Hide in Plain Sight

I started watching Survivor again during the pandemic to see how this war horse would handle a pandemic and the demand for more diversity on the cast. They made many changes to the time frame played, shortening it, to the way the game was played with varying immunity challenges and the ideas to form bonds across tribal lines while maintaining the original core of the game, the million dollar winner. It is always almost always White Men. And this season despite being the most interesting of diverse casts and the ability to literally cast away most of the White Men and the two Black Men whose alliance was the target versus them (which frankly is a departure) ultimately the sole Survivor was who? The sole White Man who did nothing to add to the tribe but be a manipulator who claimed he was hiding in plain sight. What a tool and it was that ability to be such a fucking white man that a Jury of largely who? White folks rewarded him with the million. And with that denied the most interesting of players who are of color and one a woman nothing. Typical so for the future I am out. I cannot think of another reason to watch white men win shit for largely just being white.

And with that it brings me to another White Man, the Crypto King, Sam Bankman-Fried. The moppy hair flop top of cargo shorts, dirty tee shirts and sneakers that looked like he just rolled out of bed from a hard night of frat boy partying is now in the slammer. He is the token of late but he will be joining the sole Female of that, the Theranos Queen and her former boyfriend, Sunni. Well that is some survivor diversity right there! Naturally they are missing a wider cast, the Uber asshole, the We Work Shyster and some others who have committed equal levels of duplicity if not fraud in building the bullshit that defines the Silicon Valley hubris. There are other players in the game, equally diverse but now crime free. The Robinhood Partners, who are first generation Americans, so they did not get the memo about how Meritocracy was a myth. Then we have the SPAC founder who flew off on his private plane and left investors on the runway.

In profiles of both SBF and Chamath Palihapitiya, there is a consistent narrative – fake it, make it and cash out. SBF had not been smart enough and instead went Madoff. As the Times points out:

Michael Klausner, a professor at Stanford Law School, has written about the difference between those who back SPACs, like Mr. Palihapitiya, and investors who buy their shares after the listing. A backer can put in a small amount of money but still gets 20 percent of the shares, essentially for free. Ordinary investors don’t get the same terms.

“Sponsors make a killing, and public shareholders take a bath,” Mr. Klausner said.

These people are no different than the Gold Rush speculators of a 100 years ago, the Railroad or Steel Magnates of their day. Some make it big, a killing perhaps is the expression and with that some are left dead in the wake. 1929 brought a lot of suicides to the windows and not much has changed as the recent suicide of Bed Bath and Beyond CEO is one not lost. The push to satisfy the insatiable greed of Wall Street, of Venture Capitalists and of course the rank and file investors who believe the hype can take a toll on anyone. I always look at Jack Welch the true benchmark of what the modern day CEO has become, the slash and burn type who has little to worry about as their golden parachute can land them safely in their Bahamian mansion. They may wear a different uniform, aka, costumes to plead their case or manipulate the media, but they have a similar mein – win and win big fuck everyone else.

Think about your 401K or even a pension fund, they are run by these same type whose primary concern is their fees and there push to make more for you is in reality a way to make more for them. They make money regardless of if you win or more importantly lose, and the recent hits on the market have dramatically affected many a net worth when it comes to retirement savings. I recall an exchange where a moron informed me that my investments, largely outside the provenance of 401K (although I have one for tax purposes) was a waste and rip off. Yeah okay so tell me now what?

I meet many people who are looking for that ground up, the early Apple investor, the Amazon shareholder and I laugh. Really the only way is to possibly fuck them or a family member to get that foot in the door. Look at the walking idiot Elon Musk, I am sure that his largest contribution to his initial holdings in PayPal was holding the actual creators dicks while they were coding the platform. They fired him. Hey his check cleared so what more do you need? Do people still use PayPal? I sure as fuck don’t unless forced to. And I don’t keep my credit or banking info on the site once done. Same with Venmo (who owns it? PayPal) and the rest, as they are ripe for fraud and are often used for criminal activities, like Crypto only more legitimate but not bound to banking laws. But all of them are largely children of privilege and with that access and availability to con, scam and manipulate people out of money. Just like Survivor.

SBF family are very much a part of the Cypto King’s persona and rise into the social conscience, whoops I mean media, of our lives. They are prominent well established Professors at where? Stanford. That has to be the place where all good people go to become criminals, right Elizabeth Holmes. The earlier prototypes were Harvard but now West Coast baby! After “dropping out” they in turn talk a game and with that find again those rich white men who can write a check without blinking an eye, but that is not the real mark. The real marks are real people who want to be the first, on the ground floor and say “I was there from day one” And then promptly if wise cash out and head to a legitimate financial industry to handle the cash. Well on paper right? But the Crypto King was a family affair, aside from his Parents, his Brother was employed and of course the cult of followers was a Girlfriend who ran the other business that he used to double dip. Ick that vision takes on a nasty turn but given the speed and manner of how quickly the FBI and SEC are charging this doofus means someone on the inside is spilling. Remember that it was George Schultz’s own Grandson who tattled on Theranos. I suspect no fury hath a woman scorned. But his parents for now are not being charged but given what I have read they are either Erika Jayne who never knew of husband Tom Gerardi’s dealings or did sorta kinda know but hey those diamond earrings are super nice, thanks honey! Yeah a mansion is a great place to hide those tears.

And that brings me to the next layer – celebrity and politics. Now CBF was openly buying Democratic support but he was using Dark Money to fund Republicans for equity and parity I am sure! He used Celebrity endorsements, large Philanthropic efforts (another who did this – Jeffrey Epstein) and of course the media both mainstream and social in which to draw the masses. And yet for all its modernity it was just old school embezzlement. It is all a reality program just without the dirt and lack of sleep and food and whoever wins the payoff is the ultimate Survivor.

But we are not even players in the game and if we are we are the early ones booted off for varying reasons, none of which make sense as no one knows each other so whichever white man can convince, con or lie his way into the graces of his tribe mates, aka strangers on a plane, they kick to the curb the one the perceive as a threat. In the case of many these high flying fuckwits are Libertarians and they are against Government regulation like Republicans but they think of themselves as less Conservative and Political. For the record Rand Paul and his father Ron who served in the House are “Libertarian” and Paul Ryan considered himself a devotee of the movement after reading the Queen of the concept, Ayn Rand. Yes, folks policy and economics all delved from a poorly written book of fiction.

To the costumes akin to attending a sporting event to know which team you are for, they play the same with the buff on Survivor. In white collar world it is a suit and tie and in Silicon Valley it was the Black Turtleneck replaced by a hoodie. We all wear some type of body armor in which to identify and belong. We are conformists and followers which means we are sheep and easily lead. For those who don’t walk that path they are ostracized, demonized and vilified. They are the true renegades and often better leaders, creators and yes folks better citizens, but they pay it at a price. They are often invisible and in turn not ones whom others seek and that may be a benefit. But the world is full of outliers and with that they don’t win the spoils. The recent fraud of FTX follows a long line of Ponzi schemers, Bernie Madoff who died in Prison was one. Enron sent at least one to prison, Jeffrey Skilling and he was released in 2019. The Enron Scandal was described as The Smartest Guys in the Room. No wonder my new Manta is: I don’t know, I’m not very bright.

This is just one of many both past and present and there will be more in this world of winner takes all Capitalism. We love money just slightly more than we love guns. But mostly we love rich white guys as we are sure they earned it the hard way, by their bootstraps. Yes made by poor children in Asia. They fall apart easily both the bootstraps and the children so they are quickly and easily replaced. Fast food, fast fashion, fast money.

**ETA: The Stock Market is bullish on the Bulls and with that this announcement may change how many access and understand the market:

FROM CNN:

Wall Street’s top cop has voted in favor of major changes to the way millions of everyday investors buy and sell stocks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday proposed a rule that it says would add competition to an unseen — but potentially costly — part of the stock trading system for retail investors. The changes won’t be implemented just yet — a vote in the spring could finalize the rules. But the agency is majority controlled by Democrats and the proposal is expected to be adopted next year.

Today, when you buy or sell a stock on an app, the trade appears to be instantaneous. But beneath that simple buy/sell action is a complex web of Wall Street players exploiting tiny differences in price to rake in huge amounts of cash.

When you tap buy or sell, the broker, such as Robinhood or E*Trade, takes your order to a firm known as a wholesaler or market maker — middlemen firms that are supposed to get you the best price. Wholesalers pay the brokers for the privilege of executing the trades.

That process is known as “payment for order flow.” To support free trading, brokers typically make pennies from wholesalers off each transaction — but those pennies add up, accounting for the bulk of brokerages’ revenues. The SEC said the six largest wholesalers collectively paid retail brokers $235 million in payment for order flow for stock orders in the first quarter of 2022.

Payment for order flow has come under intense scrutiny by regulators following the fallout from the January 2021 run-up in meme stocks like GameStop. The SEC notes that wholesalers typically execute trades “without providing any opportunity for other market participants to compete to provide a better price.”

The SEC’s proposed changes would add more competition at the middleman level to ensure retail investors are actually getting the best prices. Orders would be routed into auctions where trading firms would have to compete to execute them.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been a longtime critic of the way the current payment for order flow market operates, arguing that it lacks transparency and competition to the detriment of investors.

Gensler and other critics of the process say the brokers and market makers have conflicts of interest, and that payment for order flow hurts everyday investors while amassing huge wealth for Wall Street firms.

“Today’s markets are not as fair and competitive as possible for individual investors — everyday retail investors,” Gensler said. “This is in part because there isn’t a level playing field among different parts of the market: wholesalers, dark pools, and lit exchanges.”

Gensler noted that everyday folks don’t have the same benefits as larger, deeper-pocketed investors who are often able to execute orders at the best price possible.

“The markets have become increasingly hidden from view, especially for individual investors,” Gensler said. “Thus, today’s proposal is designed to bring greater competition in the marketplace for retail market orders.”

Blame the Patriarchy

I wrote yesterday about how particularly White Feminism is in fact as judgmental, racist and discriminatory as any white supremacist group as they use their moral superiority to patronize and demoralize anyone who refuses to subscribe and follow the script. The lack of diverse voices ( a wide swath largely of class and color) and of course voices that offer disagreement (see the current issues about Times Up) often enable, if not further, the belief that the sole course of action is right. And largely is that it is all about gender and in turn believing that one gender is morally superior over another. See the White Supremacist similarity? And with that women of color, women who are not American born are often equally subjugated and dismissed with regards to their complaints, blaming said failures on again intrinsic behaviors and not extrinsic factors that block access. What is the untold secret is that many of these women who have attained a place or position of authority that they did not bypass traditional pathways, networks, or accomplish said success without (usually) a white male mentor who either fucked them, or had some type of father dynamic in place in which to foster and develop the relationship that enabled the same women to have both access and availability to powerful people and positions. There are some women who have made success without male influence but they also had a large cohort of other women who embraced and encouraged them, as one can look to the early days of Feminism that arose in the 60s, much like Civil Rights it is a movement over a cause that enables if not encourages it, but today there are few if any women who have not found their place in society secured by either marriage or from birth.

And this brings me to the story of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame and infamy. The story of her fraud and duplicity in rising the company to amazing heights gives illustration to the ability to con. This woman conned many successful and well known men and Betsey DeVos (not a challenge there intellectually as we have come to know) into investing into her company based on an idea. This is the foundation of the Valley, the BIG IDEA, which in many cases are often just BIG LIES passed off as ideas and plans, see Adam Neumann of We Work as another example of this kind of P.T. Barnum bullshit in the land of cash and gravy. But the road to riches is paved with lies and exaggerations, and of course, men chest thumping and dick swinging. And then came Elizabeth with her contrived deep voice, blonde hair and black turtlenecks it was still easy being a child who extrinsically demonstrated the idea of white privilege and still now breaking the glass ceiling that someone less glamorous like say, Hillary Clinton, failed to do. But she managed to do it and for awhile rode that ride like a child at a carnival. And then it was a man, a man from the Wall Street Journal who began to ask questions thanks to another young man and a young woman who too had questions and they began to blow some whistles. But this kind of shit can only be covered up so long before the stink rises and we have seen this with many men of late, Scott Rudin, Andrew Cuomo come to mind, but this is still toxic regardless of who shat it. But what is fascinating is how they never admitted guilt or truly apologized they just retreated and we await to see their inevitable return or not, hey whatever.

But, today as she is prepping for her trial, Elizabeth’s success ladder has collapsed and now in an attempt at redemption is doing what anyone does best in these times, BLAME SOMEONE ELSE. Ah yes that is always a good idea and saying one is a victim of domestic violence is a good defense when any other possible one has been exhausted. Not only is it tragic, this is a horrific notion that further pushes women back into the professional closet. We are either fucking our way to the top or being raped while at the bottom, it is an either/or neither/nor choice that only once again seems to validate the idea that women are stupid manipulative bitches. One of these days Alice!

Elizabeth Holmes expected to argue she suffered abuse from ex-boyfriend during Theranos trial

Unsealed documents in the high-profile case that begins with jury selection Aug. 31 include accusations against Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani of “essentially dominating her and erasing her capacity to make decisions.”

By Jay Greene and Rachel Lerman The Washington Post August 29, 2021

Former Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes is likely to argue in her criminal trial that abuse by her ex-boyfriend, who was the company’s president, rendered her incapable of making her own decisions, according to documents unsealed in the case early Saturday morning.

Holmes, who started Theranos when she was a 19-year-old student at Stanford University, is charged with 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly defrauding investors and patients in connection to her failed blood-testing firm. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Aug. 31, with the trial starting Sept. 8.

The unusual defense strategy in one the highest-profile corporate trials in years offers clearer details on how Holmes plans to frame the implosion of a company that was once one of the industry’s start-up darlings. Holmes graced magazine covers and regularly appeared on business television programs while Theranos took in hundreds of millions of dollars from household-name investors such as Rupert Murdoch and Betsy DeVos. But her fall, after a 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation showed the company’s technology was unreliable, led to the many claims of fraud.

Several of the newly unsealed documents relate to the successful efforts by Holmes’s ex-boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, to separate his trial from hers. Holmes’s plans to argue intimate partner violence as a defense would prevent him from receiving a fair trial if the cases were joined, Balwani’s lawyers argued in the documents.

One unsealed Balwani filing from February notes the strategy: “Ms. Holmes plans to introduce evidence that Mr. Balwani verbally disparaged her and withdrew ‘affection if she displeased him’; controlled what she ate, how she dressed, how much money she could spend, who she could interact with — essentially dominating her and erasing her capacity to make decisions.”

Holmes’s lawyers introduced the possible defense in December, noting that it might call an expert witness to testify about “whether and how Ms. Holmes’ relationship with Mr. Balwani was consistent with intimate partner abuse,” and also attest to “Ms. Holmes’ particular vulnerability to an abusive relationship.” In a separate filing, Holmes’s lawyers note that it is “highly likely” Holmes will introduce evidence of “intimate partner abuse.”

Holmes’s filings provide some detail into her allegations of abuse. She alleges that Balwani monitored her calls, texts and email messages, that he threw “hard, sharp objects” at her, and that he restricted her sleep and monitored her movements, among other charges.ADVERTISING

In his legal response, Balwani’s lawyers disputed Holmes’s abuse claims, arguing they are “deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani, devastating personally to him, and highly and unfairly prejudicial to his defense of this case.”

The filings also answer a question about which has been widely speculated, whether Holmes will testify in her own defense, something that often is a perilous legal strategy because it opens a defendant up to cross-examination by prosecutors. The apparent answer is yes.

“Ms. Holmes is likely to testify herself to the reasons why she believed, relied on, and deferred to Mr. Balwani,” according to one of her legal filings in February.

Court documents had previously indicated that Holmes was evaluated by a psychologist who specializes in violence against women and interpersonal violence, leading to speculation that her attorneys could mount a so-called “mental defect” defense. The government also asked, and was granted, the chance to have Holmes evaluated by medical professionals they appointed.https://85c90c650def3b002604d56bc0e8515c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The documents were unsealed after a lawyer for Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, asked the court to make them public. Balwani’s lawyers opposed the unsealing, and Holmes’s lawyers asked the judge to wait longer before making them public.

Balwani was initially charged with Holmes, but the two later had their cases separated. His trial is scheduled to begin in January. The unsealed documents also show that Balwani requested to be tried first. And they show that the government opposed severing the trial.

Theranos attempted to develop miniature lab technology, which sometimes was called the “Edison,” that could quickly and inexpensively run hundreds of tests from just a couple of drops of blood collected after pricking a finger. But investigations led by reporting from the Journal revealed severe dysfunction within the young company and technology that was erratic and unreliable.

Theranos was actually using traditional lab equipment, made by outside companies, to run most tests, the Journal’s reporting showed. And scientists within the company were uneasy about how often the company’s machine seemed to give unreliable results.

Holmes launched Theranos in 2003 and grew it to about 800 employees and a valuation of $9 billion before it ultimately collapsed in 2018. In a chaotic period after the Journal’s bombshell reports were published, partners including Safeway and Walgreens dissolved deals with the company.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees clinical labs, found deficiencies at the company’s lab. Theranos eventually settled with the agency and agreed not to operate any clinical labs for two years. Holmes also settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over fraud allegations, and was barred from serving as a director or officer of a public company for a decade.

Judge Edward J. Davila, of the federal court in the Northern District of California, said during a hearing Thursday that he thought it wise to unseal the documents before potential jurors are brought in to be questioned next week. That way, lawyers could ask them if they had seen any recent media coverage of the case, he said.

Holmes’s lawyers had asked that the unsealing be delayed until after jurors had been chosen and directed not to read media items.

Enablers

I am not sure I have a place to add my voice into the din at this time. Like many I could not believe what I was seeing on Wednesday in the halls of Congress by both the Congress itself with some members insatiable need for relevancy and import challenging States electoral votes or those Trumptards who were busting their way in. Could I tell a difference? Well other than the costumes and bizarre clothing choices not really when it came right down to it. What I have long thought and since confirmed via the exposure to find many of these insurrectionists, they are employed and have decent jobs. They are CEO’s, State Representatives, Ex Military, Teachers, Human Resource Directors, as well as Contractors, Tattoo Artists, sons of Judges, and others who came into DC for the day/night to challenge the election results. Many seem to regret their choices, have denied doing anything beyond going to the Capital but all of them believe Trump and his lies.

So where does that leave us? It is not over until the semi naked horn wearing man sings. They were intent on causing disruption and were called to arms by their leader in chief who retreated to his White House compound to watch all that transpired over the course of those four hours of bizarro world. A world where Capitol Hill Police took selfies, showed them the bathroom, opened doors, helped them down stairs and moved guardrails. What the coffee pot not on? Much is to be made of that and like all that preceded this riot it too will have a reckoning. Already several have resigned but the reality is that the preparation and coordination was non-existent by intent or by accident it was exceedingly lacking.

As for the deaths, five, one a Capitol Hill Police Officer who was beaten and then his heart failed while being treated for injuries sustained from what is believed to be a fire extinguisher. The four others were participants including two women, one shot by Capitol Hill Police. Much is made of this as she “deserved” it. On that note I will extend the one contrarian belief that no, no she did not deserve to die. Just in the same way that any BLM protester was harmed by Police during their much less violent protests or how any individual actually not doing harm has been killed by Police this last year. Heck given the amount of mental health issues present on Wednesday, had the standard Police been called just on a wellness check alone would have ended up with way higher death toll.

And what I find interesting is that while this same crew live off of conspiracy theories and deep state hysteria I have seen none of that on the left. There are those who are clearly suspicious and sure that it was an “inside job.” To that I agree, it was one the President hoped for and encouraged he was not secretive in the least, but beyond that no conspiracy existed to ensure the completion of the goal of the protesters, which varied from killing, capturing Congress members to ensure that the vote was tossed, and in turn allowing states to recount them. Or in fact a redo. Unclear as many seemed more intent on securing souveniers and memories of this their very special terrible horrible day. Or just taking a dump on the floor, whatever. This was a massive moment of group think, an act of collective behavior that had no single leader or coordinator but much akin to the ubiquitous and frequently mentioned ANTIFA, leaderless but violent with chatter that takes place in the dark web. And with that the similarity ends there… the supposed ANTIFA are always just what they are opportunists who seek to do shit and break things and no doubt there were that same type in DC. They are the ones who loot, who damage property and create havoc but sadly this was too large a number to be simply relegated to a fringe group. The amount of largely white employed folks showing up on a weekday, on a day well establised as a D DAY for Trump was clearly not just done on a whim. Flights were booked, hotels established, vehicles rented, time taken off of work, and as for the ends well they justified the means and they meant to do something. And the minute the President gave the directive to march to the Capitol it was all they needed, they were armed and ready. I heard of none of the BLM marchers carrying sticks, wearing riot protective gear, planning with guns and having bombs made and left so no, this is not the equivalent. And the same goes for the Police planning as there was none. Why? Well ask Trump. The buck stops there. From hiring idiots to run departments, to take resignations of experienced officials in office, including William Barr, left the vacuum Trump needed and like Covid he took advantage of it. The man is not a planner nor that detail oriented but he gets his people and he knew exactly how to push them in the right direction. As for the Capitol Hill Police we will eventually know why they were so how to say it – short sighted. Racism I suspect, but hey I did see five black people and one was an “organizer” so go figure. I thought at first they were hostages. Regardless, hey will need serious deprogramming. But this was not reported and again the media does their part to provide just as much contradiction, repetition and misinformation as they can as well.

And that brings me to the remaining enablers of the debacle that was the Trump Presidency. Starting with the media from not just Fox but CNN. They were equally complicit in literally covering every Trump utterance and showcasing him at every opportunity. The endless parade of talking heads ended for me when on Thursday Dana Bash of CNN watched the robotic video of Trump and said he sounded sincere. Whatever she said he said he was “Presidential” after his first speech to Congress. Bitch please. My thoughts anytime Trump has to give a mandatory speech, he sounds medicated as if they slipped something into his diet Coke, or that of an eight year old giving a presentation at school. The man is not intelligent nor diligent enough to properly craft let alone read a speech and in turn deliver it with conviction. He is however good at riling up the sheep and spouting bullshit. That is something he has well developed. But the idea that he would evolve into the gig has never been a fact of reality, just ask Susan Collins of Maine if she thinks Trump “learned a lesson” since Impeachment? Going with no on that one.

The media had begun to realize that not every word from the liar in chief was worth broadcasting and had discontinued the Covid talks as they were clearly propaganda and yet again on all cable channels the slavish coverage and endless panel discussions fueled the battles that took place on social media; a form of communication that is anything but social it is an echo chamber and Covid bubble. Does anyone actually talk to each other there? Let me answer as no one will, NO.

The deference to Trump was eroding as Covid deaths rose and ultimately is failed re-election was the straw that broke the proverbial camel toting the daily missives to the great thirsty crew. So again this defines the second enablers role – that of the Silicon Valley. From Facebook, to YouTube and especially Twitter they were the breeding ground of paranoia, histrionic falsehoods and bitter statements that went largely unchecked. Despite the endless hauling in of CEO Marc “Libertarian” Zuckerberg little changed. Again false idols build false claims and the enablers allowed it like the networks, as with that came eyes to page. More data means more money and we will do whatever it takes to bait those clicks. And nothing fuels the money pit than chaos. The irony that the obsession with filming every moment of life is what enabled many of the rioters to be identified and in turn arrested is truly laughable. And that they refused to wear masks even easier. How ironic right Alanis?

As for the pandemic and the increasing social distancing that took a dive the second the rage took over. And there was much to be enraged from the civil unrest over George Floyd, the endless natural disasters that struck to lastly the grievances of the election we were hostages to a new cult, that of the Valley of the Dolts. They created something to change the world and like the Egypt Spring which was found to be largely a myth, they tried again to upend the oldest Democracy of the world. How proud they must be cashing those stock options.

And while we can of course blame those who elected him to office, they were stooges, they were just marks in the con game. For without the larger enablers this would not have happened and no I don’t mean Republicans, well they too, for whatever gain they felt their sedition would provide good luck with that; However, the largest enablers are those of the business community, the ones who largely write the legislation and that in turn underwrites the Republican party.

Business largely derided Trump post riot and they too will need a reckoning for their role cannot be denied. Many who were underwriting campaigns and of course those who they got elected already realizing their pact with the Devil. Josh Hawley is one who found not only a book deal taken away, but his biggest benefactor is now expressing regret and when you read about that asshole and his dirty paws on varying bills in Missouri that is one big fish now fried. And many of the varying staff and members of the Trump inner circle, now quickly jumping ship. They put denial as one bigger than any river in Egypt. Come on remember Anonymous, the lowly staffer. Ah yes they did nothing and how they are now shocked that the rooster came in to roost. Fascist you say now? But Corporate America needs to own their evil in keeping him in office, and in turn we need to hold their feet to the fire, right Tim Cook, or whatever your name is?

On Wednesday, many chief executives had, once again, had enough. The National Association of Manufacturers called on Vice President Mike Pence to consider invoking the 25th Amendment of the Constitution and remove Mr. Trump from office. Many executives — including Mr. Cook of Apple, Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan and Mr. Schwarzman — denounced the violence, lamented the state of the country and called for accountability.

Alanis you can hit it now.

And the last group, always the best for last my personal favorite – The Evangelical sect. They are the last holdouts and their response is very Christian as they are not pro democracy, they want a Theocracy so carry on lunatics, January 20th is just two weeks away

Trump faith advisers condemn insurrection, but say benefits of presidency will last longer than ‘controversies’

By Michelle BoorsteinJan. 8, 2021

Faith advisers to President Trump are condemning this week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, but few were willing to blame the president for inciting it, saying their partnership with him over the past four years was worth it despite the president’s flaws.

By Friday, with the growing numbers of members of Trump’s Cabinet quitting and former staffers calling for his removal, some prominent conservative evangelicals outside the Trump advisory group were criticizing the president in unusually sharp terms.

“Mr. President, people are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. There are 12 dangerous days for our country left. Could you please step down and let our country heal?” tweeted Russell Moore, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, overwhelmingly lean conservative and voted for Trump.

Jason Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — one of the convention’s six seminaries — tweeted that Wednesday’s riot was not comparable to Black Lives Matter-related disobedience last year. This was instigated, he wrote, by the president and mingled nooses and Confederate flags with crosses. “God help us.”AD

But members of Trump’s advisory group, who won unprecedented evangelical access to the White House, said they didn’t regret putting a Christian imprimatur on his administration.

Ralph Reed, a longtime Christian conservative activist who was part of the loosely organized faith group, tweeted Wednesday that the Capitol scene “does not represent our movement or the cause of Christ.” Asked if the president was responsible, Reed said Trump’s subsequent call for peace and civil order and a peaceful transition speak for themselves.

Influential Dallas mega-preacher Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s early prominent evangelical backers and a member of his advisory group, tweeted Wednesday that “disobeying and assaulting police is a sin, whether it’s done by Antifa or angry Republicans.”

In an interview Thursday, he said leaders who support Trump have a responsibility to separate and condemn the nationalistic messages that are common at Trump events. “Storming the Capitol and doing so with ‘Jesus Saves’ signs is blasphemy. It is despicable and has nothing to do with the gospel.”

But when asked about Trump’s role in the riot, Jeffress swerved: “I think there is election fraud in every election. Was there enough in this election to sway it to Biden? I don’t know enough. I try to stay with what I know about.”

Despite the events of Wednesday, both Jeffress and Reed were unequivocal in their praise of Trump’s presidency overall.Jeffress said: “No conservative president has done more than Donald Trump to champion Christian values. He has done more in the pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel with moving the Embassy — no one has been more vocal. … I don’t regret for one minute supporting him.”

“Did LBJ’s mistakes in Vietnam delegitimize the historic civil rights achievements he made with Martin Luther King? Should King have not worked with LBJ because he was a profane man and a philanderer? I think not. King spoke truth to power and he worked with unlikely allies to advance his cause. It led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which changed race relations more than anything since Reconstruction,” Reed said in an interview Thursday. “Presidents, politics and even policies will come and go. They are transitory. But the values and achievements and aspirations of a social reform movement are lasting and enduring.”

To the White evangelicals who advised Trump, their blessing of his presidency is just part of a decades-long movement to secure social conservatism’s legal place and power. Along the way, in their mind, they have dealt with flawed politicians in a system they see as inherently amoral. A transactional approach that focuses on laws and policies — rather than a broad prophetic one that includes other crucial scriptural issues such as poverty, immigration and honesty — is justified, some of them said.

“Most conservative evangelicals, the things they care about [when it comes to the presidency] are all things that arose in the past 50 years out of the judiciary: the legalization of abortion, the redefinition of marriage,” Jeffress said. “And the common element of his successes has been the promise of a conservative judiciary. We believe policies influence the direction, both moral and spiritual, of the country, and he has succeeded in fulfilling those promises.”

Jeffress and Reed don’t think American Christianity paid a moral cost, even as other evangelical leaders — such as Russell Moore, who was not an adviser to Trump — spoke out in unusually forceful words. The vast majority of White evangelicals voted for Trump, though no prominent faith leaders — including members of Trump’s advisory group — appeared at rallies in D.C. this week for the president.

“I don’t think he’s done anything to change the witness of Christians. Our message has remained the same. It’s not about pro-life policies, it’s about the gospel,” Jeffress said.

Reed said the advisers’ wins are moral — such as Trump’s creation of a team at the Department of Health and Human Services that expanded conscience exemptions for religious conservatives opposed to supporting contraception or LGBTQ equality. The advisers hope the judges Trump selected will revisit or overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Should the Supreme Court revisit Roe v. Wade, it will only be because of Trump’s picks, and that will be of lasting historical significance and transcends personality and politics. I’m playing the long game, as any smart social reformer does,”Reed said.

The past four years have also given White evangelicals — including segments unaccustomed to political power, such as charismatic and Pentecostal figures like Paula White — credibility by placing them up and down the administration ladder, from Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and former education secretary Betsy DeVos to sub-Cabinet appointees and senior staff.AD

That may be the most substantial gain, Reed said, for a group that has been working since Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in the 1970s to attain cultural and political influence.

Reed said: “Ironically, a president without a history of working with evangelicals ended up being the vehicle to both credential and empower more conservative Christian policymakers. Those individuals are now credentialed and will be ready to serve future Republican presidents.”

The attempted insurrection at the Capitol seemed to give at least one Trump faith adviser real pause — or a kind of pause. Mike Evans, an author and Zionist activist, on Friday said evangelicals are in a “Dietrich Bonhoeffer moment,” referring to a German Lutheran pastor and Nazi critic who was executed in the 1940s for anti-Hitler activism. Evans said he wasn’t equating Trump with Hitler, but rather was thinking of theGerman icon who said Christianity requires speaking truth to power.

Evans cited Bonhoeffer’s famed quote: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.”

Evans feels Trump changed the Middle East for the better by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and moving along detentes between Israel and Gulf states. He voted for Trump in hopes the president would help get Roe v. Wade overturned in a second term. Working with him was “absolutely” worth it, he said.

Over the years, he said, the “moral dilemmas started to become a tsunami,” with Wednesday as its peak. The Capitol riot, which Evans said Trump incited through spreading untruths about election cheating, is in another category because “it struck at the heart of democracy.”

“We evangelicals are in a painful predicament. On the one hand, we think the world of the president and his policies because he’s been astonishingly good to us. On the other hand, we have based our own whole life on truth and the word of God,” Evans said. “He gave us a seat at the table. He honored us like we’ve never been honored, so I have nothing but gratitude for that. But [Wednesday] has put us in a moral dilemma.”

Johnnie Moore, an author and religious freedom advocate who served as the unofficial spokesman for the advisers, said the events at the Capitol were “inexcusable and in some cases criminal,” and that he had told the White House of “my dissatisfaction with the President’s role in it.”

However, Moore wrote in an email to The Post, his appreciation for Trump and his administration’s achievements isn’t changed.

“I think of unprecedented efforts to promote religious freedom abroad, the sanctioning of countless human rights abusers in countries like China and Iran, the First Step Act here and the Abraham Accords in the Middle East,” he said.

Engaging with presidents is a “mixed bag,” Moore wrote, but it’s a responsibility — a “moral duty.”

“I’m well aware that it may be misunderstood. I’m just fine with that,” he wrote.

Crazy Rich White Folks

I have long lamented about the current state of Venture Philanthropy, the idea that giving is tied to some type of investment with a return. Apparently just the thought of giving money to those in need, no strings, no demands, no capital gains is what giving is about but the rich are different and they don’t give anyone anything without a string perpetually attached.

The idea of the “giving pledge” is my personal favorite bullshit line up there with “self made” and “entereprenuer”. No you got fucking lucky when a bunch of white men “gave” you money for your harebrained scheme and in turn you sold that to another group of white men down the chain and then they sold it to some more. That is called a Pyramid Scheme, ask Bernie Madoff or that dude from WeWork or Uber or AirBnb (who apparently cried when this pandemic hit). These are all white men with links to more white men who in normal times would meet at a Red Roof Inn and circle jerk to porn, but today they meet in the Silicon Valley and exchange bullshit lines and then metaphorically suck each others cocks while making ludicrous claims that this scooter, this app, this idea will do what – CHANGE THE WORLD. Okay then.

In the meantime, the rest of the world, the 99% are in deep shit. Facing evictions, facing dire poverty and potentially contracting a serious illness that could leave one indebted/bankrupt, permanently damaged physically and emotionally, for both adults and children.   And the Medical Industrial Complex is going, “What the fuck?” as they need to make a profit here folks.   We have no fucking clue with this Covid what the long term outcomes will be regardless, this is just a real call to action. But the rich? Fuck that. If I hear another quote from Bill Gates I will Coove on him.

And while everyone is swooning over Cuomo, I want to remind all those doing so that again in the shade of the pandemic, he is doing his part to cover his ass and keep it firmly in the chair he sits doing his daily lottery announcement and showing us his art projects that he creates in pandemonium. The man is a douche. Phil Murphy in NJ did so recently with a bill that covered the ability to sell public park lands to wealthy golfers.  FORE SURE.  

And yes folks a hard lockdown in coming.  Trump needs to hit the trail and the trail is sort of piling up bodies so the one way to do this is locking us up again. So the rich are now stockpiling cash while we do what we do best, fuck all nothing.   Just ask Jared about that.  Our Jared has closed up with the rest of the Subway chains folding up their six foot longs.   And more businesses are heading to bankruptcy so those courtrooms that have been closed for so long are going to be super busy until lockdown 2.0 hits.  So bitch please, what about that stimulus and recovery? Oh yeah sure. WHAT.THE.FUCK.EVER

In this crisis we have seen Trump pull bullshit but as they say all Politics are local and the reality is that whatever the rich need to do to stay rich they are doing so and nothing says taking advantage of a crisis by taking needed Government funds and money from the Reserve at zero interest rate and stashing it up their ass, in their yachts, family homes and hidden bank accounts on tax free islands where you can get massages from teen agers. Sounds great.  Crazy Rich White People.

In a pandemic, billionaires are richer than ever. Why aren’t they giving more?
Chuck Collins
The Guardian
Published on Mon 3 Aug 2020

Billionaires get huge tax breaks to park money in private family foundations operated by wealthy heirs. Little goes to actual charity work

‘Taxpayers should not subsidize private fortresses of wealth and power that will exist for generations, controlled by the same families and their professional advisers.’

A decade ago, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett did an important thing. They organized the Giving Pledge to inspire their fellow billionaires to donate more money to charity.

On 4 August 2010, the first group of billionaires announced their intention to give away over half their wealth to charity. Over the last decade, they’ve been joined by many more.

A decade later, however, two obvious problems have emerged.

First, billionaire wealth has expanded at a phenomenal rate. Of the 62 living Pledgers who were billionaires in 2010, their personal wealth has increased by 95%, from $376bn to $734bn in 2020 dollars.

They’d pledged to give away half. Instead, their wealth has nearly doubled.

Not even the pandemic has slowed them down. From March to July 2020, the 100 US billionaires who are currently part of the Giving Pledge saw their total wealth increase $214bn – an increase of 28% in just four months.

Many have stepped up to give during the pandemic. But their giving is not keeping pace with their exploding wealth.

This leads to the second problem: in all likelihood, most of what they give away won’t go to on-the-ground charities, but to private family foundations often controlled by wealthy heirs and their advisers. Instead of supporting charities on the frontlines of problem solving, these billions end up sitting in tax-advantaged intermediaries.

The notion that philanthropy is a private preserve, apart from the government, is a myth

You may be thinking: it’s their money, they can do with it as they choose.

But the notion that philanthropy is a private preserve, apart from the government, is a myth. The wealthier the donor, the more advantaged the charitable tax deduction becomes. For every dollar donated by a billionaire to their private foundation, we the taxpayers chip in as much as 74¢ on the dollar in lost tax revenue.

For this reason, the philanthropy of billionaires is at best understood as a public-private partnership. We taxpayers have a legitimate interest in ensuring these funds serve the public interest.

Through this lens, it is troubling that so much wealth is sequestered in private foundations and donor-advised funds – and that these are the fastest-growing areas of the giving sector. There is over $1.2tn parked in private foundations and an estimated $120bn in donor-advised funds.

Private foundations are required to give away – or “pay out” in charity lingo – at least 5% of their assets each year, ostensibly to working charities. But administrative overhead, salaries and gifts to other tax-advantaged funds are counted toward this 5%. And many larger foundations treat this 5% as a ceiling, not a floor.

Donor-advised funds, or DAFs, have no mandated payout at all. The donor takes a generous tax break when placing funds into the DAF, but the DAF does not legally have to pay out – ever. Donors can set up a DAF and pass it on to their grandchildren, who may or may not ever share the money with active charities.

Private philanthropy has always been a form of power for wealthy donors. But as wealth inequality has exploded in recent decades, it’s concentrating that private power in even fewer hands – all subsidized by public taxpayers.

This has troubling implications for charities, who are forced to cater to a smaller number of mega-donors, and our democracy. As governments at all levels face growing austerity from the Covid-19 pandemic and recession, billionaire philanthropy may well fill the vacuum for local services and institutions. But unlike local taxpayer dollars, billionaire foundations don’t answer to voters.

So what can be done?

The first step is for Congress to pass an “emergency charity stimulus”, a three-year mandate to increase the payouts of foundations and donor-advised funds. This would move $200bn to frontline charities doing urgent work during the pandemic – without costing taxpayers another dime, since these funds have been “paid for” by tax deductions.

But ultimately we need a movement to democratize charitable giving. We should reorient the rules governing taxes and charity to discourage the concentration of power and decision-making. Taxpayers should not subsidize private fortresses of wealth and power that will exist for generations, controlled by the same families and their professional advisers.

The implication for Gates, Buffett and the other Giving Pledgers is clear: give more money – not to private foundations, but directly to working charities and community-controlled foundations. Ten years from now, on the 20th anniversary of the Giving Pledge, the private family foundation should no longer exist.

Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a co-author of the report Gilded Giving 2020: How Wealth Inequality Distorts Philanthropy and Imperils Democracy

Fries with that?

While we are all now a to go nation it is ironic that unless you are serving food to go you are unemployed.

The safety net that we frequently refer to means that motherfucker has a lot of holes in it.

I link to this story in the Washington Post and well its nothing I have not heard before.  I have already written about Substitutes and other hourly employees in school that do not qualify for UI benefits ever thanks to a wonderful law written by legislatures across the country that have this type of verbiage:

“if there is a contract or a reasonable assurance that the individual will perform services” in the following academic term. 

This language means public school employees aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits if they worked in the spring and have “reasonable assurance” of continued employment in the fall.

Which is why at the end of every term a district sends out a notice asking you to sign it if you are available, if you aren’t then it means you are working and hence they are still exempt and if you do sign it it means you are assured that you will be employed by the coming year.

See that applies to self employed, to the gig employed and to many many part time workers.  You may have three jobs and you will have to see which if any qualify you.  So again its all up to the State and they are fucked up times ten as we have come to see and red state/blue state, good luck with it.

The service industry is the most hard hit and this article as well discusses its own failures and issues as we go forward post coropocalypse.

Now lets move on to the medical field or not as it has finally proven that with all the bullshit about we have the best care in the world it appears no.  So you can just look to the varying articles or watch the news to learn about how that has been exposed to be a soft underbelly of bleeding tissues.  And it is that reason alone why many die often by their own hand.

Now with holes we have loopholes and in turn sick leave. Again that one is a big game changer as many have it established by law in some communities and by policy in others but there are always an and if or but and those are black holes in the world that well once sucked in you infect all the others.  Neil deGrasse Tyson should study those.

Well if you are rich you get that test faster and furious than Vin Diesel could even challenge. In America one day you are sick and the next day you are not.   Yes Heidi Klum you are America’s top model and nothing should stop a German citizen from her rights to health care. Wait is she? PAPERS PLEASE!  And I share the sentiment that seeing the rich sing to me online does nothing for me or with me so fuck me.  No really fuck me as at this point I am losing my mind.  Is sex safe? No really is it?

The Gig Economy another brainchild of the Silicon Valley elite is showing its ugly underbelly too well that is not news to those who ever followed half the scandals over the last two years is this news? But to some in the Valley it is business as usual.  

Where will be when we finally emerge from our house prisons?  I assume like many convicts we will be very confused and angry. Social isolation is not healthy and with that old man who is the supposed President of the United States rambling on with shit that is so over his head, his son-in-laws head (who apparently is the great mastermind of this shit) and those with whom he has failed to hire and instead put his cronies in their jobs I can’t see this ending sanely.

I have again ceased all communications with anyone other than my few service providers and for them I am eternally grateful.  I have nothing further to say to anyone unless it is business related as frankly people are so fucking stupid, so afraid and so self involved what can I say.  The road runs in two directions and yet after I did reach out to those in Nashville post Tornado, San Francisco post lockdown and of course Seattle ground zero but since that I have heard nothing from them to ask how I am or even just to simply touch base.  So I am done why pretend I have never been a good phony or liar as well I don’t give a fuck about them or their tragedies.  Quid pro Quo. Well finally a chance to use that term again!

Let’s see about old people of which I am one. When I read this my head imploded and this may be why no one gives a fuck about me as clearly I am not that.  What a fucking sham and what we do to people who are suddenly thought of a useless.  Here is this fact all 55 or over .. Brad Pitt 57, Keanu Reeves 56, Chris Rock 55, Sandra Bullock, Oprah Winfrey, etc etc.. so let me see they are to sort through photos while waiting to go on a cruise or check into the petri dish of the oldster homes.  I see normal people cannot be attractive, intelligent, interesting, funny or they would be a celebrity. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK???

I should go to my corner and die now and that is how I feel, dead inside. When I emerge from this cocoon in spring I can assure you I won’t be a Butterfly.  To those who have never said a kind word to a stranger.. DO SO.. from of course acceptable social distance but otherwise go fuck yourself. So next time I am out and you are waiting on me.. yes I will have fries with that and then I will throw them in your face as you deserve nothing more or less for not giving a shit about any of this.  And that should remind you I am not invisible nor a sad case who needs to get to Target early to shop.  Well I am doing that but shit who wouldn’t.  I still and always will have a sense of humor despite all the Celeste’s of the world telling me not.

Start reading, giving a damn, learn something, talk to someone, start voting and start annoying them to actually do what they do to the rich which is apparently nothing but blow them and it up their asses.  As long as the check clears right? No cash but hey isn’t a check paper?  Is this finally the tipping point to start the revolution? Yeah and Joe Biden is just the one to lead it right? Wrong again I may be old but I am not that stupid.

Big Tech

I am still cleaning up the absurd sites that collect and sell your data.  Much of it is so convoluted and inaccurate that it is almost disturbing.  My personal favorite is one that enables anonymous individuals to “rate” you on some vague credibility scale.  Really this is a business? But then again I have to remember that most of big tech are failed juveniles whom have never gotten over being 13 and being ignored.

On March 19th  the HBO documentary on the fraudster Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos will shed lite on the weird co-dependent fame seeking money grabbing tech industry. This last week I read about the confidential Emails by Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook crisis regarding what they do with user data.   Irony that this week another app that collects personal health history has been revealed that they disclose that too to Facebook. Fitbit anyone?

With the switch in Congress to a younger more savvy demographic who are familiar with tech and are prodigious users in ways that demonstrate how the hold and its effective use of social media can change minds, hearts and outcomes in both good and bad ways perhaps now we can have that serious discussion about the role of tech and the need for regulation.

Europe has been highly aggressive so the model is already there and so it saves time and energy in which to find ways to enable people to hold on to their identity and in turn exploitation of that.   True if you are willing to put a portfolio of personal information short of your social security number then in turn expect that you will either have to pay a provider to host and in turn maintain a sense of confidence and respect in which it is used or well know that any fat man in his mother’s basement with a router and a slight Russian accent will appropriate said info for whatever nefarious uses he desires.   Some of this you own it and maybe you need to keep it to yourself as my Mother used to say.  Sharing is good in the appropriate situations.

This goes back to the day that the Student who informed me that I was a white lady who was a bitch (I own that sure but this was me not playing black music vs white music as she would not explain to me what said music is) that she wanted to write a complaint about me.  Again she wanted my full name and I informed her that my last name was sufficient and that I would happily go the office to inform the Administrator of her complaints and they could take over the paperwork in which to do so.  No she insisted she wanted my full name.  Well first of all back in the day we had these things called the White Pages (they exist online now surprise!) that people could look  you up, find your phone number and address unless you ask to be unlisted.  Gosh and the phone company respected that today to opt out it requires all kinds of bells and whistles and you are never sure it is complete so the last thing I do is give anyone my full name anymore.  And since I have an odd last name with an extra letter few spell in correctly so its all good, again when I took said last name I did that with intent.  Gosh me smart! This young woman wanted my full name to search on social media and of course demean me.  This is not the same issue as in the press that upsets Trump that and that he can be mocked in the media say by Saturday Night Live as he is a public figure and the rules that oversee that issue are complex. But the reality is that pretty much anyone has the ability to demean and degrade you over the internet and you can do little about it.  Ask those who have been on the negative side of YELP or Amazon reviews about how that works.

Tech is running the show. They run our lives and in turn manage them.  This is terrifying and worrisome as it truly is unforgiving. So that idiotic idea to wear a Confederate Uniform or post a tit pic back in the day can come back and haunt you forever.   There is no right to be forgotten nor apparently forgiven for being an idiot.  Funny how that exemption works if you are rich/famous/powerful.  

The left needs to get radical on big tech – moderate solutions won’t cut it

Radical democratic transformation seeks to empower those that have been excluded from the leading roles in the digital economy

by Evgeny Morozov
       Evgeny Morozov is the author of the Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom and a Guardian US columnist
Wed 27 Feb 2019 06.00 EST

To note that the “techlash” – our rude and abrupt awakening to the mammoth powers of technology companies – is gaining force by the month is to state the obvious. Amazon’s sudden departure from New York City, where it was planning to open a second headquarters, attests to the rapidly changing political climate. The New Yorkers, apparently, have no desire to spend nearly $3bn in subsidies in order to lure Amazon – a company that, on making $11.2bn in profits in 2018, has paid no tax and even managed to book $129m in tax rebates.

Ignored in most accounts of the growing anti-Silicon Valley sentiment is the incongruence of the political and ideological forces behind the techlash. To paraphrase a Russian classic: while all the happy apologists of big tech are alike, all its critics are unhappy in their own way. These critics, united by their hatred of the digital giants, do make short-term tactical alliances; such arrangements, however, cannot hold in the long term.

One can distinguish three camps in today’s anti-tech landscape. They cover almost the entire political spectrum, from the pro-market neoliberal right to the pro-solidarity socialist left, even if the most prominent faces of the latter are still to take an explicit position on these issues.
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The two better-known currents of the techlash represent what we might call “economism” and “technocracy”. Adherents of the former insist that the users of digital platforms are systematically shortchanged for their data and need to be compensated in some way. Such ideas are also rapidly gaining relevance in the policy world. In a major speech in mid-February, Gavin Newsom, California’s new governor, called on the tech giants to embrace the idea of a “data dividend”. “California’s consumers,” he said, “should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data.”

Why dub this “economism”? Well, in part because this perspective does not easily admit non-economic critiques of today’s big tech; the only power relationship it detects and scrutinizes is that between firms and consumers. There are no citizens – let alone social and public institutions – in this political universe.

This is bound to yield perverse results. By linking the size and profitability of tech companies to the handouts received by their users, this approach might even entrench the political power of big tech. As for consumers, they might welcome their expansion: the bigger the technology companies, the larger the data dividend. However disruptive it might seem, this is an extremely conservative approach, leaving everything as it is, but now, also, shuffling some money to consumers while giving the tech companies carte blanche to take over the rest of society.

Treating data as a commodity would also make non-market solutions infeasible and costly. Imagine a resource-starved city hall aspiring to build an algorithmic system for coordinating mobility services. On discovering that it now needs to pay for the data of the residents, it might never proceed with the plan. Deep-pocketed firms like Uber do not face such hurdles.
Why US rightwing populists and their global allies disagree over big tech
Evgeny Morozov
Read more

The “technocrats” of the second camp often define themselves in opposition to those preaching “economism”. And yet, they hardly represent a very radical departure, for they, too, believe in the virtues of free and competitive markets. They merely contend that we will never get there without strong antitrust policies, which assume far greater importance in today’s digital economy with its ubiquitous network effects.

The technocrats, thus, look to the toolkit of antitrust law to limit the power of big tech and, if necessary, make it smaller – by breaking up the tech giants. Such thinking is increasingly in vogue in Washington, where renegade thinktanks like the Open Markets Institute seek to reverse the regime of light and very selective enforcement of antitrust laws of the past 40 years. Brussels is also quite receptive to such considerations, with the European Commission, under the guidance of Margrethe Vestager, spearheading even more ambitious antitrust efforts. The recent ruling by the German cartel office, which prohibits Facebook from pooling the data of third-party apps without explicit user consent, is inspired by a similar vision.

Such technocratic solutions, however radical in their objectives – breaking up Facebook or Google is no small feat – stop short of charting an appealing, post-technocratic and political vision for a world rich in data. Instead, they seek solace in a centralized, rigid and heavily bureaucratic model invented and originally deployed a hundred years ago. It’s probably true that 10 smaller Facebooks would be less damaging than the Facebook of today. This, however, is no political program.

Demanding to break up tech giants is fine, but what kind of non-commercial institutions and arrangements should exist in a just digital society where neither Facebook nor Google play the dominant role? Lacking a convincing answer, the technocratic agenda reveals itself to be mere economism in anti-establishment rhetorical disguise: the fundamental question of what awaits us in a world beyond big tech is to be answered by market competition itself.

What, then, of the third – and, for the moment, least visible – current in the techlash debate? Its adherents, currently to be found in a smattering of radical municipal movements, some of them in power across Europe, preach neither markets nor technocracy but, rather, radical democratic transformation. They do not start by assuming that market competition is always the right answer. Instead, they revise the question itself, moving away from redressing the ills of big tech and towards asking what sort of arrangements and institutions might underwrite a more progressive digital future.

How could digital technologies help redesign core political institutions, including representative democracy and its bureaucratic apparatus, and make them more decentralized and participatory? Proponents of this view imagine citizens not as sophisticated and emancipated consumers – merely to be served by more ethical digital capitalists of the future – but, rather, as active, political and, occasionally, entrepreneurial subjects.

This third approach questions the adequacy of treating data and artificial intelligence as commodities

Once given unmitigated access to the most advanced technologies of the day and a modicum of resources, these citizens are trusted to find effective solutions to the very problems that currently baffle remote planners and bureaucrats. They might even invent new services, of both commercial and non-commercial variety, that are currently hard to imagine because access to the key resources of the digital economy – data, identity, artificial intelligence – is tightly controlled.

Unlike economism and technocracy, this third approach does not aim to create more efficient markets, either by extending the paradigm of private property to data or by breaking up tech monopolies. Rather, it questions the adequacy of treating data and artificial intelligence as commodities rather than as collectively produced and socially useful resources. In doing so, it seeks to empower those that have been excluded from the leading roles in the digital economy and bureaucracy alike.

Faced with a resurgent rightwing populism that questions, not always incorrectly, the virtues of the unreformed administrative state, a progressive movement would not get very far by promising a mere return to the technocratic apparatus of the New Deal or of the original welfare state. Likewise, those advocating “economism” have a steep road ahead, as they are preaching the deepening of the neoliberal agenda at a time of growing pushback against globalization, financialization and tax avoidance.

The choice for the undecided movements on the left is simple: if they truly want to depart from the neoliberal dogma, with its insistence on competition as the overarching political and social device of modernity, they should resist rhetorical and ideological temptations of “economism” and “technocracy” and rally behind the option of the radical democratic transformation.

It might be the most ambitious – and most ambiguous – of the three techlash currents. However, for all its utopianism, it’s the only option that allows progressive forces to stop merely defending the past, and, for a change, articulate a just, fair and egalitarian vision for the digital future. If they fail, the rhetorical space would not rest empty forever: the rightwing populists would get there fast, minus, of course, all the justice and egalitarianism.

Gigs Up!

I predict that as the new ## du jour as we wind down the kerfluffle of the women’s movement, the irony not lost that it perhaps is happening on the worst day of weather across the country is a symbol that cannot be lost. Remember the Climate Change marches?  Me either.

Again could we find a coalition and somehow find issues that we agree are priority and in turn eliminate individual mandates for the collective whole?  Funding for schools, raising the minimum wage, affordable housing, equal rights that include gender/sexuality/religion, Immigration and climate change.  Start there, it is a big list and given the people currently serving in office those seem to be 7 – 13 on matters of import.  Wow lucky 13 right there!   One through six seem to be more money for the rich via tax cuts, deregulation, Russia, walls, China and suffocating free press.

The reality is that America’s greatest economic generator is the tech sector and their relationship with China is fraught with complex issues that make any seen on the Bachelor kiddie play.  Part of the Valley’s innate problem is they are exactly like the Oligarchs were of yesteryear, protecting their own class and securing their economic place in society.  They have a better vocabulary that professes doing good but so far I have seen or heard little that actually demonstrates this.    Sure I can freely Google but the costs are my personal privacy and a violation of my own personal civil rights for privacy. 

We used to feed the Gods that were Wall Street and in turn all hearts and minds fell to them to ensure that the prosperity of America was under the dubious belief that all Americans could grow wealthy and find economic security through the concept of investments in public funds.  Sure that was then this is now and if anything we learned from 2008 that regardless of the crime we pay the costs and do the time.

I have been using Lyft of late as I travel across the city to get to appointments, pick up goods and try to manage at times a commute that I prefer to rely upon buses frankly as there is less conversation and less confusion as how to go three city blocks.  Seriously Google your maps with all your tech are junk.  Weird how that works out and as if I would get into a driverless car knowing that.

Millennial’s you are so used to people aka “Mommy”  driving you as you shuttled to school, to practice, to homes and to play dates you are pretty sure everyone loves that and as Chauffeurs are related to Green Books and the rich you came up with the idea of ride sharing.  Really it is a taxi but without that pesky regulation and licensing.  Good plan.   Then you have the same person shop for your Groceries and bring them home and if you cannot manage actually doing real meal preparation then the same person who drove you home, shopped for you and brought it to you will go out and get takeout for you.   I used to call that a Parent, then a Husband and then I got independent and shit and managed to do it myself.  Wow and I car shared my own car via Car2Go and drove myself, parked it, found it later and used it again.  Saving money and bother of owning a vehicle when this thing called public transit was not convenient.  You know like grown ups do and shit.

But Silicon Valley is the valley of the dolls, they have one shared brain and don’t do fun ones like those in the book by Jacqueline Susan.  They would be better off.  I am still trying to figure out how Lyft and Uber have valuations in the billions when all they are are taxi and food delivery services and they actually don’t even own the taxis, so they have no tangible assets in which to inventory and assess value.  And they don’t produce any product that is sold and can be in turn valued for gross income versus net profit after labor and manufacturing costs are tallied.  So they get individuals to use their cars, pay their insurance to drive strangers all over town for a cut of the costs they bill the passenger.  Like Taxi and Limo Services only the cost of upkeep for the vehicle and insurance is covered by the company.  I used to love that show Taxi!  So anyway if the driver gets into an accident or is hurt by a car or a passenger that falls to them to repair said vehicle, pay any costs and are ultimately responsible. Same with the passenger.  Good luck with that if anyone has ever dealt with insurance you will find yourself lost in a quagmire of hell and I have a suspicion that they don’t look kindly on these kind of drivers so I suspect that is one hell of a premium.

One thing I have learned is that I ask all my drivers what they do and where they live.  Few if any live in Nashville proper, hence the reliance on the tool (in every sense of the word in a negative manner) on Google maps.  They also commute themselves as a result to drive around the city finding gigs and one driver I had informed that she worked all day and made $6.00.  She lived an hour commute outside Nashville and has been doing this for two years and frankly given her lack of knowledge knowing the area I was shocked as she was nice but okay. Then we had the “Hotelier” who seemed to know nothing about commercial development or anything about Hotels but was building one that he could not share with me as it would disrupt the hotel industry.  This is from someone who came here 10 years ago to be a Musician and worked waiting tables while failing at that career and now was driving Lyft. But I felt like I was trapped with an aspiring Donald Trump the way he informed me about real estate investments. Funny that I had to tell him about current hotels and land for sale but okay then.  Sure this is the Nashville Way – stupid.

I would rather walk than use Lyft and I rarely tip and did with the woman as I felt bad as when I am directing them and having to deal with all this to get from point A to B it just isn’t worth it.  I have watched cars drive by as they are confused by where I am standing and in turn gotten into some vehicles that the driver was so bizarre that I ended the trip earlier feigning I forgot something.

I urge you to read this and understand that the Valley is about green and by green they mean money that is how green the valley is.

Silicon Valley’s grand experiment in jobs means employees are the guinea pigs

By Katherine Boyle
The Washington Post
January 18 2019

Katherine Boyle is a venture capitalist at General Catalyst in San Francisco.

For roughly 2,300 years, Aristotle’s edict “We work in order that we may have leisure” has explained a lot of why humans do what they do. Philosophers in every age have upheld the virtue of work, providing that, at some point, we could kick back a little bit.

But Silicon Valley is busy fiddling with that ancient contract. Among technologists building our task-based gig economy, there have emerged two factions holding opposing theories of the future of work and what it means. In one, we each will need to have many jobs. In the other, we will not work at all. It’s unclear in which direction we’re headed.

The first group — the UBERians, let’s call them — believe the gig economy will give workers more money, more time and more flexibility. In a perfect UBERian world, we will all be gig workers, working for a variety of platforms, enjoying the benefits of life as independent contractors. As Uber and Lyft — the current victors of the gig economy — go public this year, it’s also clear that Silicon Valley’s grand experiment with gig employment is not so much freedom from labor but gamifying it so that workers will do more of it. The next time you climb into the Prius you just summoned, ask your driver if he or she is on track to hit their Quest bonus today and see what happens.

The second group — the UBIans, let’s call them — believe machine intelligence will soon replace much of work as we know it. The UBIan mantra is: “We work on algorithms in order that . . . oh no, humans may never need to work again.” As human labor increasingly becomes the most expensive input in the “technical stack,” this faction believes much of work will become obsolete and the government will need to give everyone some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to live.

Universal Basic Income has become intellectually so trendy in Silicon Valley that it’s a little like last season’s Juicero — faddish and frivolously accepted as something society really needs. When UBIans gather in their cryptocurrency WhatsApp groups — UBIans aren’t fans of dinner parties, as they tend to fast “to enhance cognitive function” during the week — they’ll cite the success of UBI in Kenya and Uganda, where GiveDirectly, a nonprofit, offers unconditional cash to small groups. Or the Alaska Permanent Fund, which has been supplying Alaskans with a yearly cash dividend since 1982. “On a limited scope,” they’ll say, “this works!”

As everyone knows, when Silicon Valley investors assess start-ups, their primary question is, “Will it scale?” When it comes to solving the riddle of an economy where work is dramatically changing, many who work with me in the digital economy are eager to foist the problem on Washington. Perhaps they know full well that our gridlocked Congress will not enact the greatest change to welfare since the New Deal. For many technologists, UBI is an intellectual get-out-of-jail-free card that makes it easier to stomach the long-term effects of our preferred business models.

On the flip side, many advocates for the gig economy genuinely believe their new business model is better for workers’ lives. And for many workers, it is: Uber and Lyft and many of their like are strong platforms for part-time workers who make gig work a supplement to a full-time job.

But the reality of who benefits seems to relate directly to the type of gig work one does and how much of it one performs: According to a JPMorgan Chase Institute study, from 2013 to 2017, gig-worker earnings fell by 53 percent in the transportation sector but grew by 69 percent in the leasing sector. Thus, if you’re driving, you’re likely worse off than you were five years ago. But if you’re renting an apartment, you’re faring much better.

Meanwhile, it’s somewhat unclear how many people the gig economy really serves. Government agencies can’t even agree on “who” a gig worker is: The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently declared a slight decline over 12 years in gig economy workers to 10 percent of the workforce, while the Federal Reserve says contractors compose closer to 30 percent, the difference being whether gig work is primary or supplemental income, which again, isn’t easy to measure. Even Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, the two economists who published a widely cited study in 2016 on the gig economy, recently walked back their conclusions that the gig economy was growing rapidly.

Growing or not, it’s clear though that politicians are not keen to fund the social costs of these new business models; more likely, they will force tech companies to unravel the problems themselves. In December, New York officials enacted a guaranteed minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers of $17.22 per hour. Neither the UBERians nor the UBIans applauded. That may be because it’s increasingly clear what most people want: a traditional relationship with their employer. Silicon Valley would be wise to heed the signs — as well as the literal signage — now popping up on streets. Last year, when striking workers picketed outside many Marriott hotels in San Francisco, they held up signs that said, “One job should be enough.”

While the future may mean choosing no job or many, many of us are still with Aristotle, craving that weekend nap.

Google This

As a second tier employee few understand what that is like both emotionally and financially. I was an office temp for a large part of my work life and when young it suits but as one ages and seeks security it is tasking and not in a good way.

Olsten Temps and Kelly Girls were designed for women to fill office jobs and ultimately save company money by not being a full time employee.  Such employees are at ‘will’ and that means exempt from Unemployment, Health Care, Vacation,  Pension and Workman’s Comp (again there is two tiers there as well) as well as  long term professional growth and security. This history is well behind much of the gig economy of today  and thanks to this we have graduated to a new level of white collar temps that Microsoft pushed forward and now all of the valley has graduated to employ the same tactics. 

Now as Google testified before Congress about their data collection practices their employment ones have also come to light.  Can you Google that? 

Revealed: Google’s ‘two-tier’ workforce training document

Exclusive: internal document shows how Google employees are trained to treat temps, vendors and contractors

Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
Guardian
Wed 12 Dec 2018

Google staff are instructed not to reward certain workers with perks like T-shirts, invite them to all-hands meetings, or allow them to engage in professional development training, an internal training document seen by the Guardian reveals.

The guide instructs Google employees on the ins and outs of interacting with its tens of thousands of temps, vendors and contractors – a class of worker known at Google as TVCs.

“Working with TVCs and Googlers is different,” the training documentation, titled the The ABCs of TVCs, explains. “Our policies exist because TVC working arrangements can carry significant risks.”

The risks Google appears to be most concerned about include standard insider threats, like leaks of proprietary information, but also – and especially – the risk of being found to be a joint employer, a legal designation which could be exceedingly costly for Google in terms of benefits.

Google’s treatment of TVCs has come under increased scrutiny by the company’s full-time employees (FTEs) amid a nascent labor movement at the company, which has seen workers speak out about both their own working conditions and the morality of the work they perform.

American companies have long turned to temps and subcontractors to plug holes and perform specialized tasks, but Google achieved a dubious distinction this year when Bloomberg reported that in early 2018, the company did not directly employ a majority of its own workforce.
Recreation of part of a Google training document

According to a current employee with access to the figures, of approximately 170,000 people around the world who now work at Google, 50.05% are FTEs. The rest, 49.95%, are TVCs.

The two-tier system has complicated labor activism at Google. After 20,000 workers joined a global walkout on 1 November, the company quickly gave in to one of the protesters’ demands by ending forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment – but only for FTEs.

On 5 December, the walkout organizers published an anonymous open letter addressed to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, from “TVCs at Google”. The letter detailed some of the material concerns that TVCs face due to Google’s differential treatment, including lower wages and “minimal benefits”.

But beyond financial inequality, the letter focused on disparate access to information. “Google routinely denies TVCs access to information that is relevant to our jobs and our lives,” the letter states. “When the tragic shooting occurred at YouTube in April of this year, the company sent real-time security updates to full-time employees only, leaving TVCs defenseless in the line of fire. TVCs were then excluded from a town hall discussion the following day.”

Google disputed this account of the shooting, saying that it worked to provide TVCs with security updates during the incident, though some information was sent through a different email account or came from TVCs’ direct employers. The company also said that it invited TVCs to an all-hands meeting at YouTube after the shooting and gave TVCs at the campus where the shooting occurred access to post-shooting resources, including counseling.

Google said it provided employees with training on many topics, including this material on TVCs, “to adhere to labor laws and policies”.

“We hire Google employees to work on jobs that are core to our business, and look to temps, vendors and contractors when we either don’t have the expertise or infrastructure ourselves, or when we need temporary help due to employee leaves or short-term projects,” a Google spokeswoman, Jenn Kaiser, said in a statement. “Temps, vendors and contractors are an important part of our extended workforce, but they are employed by other companies, not Google.”
Red badges v white badges

Matt was on his way to a “whole team” meeting for a project he was working on when he noticed that one of his co-workers, a test engineer, was still at his desk. “You should come,” Matt, a Google software engineer, recalls saying, only to be told that the meeting was not actually for the whole team: temps, vendors and contractors were not allowed.

“The guy sits with us,” Matt told the Guardian of his co-worker. (Matt asked not to be identified by his real name because he is not authorized to speak to the media.) “Like literally next to my desk. He’s got better knowledge than me about parts of the project, to be honest … It changes the dynamic a lot.”

While excluding his co-worker from an important meeting bothered Matt, leaving the TVC out in the cold was the proper procedure, according to The ABCs of TVCs. “When we share strategic or proprietary information with TVCs through meetings or communications, it can create both co-employment and information security risks for Alphabet,” the document states.

The training instructs Google employees not to invite TVCs to all-hands meetings, team offsites, or the company’s weekly “TGIF” meeting, where employees vote on questions to post to top executives. Indeed, according to two current employees, the company often employs security guards to stand outside all-hands meetings, admitting those whose employee badges are white (FTEs) and keeping TVCs, whose badges are red, outside. The security guards themselves are subcontracted and wear red badges.

The training document includes a number of other common scenarios that Google employees might encounter when working with TVCs. One slide asks whether “Gary” should reward his vendor team with Google T-shirts after they complete a major task.

“Gary should not reward them with shirts,” the document explains, because “swag, bonuses, and other gifts are considered taxable income to the individual”. Instead, Gary is advised to send a thank-you email or write a positive comment on G+, the social network used internally at Google.
Recreation of part of a Google training document

Another scenario involves a Googler noticing that a TVC has listed Google as their employer on LinkedIn, illustrated with a LinkedIn profile of “Tom Temp” claiming to be a “Staffing Coordinator – Google”.

“Since TVCs are not Alphabet employees, they may not represent themselves as such on resumes or external sites (e.g. social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, etc),” the document states. Googlers are encouraged to either “address it with the temp directly”, report the TVC via an anonymous form, or report the TVC to their direct employer.

Other rules address paying for expenses (“their travel should not, under any circumstances, be paid for using a Gcard”), dealing with medical issues, and handling the ambitions of a TVC who wants to take professional development courses (“training beyond what they need to do their jobs is considered an employee benefit … they may not enroll in or attend soft skill or professional development trainings”).

Throughout the training document, the “risk” that TVCs pose to Google is raised numerous times. The document names three types of risks: deviation from the “code of conduct”, such as concerns about harassment or discrimination; risks to security and privacy; and the risk of “co-employment”.

It is this third type of risk that earns the most attention in the document. “Co-employment is a relationship between two or more employers in which each has actual or potential legal rights and duties with respect to the same employee,” the document explains. “If found to be a joint employer of a TVC by an agency or court, then Alphabet could be liable for employer obligations, as well as acts and omissions leading to employment related legal claims.”
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The legal designation of employees is a frequent issue in Silicon Valley, where the multibillion-dollar valuations of startups like Uber and Lyft rely on classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.

But while Uber and Lyft have thus far been able to maintain a legal distinction between the software engineers in their corporate headquarters and the armies of drivers working in their own vehicles, there is a major precedent for a tech giant getting in trouble over the TVCs in its own offices.

Microsoft spent much of the 1990s embroiled in a dispute over its expansive use of “permatemps” who often performed similar work to Microsoft employees, but without the access to employment benefits or stock options. In 2000, Microsoft agreed to pay a $97m settlement over a massive class-action lawsuit brought by permatemps.

That settlement was estimated to cover an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 individuals, far fewer than the number of TVCs currently on Google’s books.

To Matt, this is the real reason that he was tasked with learning The ABCs of TVCs. “It’s all about saving money,” he said. “If someone sues them, they want to point at all this fake shit and say, ‘Hey look, there’s such a big difference, see?’

“We are legally in the clear to treat people like garbage.”

"Poor" People

I put that in quotes as that is the way the rich view the poor, as some cluster of individuals due to circumstance they are poor.  This is usually attributed to race and ethnicity as white people who are rich do feel some guilt and in turn surround themselves with those who come here via an H1B1 Visa to demonstrate their equality and openness to those who are “different.”  I have met and known many of those who come from India and China and found them to be the most conservative individuals I have ever met.  And yes guess what even those from Spanish speaking countries are often quite conservative largely due to their engagement in the Catholic Church.  So to presume all Immigrants are card carrying liberals rarely actually meets and speaks to them.   But let’s all hold hands and prove how open we are to the poor and all that.

Trump opened the door for the hate wagon to drive through. The irony that his Presidency is largely supported by the Evangelical cohort cannot be lost, the most conservative and judgemental of all faiths seem to have no problem shoving racism, infidelity and fraud (as that is much of the issues behind Trump’s bankruptcy) into the back of the Bible.

Living in the dead zone for the Bible Belt I have long held suspicion that these are the most hypocritical idiots on the planet. They profess the Bible but when it comes to walking the walk not so much.  Hence the prosperity pulpit and other memes that from the pulpit have less to do with God and more to do with greed that enables the Evangelical right to preach the bullshit they do.

This Sunday I went to Church.  To say it was an alt church of hipsters would be an accurate description but oddly still diverse.  It was not as odd and masculine as the former Mars Hill Church in Seattle that I wandered into when they took over and restored an abandoned Church in downtown Seattle. Irony that the Church too has disbanded as it was one of the most bizarre scenes I have ever witnessed in a Church – largely young, white males, chest thumping, espousing hate.  It was akin to watching a Hitler Youth rally.     Thankfully Storyville coffee exists and I get my beans every two weeks to remind me of the joyous times sitting in the Pike Street Market one on a Sunday doing my religion of reading The New York Times.  And yes I knew of their agenda, I had actually walked into a Mars Church and heard the bullshit, at that time the founder was anti Yoga, but I also believed that these kids needed to see other people, have dialogs and exchanges that would contradict the idiocy of Mark Driscoll.  And today they still exist and have a different message.  So again opening minds is always an uphill battle.

So when I was invited to the Legacy Church I went with an open mind and I found it interesting. I had no complaints and would possibly go again if so invited, but alone no.  Again I don’t think this is a place for me as a single woman and I simply don’t have the connections to fit in comfortably which is odd given the messages of the Church.  This is where the line of hypocrisy is drawn when it comes to religion.

And when I read this story about the Silicon Valley Minister I was surprised and relieved.  Honesty should be the foundation of the Church and of late the Poor Persons Ministry long advocated by Rev. William Barber in North Carolina has finally crossed state line here and activists are starting to step up here in Nashville, the city that distrusts outsiders in the same way they loathe conflict.

And coming from liberal bastions like Seattle and San Francisco where I had also lived, this message did not shock me.  What I saw in Seattle was this overwhelming need to talk the talk and walk it not so much.  The reality is that when it comes down to the me versus you, me will always win.  Just the current hysteria in the Seattle Public Schools over HCC (Highly Capable) learning is just another example of many ways that when it comes right down to it, families care about their kids first and if your family can benefit great but don’t let it harm my kid.   

**Seattle has been working to eliminate Advanced Placement etc for years by creating a Honors for All type program so that all kids can access the AP and other advanced curriculum that has largely been the provenance of white families who can afford the tutoring, testing and fees associated with placement and achievement and by dismantling this they in turn open the door to wider enrollment and less self segregation.  It is going over like a lead balloon.  Schools integrated – yes, Classes – not so much. **

So when I saw Nasvhille had started a Gifted and Talented program I busted out laughing as it was putting random kids only those enrolled in the 8th grade into a room and labeling them that.  No curriculum nor endorsed/trained teacher and this was to do what?  The reality is that it should start at 5th Grade and they follow the cohort through middle school until 8th to see what testing data results.  But in many of the schools they did not even bother to do that as some were simply on call Teachers that roved throughout the building and taught part time in overflow classes.  It was a joke and farce like all things in Nashville Public Schools.  

So when it comes to Church and faith I have a similar disbelief and while I respect those who choose said avenue I want nothing to do with it.  And clearly even those deep within want nothing to do with it either.  Funny how the Minister’s Parishioners did not want to hear the truth as that is the point of religion – myths.   And yes in my visit the hit for money was subliminal and clear with a story about a family who tithed, had some crisis that in turn challenged that and then suddenly a miracle happened and an insurance policy that the family had paid them off and all was right with the world!  Miracle? Myth or Coincidence?  Hey I am all for Prayer and solace it guides but it always comes down to money.  And yes I through 10 bucks in the kitty as I felt I got my money’s worth. I am just not sure how one defines worth when it comes to faith.

‘Elitist den of hate’: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area’s rich liberals

Gregory Stevens resigns after tweets about Palo Alto, slamming tech industry greed and empty social justice promises

Sam Levin in San Francisco
UK Guardian
Tue 22 May 2018

A Silicon Valley pastor has resigned from his church after calling the city of Palo Alto an “elitist shit den of hate” and criticizing the hypocrisy of “social justice” activism in the region.

Gregory Stevens confirmed Monday that he had stepped down from the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto, an LGBT-inclusive congregation, after his personal tweets calling out the contradictions of wealthy liberals in northern California surfaced at a recent council hearing.

In emails to the Guardian, the 28-year-old minister detailed his “exasperation” with Palo Alto, a city in the heart of the technology industry, surrounded by severe income inequality and poverty.

“I believe Palo Alto is a ghetto of wealth, power, and elitist liberalism by proxy, meaning that many community members claim to want to fight for social justice issues, but that desire doesn’t translate into action,” Stevens wrote, lamenting that it was impossible for low-income people to live in the city. “The insane wealth inequality and the ignorance toward actual social justice is absolutely terrifying.”

He later added: “The tech industry is motivated by endless profit, elite status, rampant greed, and the myth that their technologies are somehow always improving the world.”

Local headlines about Stevens, who has faced intense backlash from residents and city leaders, labeled his tweets “nasty”, “vile”, “unsavory” and “unholy”, highlighting posts in which he called Palo Alto “disgusting” and said: “I hate ‘social justice’ in Palo Alto. What a fucking joke.”

Local critics had surfaced Stevens’ tweets while opposing an effort by the church to get permits to allow new community activities in the space. His old tweets were geared to “small group of progressive ministers and Leftist political activists”, he said, adding that he had vented his frustrations in “an unprofessional and often hurtful way” and was resigning to “minimize the negativity” facing the church.

But, he later added, “I think rage and anger toward oppression and injustice is a Biblical calling on our lives.”

The underlying messages to Stevens’ tweets, however, touched on continuing tension in Silicon Valley, where some of the world’s wealthiest companies and entrepreneurs have pledged to better the world through innovations, yet working class families and poor residents struggle to afford the most basic necessities. The region has one of the worst homelessness crises in the country and a huge shortage of affordable housing, forcing tens of thousands of low-income workers to commute more than 50 miles to work.

Stevens, who is queer and has lived in Palo Alto for nearly three years, noted that his church was located in one of the richest neighborhoods in the city, with houses worth anywhere from $5m to $15m.

“Jesus was a homeless Jew who said it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle,” he wrote, adding: “It is very difficult to do Christian ministry, a ministry that calls us to fight with and for the poor and marginalized among us, in the midst of an enclave of wealth and power.”

He argued that the church’s rich neighbors could afford to “feed and house” all the homeless people in Palo Alto and surrounding cities, but instead focused on passing laws that further criminalized this population, encouraging police to harass those sleeping outside or in cars. The city had also made it hard for the church to provide meals for the homeless by requiring costly permits, he said.

In his email to the Guardian, Stevens was also outspoken about the harms of the tech sector, accusing Facebook of “completely destroying (through rapid gentrification) the historical black and brown East Palo Alto neighborhood”, which is adjacent to the tech company’s Menlo Park headquarters and not far from his church.

“The working class does not benefit from these ‘advances’, but cook, clean, and baby sit rich babies before heading off to home on long hours of public transit.”

Stevens said he was originally drawn to the church because of its “progressive Baptist theology”, noting historical Baptist figures such as Nat Turner, who led a slave revolt, and Martin Luther King Jr. He said he was also inspired by the local pastor, a gay man who had fought for years to be ordained.

But Palo Alto, he said, “wanted nothing to do with actual justice and was more so interested in guarding their enclave of power and wealth”, adding: “If the wealth inequalities are not addressed, any talk about climate change, homelessness, and migrant rights is in vain.”

The Almighty

No not God but I was thinking more in lines of a mortal, Mark Zuckerberg.  Yesterday the Prince of Tides was forced to testify before Congress for a grilling of a few hours where he was propped up on a soft cushion. Don’t they do that in restaurants for small children?

Anyway, the King of Queens (yes I am going to do this until bored) was resplendent in adult wear and perhaps an adult diaper to prevent leakage should he shit himself, hence the booster chair.  Odd to see his Majesty out of the T-shirt and hoodie he has made as the resplendent costume of the Valley set and instead wearing a sedate blue suite.

I never got Facebook and still have a fake account under an assumed name that Facebook claimed upon its origin was not possible, well guess that is not exactly true.  I rarely use it unless bored and curious about people I hate then I have a look and a laugh and move on.  I tweet but nowhere near the level I did when I first joined years ago, it gets boring ranting to oneself and the few responses are not worth it.  Tried having dialogues and meeting people from message boards and the like over the years and what your have in common over the Internet is what you have in common over the Internet, real life not.so.much.

True I hear of those who have had successful online relationships pan out of the PC and into the home but I am not one of them.  And I doubt I will ever be one again.   I did not say never I said ever and that is a very distinct difference in the use of the word.

For those who idolize him he reminds me of the Boy Prince who came before and too sat before the panel of Benihana Chefs to be grilled, Bill Gates. That was at the time an Attorney for good not evil, David Boies, was taking out a case regarding Microsoft’s monopoly, the business not the game. Well they are sort of one of the same.  And yesterday for one brief shining moment that word was mentioned by Senator McCain’s work wife, Lindsay Graham, and then duly ignored.  As were most of the questions as we know that all Kings have people just ask Cromwell about that one to do their bidding.

The United States is nowhere near dealing with the issue of Tech monopolies in the same way they are not willing to do what the European Union is doing with both that issue and the right to privacy under the “Right to be forgotten” law.

So the new gig, The Apology Tour, lacks the panache and glamour of a Rolling Stones tour and has less swag to sell but what they are selling is pretty amazing, your entire history and personal information and you gave it them willingly. And in turn what Facebook has taken credit for revolutions and used in other societal events including the Women’s March, the Teacher’s strike and the Gun movement  but in many cases from the Arab Spring to Myanmar that is not always a good thing as sometimes moving fast and breaking things just leaves things broken. Facebook isn’t too big to fail and neither are any of the tech giants. And that does not make them Kings or Gods.

But in reality our Congress largely filled with elderly arrogant idiots who know of Facebook but not of Facebook asked few relevant questions and allowed the Boy Prince to wear down the clock. The House however did and that event was not for the consumption of the public as we cannot see our King decapitated.  But this analysis I think fittingly suits the failure of the inquisition. 

Facebook isn’t too big to fail

By Christine Emba Columnist The Washington Post April 10

The 2008 financial crisis made the phrase “too big to fail” a part of common parlance. Until now, it’s been used mainly to describe financial institutions that have become so vital to our system that their collapse could take down the larger economy. When these institutions run into trouble, the government feels obliged to step in — and it has.
Following Mark Zuckerberg’s first day of testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, one wonders: Is Facebook trying to usurp the “too big to fail” designation for itself — and with the opposite policy outcome in mind? Rather than asking for support or intervention, Zuckerberg’s message is that his social network is so systemically important that the government should just leave it alone.

In a string of news appearances and in his prepared testimony, the Facebook chief executive continued to make a glowing case for the importance of his platform. In interviews, he mused on the “philosophical question” of helming a community of more than 2 billion active users, and about his “social mission” of connecting the world in new ways. Before Congress, he went further, painting a picture of the platform as all but essential to the functioning of the United States. “After Hurricane Harvey, people raised more than $20 million for relief. And more than 70 million small businesses now use Facebook to grow and create jobs.” And while Zuckerberg apologized for the mistakes the company has made, he made clear that he views it as his responsibility — and no one else’s — to fix them.

At least at Tuesday’s joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce, Science and Transportation committees, many members of Congress appeared willing to accept Zuckerberg’s reasoning. It’s easy to see why they might.

It was clear, for starters, that the majority of those asking the questions weren’t necessarily familiar enough with Facebook’s technology to suggest any specific regulation to secure user data in advance of the next Cambridge Analytica-style scandal, or to prevent a new infestation of Russian bots. Why not allow Zuckerberg — the expert — to figure it out? He did roll out what seemed like dozens of new ideas and next steps for securing the Facebook platform. It was hard to tell whether they were real fixes or Band-Aids, however, and the senators didn’t seem up to the task of figuring it out.
Perhaps more important, much of Congress seemed to buy into the myth of Facebook’s importance and the inevitability of its growing influence. In his opening statement, Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) said, “Today’s hearings are extraordinary. . . . But then, Facebook is pretty extraordinary.” Later, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) waxed nostalgic about how his were the first Senate business cards printed with a Facebook address, and how today his young son was already dedicated to Instagram, another Facebook-owned platform.

Yes, there were questions about what the company should change in the future or what it should have reported earlier. But few bothered to wonder whether the platform was worth all the trouble it had caused, or whether it was time for a major shift in how it operates — its revenue model, its data-collection methods, its end goal of world connection.
That’s a mistake. Facebook may tout itself as an idealistic operation, connecting humans across the globe for the greater good, but its business model is based on monetizing as much personal data as possible. In essence, the company has ushered in a new era of what is essentially personal surveillance for profit. Facebook may be making itself safer or more secure, but it hasn’t answered the question of whether we should continue to interact with it at all.
Certainly, at least, Facebook is not too big to change. Congress should remember that the social network is not too big to be punished for prior bad actions, it’s not too big to be tightly regulated by experts, and it’s not too big to be reformed in ways that could help us all.

After all, it’s not even clear that Facebook’s leadership is entirely convinced of its own hype. In Europe, plans for a consumer-oriented regulatory scheme are underway, to be implemented next month. And as my Post colleague Anne Applebaum has noted, Zuckerberg seems to be rather excited to have the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation suggest changes to his site. Clearly, Facebook’s not too big to accept orders, and it’s not too big to pivot when needed.
After this week’s hearings, Congress should begin to look past Facebook’s bluster about its size and importance. It should resist the urge to take the company’s protestations at face value, and it should begin to push for real legislative remedies to the social network’s problems rather than leaving them to the site’s users to deal with after the fact.

Facebook may be big, but it’s not too big to fail.

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