
Articles from seekingalpha.com by Gary Gordon, retired stock-broker and prolific serial investment bullshit artist:
Freedom To Vote Act: "To expand Americans’ access to the ballot box and reduce the influence of big money in politics, and for other purposes"
The "Freedom to Vote Act" is presented as a voting rights initiative to rollback evil state-level Republican voter discrimination laws, but in reality it's the other side of the two-pronged assault on third parties and diversity of candidate choice. The unspoken objective is to further duopoly lockdown using GOP gerrymandering and voter restrictions to escalate dozens of restrictions/stipulations on ballot access (candidate funding). The Act centralises campaign financing (including public funds) with big party committees, inevitably excluding challenges from within (e.g. Bernie Sanders).
Under H.R. 1, wealthy donors can effectively circumvent the candidate contribution limit by giving to the party committees directly and have them funnel up to $300 million forwarded candidates, effectively raising the amount big donors can contribute to a candidate to more than $115,000 in a year. H.R. 1 program would replace the 1:1 match in public funding with a 6:1 match, but simultaneously increase the minimum amount of donations (to get matched) by 500% to a minimum of $25,000 in each of 20 states. It would also increase the minimum number of contributions to reach it by 625%.
"Removing the general election public funding grant, H.R. 1 also eliminates the other existing opportunity for minor parties to benefit under the current public financing law, where any party that receives between 5% and 25% would get a pro-rated portion of the public funding in the next election that the major party candidates do. Greens and Libertarians have long argued that a vote for their candidates helps them to get to 5%. Raising the primary election matching funds threshold helps ensure only a limited number of anointed candidates qualify for it, to eliminate those pesky others who stay in primary race too long."
"The Act removes voters’ ability to fund 100% clean money and grassroots campaigns via matching funds, while increasing the role of big money in elections, and limiting voter choice to vote for other than major party candidates — the latter which itself is a de facto form of voter suppression, by removing a positive incentive for many voters to vote. Masters of lesser-of-evilism, Democrats have set up the Devil’s bargain in H.R. 1 — accept a further entrenched duopoly in exchange for your right to vote.
Avril Haines: US intelligence chief intervenes to block state secrets in Saudi Crown Prince's feud with former Saudi official @ MSN Article.
Brent Jamin Budowsky (born 29-Feb-1952) is an American political opinion writer and columnist for The Hill. See Wikipedia entry.
D.J. who moonlights as a titan of Wall Street, David Solomon is a crossover media-finance bullshit artist. Under him, Goldman Sachs - the investment bank - has tried to shed its uptight image as a haven for besuited M.&A. bankers and chest-thumping traders. That effort now includes its own typeface. Meet Goldman Sans. The firm describes the font, which is free to download, as “approachable without being whimsical” and “neutral, with a wink.” It was created for Goldman Sachs by the British design firm Dalton Maag, with a mandate to create a typeface with just the right amount of personality for the 151-year-old bank.
It follows other efforts by Goldman to come across as cool, including relaxing its dress code, pitching itself as a tech company and collaborating with Apple on a credit card. The reaction from experts is, shall we say, mixed. They are on record saying that it suffered from “lack of courage,” was “missing life” and was the typographical equivalent of “a casual Friday.”
Retired stock analyst covering the housing, mortgage and consumer finance industries. US investment strategist and portfolio manager. Work career at PaineWebber and UBS, an adjunct professor at Mercy College in New York. Written articles about - for example - AMC where Gordon advocates sell the stock, exposing reasons why it's going to drop, telling the audience to get out while the going is good. Turns out he's got a lot of AMC stock and he's short on it!
Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) on Twitter | Latest Tweets from Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko). Defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent. War, weapons, beer & heavy metal. A village guy from Donbas in a crusade for something better. Kyiv, Ukraine. US/UK/NATO deep state funded.
The Kyiv Independent newspaper - propaganda cutout
Journalist: Illia Ponomarenko is the defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Joe Biden assured rich donors at a fundraiser (Carlyle Hotel, NYC) if elected, he would not "demonise" the rich and promised that "no one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change."
Biden said that poverty was "the one thing that can bring this country down" but to this donors: "I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money... The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it's all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change."
Biden went on to say that the rich should not be blamed for income inequality, pleading to the donors: "I need you very badly... I hope if I win this nomination, I won't let you down. I promise you."
Biden also complained that some Democrats criticised his eagerness to work with Republicans after they spent years blocking President Obama's agenda and moving further right. Biden pointed out that his ability to work with segregationists like former Mississippi Sen. James O. Eastland and Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge showed that he could "bring people together." (The Washington Post).
Joe Biden: "I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy,' he always called me 'son.'" He also called Talmadge "one of the meanest guys I ever knew." "Well, guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you're the enemy. Not the opposition -- the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore. I know the new 'New Left' tells me that I'm -- this is old-fashioned... Well guess what? If we can't reach a consensus in our system, what happens? It encourages and demands the abuse of power by a president. That's what it does. You have to be able to reach consensus under our system -- our constitutional system of separation of powers."
Neoliberal US Cathedral - Ken Dilanian - Intelligence and National Security Correspondent @ MUCKRACK PROFILE on the neoliberal shill index at muckrack.com website.
The former House speaker Paul Ryan is reportedly preparing to launch a special purpose acquisition company, The Wall Street Journal reports. The investment fund is aiming to raise $300 million in an I.P.O., with Mr. Ryan, who left Congress last year, as chairman. He’s not the only famous face joining the SPAC boom. Figures from financiers like Bill Ackman, Dan Loeb and Michael Klein to the famed baseball executive Billy Beane have launched versions of these “blank check” investment vehicles. They have been buoyed by strong equity markets and private companies’ desire to sidestep the traditionally laborious I.P.O. process by merging with these funds, assuming their stock listings.
This SPAC is notable for its Republican ties. In addition to Mr. Ryan’s involvement, the fund’s sponsor is Solamere Capital, an investment firm run by a son of Senator Mitt Romney, who picked Mr. Ryan as his running mate in his 2012 presidential bid. But its financial adviser has strong Democratic leanings. Mr. Ryan’s SPAC is being underwritten by Evercore, whose founder and senior chairman is Roger Altman, who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations and is a major fund-raiser for Joe Biden.
Evercore has been strengthening its SPAC expertise, hiring Neil Shah, a specialist in these funds, from Citi last year. The bank has also emphasized its capital-markets business of late: Executives told analysts last month that the firm was coming off its “strongest period ever in equity underwriting.”
Four star American Army general and entrenched neoliberal character actor, Stanley A McChrystal was a prime mover in the enrichment detail of the Military Industrial Complex during the Obama Presidency. As is the norm, his retirement from the military led to a series of appointments in business and heading up various fronts for deep state interests. Corporate boards, consulting, speaking fees: How U.S. generals thrived after Afghanistan is a useful article on Stanley McChrystal exemplifying how ex-generals sell their battlefield experience in other arenas, from corporations to Covid-19 response grifting.
“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”
Voluble stupidity is a great disguise in a society where silence is suspect.
The problem with falling into line with the duopoly paradigm (e.g. Democratic v Republican) is it’s designed to force people into a self-regulating (and group-signaling) repetition of factional loyalty affirmations, and since the real world isn’t represented by either ‘faction’ of mostly grasping, corrupt political orthodoxies, the people end up having to misrepresent a distorted version of the world to fit the needs of the loyalty affirmation. This distortion ends up calcifying into a divergence, fed by fake news and false prejudice.
Want some examples? #defundthepolice doesn’t mean no police, Alex Jones doesn’t support school shooters, Rogan doesn’t hate trans people, Black Lives Matter isn’t trying to destroy the family, Trump isn’t the next Hitler, Boris isn’t the champion of the patriotic Briton, Cummings isn’t trying to set up a fascist database, Biden isn’t going to tax the corporate oligarchs, Russia didn’t impact the 2016 US election, wearing masks on public transport isn’t an affront to your freedom, locking down whole cities is an affront to your freedom, Putin isn’t an evil modern Stalin, Putin isn’t the everyman savior of the Russian people, Xi Jinping isn’t a socioeconomic mastermind, Xi Jinping isn’t a communist dictator. Etc.
In America, for instance, Democrats think everyone else is a homophobic gun-toting Nazi looking for ways to deny climate change, force rape victims to have babies and lock immigrants in cages. Republicans think everyone else is a pedophile enabler who wants to take away guns, censor free speech, kill babies, raise taxes and destroy their way of life.
Identity politics is encouraged, as a way to atomize, by forcing collisions: purity statements, condemnation of perceived ‘other team’ untermensch, then the disgruntled target of the condemnation reacting by getting sucked into joining the opposite team. And the cycle perpetuates.
The whole game of team factions is banal and stupefying. It tears the potential for popular unity apart; not because of any real ideological differences between citizens but because it degrades everyday debate into a contest of petulant proletarian monkeys throwing their own excrement at the sound of foghorns.
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