Here's To You, Mr Robinson

It's revealed that the candidate has some pretty nasty secrets, and the voters - some of them anyway - get reluctant to stay with him. But the money guys know they can get 25 or 30 percent of those voters to swallow any little piece of shit that floats by as long as their favorite "news" readers and commentators say they should.

note: Let's be real clear - the GOP knew about all this shit way before CNN broke it. There's no way this comes as big surprise. So I have to suspect that Robinson's backers figured they could use it as leverage.

So the monied interests "take a second look", but instead of deciding not to back a slug like that guy, they stay in their default transactional mode, and figure, "We got him to commit to supporting our shitty harmful business model in exchange for the money we've already spent, so what more can we get from him now that the election calculus is changing?"

The money says, "we're pulling our support".

Robinson says, "what'll it take to get you back on board?" And then he proceeds to sweeten the pot.

Deregulation is the prize - full on unfettered private enterprise in the ultimate goal.

Robinson was spouting all kinds of crazy shit before. I suspect he'll double down again, which I think means he's made his deal.

And the big money sees a chance to win by losing. Robinson may be going down in flames, but the authoritarians can look forward to him doing further damage to a free press, which they'll continue to use as a tool to tear down democracy.

BTW - dark money is called dark money because the "donors" don't have to show themselves.

They can cluck their tongues and make a public show of withdrawing, but there's nothing that says they can't just go underground with it.

Truth

"Über rich people won't create jobs if we tax them"

is a myth

created by über rich people

to keep us from taxing them.

Hmmm

We haven't heard a lot lately about "drill baby drill", and it kinda leaps to mind here.

Did the billion-dollar deal with the Dirty Fuels Cartel fall through, so he has to suck up to Mr $45-million-a-month?

Does he think he can start a bidding war?

What the hell is it?

Trump says he has 'no choice' but to support electric vehicles because Elon Musk 'endorsed me very strongly'

Former President Donald Trump said he had "no choice" but to support electric vehicles after Tesla CEO Elon Musk "endorsed" him.

Trump then went on to criticize the EV industry at length.

Musk has long been a champion of the pivot to electric vehicles. His company, Tesla, has largely led the way in developing the industry, which for a time made Musk a darling of the climate-conscious left.

But Musk has more recently embraced conservative politics, especially the issue of free speech. Musk bought Twitter in 2022, rebranded it to X, and has dismantled many of the checks and balances meant to limit hateful speech and misinformation on the platform.

Musk has publicly supported Trump since the assassination attempt last month. Musk, however, has denied reports that he pledged a $45 million donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.

At a rally in Georgia on Sunday, Trump told the crowd that he supports electric cars but thinks people should still have access to gas vehicles.

"I'm for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly," Trump told the crowd. "So, I have no choice."

He then clarified that he only supports them as a "small slice" of the larger auto industry.

"You want to have gas-propelled cars. You want to have hybrids. You want to have every kind of car," he said.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Biden administration's electric vehicle regulations, including its plan to grow electric vehicle sales to half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.

Trump says he loves Elon Musk but hasn't been told of any plans for Musk to donate $45 million a month to his campaign

Biden tries to drum up fundraising off Elon Musk's Trump endorsement: 'The richest person in the world is now on Team MAGA'

While speaking at a bitcoin conference in July, Trump gave similar remarks when referencing Biden's regulations, which also make it more difficult for gas-powered cars to meet EPA standards.

"Not everybody has to have an electric car. I told him that," Trump said, referencing Musk. "So we're going to get rid of that mandate if you don't mind. Some people want gasoline-propelled cars, some people want a hybrid, and some people like an electric car."

Trump has also repeatedly criticized the cost of installing EV chargers nationwide. He erroneously claimed the government built eight chargers in the Midwest for $9 billion.

He's given wildly inconsistent estimates for how much it would cost to install EV chargers nationwide. At the bitcoin conference, he said it would cost $12 trillion. At a North Carolina rally on Thursday, he said it would cost $9 trillion. And at the Atlanta rally on Sunday, he said it would cost $5 trillion.

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 included $7.5 billion to help pay for thousands of electric vehicle chargers around the country, Politico reported.

The White House's infrastructure tracking website shows that only 15 charging stations have been installed so far. An analysis published by research firm Atlas Public Policy shows that each station received about $770,000 in federal funding, Politico reported.

Overheard

Actually, we're not spending all that much on cancelling student debt.

Someone with a $20,000 college loan, who has paid $250 a month for 10 years, has repaid $30,000, but often still has an outstanding balance of $15,000 - because of the way the loan was written.

Loan relief says the borrower has paid 50% more than what they borrowed - so we're going to call it good and discharge the remaining balance.

The lender has already received a fair return on their investment.

Plus, someone in their late teens or early 20s is not fully equipped to understand the long-term effects of these high-interest loans - many of which are basically equivalent to Usury, trapping people in a lifetime of debt.

It's better to erase that debt, and allow the borrowers to spend the money in ways that better benefit the broader economy instead of filtering it through a middleman.

You know - like we did with the banks.

Looking Back On It

"... And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."

Donald Trump is the poster child for the new Gilded Age of Robber Barons - The Resurgence of the American Plutocracy.

And the kind of ugly claim to entitlement that Trump embodies goes way back.

Droit du seigneur ('right of the lord'), also known as jus primae noctis ('right of the first night'), sometimes referred to as prima nocta, was a supposed legal right in medieval Europe, allowing feudal lords to have sexual relations with any female subject, particularly on her wedding night.

If you've got the money, you've got the power. And with enough money and power, you can do whatever the fuck you want.

You've Been Trumped Too (2020) [01:18:54] story of a billionaire who refuses to turn on an elderly woman's water
byu/howardhughesbrain inDocumentaries

I don't know how many old westerns I've seen where the local cattle baron buys up water rights, or builds a dam upstream from the farmers to force them off their land, so he can snap up more for himself.

Shit's gotta change

That Dark Money Thing

As long as the bad guys can hide the amounts, and the recipients, and the donors, we're going to have bigger and bigger problems with getting good decent people elected, and with understanding just what the fuck is wrong when we know with near certainty that everybody voted one way, but somehow the result went in the other direction.

AN EGYPTIAN BANK CLAIMED DETAILS OF A SUSPECTED $10 MILLION PAYMENT TO TRUMP MIGHT BE IN CHINA

Back on September 19, 2018, then DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell denied a motion brought by an Egyptian bank to quash a subpoena for information on a suspected $10 million payment made to then-candidate Trump in fall 2016. That set off litigation that continued, at the District, Circuit, and Supreme Courts, for at least nine months.

As CNN described in 2020, not long after the investigation got shut down under Bill Barr, investigators had been trying to see whether Egypt (or some entity for which Egypt served as go-between) provided the money that Trump spent on his campaign weeks before the election.

For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President’s foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel’s pursuits.

The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egyptian bank’s records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly.

Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump’s campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove a connection.

It took months of legal fight after Judge Howell denied that motion to quash before the Egyptian bank in question complied, and once they got subpoena returns, prosecutors repeatedly complained that the bank was still withholding information, which led prosecutors to reopen the investigation with a new grand jury.

That much we know from documentation unsealed back in 2019 (part one, part two, part three), in response to a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press request for unsealing.

On August 17, 2023, while she was still Chief Judge, Beryl Howell ordered the government to post newly unsealed sets of some of the orders she issued during the litigation. On Thursday, Chief Judge Boasberg ordered that newly redacted set of opinions to be released. While Howell released six opinions in June 2019 along with the other materials from the case — with redactions done digitally, thereby hiding the length of redactions — just three new versions of her orders got released last week:

• September 19, 2018 memorandum denying motion to quash
• January 15, 2019 memorandum regarding sanctions
• January 30, 2019 memorandum limiting ability to refer to proceedings

These may be limited to orders incorporated as appendices in prior appeals, which might also explain why the first two appear twice in the newly-released materials.

Much of the newly unsealed material pertains to a fight over how much Alston & Bird, the law firm representing the Egyptian bank, could say about the litigation publicly. Among other things, prosecutors under Robert Mueller objected to their own names appearing publicly, out of a desire to tie this litigation to the narrow scope of Mueller’s investigation into interference in 2016.

One thing made clearer by a redaction in that January 2019 opinion on public comments is that the DC Circuit considered what public comments the two sides could make, in addition to SCOTUS, as part of its denial of cert.

It’s possible that the DC Circuit has weighed in, secretly. Among the details newly unsealed in the original opinion are the names of two of the bank’s other lawyers: Ashraf Shaaban (who appears to be or have been in-house counsel) and Mona Zulficar (who runs a Cairo corporate law firm). Those lawyers were named in conjunction with declarations they submitted arguing some part of the claim that Egyptian Anti-Money Laundering law would prohibit compliance with the subpoena as would unspecified law in a third country, described as Country B.

Howell described that Alston & Bird are relying on,

conclusory declarations by [redacted] own Country A in-house and retained counsel, which themselves cite no legal authority on this question of [redaction] See Decl. of Ashraf Shaaban,, Mov’s Group Legal Counsel (“Shaaban Decl.”)¶7, ECF No. 3-6; Suppl. Decl. of Mona Zulficar, “Suppl. Zulficar Decl.”)¶ 4, ECF No. 12. The Court gives these declarations little weight. [bold newly unsealed, compare this passage with this one]

So if we can figure out who Shaaban works or worked for to ID the bank.

It’s the unspecific third country, Country B, that is the most interesting new disclosure, however.

The newly unsealed passages do not identify which country, described as Country A and which CNN identified as Egypt, owns this bank. But they do show that the bank or its lawyers wanted to share the subpoena with personnel in Cairo.

The newly unsealed passages do identify which third country’s laws, unspecified laws, might prohibit lawyers from searching for responsive documents in that country: China.

In other words, a bank owned by Egypt said it couldn’t comply with a subpoena seeking information on a suspected payment to Trump during the 2016 election, in part, because China’s laws would prevent that.

Not What We Were Told

Trump "owns" 78.5 million shares. At the closing price today, he has a little over $2 billion in "equity" - that doesn't really exist because he can't access that money for another few-to-several months.

Today's 🤬

If billionaires (along with their coin-operated politicians and judges) aren't in fact above the law, then somebody needs to step up and prove it.

Start putting these assholes in prison.

Sick to fucking death of this shit.

Billionaire Leonard Leo rejects Senate subpoena over supreme court gifts

Progressive groups hail long-brewed move against influential donor but protest lack of summons for Harlan Crow

The big-money rightwing donor Leonard Leo said he would not comply with a subpoena issued by the US Senate judiciary committee, as it investigates undisclosed gifts to conservative supreme court justices that have stoked an ethics crisis at a court already held in historically low public esteem.

Referring to Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the committee, Leo said: “I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse [a Democrat from Rhode Island] and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”

Democrats on the judiciary committee are concerned with rightwing dark money and its effects on a court stacked 6-3 in favour of conservatives since Donald Trump installed three justices in just four years in power.

Multiple reports, led by the non-profit newsroom ProPublica, have described undisclosed gifts including luxury travel and resort stays given to Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, long-serving hardline court rightwingers.

Thomas and Alito deny all wrongdoing. The chief justice, John Roberts, has refused to testify in Congress. The court issued a new ethics code but it is enforceable only by the justices themselves.

In November, the Senate committee voted on party lines to subpoena Leo and the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, a collector of Hitler memorabilia with close links to Thomas. On Thursday, more than four months later, Leo said he had received a subpoena but a spokesperson for Crow said he did not.

In a statement to the Washington Post, Durbin said: “Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the legitimate oversight requests of the Senate judiciary committee with a blanket refusal to cooperate. His outright defiance left the committee with no other choice but to move forward with compulsory process. For that reason, I have issued a subpoena to Mr Leo.

“Mr Leo has played a central role in the ethics crisis plaguing the supreme court … This subpoena is a direct result of Mr Leo’s own actions and choices.”

Progressive groups welcomed the Leo subpoena but protested about the lack of one for Crow.

Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, which has focused on drawing attention to Leo’s coordination of billions of dollars in rightwing political spending, said: “Thanks to … Leo, a full-blown corruption crisis has plagued the high court for over a year, undermining its credibility …

“Today’s subpoena is a critical step toward accountability, and toward ensuring that our high court adheres to the highest possible ethics standards. As a result of the strong leadership of Chairman Durbin and the judiciary committee, we can now begin to get to the bottom of the corruption crisis pervading the supreme court.”

But Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, said that though the Leo subpoena was “a long overdue first step towards ensuring accountability” it was also “far from enough”.

“The entire country has been waiting too long for Durbin to take action, and subpoenaing Leonard Leo without simultaneously subpoenaing Harlan Crow is a half-baked attempt at doing his job as judiciary chair.”

Pointing to epochal rulings from the rightwing court including removing the federal right to abortion, loosening gun control and ending race-based affirmative action in colleges, Levin added: “Democrats cannot let this corrupt and compromised supreme court continue to have a strong hold on our fundamental rights without any form of accountability.

“Durbin cannot ignore the overwhelming calls and pressure from his own base. He must continue to exercise his authority … by subpoenaing Harlan Crow, holding the justices and their accomplices accountable, and unrigging a court that was packed by Trump and his Maga supporters.”

- MORE -

The king of dark money effectively controls the US supreme court now

‘Conservative justices? Yeah, in what way?’ Key senator on a supreme court in thrall to special interests

Today's Explainer

Graft and Money Laundering made easy.

What Did I Tell Ya?

What did I fucking tell you?

Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation

Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors

Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.

The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.

But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.

The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.

Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.

The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.

The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.

Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.

Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.

There is also no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.

After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”

But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.

Postolnikov and the trust

In late 2021, Trump Media was facing financial trouble after the original planned merger with Digital World was delayed indefinitely when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the merger, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder-turned-whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.

Part of the problem was that Trump Media struggled to get financing because traditional banks were reluctant to lend millions to Trump’s social media company in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack, Wilkerson said.

Trump Media eventually found some lenders, including ES Family Trust, but the sequence of events was curious.

ES Family Trust was established on 18 May 2021, its creation papers show. Postolnikov’s “user” access to the account was “verified” on 30 November 2021 by a Paxum Bank manager in Dominica. The trust was funded for the first time on 2 December 2021.

Trump Media then received the loans from ES Family Trust: $2m on 23 December 2021, and $6m on 17 February 2022.

The loans came in the form of convertible promissory notes, meaning ES Family Trust would gain a major stake in Trump Media because it was offering the money in exchange for Trump Media agreeing to convert the loan principal into “shares of Company Stock”.

Oddly, the notes were never signed. But the investment in Trump Media proved to be huge: while precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is worth between $20m and $40m even after the sharp decline of the company’s share price in the wake of a poor earnings report.

The ES Family Trust account also appears to have benefited Postolnikov personally. As the criminal investigation into the Trump Media deal intensified towards the end of last year, the trust recorded several transfers to Postolnikov with the subject line “Partial Loan Return”.

In total, the documents showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to Postolnikov’s account, although $3m was inexplicably “reversed”.

(On 17 July 2023, Postolnikov received $300,000. On 17 October 2023, Postolnikov received $1.5m, before it was reversed the next day; later the same day, Postolnikov again received $1.5m, which was also reversed. On 19 October 2023, Postolnikov received the $1.5m for a third and final time.)

The reason for the trust’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the money that went to Trump Media, the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money with only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm, and $1m to Wedbush Securities, a wealth management firm.

The current status of ES Family Trust is also unknown. The trust’s address is listed as a residential home in Hollywood, Florida. But, according to the property website Redfin, the six-bedroom home appears to have been sold in December 2023.

The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.

Sprawling money-laundering investigation

Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.

At least part of the evidence against Shvartsman came from a confidential informant for the DHS, court filings show: in one March 2023 meeting with the informant and an associate, Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media.

“[Shvartsman] stated that a friend of his owns a bank in the island of Dominica and would be able to provide banking services to Russian and Ukraine Nationals if the [confidential informant] had other clients in need of that service,” the DHS report said.

“[Shvartsman’s associate] told the [confidential informant] that he does not think the SEC would be able to go after [Shvartsman] for his part in the investment but mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.

The unredacted parts of the DHS report do not specify whether the “friend” was Postolnikov and what the “bridge financing” referred to – but the report left open the possibility that Shvartsman also had a role with the trust.

A lawyer for Shvartsman declined to comment on his client’s relationship with Postolnikov. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York also declined to comment.

It is unclear whether federal prosecutors are aware that Trump Media was propped up by Postolnikov via ES Family Trust. At the same time, the money-laundering investigation surrounding the Trump Media merger and the scrutiny on Postolnikov appears to have ballooned in recent months.

The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.

Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado task force, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.

I Will Stop You

I think Trump has been worried that he might not get the old money Republicans to go along with his hare-brained schemes, so he's emphasizing his intentions to serve the plutocracy by telling us straight out that he's all for shit-canning every progressive policy that's been put in place since FDR.

• Privatize Social Security
• Voucherize Medicare
• Kill Obamacare outright
• Eliminate EPA and OSHA (and the departments of Energy and Education, et al)

In a democracy, even very poor people have power thru the various agencies and regulatory bodies that their votes got politicians to create, and push those politicians to maintain.

In a plutocracy, people who don't have the money don't have the power.

Say What Now?

There's a definite probability that Trump is trying to do his usual Pay-For-Play thing, but I think it's at least as likely that Trump turned against it because it signals an effort in Congress to get something done, and Trump's whole schtick is that nobody can do anything without him. ("Only I can fix it")

And of course, there's some probability that Trump is playing monkey in the middle again, setting up the conflict and looking for his profit opportunity, which kinda knits the whole thing together.

Steve Bannon Suggests Donald Trump Has Been Bought

Steve Bannon, the one-time adviser to Donald Trump, suggested on Saturday that the former president was paid off after a shift in stance on TikTok.

TikTok, the immensely popular video-sharing app known for its predominantly young audience, has once again come under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers. The app is currently owned by Chinese tech company, ByteDance, which has spurred significant suspicion that its abundance of user data is being furnished to the Chinese government.

While ByteDance and TikTok have dismissed these accusations, lawmakers have continued to consider their options. A bipartisan bill put forward by members of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party last week would work to "incentivize divestment of TikTok" by ByteDance by blocking it from appearing in American app stores and granting Executive Branch authority to take similar action in the future against social media companies operated by a "foreign adversary."

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Energy & Commerce advanced the legislation last week in a 50-0 bipartisan vote to the full U.S. House of Representatives. TikTok, meanwhile, characterized the bill as a ban, and urged users to encourage their local representatives to block it.

Despite his past stances in favor of action against TikTok for its Chinese ties, Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday that he opposed the recent bill, citing his oft-repeated false claims about widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

"If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck [CEO Mark Zuckerberg] will double their business," the former president wrote. "I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!"

In response to this post, reports noted that the seeming shift in stance from Trump came after a meeting with Jeff Yass, a conservative hedge fund manager who has a $33 billion stake in TikTok. Yass, according to Intelligencer, has been allegedly threatening to pull support from GOP lawmakers who back the bipartisan divestment bill.

American Plutocracy 101: The rigging of the system lies in a rich guy exerting influence over policy by waving his checkbook at the decision-makers.

Bannon, who led Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign and served as a White House adviser for the first several months of Trump's presidency, took to Gettr to make his suspicions about the situation clear.

"Simple: Yass Coin," he wrote in a post that included a link to an Axios story about Trump's flip on TikTok, without providing further evidence. Newsweek has not seen any evidence that Trump's meeting with Yass and his stance on TikTok are connected.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment on Saturday afternoon. Any responses received will be added to this story in a later update.

In August 2020, Trump issued an executive order ordering ByteDance to sell its U.S. assets and destroy all data within 90 days.

"There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance Ltd.... through acquiring all interests in musical.​ly...might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," the order read.

Vote Your Values

... and recognize that your values guide your interests - but sometimes it has to go the other way, and your interests drive your values.

Don't abandon your belief in your better self. Just understand that you have a lesser chance to be that better self if you don't survive some of the more mundane - even crass and distasteful - things in life along the way.

It may involve issuing a few fat lips and bloody noses.

In the meantime, the plutocracy is rollin' along, singin' a song.

Uncle Vlad To The Rescue (?)

Have you been wondering how and when the Russian &/or Saudi money was going to show up and pull Trump's fat outa the fire?

I have nothing but my own suspicions and speculation on this, but we're talking Donald-fucking-Trump here, and that should be enough to throw the rosiest-thinking Pollyanna into a deep and dark purple funk.

Maybe Trump did a deal on some of those state secret thingies before the feds caught him (?)

The stock linked to Donald Trump's Truth Social platform is flying high.

Read this before you invest.

You know you're buying a quality stock when the prospectus reads like a police blotter

Donald J. Trump has a long record of business failures and bankruptcies.

But after getting kicked off Twitter in 2021 he launched Truth Social, a social-media site.

Truth Social, his would-be Twitter rival, is a high-risk, speculative operation with few hard numbers behind it. It's already the subject of subpoenas, from regulators and a grand jury, even though it's barely off the ground. Oh, and Trump is not required to use the social-media site much - if at all - to communicate with the public, notably if voters were to return him to the White House. You buy the stock at your own peril.

That's not me talking. That's ... er ... the new stock-market prospectus for Truth Social. It has just been filed here with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In case you missed it, yes: Donald Trump is trying to come back to Wall Street.

He's in advanced talks to list Truth Social on the stock market by merging its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, with a publicly traded shell company, Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC).

See: DWAC up over 15% as it moves to buy Trump Media & Technology Group - but here's a potential snag

Trump faces mounting legal woes, as well as having a presidential campaign to manage. Meanwhile, Digital World has been in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and recently agreed to pay $18 million to settle fraud charges relating to this potential merger.

But never mind all this. Digital World Acquisition Corp.'s stock is suddenly flying high, as Trump heads toward the presidential nomination for the Republican Party - for a third straight time. The stock has tripled in price since the Iowa caucuses in January to $48, potentially valuing the business at $6.5 billion.

Opinion: Cha-ching! Trump makes $4 billion from his election campaign

But the prospectus for the deal, which runs to nearly 600 pages, is a doozy.

It reveals all the reasons investors jumping on the MAGA train might want to think twice, or even three times, before taking the plunge.

"A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy," the prospectus reminds investors. "There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also become bankrupt. ... A number of companies that had license agreements with President Trump have failed. There can be no assurances that TMTG will not also fail."

In case you've forgotten, "The Trump Taj Mahal, which was built and owned by President Trump, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991," recalls the stock-market prospectus. "The Trump Plaza, the Trump Castle, and the Plaza Hotel, all owned by President Trump at the time, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992."

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, founded by Trump in 1995, "filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004," it continues. "Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc., the new name given to Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts after its 2004 bankruptcy, declared bankruptcy in 2009."

You know what gamblers say, that the house always wins? Well, Donald Trump and his failed casino operation are your refutation.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts had trouble with the law on the way down, too. "On January 16, 2002, the SEC issued a cease and desist order against Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc. (THCR) for violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the Exchange Act," the prospectus reveals.

I've written about Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts before. Ordinary investors, drawn to the stock by the perceived, by them, allure of the Trump name, ended up relieved of their shirts, pants and shoes and were left standing on the Atlantic City boardwalk in their undergarments.

Yes, Trump himself pocketed millions. Stockholders pretty much lost everything.

From the archives (July 2015): Donald Trump was a stock-market disaster

Also read (March 2016): Donald Trump's business disaster is worse than you think

"Trump Shuttle, Inc., launched by President Trump in 1989, defaulted on its loans in 1990 and ceased to exist by 1992," the prospectus continues, referring to the short-haul airline. "Trump University, founded by President Trump in 2005, ceased operations in 2011 amid lawsuits and investigations regarding that company's business practices."

This, let me remind you, is not the fake-news liberal media talking. It's the stock-market prospectus for Trump's own, current business.

"Trump Vodka, a brand of vodka produced by Drinks Americas under license from The Trump Organization, was introduced in 2005 and discontinued in 2011," it goes on. "Trump Mortgage, LLC, a financial services company founded by President Trump in 2006, ceased operations in 2007. GoTrump.com, a travel site founded by President Trump in 2006, ceased operations in 2007. Trump Steaks, a brand of steak and other meats founded by President Trump in 2007, discontinued sales two months after its launch." Two months.

But Truth Social will be different, right?

There is also a long section in the prospectus listing all of the former president's current legal troubles (while eschewing that word, former). You always know you're buying a quality stock when the prospectus reads like a police blotter.

Then there's the Truth Social deal itself.

Trump Technology & Media Group "aspires to build a media and technology powerhouse to rival the liberal media consortium and promote free expression," the prospectus reads.

Total Truth Social sign-ups to date? Er... 8.9 million people.

In the nine months to September 2023, the business suffered a $10.6 million operating loss on just $3.4 million in sales.

Meanwhile, somehow. it racked up $37.7 million in interest expenses.

If you want more financial details about Truth Social before investing, you are not alone. The board of Digital World, the would-be merger partner, admits that it, too, would like more financial details.

Alas, Trump's business "did not provide the Digital World Board with TMTG's financial projections in connection with the Digital World Board's bring-down due diligence process," the board reveals.

Oh, well. Can't have everything.

Some of this may be because the people running Truth Social - led by CEO Devin Nunes, formerly a Trump-aligned member of the U.S. House of Representatives from rural south-central California - don't actually have too much data. "[I]nvestors should be aware that since its inception, TMTG has not relied on any specific key performance metric to make business or operating decisions," the prospectus reports. "Consequently, it has not been maintaining internal controls and procedures for periodically collecting such information, if any." My italics.

The Trump operation has chosen not to track these metrics. It reports: "At this juncture in its development, TMTG believes that adhering to traditional key performance indicators, such as signups, average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts including monthly and daily active users, could potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation with respect to the progress and growth of its business."

Which is to say Truth Social didn't want numbers distracting it from the business. You could call this the Alternative Facts School of Business Administration.

But the real peach here is that, although investors are buying this stock in the hope that Donald Trump will do for Truth Social what he did for Twitter, there is actually no guarantee he will use it much, or at all. Even if he is elected president.

That's because, the prospectus reveals, Donald Trump's agreement with Truth Social is limited. Yes, he is required to post certain of his social-media messages there first. But only nonpolitical ones, made from his "personal (i.e., non-business)" accounts. And the Truth Social exclusivity on each post only lasts for six hours.

Oh, and Trump can even cancel this agreement with 30 days' notice, "at any time on or after February 2, 2025." In other words, shortly after Inauguration Day.

And even until then, who is to decide which social-media posts are political, and therefore exempt from the exclusivity agreement? Guess.

"President Trump ... may post social media communications from his personal profile that he deems, in his sole discretion, to be politically-related on any social media site at any time," the prospectus warns. My italics.

It adds: "As a candidate for president, most or all of President Trump's social media posts may be deemed by him to be politically related."

As a result, it warns, investors "may lack any meaningful remedy if President Trump minimizes his use of Truth Social."

Trump will own at least 58% of the stock in the new company, giving him total control and minority investors nothing but hope. What could possibly go wrong?

It's A Wonderment

Melania wants a new contract. So how's the smart money betting on this thing?

Does she and her legal gang see something coming down the road that makes them believe she needs to get a better while she still can?

Is it the mercenary shit we've always thought it was?

Sure hope she's good and careful around staircases and windows and stuff.

Why Melania Trump may want to revisit her prenup with Donald Trump

• Melania Trump is reportedly renegotiating the terms of her prenuptial agreement with Donald Trump, per Page Six.
• The former first lady previously revisited the terms in 2017, according to a biography.
• Lawyers told Insider renegotiating may be smart amid the legal troubles Donald Trump faces.

Melania Trump spent the first few months of her husband's presidency in New York renegotiating the terms of their prenuptial agreement, Mary Jordan, a Washington Post reporter wrote in her book, "The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump."

Now, as Donald Trump maintains his position as the top GOP contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, all the while besieged by a mountain of growing legal troubles, Melania Trump could be wise to revisit those terms yet again, two lawyers told Insider.

A dishy report from Page Six on Thursday said that the former first lady has already done just that, citing two anonymous sources who told the outlet Melania Trump "quietly" renegotiated the terms of a new "postnup" agreement with her husband over the last year.

Insider was unable to independently confirm the report. Representatives for Donald Trump and several acquaintances of Melania Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Renegotiating a prenup isn't solely reserved for couples experiencing marital woes, attorneys told Insider. Reevaluating the legal agreement is common among those who anticipate future financial turbulence, as well.

Trump is facing four criminal indictments and a civil action in Manhattan, in which a judge ordered that the Trump Organization's New York corporate charters be revoked.

"She may well want additional protections for herself and her son," said Bill Beslow, a high-powered New York City divorce lawyer who represented Marla Maples in her 1999 split from Trump.

Beslow could not confirm any details of the current Trump couple's prenup, but said generally, protecting your stake in the marital assets is important, he said, "if you think the whole roof may fall in on you."

Melania Trump may also want to take advantage of the leverage she has at this moment, according to Beslow, whose clients include Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, Linda Evangelista, and Mia Farrow.

"She may be saying 'this is what you need to do, if you want me on your side, if you want me on the campaign trail, if you want me in the courtroom,'" he said.

"And he may need her not to do certain things," Beslow added. "What's that worth for him, for example, for her not to write a book?"

Melania Trump has thus far removed herself from her husband's 2024 presidential campaign, forgoing public appearances alongside Donald Trump on both the trail and in court.

As Donald Trump's litany of legal troubles mount, so too do his likely legal fees, Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Insider.

"There's a possibility that when it's all said and done, Trump isn't going to be in a good financial state," Rahmani told Insider.

"She may be trying to protect herself," he added.

Beslow, however, cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that a prenup-renegotiation means the Trump marriage is on the rocks.

Spouses in high-power, high-asset marriages do renegotiate their prenups for benign reasons — such as a gesture of generosity, he said.

But more nefarious motivations can also come into play. A prenup can be changed to keep marital property out of the hands of creditors.

"The spouse who is having financial difficulties, or facing financial difficulties, may want to transfer assets out of his or her name," Beslow said.

"That would be all with the view toward avoiding the seizure of those assets," he added.

Regardless of what happens come 2024, Melania Trump is wise to renegotiate the agreement now, Rahmani said.

"To the extent that you can get money from the marriage now, before his creditors get to him, that's something you should consider," he said.

Money

... always money.

It’s hard to quantify the value of painter and all-around cultural icon Bob Ross, but $9.85 million is a good start.

The very first on-air painting from the very first episode of Ross’ beloved series “The Joy of Painting” is looking for a new owner after being kept safe for decades by one of the show’s early volunteers.

“A Walk in the Woods” was painted live on-air in January of 1983, and typifies everything the public came to love about Ross and his art-positive mission. It depicts a placid woodland scene in shades of gold and blue, painted with Ross’ preferred “wet on wet” technique, with deceptively complex-looking brushstrokes and, of course, an abundance of happy little trees. In the lower lefthand corner, Ross’ signature stands out in red.

The work was acquired by Minneapolis-based art gallery Modern Artifact earlier this year. Before that, it was owned by a one-time volunteer at the Falls Church, Virginia PBS station where the first season of “The Joy of Painting” was aired. The volunteer bought it in November of 1983 at a station fundraising auction, just months after it was painted. It has been verified as authentic by Bob Ross Inc.

Corrupt AF

Clarence (Rent-A-Judge) Thomas is dirty, and he has enough company at SCOTUS to give Trump a fair shot at getting himself off the hook.

Clarence Thomas is not a rich man. Not rich the way he's always wanted to be rich. Even at $300,000 a year, he's not rich.

Guys like Leonard Leo's gang of billionaire plutocrats know this. And they know Thomas can be treated to some of the mega-perks enjoyed by the über wealthy, which gives him the feeling of power he's always coveted, which gives them a pretty fair shot at getting what they want.

Power is what money is about. Every dollar is a Power Coupon.

If you have power, you can get money

If you have money, you can get power

You never see one without the other

Thomas has a lifetime membership in the most exclusive club in world, and he knows it's next to impossible to throw him out, and all he has to do is rationalize his way to making decisions that favor his plutocrat benefactors. And the kicker is that even when he's in the minority - when the court's decision goes against his paymasters' interests - he can still get paid for having dissented in their favor.

Accountability can't just be retroactive and remedial. It has to be preventative.

I think the problem we're faced with - how do we take appropriate action against an offender when the offense is obvious and action is warranted - is very much at the root of the opposing ideologies we're trying to deal with. I see it as a matter of having to combat the conservatives' insistence that "The Free Market" can and should be extended - to rid ourselves of this cumbersome democracy thing, and replace it with "Free Market Government".

The right wing has made it a cornerstone of their movement to stand against regulation at every opportunity. They believe the market will always correct for any harm being done by whatever company causing whatever problem. We know by history and experience that this is not true. And even if the company is "punished" retroactively by losing profits &/or taking a bad PR hit, the customers (aka: people) who have suffered because of that company's actions or neglect can never be truly made whole again.

So we have to do sensible things that mitigate risk and prevent harm, and that means we have to regulate.

This common sense approach has to be applied to government as well - especially when we're talking about a piece of the government that is currently holding itself above the law - believing it's not subject to the checks & balances that were written into the US Constitution.

The Past Is Not Past

A coal miner lies dying of Black Lung Disease while his miner sons keep watch. West Virginia,1976.

The disease was most common in the 60s and 70s, but then incidence plummeted with the passage of mine safety laws.

Now it’s on the rise again.

Fuck Joe Manchin, and his dark money paymasters in the Dirty Fuels Cartel.

Fuckery With Purpose

There's no mystery about the student loan problem - or with Biden's difficulty in helping to get people out from under an unfair debt burden.

1. Erosion of Real Wealth
2. The near elimination of Labor's participation in Productivity Gains over the last 25 years
3. Predatory lending practices
4. GOP running interference for the lenders

In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government stopped requiring regular payments of student loan debt — a pause that has lasted more than three years. But student loan repayment had been dwindling for at least a decade before the pause.

You can imagine the stock of outstanding student debt as an overflowing bathtub: More students purchasing more undergraduate and advanced degrees at increasing tuition prices is the water gushing out of the faucet, and non-repayment is a blockage in the drain. The drain is blocked because despite what economists, policy-makers and educational administrators claim, a college degree doesn’t always “pay off.”

In recent years, many Americans with student loans weren’t making enough money to pay even the accumulating interest on their debt, let alone make progress on the principal. Wage stagnation is a long-running phenomenon that worsened after the Great Recession. But an important additional source of student loan misery is the widening and diversifying nature of the Americans who take them out. It’s increasingly the case that people who were always going to have low earnings no matter their educational attainment are also overloaded with student debt — think of underpaid teachers who acquired expensive master’s degrees for only a modest pay increase. The promise of higher education leading directly to high incomes is hollow.

Regardless of what happens after the scheduled resumption of payments in September and to the Biden administration’s plans for partial student debt forgiveness following the Supreme Court’s ruling in June, we predict that most of the outstanding balances — not to mention the roughly $100 billion in new loans issued every year — won’t ever be repaid. In the meantime, while the administration and the courts wrangle over the executive branch’s ability to waive student debt under existing law, student debtors feel forced to downsize their life plans. They delay or forgo marriage and family formation, homeownership, retirement and their children’s education: a profound failure of social reproduction.

Our student debt research uses credit reports, both from an annual, representative cross-section of student borrowers and from a single group of borrowers we’ve been following since 2009. We found that counterintuitively, the repayment pause was the best thing that ever happened to help student loans get repaid. That’s because in normal times, student debt balances mostly increase, thanks to monthly interest payments many borrowers are unable to keep up with. In 2020, 60.7 percent of outstanding student loans had a higher balance than when they were first issued. By 2022, that number had declined to 53.7 percent because interest was waived during the pandemic and some borrowers continued to pay down their principal.

The chart below compares repayment progress on loans in our 2020 cross-section with progress in 2022. The group with increasing balances shrank enormously during the repayment pause. Notably, Black and Latino borrowers had more loans with increasing balances before the pause; they benefit disproportionately while it remains in effect.

Student borrowers are not a monolithic group, and some demographic groups fare far better with their education debt than others. From the group of 2009-era debtors we’ve been following, we learned that female, Black and Latino borrowers generally saw their loan balances continue to increase above their 2009 level; male, white and Asian borrowers generally were able to make progress in paying their balances down (albeit not to zero — and the standard repayment term on federal loans is 10 years).

The diverging trajectories of Americans with student loans
On average, male, white and Asian borrowers made progress on their loans between 2009 and 2022. Female, Black and Latino borrowers had increasing balances until the repayment pause came into effect.

These divergent trajectories are due to structural inequalities in the labor market, which disadvantaged workers try to overcome with increased educational attainment. More advantaged workers don’t need to borrow as much to earn a decent salary and can start paying off the debt they do take on more quickly. The pandemic repayment pause changed the game, causing balances that had been increasing over the prior decade to start to fall. A student loan system in which borrowers do not generally repay their student loans during normal times, but in which they do repay them when they’re not required to, cannot be said to be functioning well.

This situation is the fruit of a tacit agreement among state legislatures, college administrators and the federal government dating back to the 1970s: defund public colleges and universities and shift them to a tuition-based revenue model, with the federal government backstopping the system with student debt so that more students can continue to obtain more expensive education. This change was justified by the idea that higher education “pays off” in the labor market.

Opportunities for middle-class employment without a college degree have certainly dwindled. But increasing the educational credentials required for any given job or salary doesn’t magically make pay go up. It just means the higher education system gets to take a larger slice of a worker’s lifetime earnings on the front end. And if the debt can’t be repaid, taxpayers swallow the loss on the back end — but only after the borrower has endured years of mounting balances and their negative consequences for wealth accumulation and creditworthiness.

This odd structure — in which federal funding comes in the form of student loans that won’t ever be repaid, as opposed to direct funding of colleges and universities — lets school administrators off the regulatory hook. In theory, the market of students selecting their preferred college experience is supposed to discipline schools’ financial conduct. In reality, it does not. This is why college administrators resist free-college proposals that amount to direct federal funding in return for capping tuition: They fear their socioeconomically segregated business models wouldn’t survive the regulatory scrutiny attached to those dollars.

The $1.7 trillion tower of mostly unrepayable student debt is a symbol of education policy failure. Unfortunately, politicians in both parties seem unable to think outside the neoliberal box that got us here. Republicans in Congress have proposed limits to federal loans, barring students from the system once their balances reach a certain threshold. That is an exclusionary vision that seeks to return higher education to its pre-G.I. Bill status as a bastion of white privilege for a tiny elite.

And there's that razor blade.

The Biden administration proposes to regulate (some) colleges based on whether their students can eventually repay their student loans and to force all programs to disclose post-graduation earnings and debt burden before students enroll. Those proposals cling to the idea that the labor market is where the value of an education is ultimately determined. Colleges can convincingly object that they don’t control their students’ lives after graduation and would be penalized for enrolling needier students.

So, NYT, Biden shouldn't go for a little tempering regulation because the people who're acting all shitty now would act shitty?

To get a handle on the student debt crisis, the government will eventually have to redesign its relationship with American higher education. The current era of tuition-based revenue models has colleges competing for the students who can pay full freight, which can relegate the neediest students to the least-resourced institutions. A healthier system would look more homogenous, with students from all over the income scale spread across institutions nationwide, instead of being an elite scramble between students and schools to fill a few open seats at the top.

IDK what the fuck you're talking about, NYT. And I have no idea why you seem to think the Republicans are suddenly going to reverse themselves and get all cuddly with a Dept Of Education that they've been actively and publicly trying to kill for 25 years.

What political system are you even watching?

To get there, the Department of Education should make institution-level eligibility for federal student loans contingent on a uniform, very low cost of attendance for undergraduates and affordable tuition levels for professional programs. The structure of federal student loans should reflect society’s long-term needs, not just those of employers and universities preying on the generosity of the student loan program and of students desperate for jobs in an economy that feels ever more winner-take-all.

One way of ensuring and backstopping those policy goals could be the creation of a new federal university system, in which the campuses would be homogeneous in terms of financial and other resources and the student bodies socioeconomically diverse, rather than the other way around. But it’s more comfortable and politically convenient to continue to fight the culture war over higher education than to confront the facts about the causes and consequences of this ugly mountain of student debt. The Supreme Court has ruled. The Biden administration is searching for a new way forward. It’s time for a change of course.