be altruistic.
He, Musk, Trump... blame Dems, govt...

#LAFires
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/us/los-angeles-mayor-fire-response.html

Failing to use power to protect and defend the Constitution from someone who intends from day one to eviscerate it IS an abuse of power. #drumph

Failing to withhold support from a foreign government which continually flouts international law to kill those under their power is also an abuse of power. #israel

Continuing to take money from and allowing others to take money from those who are pushing those with power to serve them rather than the source of Constitutional power, the people, is also an abuse of power. #oligarchs #billionaires #corporations

#BidenAdministration

The Mount Vernon News was family owned from 1939 until it was sold in 2020 to a “pink slime” media company with ties to conservative billionaires. Then it began publishing one-sided articles that make dubious claims about solar power.

(Published Oct. 2024)
https://propub.li/3CY5WFR

#News #Oil #Gas #FossilFuels #Solar #Energy #Billionaires #Journalism

#capitalism #imperialism #colonialism #billionaires #eattherich

Did I hear that the governor of #NewYork has a hotline for ...wait for it... CEOs?

For C...E...O..s!!!

No help for people who lose housing, their health, could lose their lives because they can't pay medical bills. No hotline for that.

#Capitalism #YourGovernmentHatesYou

#Billionaires

Typical from libertarians and proglibs, ENTIRELY IGNORING THE FACT that the '#prisons' #richpigs get 'incarcerated' at are in reality Country Clubs. #China and #Vietnam have the right idea. Legal EXECUTION. Legally execute JUST ONE Western #Billionaires, and they'll ALL line up.

#HealthInsurance Execs Should Live in Fear of Prison, Not Murder
https://theintercept.com/2024/12/19/luigi-mangione-unitedhealthcare-insurance/ #luigimangione #unitedhealthcare #EatTheCEOs too.

Jeff Bezos: Everything You Didn’t Know About his Shi*ty past

https://youtu.be/IDFM7j-44Tg?si=wq4pODxdFLm_IOI4

#antitrust #osha #retail #labor #dork #billionaires #books #walmart #AntiCompetitive #logistics #WashingtonPost #journalism

“Zionist cutouts and intermediaries:
Real-estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht's Facts for Peace is just one of the covert ops being used by the Zionists to dampen opposition to genocide in Palestine”

by David Miller in Tracking Power Update on Substack

@palestine
@israel

https://open.substack.com/pub/trackingpower/p/zionist-cutouts-and-intermediaries?r=27oltk&utm_medium=ios

#Press #Sternlicht #Zionism #Billionaires #Support #Israel #Genocide #Gaza #Hamas #Palestine #Delegitimization #Campaign #FactsForPeace #Cutouts #CovertOps #STOIC #Disinformation

"Elites are reportedly ramping up security in the aftermath of the shooting of #UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. They’re especially fearful of copycats following widespread praise for #LuigiMangione online. In this video we’ll discuss 'fear in the C-Suite' and talk about why American anger is at an all-time high." https://youtu.be/UiW-LD50xD8 #HealthCare #MedicaidForAll #HealthInsurance #Millionaires #Billionaires

#billionaires #trump #musk #usa #uk #ukraine #gaza #syria

Billionaire Preachers Built Most Powerful Political Machine in Texas
https://www.propublica.org/article/tim-dunn-farris-wilks-texas-christian-nationalism-dominionism-elections-voting

* Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks
* pushed TX statehouse far right. threatens separation of church/state
* relentlessly fund campaigns v. other Republicans
* Christian nationalism
* Dunn linked to think tanks jockeying to influence Trump2 administration

#Trump2 #fascism
#ChristianRight #theocracy #ChristianNationalism #DominionTheology
#Christofascism #transgenocide #antiLGBT
#billionaires #TimDunn #FarrisWilks

Do #billionaires believe in right and wrong? There is no evidence of it.

Are they getting what they want? Yes.

Are they financing #media that tells us what is right and wrong? Yes.

Are we getting what we want?

The most secure prison is the one that inmates do not notice.

The Mount Vernon News was family owned from 1939 until it was sold in 2020 to a “pink slime” #media company with ties to conservative #billionaires. Then it began publishing one-sided articles that make dubious claims about #solar power.

https://propub.li/3CY5WFR

#News #Journalism #Agriculture #Misinformation #FossilFuels #Climate #Environment #Ohio

Back in 2021, we launched a series of stories documenting the key ways that the ultrawealthy — #billionaires like #ElonMusk, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel — avoid #taxes. Here are 10 of their strategies.

#Finance #Law #Tech #Journalism

https://propub.li/4fQL3uY

Noted professor resigns from Brtitain’s ‘Royal Society’ over #ElonMusk involvement. Writes historic and well documented blog post announcing her reasons. #RoyalSociety #Academia #Fascism #Billionaires #HigherEd #NazisShouldNotBeHonored

http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-i-have-resigned-from-royal-society.html

Billionaires don't want to pay taxes? Revoke their citizenship and passport!!

"Whatever its source, the broligarchs’ sense of their innate superiority has led many of them to positions on taxation quite similar to Trump’s. In 2016, the Republican presidential nominee bragged about avoiding tax payments for years—“That makes me smart,” he crowed from the debate stage. The broligarchs have quietly liberated themselves from one of the only certainties in life. As ProPublica reported in 2021, Musk paid zero federal income taxes in 2018 and a de facto tax rate of 3.3 percent from 2014 to 2018, during which his wealth grew $13.9 billion. Thiel used a government program intended to expand retirement savings by middle-class Americans to amass $5 billion in capital-gains income, completely tax-free. The Trump-friendly broligarchs’ political ascendancy turns the rallying cry of the Boston Tea Party on its head, achieving representation with minimal taxation.

In their hostility to taxation and regulation, the men who rule Wall Street and Silicon Valley resemble earlier generations of wealthy capitalists who enjoyed outsize influence on American politics. Even some tech barons who supported Kamala Harris clamored for the firing of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who favors vigorous antitrust enforcement. But the broligarchs are distinct from old-school American oligarchs in one key respect: Their political vision seeks to undermine the nation-state system globally. Musk, among others, has set his sights on the privatization and colonization of space with little or no government involvement. Thiel and Andreessen have invested heavily in creating alternatives to the nation-state here on Earth, including libertarian colonies with minimal taxation."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/

#USA #Trump #Musk #Billionaires #BigTech #SiliconValley

[thread] Brendan Carr

* lawyer
* served as member of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 2017+
* appointed by Trump
* authored chapter in Heritage Foundation's Project 2025
* Carr proposes "reining in Big Tech" as main goal for FCC
* Nov 2024 Trump selected Carr to lead FCC

#BrendanCarr #HeritageFoundation #Project2025 #FCC #NetNeutrality #censorship
#Trump2 #GOP #fascism #authoritarianism #disinformation #Christofascism
#capitalism #corporations #billionaires #libertarianism

A billionaire pres. was helped by #Musk +his election campaign: funded in large part by ~$2B in donations from ~150 billionaire families.
Appears: other ~350 #billionaires who funded Trump in 2020 donated with “dark$” SuperPACs created by 5 Rs on the SC with CU. With ~$15B spent on this 2024 election -likely dwarfs the ones we know about (+carpet-bombed Americans in often-deceptive pol ads).

+Billions in “free #media” Trump got from FOX “News,” RW radio, Musk...

#USPol https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-transitional-oligarchy-democracys-d2f

[thread] Competitive Enterprise Institute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family_foundations#Competitive_Enterprise_Institute

* libertarian think tank
* seeks limited government, free enterprise, indiv. liberty
* promotes climate change denial
* opponent of EPA policies lim. greenhouse gas emissions
* funders incl. Koch Foundations

See also (Charles Koch ...) [thread] Existential threat of billionaires
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/113346390093945554

#CompetitiveEnterpriseInstitute #CEI #CharlesKoch #billionaires #libertarianism #ClimateDenial

What billionaires are 'trying to escape is civilisation, the rule of law, other people – bluntly, us. They’re trying to escape us'...

and to use a phrase Zoe Williams doesn't: 'the only dangerous minority are the [ultra] rich'!

#billionaires #USpol

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/11/billionaires-elon-musk-hate-us-ultra-wealthy-climate-crisis

Memes R Us
[meme-maker unknown]

See the flaws in this oversimplified meme and read the comment by @jrefior

#economics #education #inequality #billionaires #college #taxes #press #meme #PovertyTax

Deep conversation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0gBhTO-pzs

#autrocracy #billionaires #freespeech #maga #gop #palestine #usa

#comics #medhihasan #darkmoney

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/07/investing/billionaires-net-worth-trump-win/index.html

Wednesday wasn’t just a good day for Trump. The wealth of the world’s 10 richest people also soared by a record amount. The world’s 10 richest people got a record $64 billion richer from Trump’s reelection.

- Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index

#wealth #richestpeople #investing #billionaires

The usa will #vote for who will give the murderers the weapons of death tomorrow.

Either way #Palestine will pay the price. #genocide apparently matters less than the cost of groceries.

Libs will sleep well if their queen #kamala is elected. Brown babies should have known better.

#warpigs one and all. Fuck the usa, the dept of war, the dems and republicans, the #billionaires, all of it.

#freepalestine #notanotherbomb #capitalism #politics #israel #votingdoesntchangeanything

https://hartmannreport.com/p/saturday-report-11224

Saturday Report 11/2/24 - Did a demon attack Tucker or was it his......
#ThomHartmann

..."the $6 billion or so and efforts in kind that #rightwing #billionaires, #Israel, #Putin, and #Musk have thrown in on behalf of #Trump and the GOP will make it a challenge. Particularly in the #Senate.
...
Europe’s #Greens ask professional grifter Jill #Stein to pull out of #US #election to prevent a Trump victory. Noting that the American Green Party is not affiliate."...

"The Washington Post is probably not going anywhere and on some level we need large journalistic institutions to continue to exist. But even well-run large outlets are surely full of waste and bloat that are funded on the backs of and at the expense of the actual journalism. The “wealth and business interests” of billionaire owners, as Bezos writes, are not a “bulwark against intimidation” for journalism. They are, themselves, the biggest threat.

404 Media is barely a year old and we employ four people. You cannot compare our business or what we have done to the Washington Post. As our friend Molly White explained last week, “Just Go Independent” sounds good in theory, but it is not necessarily easy. Doing high quality, investigative journalism is hard, and it is expensive. But it’s not that expensive, and the infrastructure to do it on the internet is getting cheaper and easier to pull off. Printing presses, middle managers, fancy offices, and executive salaries are the expensive things, and they are unnecessary.

Still, it’s unclear whether “Just Go Independent” is a sustainable career path for the number of journalists who we need to have a functioning society. But I do know that relying on the passing interest of billionaires to keep journalism alive is not sustainable. And I know that 250,000 subscribers could fund a lot of independent journalists."

https://www.404media.co/the-billionaire-is-the-threat-not-the-solution/

#WashingtonPost #Bezos #Journalism #Media #News #Billionaires

https://www.tiktok.com/@thehistorywizard/video/7253074426407718190

There is an easy thought experiment to clear up any remaining controversy:

Would you rather live in a city which sustains ten burglars or ten #billionaires?

Et voilà — You've just instantly convinced yourself that billionaires are worse than criminals, and must be.

Goethe's #Faust is described as "the greatest work of #German literature."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust

You can have sex with an under-age girl and you can have people killed for interfering with your real estate project. You can literally make a deal with the devil, and after all that, you'll be forgiven.

Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen.
He who constantly strives can be redeemed

Now, I'm not explaining anything, just sayin'.

#billionaires #literature

The Titanic wreckage tours by #OceanGate are a stark example of how #billionaires spend money that they do not pay in #taxes. It is unconscionable that #taxpayers should bear further the burden of rescue costs. Billionaires must be made to pay every cent of the US Coast Guard effort in this completely unnecessary and offensive tragedy.

#titan