#donald trump net worth

[srkshaju]

Republican Rivals Duel for Dollars: Net Worths Ahead of First Debate

While the first Republican presidential debate heats up in Wisconsin, the candidates' bank accounts are drawing just as much attention.

https://cutt.ly/fwGJhwR4

With Donald Trump opting out (surprise!), the spotlight falls on the contenders vying for the party's nomination and their financial firepower.

Doug Burgum: This North Dakota governor, boasting a cool $1.1 billion, reigns supreme as the wealthiest candidate. His tech empire, Great Plains Software, built his fortune, leaving him second only to Illinois's Democratic governor in terms of state leader net worth.

Chris Christie: Estimates for the former New Jersey governor's wealth vary, with some whispers of $19 million and others settling around $5 million. His legal career and political ventures, including a stint as US Attorney and governor, have contributed to his coffers.

Ron DeSantis: Florida's controversial governor, despite his recent popularity surge, trails the pack with a modest $1.17 million. His salary and book advance barely hold a candle to his predecessor's $255 million net worth.

Nikki Haley: The former South Carolina governor and ambassador navigated a rocky financial past before her $8 million fortune blossomed. Post-Trump administration, lucrative speaking engagements and book deals fueled her financial comeback.

Asa Hutchinson: Arkansas's ex-governor, raised on a farm, boasts a down-to-earth $1.5 million. His house and government pensions form the bulk of his wealth.

Mike Pence: From congressman to governor to Trump's vice president, it took Pence nearly two decades to become a millionaire.

His public speaking tour and book deals have since quadrupled his net worth to $4 million.

Vivek Ramaswamy: This Ivy League-educated candidate, with a $630 million fortune, is the debate's second-richest contender.

His successful biotech company and "anti-woke" index fund provider have made him a Wall Street heavyweight.

Tim Scott: This South Carolina senator, aiming for historic firsts, has amassed a $3.88 million net worth. His insurance career and congressional salary paved the way for his political aspirations.

The Absent Billionaire: Donald Trump, despite his refusal to participate, remains the financial elephant in the room.

His estimated $2.5 billion, shrouded in secrecy and controversy, continues to be a topic of much speculation.

As the Republican race heats up, the candidates' financial profiles offer another layer of intrigue.

From tech titans to governors on the rise, their diverse fortunes paint a fascinating picture of the party's landscape.

Who will emerge victorious on the debate stage, and will their bank accounts play a role in their ultimate success? Only time will tell.

Feedback Poll

[worldnewsforus11]

Trump's election tampering trial has been postponed indefinitely by a fe...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Security is class war, not intergenerational conflict

Today, Tor.com published my latest short story, "The Canadian Miracle," set in the world of my forthcoming (Nov 14) novel, The Lost Cause. I am serializing this one on my podcast! Here's part one.

The very instant the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, American conservatives (in both parties) began lobbying to destroy it. After all, a reserve army of forelock-tugging plebs and family retainers won't voluntarily assemble themselves – they need to be goaded into it by the threat of slowly starving to death in their dotage.

They're at it again (again). The oligarch-thinktank industrial complex has unleashed a torrent of scare stories about Social Security's imminent insolvency, rehearsing the same shopworn doom predictions that they've been repeating since the Nixonite billionaire cabinet member Peter G Peterson created a "foundation" to peddle his disinformation in 2008:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.O.U.S.A.

Peterson's go-to tactic is convincing young people that all the Social Security money they're paying into the system will be gobbled up by already-wealthy old people, leaving nothing behind for them. Conservatives have been peddling this ditty since the 1930s, and they're still at it – in the pages of the New York Times, no less:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/opinion/social-security-medicare-aging.html

The Times has become a veritable mouthpiece for this nonsense, publishing misleading and nonsensical charts and data to support the idea that millennials are losing a generational war to boomers, who will leave the cupboard bare:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/opinion/aging-medicare-social-security.html

As Robert Kuttner writes for The American Prospect, this latest rhetorical assault on Social Security is timed to coincide with the ascension of the GOP House's new Speaker, Mike Johnson, who makes no secret of his intention to destroy Social Security:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-10-31-debunking-latest-attack-social-security/

The GOP says it wants to destroy Social Security for two reasons: first, to promote "choice" by letting us provide for our own retirement by flushing even more of our savings into the rigged casino that is the stock market; and second, because America doesn't have enough dollars to feed and house the elderly.

But for the New York Times' audience, they've figured out how to launder this far-right nonsense through the language of social justice. Rather than condemning the impecunious olds for their moral failing to lay the correct bets in the stock market, Social Security's opponents paint the elderly as a gerontocratic elite, flush with cash that rightfully belongs to the young.

To support this conclusion, they throw around statistics about how house-rich the Boomers are, and how much consumption they can afford. But as Kuttner points out, the Boomers' real-estate wealth comes not from aggressive house-flipping, but from merely owning a place to live. America's housing bubble means that younger people can't afford this basic human necessity, but the answer to that isn't making old people homeless – it's providing a lot more housing, and banning housing speculation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

It's true that older people are doing a lot of consumption spending – but the bulk of that spending isn't on cruises to Alaska to see the melting glaciers, it's on health care. Old people aren't luxuriating in their joint replacements and coronary bypasses. Calling this "consumption" is deliberately misleading.

But as Kuttner points out, there's another, more important point to be made about inequality in America – the most significant wealth gap in America is between workers and owners, not young people and old people. The "average" Boomer's net worth factors in the wealth of Warren Buffett and Donald Trump. Older renters are more rent-burdened and precarious than younger renters, and most older Americans have little to no retirement savings:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2023/10/28/the-new-york-times-greedy-geezer-myth/

Less than one percent of Social Security benefits go to millionaires – that's because the one percent constitute one percent of the population. It's right there in the name. The one percent are politically and economically important, but that's because they are low in numbers. Giving Social Security benefits to everyone over 65 will not result in a significant outlay to the ultra-wealthy, because there aren't many ultra-wealthy people in America. The problem of inequality isn't the expanding pool of rich people, it's the explosion of wealth for a contracting pool of rich people.

If conservatives were serious about limiting the grip of these "undeserving" Social Security recipients on our economy and its politics, they'd advocate for interitance taxes (which effectively don't exist in America), not the abolition of Social Security. The problem of wealth in America is that it is establishing permanent dynasties which are incompatible with social mobility. In other words, we have created a new hereditary aristocracy – and its corollary, a new hereditary peasantry:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Hereditary aristocracies are poisonous for lots of reasons, but one of the most pressing problems they present is political destabilization. American belief in democracy, the rule of law, and a national identity is q function of Americans' perception of fairness. If you think that your kids can't ever have a better life than you, if you think that the cops will lock you up for a crime for which a rich person would escape justice, then why obey the law? Why vote? Why not cheat and steal? Why not burn it all down?

The wealthy put a lot of energy into distracting us from this question. Just lately, they've cooked up a gigantic panic over a nonexistent wave of retail theft:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/31/the-retail-theft-surge-that-isnt-report-says-crime-is-being-exaggerated-to-cover-up-other-retail-issues/

Meanwhile, the very real, non-imaginary, accelerating, multi-billion-dollar plague of wage theft is conspicuously missing from the public discourse, despite a total that dwarfs all retail theft in America by an order of magnitude:

https://fair.org/home/wage-theft-is-built-into-the-business-models-of-many-industries/

America does have a property crime crisis, but it's a crisis of wage-theft, not shoplifting. Likewise, America does have a retirement crisis: it's a crisis of inequality, not intergenerational conflict.

Social Security has been under sustained assault since its inception, and that's in large part due to a massive blunder on the part of FDR. Roosevelt believed that people would be more protective of Social Security if they thought it was funded by their taxes: "we bought it, it's ours." But – as FDR well knew – that's not how government spending works.

The US government can't run out of US dollars. The US government doesn't get its dollars for spending from your taxes. The US government spends money into existence and taxes it out of existence:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/14/situation-normal/#mmt

A moment's thought will reveal that it has to be this way. The US government (and its fiscal agents, chartered banks) are the only source of dollars. How can the US tax dollars away from earners unless it has first spent those dollars into the economy?

The point of taxation isn't to fund programs, it's to reduce the private sector's spending power so that there are things for sale to the public sector. If we only spent money into the economy but didn't take any out of the economy, the private sector would have so many dollars to spend that any time the government tried to buy something, there'd be a bidding war that would result in massive price spikes.

When a government runs a "balanced budget," that means that it has taxed as much out of the economy as it put into the economy at the start of the year. When a government runs a "surplus," that means it's left less money in the economy at the end of the year than there was at the beginning of the year. This is fine if the economy has contracted overall, but if the economy stayed constant or grew, that means there are fewer dollars chasing more goods and services, which leads to deflation and all kinds of toxic outcomes, like borrowing more bank-created money, which makes the finance sector richer and the real economy poorer.

Of course, most governments run "deficits" – which is another way of saying that they leave more dollars in the economy at the end of the year than there was at the start of the year, or, put another way, a deficit probably means that your economy got bigger, so it needed more dollars.

None of this means that governments can spend without limit. But it does mean that governments can buy anything that's for sale in their own currency. There are a lot of goods for sale in US dollars, both goods that are produced domestically and goods from abroad (this is why it's such a big deal that most of the world's oil is priced in dollars).

Governments do have to worry about getting into bidding wars with the private sector. To do that, governments come up with ways of reducing the private sector's spending power. One way to do that is taxes – just taking money away from us at the end of the year and annihilating it. Another way is to ration goods – think of WWII, or the direct economic interventions during the covid lockdowns. A third way is to sell bonds, which is just a roundabout way of getting us to promise not to spend some of our dollars for a while, in return for a smaller number of dollars in interest payments:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/08/howard-dino/#payfors

FDR knew all of this, but he still told the American people that their taxes were funding Social Security, thinking that this would protect the program. This backfired terribly. Today, Democrats have embraced the myth that taxes fund spending and join with their Republican counterparts in insisting that all spending must be accompanied by either taxes or cuts (AKA "payfors").

These Democrats voluntarily put their own policymaking powers in chains, refusing to take any action on behalf of the American people unless they can sell a tax increase or a budget cut. They insist that we can't have nice things until we make billionaires poor – which is the same as saying that we can't have nice things, period.

There are damned good reasons to make billionaires poor. The legitimacy of the American system is incompatible with the perception that wealth and power are fixed by birth, and that the rich and powerful don't have to play by the rules.

The capture of America's institutions – legislatures, courts, regulators – by the rich and powerful is a ghastly situation, and to reverse it, we'll need all the help we can get. Every hour that Americans spend worrying about their how they'll pay their rent, their medical bills, or their student loans is an hour lost to the fight against oligarchy and corruption.

In other words, it's not true that we can't have nice things until we get rid of billionaires – rather, we can't get rid of billionaires until we have nice things.

This is the premise of my next novel, The Lost Cause, which comes out on November 14; it's set in a world where care and solidarity have unleashed millions of people on the project of maintaining the habitability of our planet amidst the polycrisis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

It's a fundamentally hopeful book, and it's already won praise from Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. I wrote it while thinking through and researching these issues. Conservatives want us to think that we can't do better than this, that – to quote Margaret Thatcher – "there is no alternative." Replacing that narrative is critical to the kinds of mass mobilizations that our very survival depends on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/intergenerational-warfare/#five-pound-blocks-of-cheese

This Saturday (Nov 4), I'm keynoting the Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA.

[simply-ivanka]

If Taylor Swift Had Endorsed Donald Trump

Democrats would scorn her business savvy, cap her ticket prices, and fret over her huge carbon footprint.

Wall Street Journal

By Allysia Finley

Forbes estimates Taylor Swift’s net worth at $1.3 billion. Despite her liberal leanings, the singer-songwriter has amassed her wealth the old-fashioned way: through hard work, talent and business savvy. Her endorsement of Kamala Harris last week is rich considering she owes her success to the capitalist system the vice president wants to tear down.

“The way I see it, fans view music the way they view their relationships,” Ms. Swift wrote in a 2014 piece for the Journal. “Some music is just for fun, a passing fling. . . . Some songs and albums represent seasons of our lives, like relationships that we hold dear in our memories but had their time and place in the past. However, some artists will be like finding ‘the one.’ ” She has become “the one” for hundreds of millions of fans worldwide with lyrics that chronicle relationship woes women commonly experience.

Ms. Swift took advantage of her ardent fan base in 2014 by removing her catalog from Spotify in a bid for higher royalties. “Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” she explained. “My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet, . . . is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.”

She also criticized Apple Music for not paying artists during the streaming service’s free trial, prompting the company to change its policy. As she jeers in a hit song, “Who’s afraid of little old me?” Apparently, Big Tech companies.

Last year she reportedly raked in $200 million from streaming royalties on top of the estimated $15.8 million she grossed per performance during her recent “Eras” tour. Some fans have shelled out thousands of dollars on the resale market to see Ms. Swift perform. Americans have even traveled to Europe when they couldn’t get tickets in the U.S.

Her fan base may be more loyal and enthusiastic than Donald Trump’s. JD Vance scoffed at the idea that the star’s endorsement of Ms. Harris could influence the outcome of the election. The “billionaire celebrity,” he said, is “fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.” Maybe, but she certainly taps into the problems of young women.

Democrats hope to use Ms. Swift’s endorsement to drive them to the polls. But it isn’t difficult to imagine what the left would be saying about her had she endorsed the Republican antihero. It might go something like this:

The billionaire has gotten rich by ripping off fans, avoiding taxes and harming competitors. Time for the government to break her up. Unlike rival artists, Ms. Swift writes, performs and owns her compositions. This vertical integration allows her to charge exorbitant royalties and ticket prices.

Tickets for her “Eras” tour on average cost about $240. That’s merely the price for admission—not including food, drink or Swiftie swag. VIP passes that include memorabilia go for $899. How dare she make young women choose between paying for groceries or rent and going to a concert.

The Federal Trade Commission must cap Ms. Swift’s ticket prices at a reasonable price—say, $20—and ban her junk fees. Concertgoers shouldn’t have to pay $65 for an “I Love You It’s Ruining My Life” sweatshirt.

Her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce also unfairly boosts their star power, letting them charge more for endorsements. As Ms. Swift writes in one song, “two is better than one.” Mr. Kelce reportedly signed a $100 million podcast deal with Amazon’s Wonderly. By breaking up the couple, the government could reduce their royalties and ticket prices.

Ms. Swift, the self-described “mastermind,” also dodges taxes on her “full income,” which includes some $125 million in real estate and a music catalog worth an estimated $600 million. “They said I was a cheat, I guess it must be true,” Ms. Swift acknowledges in her song “Florida!!!”

Under the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed billionaire’s tax, she would have to pay a 25% levy on the $1 billion increase in her fortune since 2017. But that isn’t enough. Ms. Swift should also have to pay taxes on the appreciating value of her “name, image and likeness,” which the Internal Revenue Service considers an asset.

How much is her brand worth? Easily billions. She might say, as she does in a song, that her “reputation has never been worse.” True, Miss Americana’s image took a hit after reports that her private-jet travel in 2022 emitted 576 times as much CO2 as the average American in a year. When Ms. Swift sings, “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me,” she’s correct. She and her fat-cat friends are what’s wrong with America.

Appeared in the September 16, 2024, print edition as 'If Taylor Swift Had Endorsed Donald Trump'.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Jeff Yass just bought Trump. Here’s what he stands to gain.

The right-wing billionaire and TikTok investor is about to help the former president add billions of dollars to his net worth. This is what oligarchy looks like.

March 25, 2024, 4:42 PM EDT

By Ja'han Jones

Billionaire investor Jeff Yass is playing his Trump card.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday that the right-wing megadonor and major TikTok investor is a part owner of the company that merged with Donald Trump’s media company, which owns Truth Social, the former president’s struggling social media platform. The head-scratching deal stands to add billions of dollars to Trump’s net worth.

Yass’ name recently started popping up in news reports after Trump denounced legislation in Congress that could ban TikTok unless the social media outlet is sold from its China-based parent company. This was a major reversal of Trump’s previous opposition to TikTok and came after Yass met with Trump in Florida, with the backdrop of the former president’s mounting legal fees only adding to suspicion that Yass essentially could be purchasing a presidential candidate.

Trump claimed afterward that he hadn’t spoken with Yass about TikTok, and Yass is a major backer of efforts to promote school privatization, so I guess it’s possible that the right-wing billionaire didn’t say a thing about one of his most prominent investments. (Yass recently declined a request for comment from NBC News.)

But it certainly looks like Trump is under Yass’ thumb now.

It also looks like TikTok — or at minimum, one of its key investors — has just tried to one-up other social media companies in Big Tech’s ongoing battles over influence in Washington. Two years ago, The Washington Post revealed that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, had waged a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign that involved trying to get media outlets and lawmakers to scrutinize TikTok more heavily. And although Meta can’t take total credit, that effort does seem to have helped get us to the present-day scenario, with a possible TikTok ban under consideration at the federal level and several other bans enacted at the state level.

With Trump, Yass appears to be employing the oligarchic approach to protecting an investment: transfer heaps of cash to a desperate presidential candidate and hope they do your bidding.

☝️😡🤬

[1americanconservative]

U.S. presidents net worth before and after office:

Ronald Reagan: $10.6M ➡️ $15.4M

George H.W. Bush: $4M ➡️ $23M

Bill Clinton: $1.3M ➡️ $241.5M

George W. Bush: $20M ➡️ $40M

Barack Obama: $1.3M ➡️ $70M

Donald Trump: $3.7B ➡️ $2.5B

Numbers don’t lie.

What are your thoughts here?

[itsallpoliticsstupid]

Donald Trump doesn’t even know who he wants to deport now.

You’d think a man with a net worth of *checks* 3.8 Billion USD would be able to invest in a globe…

So much wrong here, so little time.

How can people take this man seriously? Without Biden making so many mistakes alongside him it’s becoming extremely clear he is not doing that well mentally.

[dertaglichedan]

An appeals court slashed his court judgment to $175 million

The value of his stake in Digital World Acquisition has jumped

'I have a lot of cash,' Trump told reporters Monday

Donald Trump's net worth is shooting up even as he is forced to assemble piles of cash to pay court judgments – now climbing onto at least one coveted billionaire's list.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the misnamed Truth Social, hit its lowest point this past week since its shares went public on March 26th this year.

Trump Media stock falls below $20 per share, a first since company went public

The monthslong Trump Media stock slide continued Wednesday, as shares of the company majority-owned by former President Donald Trump fell below $20 for the first time since the Truth Social maker went public more than five months ago. The stock price of DJT touched a low of $19.38 per share around midday, marking a drop of more than 75% from its intraday high on March 26, the day the company debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange. [ ... ] Trump owns nearly 59% of Trump Media’s stock. Even after losing much of its value, Trump’s stake at Wednesday’s stock price is still worth more than $2.2 billion — more than half of his on-paper net worth, according to Forbes. Trump, and other company executives and insiders, are bound by lock-up agreements that have so far barred them from cashing in on their shares. But the lock-ups are set to expire as soon as Sept. 20, at which point Trump may choose to start selling his shares. Trump has given no indication that he plans to cash out once he is able to do so. But speculation has flared that he might, especially as Trump Media’s latest earnings reports show it losing millions of dollars and generating little revenue. If he does sell — or if he even appears likely to — investors could lose confidence in Trump Media, a situation the company’s own regulatory filings have acknowledged.

It's easy to imagine a scenario where Trump cashes out in late September, other investors lose confidence in the company, and then the share price plummets to junk status.

Almost everything with Trump's name on it is a fail, a scam, or both. Yet there's this mythology about Trump, nurtured by his "reality" show The Apprentice, that he is some sort of genius businessman. It's this failure to distinguish actuality from entertainment which has led to the threat to democracy in the United States since that famous escalator ride in 2015.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Swing-state voters are open to several ideas to keep Social Security benefits flowing for decades — as long as it’s the wealthy footing the bill, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.

An overwhelming 77% of registered voters in the seven states that will decide the 2024 presidential election like the idea of a billionaires tax to bolster Social Security shortfalls, the poll found. More than half say they approve of trimming benefits for high-earners, and for taxing wages for Social Security beyond the first $168,600 in earnings as done under current policy.

The poll was conducted among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin between April 8-15.

Across-the-board changes — raising the retirement age to 69 from 67 or introducing a new formula that results in less generous benefit payments — were less popular. Around one-fourth of poll respondents supported those policies, while about a third support increasing payroll taxes.

The poll demonstrates the difficult task Congress will face in the coming years as it grapples with how to shore up the social safety net program for aging Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that starting in 2034 Social Security recipients will only receive about 75% of their promised payments if lawmakers don’t act.

“A lot of people want the government to take action, but they’re not really sure how,” Matt Monday, a senior manager for Morning Consult, said in an interview. “But the things that they do feel sure about is that someone else should do it,” he said, pointing to the wide popularity of the billionaires tax.

President Joe Biden’s billionaires tax would place a 25% levy on households worth more than $100 million. The plan taxes accumulated wealth, so it ends up hitting money that often goes untaxed under current laws. The president has also proposed higher payroll taxes on those making more than $400,000 as a way to strengthen the Social Security trust fund.

Conversations in Washington about large-scale plans to find new ways to fund Social Security have become more pressing with projections showing the program is becoming increasingly unsustainable. But changes to Social Security are politically risky because older Americans, who are directly benefitting from the payments, are an important voting bloc for both parties.

Benefit programs for elderly Americans are one of voters’ top priorities in November — only the economy, immigration, abortion and protecting democracy were chosen more often when respondents were asked what single issue was most important to their voting decision.

The poll also found that swing state voters trust Biden more than Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump to preserve Social Security and Medicare, with 45% trusting Biden and 39% trusting Trump.

Trump has not articulated a clear vision for the benefit programs. His campaign website says he will “always protect” Social Security without providing details. In a March interview, he said “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting,” but later walked back that statement, saying he would never do anything to “jeopardize or hurt” the payments for older people.

Republicans in Congress have proposed raising the retirement age and using a new cost of living adjustment metric that would result in lower payments over time. Nikki Haley, who challenged Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, proposed scaling back Social Security benefits for future generations and higher income retirees.

METHODOLOGY

The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll surveyed 4,969 registered voters in seven swing states: 801 registered voters in Arizona, 802 in Georgia, 708 in Michigan, 450 in Nevada, 703 in North Carolina, 803 in Pennsylvania and 702 in Wisconsin. The surveys were conducted online from April 8-15. The aggregated data across the seven swing states were weighted to approximate a target sample of swing-state registered voters based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, 2020 presidential vote and state. State-level data were weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters in the respective state based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, and 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point across the seven states; 3 percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; 4 percentage points in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and 5 percentage points in Nevada.

[follow-up-news]

A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House. Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing. Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.

[readingfolklore]

i haven't really paid elon musk a lot of attention over the years just because i always thought he was really weird (not in the best sense) and just some billionaire who is trying to do space things. that all was until recently, when he posted a rape cultural tweet about my favourite music artist, taylor swift, for speaking out about endorsing kamala harris.

in the last two days, i've come to learn and realise some things about elon musk:

1. elon has a trans daughter who quite literally wants nothing to do with him because of how he treated her while she was a boy and how feminine she was as a boy... elon doesn't support trans rights and has even said his son "died" because he is now a she. like OMG, how does this guy have TWELVE CHILDREN????

2. he's a billionaire. i always thought he was worth maybe $100 billion, but he's actually the richest guy in the world with a whopping $250 billion net worth. i think that's diabolical when we live in a world that's full of poverty, he could literally give £100k to every poor person in the world and still be a billionaire by the end of it, so how about you start spreading your wealth a bit, eLoN??

3. his ex, grimes, called herself a "feminist" until recently when she said in the middle of an interview that she likes the patriarchy. 🤦🏻‍♀️ kinda funny how she admitted that after being in a relationship with elon musk who reeks of misogyny (btw, it's not funny).

4. elon is endorsing donald trump for the presidential election. need i say more?

i don't think i hate a person as much as i hate elon musk. he is the biggest idiot in the entire world, and unfortunately the richest idiot in the entire world, and there's probably more he's done that'll enrage me, but that's currently the list so far and if anyone actually likes that man, then fuck off and keep fucking off some more.

[beardedmrbean]

A comedian was escorted away from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after he posed as a Democrat and heckled her over her stock trading, calling her “the greatest options trader of all time” and asking for tips on which shares he should buy.

Alex Strenger, a conservative comedian, approached Pelosi as she was signing copies of her new book “The Art of Power” at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday — a clip of which was posted on the X social media platform on Sunday.

Strenger, who is seen wearing a COVID mask and a Bernie Sanders baseball cap, approached the table where Pelosi was sitting and identified himself as “Noah,” according to the news site Mediaite.

“I’m a UTA candidate. I was listening. I wasn’t able to get a book, sold out, but I want to say how much I appreciate your, like, fierce, staunch defending of democracy,” Strenger told Pelosi, adding that it “really means so, so much, you know?”

Strenger then told Pelosi about how he was “really scared about…Donald Trump winning the election.”

“And honestly, with all the disinformation on X, like, you know, I honestly, the only chance, like, that we have is for Donald Trump to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Strenger said.

He added that imprisoning Trump was “the only hope for democracy,” adding: “We just have to win the election.”

Pelosi agreed, replying: “We do.”

Strenger then asked Pelosi: “What stocks should I buy?”

“Nancy, you’re the greatest options trader of all time,” the comedian added.

“I just want to know what stocks I should buy. What I just want to know, like, what’s your biggest concern?”

As security guards stepped in to prepare to escort Strenger away from the former House speaker, he said: “The police are an instrumental institution of white supremacy and racism. I don’t understand why they are even here at all. They should be defunded.”

Strenger then said that Pelosi “makes six figures a year in Congress and has a hundred million dollar net worth.”

“Don’t y’all want to know what stocks she should buy? Come on. I just want to know,” he said as security began escorting him away.

“I just want to know what stocks to buy. I want to close the wealth gap. What’s the problem? I just want to close the wealth gap.”

Pelosi, the Democratic congresswoman who represents San Francisco, is married to Paul Pelosi, the founder of a real estate and venture capitalist firm.

Paul Pelosi’s stock trading activity has raised eyebrows given the fact that his wife’s position as one of the most powerful legislators in the country gives her access to information that may influence market decision.

In June 2021, Paul Pelosi exercised call options in Microsoft just before the company was awarded a lucrative defense contract from the US government.

The next year, Paul Pelosi purchased shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia just as Congress was set to vote on the CHIPS Act, which provided significant government subsidies to the semiconductor industry.

The Pelosis’ stock portfolio includes shares in blue-chip tech firms such as Apple, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Alphabet.

Last year alone, Pelosi’s stock options gained more than 65%, according to an analysis.

Nancy Pelosi initially opposed proposals that lawmakers and their spouses be banned from trading stocks — insisting that her husband makes stock trades independently and that she has no involvement.

The Post has sought comment from Nancy and Paul Pelosi.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

VP Harris unleashes Tim Walz!

August 14, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Three overlapping developments on Tuesday boosted Democratic prospects in November. The race remains tight nationally, in swing states, and in the electoral college —but the trends all favor Democrats.

The developments include Governor Tim Walz's strong debut as a solo campaigner, the fallout from Trump’s anti-union remarks on Musk's Twitter interview on Monday, and the qualification of ballot initiatives in Arizona and Missouri that would guarantee reproductive freedom for citizens of those states.

Tim Walz makes strong solo debut in Los Angeles

Proving the wisdom of selecting Tim Walz for the vice-presidential slot, Walz turned in a strong performance during his first solo campaign outing at the Los Angeles convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Tim Walz gave a rousing speech, emphasizing the Harris-Walz support for labor unions—and Trump-Vance’s hostility to organized labor.

The full speech is included in this article: PBS News, Walz tells union members in Los Angeles that Trump and Vance have ‘waged war on working people’. It is worth your time to watch a few minutes of the twenty-minute speech. It will inspire confidence in Tim Walz as a partner, ally, and effective surrogate for Kamala Harris.

As usual, Tim Walz did not mince words. While noting that he and Kamala Harris both joined union members on the picket lines, he reminded the audience of 4,000 union members that UAW president Shawn Fain just called Donald Trump “a scab.” Walz said that Trump had spent his career “stiffing service workers on his own properties” and opposing increases in the minimum wage.

Walz recounted Trump's recent statement at a gathering of billionaires, “You’re rich as hell and we are going to cut your taxes.” Walz asked, “Who do you know wants to cut taxes on billionaires but opposes raising the minimum?” Walz then put a cherry on top by reviewing the Senate voting record of JD Vance, noting that he is one of only four Senators who “has never cast a vote in favor of a pro-worker bill.”

Walz addressed the manufactured controversy over his military service record by taking the high road, praising everyone who “put on the uniform” to serve our country:

[JD Vance] is attacking me for my record of service. I am proud to serve my country and always will be.  . . . I was a member of the Veterans Affair Committee and a champion of our men and women in uniform. I am damn proud of my service to this country, and I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record. For anyone brave enough to put on the uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I have just a few simple words: Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Walz’s earnest delivery on this point is worth watching. See the jump link to the video here: Tim Walz comments on his service in the National Guard.

Walz closed his speech by urging Democrats and union members not to take anything for granted in the 2024 election:

This is going to be a close, tough race. But if each of us does an extra shift, devotes an extra hour, does a little bit more, we get to wake up on the morning after the election and know that the work we did transformed the lives of millions, transformed generations, impacted the world. That’s how it happens. We organize, we donate, we volunteer. . . . We have eighty four days to control our destiny.

It is easy to see why Tim Walz has a net positive (11+) favorability rating—a rating that eclipses every other candidate on the presidential and vice-presidential slates for 2024. JD Vance, by comparison, has a net negative (-9) favorability rating nationally, a rarity for a vice-presidential candidate. Worse (for Vance), among the voters who know him best (in Ohio), Vance holds a negative favorability rating of -16!

The more voters get to know Tim Walz, the more they like him. The opposite is true for JD Vance. Kamala Harris chose well!

UAW sues Trump and Musk for comments made during Trump's Twitter interview

Among the many bizarre occurrences during Musk’s “conversation” with Trump on Twitter, Trump praised Musk for firing workers at Telsa who attempted to unionize. See Newsweek, Donald Trump Cheers Elon Musk Over Firing Workers: 'You're the Greatest!'

During the Twitter conversation, Trump said,

I love it. You're the greatest . . . I mean, I look at what you do. You just walk in and you just say, 'You wanna quit?' They go on strike, I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, 'That's OK, you're all gone . . . Every one of you is gone.'"

Unfortunately for Trump and Musk, it is a violation of federal law to intimidate workers for attempting to organize. On Tuesday, the UAW filed a complaint against both Trump and Musk. The UAW issued a blistering statement along with the complaint:  

Under federal law, workers cannot be fired for going on strike, and threatening to do so is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. “When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean. When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean,” said UAW President Shawn Fain. “Donald Trump will always side against workers standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon Musk, who is contributing $45 million a month to a Super PAC to get him elected. Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”

Ouch! For a hot minute, Trump was courting the labor vote. No more! Although the Teamsters Union declined (last month) to endorse Biden or Trump, the Black Caucus of the Teamsters Union voted on Tuesday (after the Twitter interview) to endorse Kamala Harris. See. Politico, Teamsters' Black caucus defies leadership with Harris endorsement.

So, in an unscripted “interview” with Elon Musk, Trump manages to start a war with organized labor. Meanwhile, Tim Walz is proving his chops as a national campaign surrogate for Kamala Harris. It’s nice when Democratic strengths overlap with Republican weaknesses.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

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[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

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