Elon Musk

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump and Elon Musk are dangerous narcissists tailored to 2022 America | Robert Reich

      by

      Trump and Elon Musk are dangerous narcissists tailored to 2022 AmericaRobert ReichWe’re better off when people like them cannot gain such untrammeled wealth and influence. Our politics is the worst for it We likely won’t know all the results of America’s midterm election for a while, but consider two people not on any ballot who are setting the tenor for much of what we have heard and seen.First is Elon Musk, who last Friday fired half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, including teams devoted to combating election misinformation – and did it so haphazardly and arbitrarily that most had no idea they were fired until their email accounts were shut off.This was after he fired Twitter’s executives to avoid paying them the golden parachutes they’re owed. And after posting an article suggesting without evidence that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was in a drunken fight with a male prostitute.It has been a long 10 days since Musk bought Twitter.But this has been his MO all along.Taunting opponents. Treating employees like dung. Bullying adversaries. Demeaning critics. Craving attention. Refusing to be held accountable. Attracting millions of followers and gaining cult status. Spreading misleading information. Making gobs of money.Impetuous. Unpredictable. Ruthless. Autocratic. Vindictive.Remind you of anyone?Musk is not exactly Donald Trump. They’re different generations, possess different skills, occupy different roles in the bizarre firmament of modern America. And Trump is far more dangerous to democracy – so far.But both represent the emergence of a particularly American personality in the early decades of the 21st century: the wildly disruptive narcissist.Both wield sledgehammers to protect their fragile egos. Both are utterly lacking in empathy. Both push baseless conspiracy theories (such as the one cooked up about Paul Pelosi).Both are indefatigable self-promoters.Both are billionaires, but they are not motivated primarily by money. Nor are they fueled by any larger purpose, principle or ideology.Their singular goal is to imprint their giant egos on everyone else – to exercise raw power over people. To make others grovel.Their politics is neither conservative nor liberal. Call it megalomaniacal authoritarian. (It seems likely Musk will give Trump back the giant Twitter megaphone Trump lost when he incited the attack on the US Capitol.)But why have both achieved such prominence at this point in history? Why are so many enthralled with them?The answer, I think, is that a large segment of the American public projects its needs and fantasies on them. People who are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” crave strongmen who shake up the system.People who have been bullied their whole lives want to identify with super bullies who give the finger to the establishment, answerable to only their own ravenous egos.Their arrogance and certitude attract millions of followers, fans, and cultish devotees, along with a fair number of goons and thugs, who want to vicariously feel superior.But they are not leaders. They are bullies who demean America.Others aspire to the same status – Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who flies undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blames wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who refuses to commit to the outcome of the election. And the other infamous high-tech zillionaires, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.Yet none comes close to Musk and Trump for sheer in-your-facedness, gleeful bombast and the brazen assertion of power to dominate and force others to submit.Beware. The last time the world gave in to megalomaniacs it did not end well.The robber barons of the Gilded Age – men like William (“the public be damned”) Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller – siphoned off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest of the nation had to go deep into debt to maintain their standard of living and overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.When that debt bubble burst in 1929, the world got a Great Depression. And that depression paved the way for Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, who created the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed, and the most deaths.We are much safer when economic and political power is widely diffused. We are better off when people like Musk and Trump cannot gain such untrammeled wealth and influence.We all do better when fewer Americans feel so helpless and insecure that they’re drawn to reprehensible bullies who parade across the public stage as if possessing admirable qualities.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionElon MuskUS politicscommentReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Inside the unhinged midterm election conspiracy theories on Truth Social

      by

      Inside the unhinged midterm election conspiracy theories on Truth Social Stuffed ballot boxes, ‘BlueAnon’, support for Russia and ‘corporate communists’ are catnip on the rightwing platform Ballot boxes being stuffed. “BlueAnon”. Men in underpants. Every Democratic candidate: a “complete weirdo psychopath”.To dive into Truth Social, Donald Trump’s Twitter-but-for-conspiracy-theorists social media platform, is to enter a world where all of the above are real topics of debate, breathlessly discussed by Trump-backing Republicans and anonymous rightwing provocateurs.Twitter sued by former staff as Elon Musk begins mass sackingsRead moreTruth Social has always been a platform for lies and obfuscations; about the 2020 election, the Democratic party, vaccines, Hunter Biden. But with less than a week before the election, the platform and its users have become even more unhinged.The site, formed as Trump’s alternative to Twitter after he was banned from that platform in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, is awash with false theories about how the Democratic party is attempting to manipulate the midterm vote, false claims about the attack on Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and false accusations about Democratic candidates themselves.As one of the most followed Truth Social users, Donald Trump Jr, son of the former US president, has been one of the most prominent agitators.In the run-up to the election, Trump Jr has used the platform to echo rightwing talking points about vaccines, drugs, Ukraine and a host of other issues. His posts are eagerly lapped up by fellow Truthers, and he isn’t the only thought leader on the platform.The unusually named Catturd2 has emerged as one of Truth Social’s tastemakers since the site launched, and with more than 760,000 followers – Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority speaker has only 54,000 and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s on-off friend and lawyer, has 89,000 – when Catturd2 speaks, people listen.In recent days Catturd2 has mostly chosen to speak about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Like numerous other Truth Social users, Catturd2 has their doubts and has echoed a rightwing, homophobic, incorrect conspiracy theory about the attack – an idea Trump Jr also peddled on Truth Social.But Catturd2 has other thoughts, too, including on the Democrats running for election in the midterm elections.“Every single Democrat candidate is a complete weirdo psychopath,” Catturd2 wrote recently, in a truth that was liked by more than 6,000 accounts, and which largely captures the attitude of Truth Social users toward Democratic politicians and their supporters.Truth Social launched, chaotically, in February 2022. Billed as “a major new platform” where Republicans and Democrats alike could converse in an environment free from the “censorship” of big tech – an environment with an “ironclad commitment to protecting vigorous debate” – thousands of would-be users were unable to access the service for weeks, and Trump himself was said to be furious with the platform.Trump had planned a $1.3bn merger of Truth Social with Digital World Acquisition Corp, a blank check company, but the deal has been plagued by delays and is under federal investigation. In October it emerged that the co-founder of Trump’s social media company had told the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the company’s efforts to raise $1bn were based on “fraudulent misrepresentations … in violation of federal securities laws”.Still, Truth Social has managed to grow in popularity, with its number of users surging past other rightwing platforms like Gab, Parler and Gettr. Even if Truth Social’s 1.7m US unique visitors a month is dwarfed by Twitter and Facebook, it has become the go-to meeting place for Trump supporters to voice unsubstantiated concerns about voter fraud.As the election looms, ballot “drop boxes” have become the particular bete noire for the rightwing crowd. Introduced so that people can drop off their early voting or absentee ballots, to Truth Social users these drop boxes are nothing more than election fraud in plain sight – flimsy, poorly guarded containers where Democratic backers or members of the deep state regularly stop off to jam hundreds of fraudulent ballots into the counting system.On Truth Social, people have been called to action.“Get out and help patriots. Watch those ballot drop boxes. We can’t let them steal another election,” msannthrope wrote, in a post similar to hundreds of others on the platform.In fact, on Tuesday a judge issued a restraining order against a rightwing group in Arizona which had deployed people to watch over drop boxes, after accusations of voter intimidation, but the obsession with the boxes hasn’t gone away.Thousands of users posted a link this week to a story from a rightwing website which alleged irregularities at ballot drop boxes in Pennsylvania, a state which Trump and his supporters have accused of seeing fraud in 2020. Politifact, a non-partisan fact-checking website, reported that people had “successfully inserted 18 ballots into three of the eight ballot drop boxes in Centre County, Pennsylvania, before the official window of time when the boxes were open to receive ballots”.But, Politifact wrote: “The ballots are not evidence of fraud. The voters simply didn’t follow directions,” while Michael Pipe, the county’s commission chair and chair of its election board, told local news station KDKA-TV. The ballots will not count towards the Pennsylvania vote, Pipe said, because they were returned incorrectly.If misinformation is king on Truth Social, then that might explain how Marjorie Taylor Greene, a darling of the Trump-Republican movement who is known for both extremism and incompetence, has become one of the loudest voices in what is a very loud room.Throughout October, her account has been a flurry of vague assertions about the Democratic party: half-baked off ideas and theories tossed off apropos of nothing, without explanation or justification.“There are more Democrat conspiracy theories & theorists on Twitter than Qanon ever produced,” Taylor Greene wrote on October 28.“Most have blue check marks, post their pronouns, support war in Ukraine, are triple vaxxed & boosted, and work in corporate media, Hollywood, or the government.“Blueanon [an apparent play on the rightwing QAnon conspiracy theory] is dangerous.”It wasn’t clear – because she didn’t say – what had set Taylor Greene off. But she clearly enjoyed this foreboding, dystopian style, because the next day, she was back at it.“Corporate communists control the speech of their employees & customers by only allowing Democrat speech and punishing, silencing, and canceling Republican speech,” Taylor Greene said.If it was unclear how the concept of a corporate communist would actually work, then it was also unclear what Taylor Greene meant by her grimly threatening follow up: “But there is a shift beginning,” she wrote. “People are beginning to refuse to be silenced and a Patriot economy is beginning.”Perhaps the real motivation for these posts is simply that people on Truth Social love stuff like this. Truth Social is, according to its bosses, a platform where anyone is free to say whatever they want, but what they mostly want to say is that they don’t have anywhere to speak.“Why are people being censored for misleading or false information and not the biggest offenders, the media?” user mikesonfire pondered obliquely this month.Mikesonfire’s other posts have included a suggestion that the military, not “biased clerks” count votes, and that: “Russia invaded the Ukraine to stop the NWO [New World Order, a conspiracy theory which states a cabal of elites is striving for a world government] for producing more viral weapons”.Russia has been a particular fascination for Truth Social users, many of whom have spoken sympathetically about the country and its invasion of Ukraine. Other users have posted approvingly about a Russian government plan to ban people from suggesting homosexual relationships are “normal”, and the hashtag IStandWithRussia has been used repeatedly over the past month.In recent days, despite users’ apparent satisfaction with Truth Social, the main interest has been Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and how it might impact the Democratic party in elections and beyond.Musk’s vague promise to overturn Twitter bans has had people giddy with excitement, claiming it could open the door to a glorious era of Republican reign.“Democrats are not going to be able to handle free speech and the corrupt Democratic Party will fall apart after hearing the truth,” one Truth Social user gravely intoned after Musk purchased Twitter.Another posted: “3 PATRIOTS🇺🇸 TRUMP, MUSK, & [Steve] BANNON,” above a photoshopped picture of the three men. Others “truthed” photos of Musk entering the Twitter HQ, and reveled in the departure of Twitter employees.Troublingly for Trump and Truth Social, however, the most striking response from Truth Social users was the large number of them pleading with Musk to be allowed to return to Twitter.For now, Truth Social might be the platform of choice for those loyal to Trump and his election lies, but it seems large numbers of the platform can’t wait to get away.TopicsDonald TrumpElon MuskSteve BannonUS politicsSocial mediaNancy PelosiRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Twitter’s mass layoffs, days before US midterms, could be a misinformation disaster

      by

      Twitter’s mass layoffs, days before US midterms, could be a misinformation disasterInternal chaos at the company – and the decimation of its staff – has created ideal conditions for falsehoods and hateful content The mass layoffs at Twitter that diminished several teams, including staff on the company’s safety and misinformation teams, could spell disaster during the US midterm elections next week, experts have warned. The company has laid off around 50% of its workforce, according to news reports; a figure that Musk and others have not disputed, amounting to an estimated 3,700 people.The internal chaos unfolding at Twitter, in addition to a sudden lack of staff and resources dedicated to counteracting misinformation, has created ideal conditions for election misinformation to thrive, said Paul Barrett, an expert in disinformation and fake news at New York University.What changes has Elon Musk made at Twitter and what might he do next?Read more“Twitter is in the midst of a category 5 hurricane, and that is not a good environment for fostering vigilance when dealing with inevitable attempts to spread falsehoods and hateful content on a very influential platform,” he said.Elon Musk and other senior figures have sought to re-assure the public. Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, said in a tweet on Friday that the layoffs affected “approximately 15%” of the trust and safety team – responsible for combating misinformation – with its “frontline moderation staff experiencing the least impact”.Musk also stated that he had spoken to civil society leaders at the Anti-Defamation League and the nonprofit Color of Change about “how Twitter will continue to combat hate and harassment and enforce its election integrity policies”.However, members of those groups claimed on Friday that in laying off the teams responsible for retaining election integrity, Musk had “betray[ed]” those promises. They called on advertisers to pull funding from Twitter as risks around elections continue to mount.“Retaining and enforcing election-integrity measures requires an investment in the human expert staff, factcheckers, and moderators, who are being shown the door today,” said Jessica J González, co-CEO of civil liberties group Free Press. In addition to a portion of its trust and safety team, Twitter appears to have axed the entire curation team, responsible for creating guides to authoritative information often surfaced alongside topics with high risk of misinformation. A London-based team member tweeted on Friday that the group at Twitter “is no more”. Another former team member echoed the claims on Friday, stating that the changes “will make Twitter noisier, more dangerous and less interesting”.Twitter also appears to have eliminated its ethics, transparency, and accountability team, which is in charge of opening up the platform’s algorithm for external review and studying the amplification of misinformation and other content.Although Musk has not made any concrete policy changes, nor allowed back any high-profile banned figures such as Donald Trump, the lack of staffing could pose a major problem for enforcing existing policies, Barrett said. Although automated systems are likely to continue to run, “you need human beings to pick up subtle forms of misinformation”.“It does not seem like there will be many people at the desk in the office prepared for oversight of content that could contribute to the continuing erosion of trust in our election system,” Barrett said.Twitter layoffs raise questions about future of infrastructure and moderationRead moreIn addition to misinformation concerns on Twitter, cuts to infrastructure have raised alarm that the platform itself may not survive the influx of traffic expected during the elections. The issue was called into focus earlier this year when a whistleblower accused the company of “egregious” failings in security and safety.An internal source at the company told Reuters that the infrastructure cuts were “delusional”, adding that when user traffic surges, the service can fail “in spectacular ways”.While it is too soon to measure concrete impacts of Twitter’s restructuring, early tracking shows hate speech is increasing. Researchers from Montclair State University found in the 12 hours immediately after Musk took ownership on Twitter, “vulgar and hostile” rhetoric saw an “immediate, visible and measurable spike”, including a rise in racial slurs.“What we have seen so far has been a canary in the coal mine for what might come in the days immediately before and – crucially – in the days after the election,” Barrett said. “This is an all-hands-on-deck situation, and unfortunately many of those hands are out the door.”TopicsTwitterUS midterm elections 2022US politicsSocial mediaElon MusknewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Musk posts baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack on Twitter

      by

      Musk posts baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack on TwitterPost comes days after Musk takes over social media platform amid concern that hate speech will run rampant under his leadership Elon Musk was criticized on Sunday after posting a baseless conspiracy theory about the assault of Paul Pelosi to Twitter – the social media giant he took over several days ago with a promise to impose less restrictions on its content.Paul Pelosi, husband of US House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer at their California home on Friday. The attacker, identified by authorities as David DePape, allegedly said “Where is Nancy?” during the attack; president Joe Biden said that she appeared to be the intended target.Musk’s sharing of the conspiracy theory stemmed from a tweet by Hillary Clinton on Saturday. The Democratic former senator shared a Los Angeles Times story about DePape’s apparent far-right leanings.“The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories,” Clinton said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.”Musk responded by tweeting that “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” and shared a link to a post that presented an unfounded conspiracy theory on the hammer attack, the Times reported. This conspiracy post was in the Santa Monica Observer, which the Times described as being “notorious for publishing false news”.Dan Moynihan, a public policy professor at Georgetown University, said in the wake of Musk’s tweet: “A big problem in contemporary American politics is that one party has become obsessed with conspiracy theories, encouraging radical responses including anti-democratic actions and violence. Musk will just make the problem worse.”Musk deleted the response by early Sunday afternoon, according to NBC News. Prior to its deletion, however, it had received in excess of 24,000 retweets and 86,000 likes.“The latest conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi’s attack is frankly too disgusting to print,” said NBC News reporter Ben Collins, in response to Musk’s retweet.The world’s richest man’s apparent sharing of this post comes amid concern that hate-speech and harassment will run rampant under his leadership. Musk has tried to ease concerns about an increase in harmful posts under his ownership, such as his announcement that there would be a new content moderation counsel.Musk suggested that a better approach would be to divide Twitter into various strands. This approach would see users applying content ratings on their posts, and engaging in online disputes, within a special space on the platform.The Guardian has reached out to Twitter for comment.TopicsElon MuskNancy PelosiUS politicsTwitternewsReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The US ultra-rich justify their low tax rates with three myths – all rubbish | Robert Reich

      by

      The US ultra-rich justify their low tax rates with three myths – all of them rubbishRobert ReichA record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of billionaires, who pay a lower tax rate than the average American. This is indefensible On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019.Over those 30 years, the richest 1% of families increased their share of total national wealth from 27% to 34%. Families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2%.Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American.How do the ultra-wealthy justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths – all of which are utter rubbish.The first is trickle-down economics.Billionaires (and their apologists) claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs.Really? For more than 40 years, as wealth at the top has soared, almost nothing has trickled down. Adjusted for inflation, the median wage today is barely higher than it was four decades ago.Trump provided a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, promising it would generate $4,000 increased income for everyone else. Did you receive it?In reality, the super-wealthy don’t create jobs or raise wages. Jobs are created when average working people earn enough money to buy all the goods and services they produce, pushing companies to hire more people and pay them higher wages.The second myth is the “free market”.The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for.The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market’ would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded with decades ago.The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurship with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars – not billions.As to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change.In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in the US for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31m in the 2010 elections to $1.2bn in the most recent presidential cycle – a nearly 40-fold increase.What have they got for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.The third myth is that they’re superior human beings.They portray themselves as “self-made” rugged individuals who “did it on their own” and therefore deserve their billions.Bupkis. Six of the 10 wealthiest Americans alive today are heirs to fortunes passed on to them by wealthy ancestors.Others had the advantages that come with wealthy parents.Jeff Bezos’s garage-based start was funded by a quarter-million-dollar investment from his parents. Bill Gates’s mother used her business connections to help land a software deal with IBM that made Microsoft. Elon Musk came from a family that reportedly owned shares of an emerald mine in southern Africa.Don’t fall for these three myths.Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.The so-called free market has been distorted by huge campaign contributions from the ultra-rich.Don’t lionize the ultra-rich as superior “self-made” human beings who deserve their billions. They were lucky and had connections.In reality, there is no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. It’s distorting our politics, rigging our markets and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people.The last time America faced anything comparable was at the start of the 20th century.In 1910, former president Theodore Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy.Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922.Since that time, both have eroded. As the rich have accumulated greater wealth, they have also amassed more political power – and have used that political power to reduce their taxes.Teddy Roosevelt understood something about the American economy and the ultra-rich that has now re-emerged, even more extreme and more dangerous. We must understand it, too – and act.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionInequalityTax and spendingJeff BezosElon MuskBill GatescommentReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to it | Bernie Sanders

      by

      The US has a ruling class – and Americans must stand up to itBernie SandersIn the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. This is unsustainable Let’s be clear. The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.We know how important these issues are because our ruling class works overtime to prevent them from being seriously discussed. They are barely mentioned in the halls of Congress, where most members are dependent on the campaign contributions of the wealthy and their Super Pacs. They are not much discussed in the corporate media, in which a handful of conglomerates determine what we see, hear and discuss.So what’s going on?We now have more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. In the year 2022, three multibillionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 160 million Americans. Today, 45% of all new income goes to the top 1%, and CEOs of large corporations make a record-breaking 350 times what their workers earn.Meanwhile, as the very rich become much richer, working families continue to struggle. Unbelievably, despite huge increases in worker productivity, wages (accounting for real inflation) are lower today than they were almost 50 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, most families were able to be supported by one breadwinner. Now an overwhelming majority of households need two paychecks to survive.Today, half of our people live paycheck to paycheck and millions struggle on starvation wages. Despite a lifetime of work, half of older Americans have no savings and no idea how they will ever be able to retire with dignity, while 55% of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $25,000 a year.Since 1975, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in America that has gone in exactly the wrong direction. Over the past 47 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50tn in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%, primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful.During this terrible pandemic, when thousands of essential workers died doing their jobs, some 700 billionaires in America became nearly $2tn richer. Today, while the working class falls further behind, multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are off taking joyrides on rocket ships to outer space, buying $500m super-yachts and living in mansions with 25 bathrooms.Disgracefully, we now have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any developed nation on Earth and millions of kids, disproportionately Black and brown, face food insecurity. While psychologists tell us that the first four years are the most important for human development, our childcare system is largely dysfunctional – with an inadequate number of slots, outrageously high costs and pathetically low wages for staff. We remain the only major country without paid family and medical leave.In terms of higher education, we should remember that 50 years ago tuition was free or virtually free in major public universities throughout the country. Today, higher education is unaffordable for millions of young people. There are now some 45 million Americans struggling with student debt.Today over 70 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are finding it hard to pay for the rising cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, which are more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. The cost of housing is also soaring. Not only are some 600,000 Americans homeless, but nearly 18m households are spending 50% or more of their limited incomes on housing.It’s not just income and wealth inequality that is plaguing our nation. It is the maldistribution of economic and political power.Today we have more concentration of ownership than at any time in the modern history of this country. In sector after sector a handful of giant corporations control what is produced and how much we pay for it. Unbelievably, just three Wall Street firms (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) control assets of over $20tn and are the major stockholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies. In terms of media, some eight multinational media conglomerates control what we see, hear and read.In terms of political power, the situation is the same. A small number of billionaires and CEOs, through their Super Pacs, dark money and campaign contributions, play a huge role in determining who gets elected and who gets defeated. There are now an increasing number of campaigns in which Super Pacs actually spend more money on campaigns than the candidates, who become the puppets to their big money puppeteers. In the 2022 Democratic primaries, billionaires spent tens of millions trying to defeat progressive candidates who were standing up for working families.Dr Martin Luther King Jr was right when he said: “We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power” in America. That statement is even more true today.Let us have the courage to stand together and fight back against corporate greed. Let us fight back against massive income and wealth inequality. Let us fight back against a corrupt political system.Let us stand together and finally create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the 1%.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator from Vermont and the chairman of the Senate budget committee
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS CongressBernie SandersRichard BransonElon MuskUS economyJeff BezoscommentReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Elon Musk hits back at Trump and says ex-president should ‘hang up his hat’

      by

      Elon Musk hits back at Trump and says ex-president should ‘hang up his hat’Tesla chief tweets that ex-president should ‘sail into the sunset’ after Trump calls Musk a ‘bullshit artist’ over Twitter bid Stepping up an ongoing verbal clash between the two men, Elon Musk said Donald Trump should “hang up his hat” and is too old to run for the Oval Office in 2024, as a poll shows the former president is losing support among Republican voters.“I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” Musk tweeted late Monday, using the same social media platform that he first tried to buy and is now trying to walk away from. The billionaire businessman’s tweet came after Trump, at a public appearance in Alaska last weekend, called Musk a “bullshit artist” over the Twitter sale.Elon Musk may have to complete $44bn Twitter takeover, legal experts sayRead moreMusk further tweeted that Democrats – who hold seven of the nine seats on the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters – “should also call off the attack”.“Don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the presidency,” Musk wrote.Trump would be 78 when the 2024 presidential election is held. If he ignores Musk’s suggestion to hang it up and wins, Trump would be 82 at the end of his second presidential term.Musk on Friday filed notice to withdraw his $44bn bid to buy Twitter, after the company agreed in late April to sell to him. He argued that the platform had failed to provide promised information on fake and spam accounts, though many observers have noted that tech stocks have plummeted recently, making the sale price look much higher.It’s unlikely Musk will walk away easily. Twitter said Musk backing out was “invalid and wrongful” and is suing him to enforce a provision in the agreement that may compel him to go through with acquiring the platform, assuming he had the financing for it – which the businessman said in May that he had.Trump spoke up after Friday’s announcement, saying the Tesla and SpaceX chief’s deal with Twitter was “rotten” anyway.The Trump-Musk spat has gone on for a while: Musk said he was contemplating supporting Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, as the Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race.In Alaska, Trump claimed Musk said he’d previously voted for him; Musk has denied it, though he has also criticized Twitter for banning Trump’s account on the platform after the Capitol attack.If Musk did vote for Trump, he isn’t alone in having a change of heart, a recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College found. Nearly half of Republican party primary voters are interested in supporting someone other than Trump in the 2024 election, and 16% even indicated that if he was the GOP nominee they would support president Joe Biden, vote for a protest candidate, abstain from voting or be unsure of what to do, according to the poll.That may not sound like much, but that number among Democrats if Biden were to face Trump was 8%, the poll said.TopicsElon MuskDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Musk muses about Mars and Earth – but stays quiet on Twitter deal

      by

      Musk muses about Mars and Earth – but stays quiet on Twitter dealBillionaire avoids talking of collapse of $44bn deal but talks about colonizing Mars and boosting Earth’s birthrates at conference Elon Musk reportedly talked about the colonization of Mars and boosting Earth’s birthrates during his keynote address at Allen & Co’s Sun Valley conference on Saturday, but he avoided discussing his attempt to withdraw from his $44bn bid to buy Twitter.Musk’s talk to close out this year’s edition of the Idaho conference which annually draws tech, media and finance gurus became one of the hottest tickets after lawyers for the Tesla boss filed notice Friday that he was terminating his bid to acquire Twitter. The billionaire accused the social media firm of failing to provide information on bot accounts, among other things, making observers wonder whether he would address such complaints at his speech scheduled for the next day.Elon Musk withdraws $44bn bid to buy Twitter after weeks of high dramaRead moreBut Musk – who is also chief of the private rocket company SpaceX – declined to do so. Instead, he mused about how he viewed Mars as a “civilian life insurance” if a disaster ever wiped out Earth, Bloomberg reported, citing the recollections of multiple people at the closed-door speech.The remarks on Mars echoed a tweet from him earlier this year that humans could land on the planet by 2029.Reuters, who reported speaking with attendees as well, wrote that Musk also expressed concern over the decline of birthrates in wealthy countries. And, Bloomberg added, he also renewed complaints about how Twitter had banned Donald Trump after the former president’s supporters staged the deadly US Capitol attack in early January 2021.It wasn’t immediately clear whether Musk was aware that Trump had called him a “bullshit artist” and his actions with Twitter “rotten” on Saturday while stumping for Republican political candidates in Alaska.Trump’s insult came after Musk last month said he was mulling throwing his support behind Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, rather than Trump as the Republican challenger to the Democrats’ Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.The chief executive officer of OpenAI, Sam Altman, reportedly moderated Musk’s talk Saturday.Musk’s withdrawal from Twitter deal sets stage for long court battleRead moreMusk may be in for a lengthy legal battle after notifying the public of his intent to withdraw from buying Twitter.Twitter chairperson Bret Taylor said the social media platform could sue Musk in a Delaware court to enforce the purchase deal they had struck with the world’s richest man. The agreement contained a provision that may force Musk to buy Twitter as long as he has financing in place, which the businessman said he had in May.Musk could also be fined $1bn if he goes through with ditching the deal, though he is trying to avoid the penalty by alleging that Twitter breached “multiple provisions” of its sale agreement.TopicsElon MuskTwitterUS politicsInternetnewsReuse this content More