Buying someone's silence as they scapegoat him is common practice.
The folks that turned a blind eye to a catastrophic financial crash, scapegoated a few executives & traders and bought their silence with handsome amounts of "Bye-Bye" money.
A history of how incompetent heirs of dynastic wealth drive businesses into the ground.
Tim Mellon would rather fund an anti-democracy movement than run a business successfully. https://www.rawstory.com/timothy-mellon/
"The Telemundo/NBC debate would be widely watched by Hispanic voters, but Biden’s handlers are petrified to allow him to defend his disastrous record." - Danielle Alvarez, Trump Campaign spokesperson
At Justice #Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display
An upside-down flag, adopted by #Trump supporters contesting the Biden victory, flew over the justice’s front lawn as the Supreme Court was considering an election case. #SCOTUS
#Russia are succeeding in their assault on #Kharkiv due to: delayed #US aid, poor fortifications and #Russia battlefield tactics and #russia is benefitting from the US preventing #Ukraine from using #US weaponry on Russia territory, Max Boot writes for the Washington Post.
Rudy Giuliani, recently fired by WABC Radio for repeated election denialism, announces what he’s calling his latest role in life:
“Please enjoy my delicious fresh roasted specialty coffee. It's quality you can trust."
US Treasury OFAC designates one Russian and three Russia-based companies involved in an attempted sanctions evasion scheme in which an opaque and complex supposed divestment could have unfrozen more than $1.5 billion worth of shares belonging to US-designated Russian oligarch Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2337
House Speaker Mike Johnson, according to his office, today will join Donald Trump in court in NYC and "will then address media outside of the ongoing sham prosecution of President Trump. Speaker Johnson will address the political persecution of the 45th President of the United States by President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and the left-wing Manhattan district attorney."
“Paul Manafort, the longtime Republican strategist and chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign, who had assumed unpaid role advising party officials on the nominating convention, has stepped aside.
Manafort’s move came after NYT reported that he had been on the ground in Milwaukee last week for planning meetings for the convention, as well as a Washington Post story that said he was involved in work connected to foreign officials and businesses.”
I'd heard about the price war between BYD and Tesla, but I'd never actually seen any of the BYD cars because they're banned in the US. Some influencer imported one and did a review and now I'm pretty sure the ban is the only thing keeping Tesla alive
It begs the question, if Trump can use the same tax exemption twice and get away with it for years..
How widespread is this practice amongst the ultra-wealthy?
Is Jeff Yass, for example, financing the end of democracy & the termination of the civil rights of 167 million American women -- just to avoid tax audits?
Children and home ownership leave individuals without options.
People with young children make the perfect economic hostages.
If you have to flee gang violence, crop failures, failed states, climate change flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, state repression, genocide, economic collapse, or ethnic cleansing, it's that much harder with young children in tow.
Former Trump attorney and misogynist Brennan: "Having sex with a guy you met a couple hours earlier in a Lake Tahoe lounge is untoward..."
I love, LOVE LOVE kasie for cutting in and letting Brennan have it before he was let off the hook for his slut shaming of Stormy Daniels.
Quote
Kasie: I get that he says that having sex is untoward but I just think it's worth noting that like being married and inviting someone into the hotel room…
And all because the fossil fuel industry bought 147 insurrectionists in Congress, 6 corrupt Supreme Court justices, and funded a disinformation campaign for 40 years.
Washington Post: At Mar-a-Lago, Trump asked oil CEOs to raise $1 billion for his campaign and told them if he gets back in the White House he'll immediately reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted. https://wapo.st/3UBf4Fy
Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":
Gotta protect the administrators from checks notes professors.
“A group of 11 professors arrived at Gibson Hall Friday morning to deliver an open letter signed by 250 faculty members that condemned the university’s response to a pro-Palestinian encampment and demanded it drop suspensions against seven students involved.
“Nine armed police officers stopped the group from entering Gibson.”
Post secondary education stopped being free when it started being used as a springboard for social mobility under the GI Bill with Vietnam War veterans who weren't white.
It was marketed by Reagan as a "tax revolt". It was really a war on democracy.
"Friends of the Court," ProPublica's investigation into Supreme Court justices' beneficial relationships with billionaire donors, has been awarded the #Pulitzer Prize for Public Service!
Here are the highlights from the reporting (THREAD)
Absorb this graph—but note that the final year is 2018, the year of Trump’s tax cuts. That’s #Trump’s big goal, always has been: to rip off working people and hand huge bags of cash to the ultra-wealthy, like himself and his Mar-a-Lago buddies.
Rutger Bregman:
Stunning graph: the plummeting tax rates of the richest Americans. For the first time in history, billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.
Sure would be horribly ironic if the US, arguably the greatest experiment in democracy ever attempted, suddenly flipped over, surrendered, and chose to become an authoritarian religious monarchy, not long after electing the first black president.
