In case you haven't noticed, or paid attention, or maybe been in a #TrumpVirus / #GQP #media induced coma....

>> The Trump administration is descending into authoritarianism

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/mar/22/trump-administration-authoritarianism

> From media to culture and the arts to the refusal to abide by court orders, we’re nearing ‘Defcon 1 for our democracy’, experts

#fascism #DOGE #Muskville #GQP #oligarchy #plutocracy #Project2025 #coup - Full-tilt war on #truth - #democracy - #respect for #law

"The Trump administration is eliminating a preference for fiber Internet in a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, a change that is expected to reduce spending on the most advanced wired networks while directing more money to Elon Musk's Starlink and other non-fiber Internet service providers. One report suggests Starlink could obtain $10 billion to $20 billion under the new rules.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick criticized the Biden administration's handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a statement yesterday. Lutnick said that "because of the prior Administration's woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the program has not connected a single person to the Internet and is in dire need of a readjustment.""

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/starlink-benefits-as-trump-admin-rewrites-rules-for-42b-grant-program/

#USA #Trump #Musk #Starlink #Broadband #Plutocracy #Kleptocracy

"Guests are paying millions of dollars to dine and meet with President Donald Trump at special events held at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5,000,000, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called Candlelight Dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1,000,000 to reserve a seat, according to an invitation obtained by WIRED.

“You are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest President Donald J. Trump,” the invitation reads, under a “MAGA INC.” header. MAGA Inc, or Make America Great Again Inc, is a super PAC that supported Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

“Additional details provided upon RSVP. RSVPs will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Space is very limited. $1,000,000 per person.”"

https://www.wired.com/story/people-paying-millions-donald-trump-mar-a-lago/

#USA #Trump #Kleptocracy #Plutocracy

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musks-doge-fires-federal-tech-team-that-built-free-tax-filing-site-2025-03-01/

"#Musk's #DOGE fires federal tech team that built free #tax-filing site"

#MAGA parasocially identifies with #plutocracy robbing them. Rich MAGA "doesn't pay #taxes." Poor MAGA hates taxes

So they think this is for them! "This hurts black people" and so they like it

The trick is mind-numbingly simple:

Be a stupid *poor* cruel ghoul

Adore *rich* cruel ghouls

Who rob them, see them as cattle to abuse

And they never. fucking. see. it.

How #bigotry is used for #power

What it looks like when #billionaires and their #GOP minions rule.

Explode the #deficit with a tax cut for the obscenely wealthy while slashing #Medicaid and #education

File this under: Let’s pull the ladder up

#Plutocracy #Oligarchy #USPolitics

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/21/upshot/house-gop-budget-blueprint.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

#WashingtonPost’s opinion editor, #DavidShipley, is exiting as #JeffBezos said the section’s focus would narrow to defend “personal liberties & free markets.”

“I am of America & for America, & proud to be so,” #Bezos said, in an email to employees. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm & everywhere else.

#UnitedStates #press #journalism #billionaires #plutocracy #DemocracyDiesInDarkness
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/business/media/washington-post-bezos-shipley.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p&pvid=1D739953-0243-48C1-80CB-C35DF757C8FA

Unlimited promiscuity. Who would have guessed that the United States of America are, after all, the true Banana Republic??

"When asked about it, the State Department issued a statement saying the purchase is now on hold with no plans of fulfilling the contract, pointing out that talks with Tesla began during the Biden administration.

But NPR has obtained a State Department document detailing that Biden's State Department planned to spend just $483,000 in the 2025 fiscal year on buying electric vehicles and $3 million for supporting equipment, like charging stations. It represented less than 1% of the hundreds of millions of dollars likely destined for Tesla vehicles after the Trump administration quietly revised a State Department procurement document.

A former Biden White House official familiar with the State Department's plans told NPR the steps taken to advance $400 million worth of government business to Tesla appear to be intentional.

"I don't think this is a clerical error. It was likely someone who is new in [the] State [Department] who decided, 'OK, we're gonna do this with Tesla,'" said the former official, who was not authorized to speak about the matter.

The person said the State Department and Tesla had agreed during the Biden administration to conduct research about armoring electric vehicles, but no money had been set aside to purchase armored Teslas for the State Department. A total budget of $483,000 had been approved to buy light-duty EVs as possible State Department vehicles. That plan was moving forward as recently as November 2024."

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5305269/tesla-state-department-elon-musk-trump

#USA #Trump #Musk #Tesla #Kleptocracy #Plutocracy #Kleptocracy #Plutocracy

"“It’s their government,” Jeffries has said of the Republicans. No, Hakeem, it is our government. The government belongs to the people, not to the unelected Elon Musk. Trump was elected president, but that does not make him “king,” as he proclaimed himself the other day on Truth Social when announcing the end of New York City’s hard-fought congestion pricing policy.

This Democratic weakness is particularly catastrophic given that people are ready to support opposition to Trump.

Let’s look at his “ratings,” a metric that the former reality star is particularly obsessed with. Throughout this month, according to a range of opinion polls, voters have disapproved of Trump in proportions ranging from 42 percent to a whopping (and historic) 54 percent.

Democratic voters extend that dissatisfaction to their own party. According to a recent CNN poll, a large majority, 73 percent, of Democratic-leaning voters feel that Democrats in Congress are doing too little to oppose Trump. And the approval rating of Congress itself is at an all-time low, suggesting that voters would also like to see some opposition from Trump’s own party too.

The Democratic leaders’ inaction is particularly bewildering in the context of a growing opposition movement."

https://jacobin.com/2025/02/democrats-trump-musk-jeffries-opposition

#USA #Trump #Musk #DemocraticParty #Plutocracy #LaborMovement

"Krause is a private equity looter. He's the guy who basically invented the playbook for PE takeovers of large tech companies, from Broadcom to Citrix to VMWare, converting their businesses from selling things to renting them out, loading them up with junk fees, slashing quality, jacking up prices over and over, and firing everyone who was good at their jobs. He is a master enshittifier, an enshittification ninja.

Krause has an unerring instinct for making people miserable while making money. He oversaw the merger of Citrix and VMWare, creating a ghastly company called The Cloud Software Group, which sold remote working tools. Despite this, of his first official acts was to order all of his employees to stop working remotely. But then, after forcing his workers to drag their butts into work, move back across the country, etc, he reversed himself because he figured out he could sell off all of the company's office space for a tidy profit.

Krause canceled employee benefits, like thank you days for managers who pulled a lot of unpaid overtime, or bonuses for workers who upgraded their credentials. He also ended the company's practice of handing out swag as small gifts to workers, and then stiffed the company that made the swag, wontpaying a $437,574.97 invoice for all the tchotchkes the company had ordered. That's not the only supplier Krause stiffed: FinLync, a fintech company with a three-year contract with Krause's company, also had to sue to get paid.

Krause's isn't a canny operator who roots out waste: he's a guy who tears out all the wiring and then grudgingly restores the minimum needed to keep the machine running (no wonder Musk loves him, this is the Twitter playbook)."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/07/broccoli-hair-brownshirts/

#USA #Musk #DOGE #Plutocracy #Fascists

"It’s worth noting that not all of Musk’s attacks on the administrative and liberal state are equally pernicious. There are real issues with USAID and its role as a soft power arm of meddling US imperial bureaucrats, as well as a political shield for U.S. atrocities, from Yemen to Gaza, as I’ve noted here and elsewhere. But USAID also does objectively useful work because many countries grow dependent on them, and it’s very clear that, based on recent statements made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, what is most likely going to happen is the sinister activity USAID does will simply be folded back into the State Department directly or the CIA (as it used to be) while the Incidentally Good Stuff USAID does will be be eliminated. Despite his faux libertarian posturing, Musk, of course, doesn’t care about the anti-imperialist argument. He hates USAID because he thinks it helps keep black and brown people alive, which—by virtue of the US being a largely unipolar empire—it very much does, regardless of motives.

The Times, Washington Post and CNN were not alone in having a blasé attitude about DOGE in the run up to Trump taking office. As I noted at In These Times, many Democrats indulged the patently false “cost savings” premise, and made no effort to paint it as a far right coup on the liberal state—which it clearly was. Pod Saves America’s Tommy Vietor treated DOGE as a good-faith effort that was simply misguided, and establishment journalists frequently mocked or downplayed its potential to disrupt our government.

This is part of a much larger media regime that, above all, must assume good faith from those in power, no matter their past lies, far-right ideological beliefs, or brash and illegal behavior. Let us call it the “Inverse Power-Skepticism Principle, which can be seen here:"

https://www.columnblog.com/p/us-medias-credulous-depiction-of

#USA #Propaganda #Journalism #Media #MediaManipulation #Trump #Musk #DOGE #Plutocracy

Our era is defined by the rise of #socialmedia and the death of print #journalism

The #newspapers still around have been taken over by vulture #capitalism and the managing #editor offices now shill the #propaganda agenda of #plutocracy

I don't have to describe social media's role in creating our age unless you've been living under a rock

What we need are #nonprofit #news orgs

On #decentralized social #media

Problem is, this is a big ask

But we have to do it

Now

https://archive.is/gYfRh

I am on a train en route to the U.S.A. National Science Foundation (NSF).

And it is a mess from a federal government standpoint. 1/n

#RiseOfTheNaziUSA
#TrumpTakeover
#kleptocracy
#kakistocracy
#plutocracy
#LateStageUSianEmpire

You be the judge.
#Nazis. It's a #JobQualification. #USPol #USPolitics is a #Duopoly controlled by a #Plutocracy. #PlutocracyIsFascist.

#PrivateEquity is responsible for the exorbitant prices of fire trucks & disrepair issues, that’ve likely caused injuries & deaths nationwide. PE’s focus on profits, rather than the quality of their wares, led to shortage of fire trucks during the #LAFires.

“A private equity roll-up of fire trucks is why >1/2 the fire trucks in LA were out of service during the catastrophic wildfires in the Palisades & Eaton.”
-M Stoller

#USPol #CorporateGreed #Plutocracy

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private-equity-fire-truck-roll

"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

"Replacing Chopra is hard for Trump in part because Trump has imposed a federal hiring freeze. That means that anyone who replaces Chopra has to already be working for the US government, and all the finance grifters are cashing out of the government to go work for giant financial institutions they've been carrying water for while drawing a public salary. Even the people who might take the job can't, because then no one could be hired to do their job – for example, there's a ghoul at the FDIC who'd fit the bill, but if he takes over from Chopra, then the FDIC will have just two members. If the GOP stooge on the FCC quits to take the job, then the Democratic commissioners will have a majority. You love to see it, really.

But – as Dayen points out – they're almost certainly gonna give Chopra the axe eventually. When they do, the CFPB will continue to do some enforcements. It's likely that Ferguson will eventually direct the FTC to do something apart from peering under their beds looking for "woke." When they do take action, they'll probably take action against companies that are wildly, lavishly corrupt. After all, that describes basically all of American big business, a sector that has festered thanks to 40 years of antitrust negligence.

It will be tempting for Trump's opponents to decide that if Trump hates these giant, evil companies, well, then, they must be good. Think of when "progressives" fell in love with the "intelligence community" just because a couple spooks decided they hated Trump. The FBI isn't your friend, folks – this is the agency that tried to blackmail MLK into killing himself:
(...)
The enemy of your enemy? Still your enemy, provided that they're a big, predatory monopolist. Boss politics is about punishing corruption – selectively. Trump-style antitrust is going to target a ton of bad businesses. That won't make them good."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/24/enforcement-priorities/#enemies-lists

#USA #Trump #Antitrust #Competition #FCC #CFPB #BossPolitics #Plutocracy

https://substack.com/@neilshooter/note/c-87571771

#Health #Healthcare #UnitedHealthcare #Luigi #LuigiMangione #BrianThompson #CEO #HumanRights #usa #america #canada #profit #stockprice #shooter #update #news #UniversalSinglePayerHealthcare #BernieSanders #corruption #WeAreStupid #WhatWouldTheFrenchDo #Politics #Corporatocracy #Oligarchy #Plutocracy #autocracy #ToxicCapitalism #Capitalism #Economics #Democracy #EatTheRich #NationalStrike

This means it's PRIVATE, civilian. The Public IS NOT welcome. Only the rich, powerful, and connected, are allowed.

"This year’s January 6 election certification has been classified as a "national special security event" 👉for the first time👈, according to the US Secret Service. This designation enables extensive federal, state, and local resources to be deployed for security."

https://unusualwhales.com/news/donald-trump-is-expected-to-grant-clemency-to-over-1-000-people-convicted-in-connection-with-the-jan-6-2021

#Duopoly owned by #Plutocrats #Plutocracy

In case of any doubt, I detest the following (in no particular order):

Farage
Badenoch
Starmer
Trump
Musk
Zuckerberg
Bezos
Le Pen
Meloni
Erdogān
Orbán
Netanyahu

The planet would be far better off without them, their financiers, friends and followers. Here's hoping that 2025 is a very bad year for them!

#NeoNazis #Fascism #Oligarths
#Plutocracy

“Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero.”
#healthcare #tyranny #plutocracy #oligarchy #capitalism #fascism #LuigiMangione #FightThePower #NYPD #corruption
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/nyregion/luigi-mangione-eric-adams.html

Who is real #PersonoftheYear?

Also: #Syria #Syrian #Rebels

Fuck dead media like #Time and #plutocracy ghouls like #Trump

Look to where the real world change is

#Ukraine #UkraineWar

The #news that in these days is raging in the #usa regards the arrest of #LuigiMangione alleged killer of #unitedhealthcare #ceo

The italo-American engineer followed the footprints of #unabomber especially under a political point of view as it is proved by the #manifesto that he was bringing with him during his escape.

A wealthy guy #fighting against #plutocracy or a brutal killer?

Check it out in my latest #article

https://edoardomariamontagna.medium.com/did-he-want-the-revolution-b18ca63c7be1

The US government is absolutely working as intended and designed. You CANNOT 'fix' it. You #OVERTHROW it.

"#Obama continued and expanded #Bush’s most evil policies. #Trump continued and expanded Obama’s most evil policies. #Biden continued and expanded Trump’s most evil policies. Now Trump is preparing to keep the streak going." #CaitlinJohnstone

The Face At The Front Desk Changes The Corporation Remains The Same https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/11/15/the-face-at-the-front-desk-changes-the-corporation-remains-the-same/ #Duopoly #Plutocracy #Corporatism #Genocide #Colonialism

The Royal (very much appreciate the Royles) family carry on milking us all and demanding love and obedience. Why the heck is ‘subject’ still part of the UK legislation?

I thought the small charge for every time the RNLI cross ‘their’ beeches hilarious. Maybe it is time to really get royal on their financial arses.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/10/how-long-will-we-stomach-sermons-from-royals-made-rich-by-their-own-charities

#UKPolitics #AbolishTheMonarchy #UkShame #Plutocracy #Theft

Remember how hard #Kamala #Harris fought for our votes and for the children of #Gaza and how she won primary after primary offering wins for the working class? Wake up, she's as big a #fascist as #Trump and was chosen not elected in any #democratic process. Neither should ever be in office.

The #workingclass will need to educate, organize and mobilize no matter who wins. The #rulingclass will keep throwing us under the bus under either #plutocracy party.

#2024PresidentialElection