![…when will it end? [DOT(…or not?) 9/6/24] – DeadSplinter (1)](https://i0.wp.com/deadsplinter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/communion-conjoined-fi-500x381.jpg "…when will it end? [DOT(…or not?) 9/6/24] – DeadSplinter (1)")
…so, I expect I’ll get around to it eventually…but I read a thing that contrasted freedom with liberty as concepts & framing devices for understanding a relationship with power & its exercise…& I suppose I’ve been wondering if a similar pairing might be commemoration & memorialisation…or maybe I mean veneration & contemplation…I don’t know…haven’t decided…but…aside from the ones who think service is for suckers…pretty much every politician in sight has been trying to rub some borrowed glory on themselves about the heroism of the men who landed on normandy beaches on D-day…&…sure…you’d be right in thinking the “they’re suckers” guy is the orange one…but boy did rishi give him a run for his money this time…didn’t bunker down in a hotel room because the rain might destroy the elaborate pretense that there’s hair on the top of his head…but not only did he duck out early before the bit where the rest of countries’ leaders rocked up in the same place…& have it seem like he picked getting interviewed for ITV as the better offer…he then tried to blame it on the schedule having been set before anyone knew it’d be during the campaign…despite the part where *he picked when that happened so he knew sooner than anyone else*…& the part where
…because that means *even without the election overlap* that was the plan…which means he was always going to do it & nobody clocked it as a bad look…but…with all apparent seriousness…they think people will respond positively to the part where he “very quickly took responsibility, admitted it was a mistake – & of course offered the public a sincere apology”…notwithstanding the contrast with how none of them will apologize for the sh*t they’ve pulled for nearly a decade & a half…or even just his stretch of late…or just the last few days & all this bollocks of being told not to say that getting a bunch of civil servants to draw up a “costing” of nebulous references to policies that have yet to be presented in “fully-costed manifesto” form to generate a figure to claim labour will jack taxes up by…& them saying “if you use this like it’s a real thing you can’t say it was generated independently”…then adding the not-big-enough-to-sound-scary annual figure into a total for the duration of the next parliament…& then repeating it a dozen times on live national tv while claiming exactly the thing he was told he couldn’t say about it…before keir got off his rhetorical ass & began to push back…nah…they’ve gone full dotard on that one
…just keep repeating it & hope that’s all that sinks in when folks tune out…that’s the ticket…I want to be joking…but…I’m really not…like…there’s a bunch who go by “led by donkeys” after a popular sentiment regarding the feelings of the enlisted fighting the war towards those waging it by wagering their lives…&…in the UK system basically the PM is decided sort of the way the speaker of the house is more than the president…but…for context…here’s the two tickets polling 2nd & 3rd to labour…per led by donkeys
…you might prefer…russell howard’s version…who’s a bit like a young jon stewart might be if he’d come up a bit working class from bath via bristol…in case you’re not familiar
…appearances…even repellent ones…can still be deceiving
…big difference between richer than the king & richer than the crown…but…fair play?
…so…surprising nobody, I’m sure…I’ve been trying to read about more or less anything else to get away from thinking about why I don’t think the land of my birth is altogether well…much less balanced…call it a bizarre sort of escapism…except…it doesn’t feel like I’m the once who escaped so much as I’m watching a movie in which escaped lunatics cow normal people into silent masses…& the protagonist never shows up…which is a bit hyperbolic…but…it’s hard not to be when so much is couched in nothing else…sure…candidate should-be-in-jail-already is all about the not-even-a-little-bit-subtle “veiled” threats of political violence…or…if you parse it out…suggesting that the “real” genocide is the one the whole world is perpetrating on the white american male…& that’s the existential threat that trumps all others…even if…you know…there are an awful lot of those…possibly enough to constitute some sort of meta-existential threat…but…that way madness lies…so…ahem…where were we?
Donald Trump went to Phoenix and called the United States a “failed nation” and a “very sick country.” […] invoked the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, saying Biden had orchestrated an “invasion” at the border as part of “a deliberate demolition of our sovereignty” because “they probably think these people are going to be voting.” […] hailed a modern-day tyrant, Hungary’s Viktor Orban (“strong man, very powerful man”), complained about “endless wars” and “delinquent” Europeans, and vowed to “spend our money in our country” — including by “moving thousands of troops, if necessary, currently stationed overseas to our own borders.” […] his message in Phoenix was full of self-absorbed thoughts on his “rigged trial in New York” and nihilistic commentary: “It’s all fake. Impeachment is a fake. The court cases are a disgrace to our country. Everything is fake.” He went on: “I don’t like using the word ‘bulls—’ in front of these beautiful children, so I will not say it.”
The crowd struck up a chant: “Bulls—! Bulls—! Bulls—!”
Trump laughed.
[…]
Trump’s first week as a “political prisoner” was trying.He was sentenced to play round after round of arduous golf — including some very challenging par 5s!
He was forced to endure the harsh confines of his triplex at Trump Tower, his compound at Mar-a-Lago and his Boeing 757.
He was exposed to the dangerous conditions of a United Fighting Championship event — ringside, no less — for more than three hours.
He was even subjected to the most cruel and unusual punishments: a 90-minute interview with “Fox & Friends,” an hour with Sean Hannity and even a harrowing one-on-one with Newsmax.
Finally, he was transported all the way to Phoenix on Thursday and forced to experience the adoration of ardent supporters at a campaign event.
And you thought Alexei Navalny had it bad.
…well…yeah…for all the reasons I wouldn’t compare the two, really
But he sees great value in proclaiming himself a “political prisoner,” as his campaign did in a fundraising pitch almost immediately after he was convicted last week. Biden, asked by NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell to react to Trump’s claim that Biden had taken him prisoner, could come up with no response other than a dumfounded smile — which the Trump campaign determined was the “look of evil.”
“Did you see that sick smile?” Trump asked in another pitch to supporters. “HE’S SMILING BECAUSE HE HAS YOU IN HIS SIGHTS!”
Hmmm. What was Trump trying to do by telling his followers that he had been taken prisoner by his opponent and suggesting that Biden now had a loaded gun aimed at them? If it weren’t clear enough, Trump directly threatened violence in his “Fox & Friends” interview, which aired Sunday. If he were imprisoned or put under house arrest, “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”
At the start of his campaign event in Phoenix on Thursday, where supporters waved posters of Trump’s mug shot with the words “Never Surrender,” a video played featuring Trump’s frequent warning that his supporters are in danger: “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I just happen to be standing in their way.”
…ignoring…at least for now…that they aren’t coming for him…they have him…bang to rights…on a spread that’s vast but still just a sliver of the sh*t he’s done in full view at full volume…& it’s people to stand between him & what he has coming to him that he’s begging for…even the ones that believe that claptrap…don’t live in that kind of place
Trump has made many such violent threats over the last couple of years, as The Post’s Aaron Blake noted: Predicting after the FBI retrieved classified documents from Mar-a-Lago that “people are so angry” it could mean “terrible things are going to happen”; warning after his indictment in the hush-money case of “potential death & destruction” and saying “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”; foreseeing “bedlam in the country” if he were prosecuted; and, asked if there will be violence if he loses in November, responding: “It depends.”
…& I want to have faith that what it depends on is him being as full of sh*t as usual & there won’t be…but he’s peddling that sh*t just as hard as he can…like a duck trying to pretend it’s sat on a flat calm lake & not a few yards upstream from a massive set of rapids & a giant f*cking waterfall…but…idiots swallowed hook, line & sinker last time…so…I could be having one of them crisis of faith things?
He poked the paranoid again with his “Fox & Friends” appearance on Sunday, warning darkly about “the enemy from within” doing more “damage to this country” than Russia or China.
On Tuesday, he threatened that, in response to the imaginary “weaponization” of the Justice Department that he and his MAGA followers have conjured, he would actually weaponize the Justice Department against his opponents if he regains power. “It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” he warned on Newsmax.
He repeated the threat on Hannity’s show the next day, saying he would have “every right” to prosecute his political opponents. Hannity repeatedly tried to get Trump to refute the belief “that you want retribution, that you will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies.” But Trump, hemming and hawing, wouldn’t do it: “Look, I know you want me to say something so nice,” he said, “but I don’t want to look naive.”
On Thursday, he expanded his call for vengeance, saying that he wants to see indictments of the members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
[…]
Trump and his allies want revenge, regardless of the merits. Old Trump hand Steve Bannon said that the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “should be — and will be — jailed” for his role in the hush-money case.
[…]
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist cultivated by Trump, said Democrats should be punished with “not just jail. They should get the death penalty.”
[…]
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) said he wanted to “aggressively go after the president and his entire family” because “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
…& they put that fool on intelligence oversight…so I guess that bid paid out for somebody…but I feel like we’d disagree about who the goose is in that equation…because only one lot seem to me to be “aggressively go[ing] after the [candidate] and his entire family”
This sort of thing has real consequences. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke about “heinous threats of violence being directed at the Justice Department’s career civil servants.” But Republicans on the committee kept right on going with their claims of “weaponization of the government against U.S. citizens” and “coordinated lawfare against Trump.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/07/trump-phoenix-campaign-rally/
…so…I’ve been trying to put some things into perspective…don’t know that I succeeded…but…for example…if you actually buy in to what felonious chump is selling…you appear to have mistaken the US for…well…HK would be a pretty good exemplar?
Five years ago, on June 9, 2019, I watched 1 million people march through the streets of Hong Kong.
Some put the crowd count higher. Police — as they do everywhere — put it lower. But it was a sea of humanity, stretching as far as I could see from my perch on one of the city’s ubiquitous elevated walkways. It was the largest protest in Hong Kong’s history, and by far the largest I’d ever seen anywhere.
…I mean…the jan 6 mob probably wasn’t the biggest crowd at a protest in the US ever…but…in terms of goals & conduct…at least on that day…comes pretty close to ticking all the boxes the principal beneficiary of the US effort likes to make out
It was also almost entirely peaceful, even festive, representing a cross section of Hong Kong society. I saw students and elders, well-known activists and ordinary people, and couples pushing children in strollers. It turned ugly only briefly, at midnight, when police fired pepper spray at a few hundred stragglers who refused to disperse.
…the bit of government business they were looking to obstruct via civil disobedience wasn’t quite so run of the mill…but…the method for getting it on the books kind of was at that juncture
Looking back, it seems odd that a technical amendment to an existing ordinance would engender such widespread public attention and antipathy. Lam insisted the extradition bill was merely closing a “legal loophole.” Hong Kong already had extradition treaties with more than a dozen countries. China had inadvertently been left out.
…& it was genuinely an antidemocratic sham designed to mortally wound a one-time democracy
That was untrue. China was deliberately left off the list at the time of the special administrative region’s 1997 handover of sovereignty from British to Chinese rule. Hong Kong enjoyed a Common Law system and proudly upheld internationally accepted judicial standards and human rights. China’s legal system was, and still is, a black box. Criminal suspects in China are subject to arbitrary detention, torture, forced confessions and a denial of medical treatment. China boasts a 99 percent conviction rate for suspects, sometimes after trials held in secret.
…so…what does that look like in a state in thrall to an autocratic master?
Normally, seeing 1 million people in the streets would give any elected leader pause. But Hong Kong in 2019 wasn’t a normal place, and Lam was not an elected leader. She was a career bureaucrat with no political experience, appointed by mainland China and ratified in the position by a small committee of pro-China loyalists. The vast majority of Hong Kongers had no say.
Lam’s response to the million-person march was something like imperial disdain. She said the people “didn’t understand” the bill. She said the government only needed to communicate better. And in her most condescending remark, she compared the demonstrators marching in the streets to her children throwing tantrums to get what they wanted. She vowed to ram the hated extradition bill through the pro-Beijing legislative council three days later, on June 12, 2019.
…but the children persisted in throwing their tantrum…& she blinked in the end…after things came to blows…which…the way this one argues the toss…is maybe where it went off the rails in a way that equates to losing before the real fight happened
The protesters learned a lesson that day — one that ultimately led to Beijing’s crackdown and its remaking of the city in China’s authoritarian image. We marched peacefully and Lam ignored us, some later told me, but when we became violent, she suspended the bill. Violence, they concluded, gets results.
…marinate for a few months…&…hey presto
By then, the protesters’ demands had grown, and the protests became more violent. They wanted an independent investigation into acts of police brutality that took place on June 12. They demanded that people arrested be freed and that rioting charges against them be dropped. They demanded universal suffrage — and Lam’s resignation.
…& five years later?
Five years on, I am left pondering a series of “what ifs,” counterfactuals that might have changed the trajectory of Hong Kong’s history, and might have saved it from the repression it now faces.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/07/hong-kong-china-protests-anniversary-lam-extradition-law/
[…]
We’ll never know what might have been. What we know is that Hong Kong has been changed irrevocably — by events set in motion five years ago on that second Sunday in June.
…thing is, though…we very much do know how it went for the “political prisoners” (domestic edition) who protested the tyranny of joe biden’s america…& it has as much in common with getting extradited to the mainland china penal system as the oranjeboomer has with navalny
…the part where the man is the figurehead of…well…oddly…maybe the farthest thing from a monstrous regiment…but john knox would probably get where they’re coming from…be easier to call it a criminal enterprise than a political party, anyway…that’s obviously a bit of a giveaway
Trump Vows to Lower Prices. Some of His Policies May Raise Them. [NYT]
…but then…what is it they say…by their fruits ye shall know them, wasn’t it?
This week, Breitbart interviewed the former Trump official Peter Navarro, one of many criminals in the ex-president’s orbit, from the Miami prison where he is serving four months for contempt of Congress. While life behind bars is difficult, Navarro boasted that his stint has been smoothed by his ties to Donald Trump, which make him something of a made man. The former president, said Navarro, is beloved not just by the guards, but by the “vast majority” of inmates as well. “If I were a Bidenite, things would be a lot tougher here — and yes, they know exactly who I am and respect the fact that I stood up for a principle and didn’t bow to the government,” he said.
…in the movies that’s how it goes when the aryan brotherhood has your back…which is probably a flattering comparison to someone I’d just as soon not flatter…but…certainly fruity?
One of the more unsettling things about our politics right now is the Republican Party’s increasingly open embrace of lawlessness. Even as they proclaim Trump’s innocence, Trump and his allies revel in the frisson of criminality. At his rally in the Bronx last month, for example, Trump invited onto the stage two rappers, Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, who are currently facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder and weapons possession. (They’ve pleaded not guilty.) During Trump’s recent criminal trial, his courtroom entourage included Chuck Zito, who helped found the New York chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and spent six years in prison on drug conspiracy charges. (The Justice Department has linked his Hells Angels chapter to the Gambino crime family.) Trump, who has his own history of mafia ties, has repeatedly compared himself to Al Capone. MAGA merchants sell T-shirts — and, weirdly, hot sauce — showing Trump as either Vito or Michael Corleone from “The Godfather” movies, with the caption “The Donfather.”
Both liberals and anti-Trump conservatives have sometimes had trouble getting their heads around this phenomenon. Often the go-to move is to point out hypocrisy: so much for law and order! But the disturbing thing about the MAGA movement’s outlaw turn isn’t that it’s failing to live up to its own conservative values. It’s that it’s adopting a sinister set of new, or newly resurrected, ones.
…or at least…appropriated the ones with the highest cultural familiarity…way more people have seen enough mafia movies than prison dramas where the aryan brotherhood makes an appearance…& these are not imaginative people
Ganz’s book excavates a prehistory of Trumpism in the angry, cynical period between the end of the Cold War and the full flush of the Clinton boom. You can see, in the rise of figures like David Duke, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan, Trumpism in embryo. (The chapter on Duke, and the cultish loyalty he inspired, is particularly illuminating.) But the most revelatory section — some of which Ganz has adapted in a post for his Unpopular Front newsletter — involves the mystique around the mobster John Gotti and the Buchanan-style paleoconservatives who saw, in the mafia, an admirable patriarchal alternative to the technocratic liberalism they despised.
Both Murray Rothbard, a co-founder of the libertarian Cato Institute, and Sam Francis, a white nationalist who has become posthumously influential among MAGA elites, found in “The Godfather” novel and films a vision of a self-governing social order more admirable than our own.
…if this wasn’t already well on the way to being interminably long…well…probably well past…but…also possibly not even halfway…so…all things are relative, I guess…I’d probably try to argue that it’s just a particularly familiar riff on a more broadly applicable bit of fantasy wish fulfillment…we like stories where the protagonist gets to exist on their own terms by sort of over-writing the reality we’re familiar with existing in with one where they have…more or less…complete agency & matching license…to some degree simply by “not accepting” the rules of the established order & controlling their immediate environment well enough to “get away with it”…the mob is just one flavor…the way semantics is just one plane within a broader semiotic volume…or whatever…but…it is…so I won’t get into that part?
Francis used the German terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to contrast the values of the Godfather with those of liberal modernity. Gemeinschaft, he wrote, describes a culture based on “kinship, blood relationship, feudal ties, social hierarchy, deference, honor, and friendship,” whereas Gesellschaft refers to a social world that is atomized, calculating and legalistic. “It is a principal thesis of The Godfather that American society is a Gesellschaft at war with the Gemeinschaft inherent in the extended families of organized crime, and it is the claim of the novel and even more intensely of the films that the truly natural, legitimate, normal, and healthy type of society is that of the gangs,” wrote Francis in 1992.
There’s a similar dichotomy between Trump and his enemies: He represents charismatic personal authority as opposed to the bureaucratic dictates of the law. Under his rule, the Republican Party, long uneasy with modernity, has given itself over to Gemeinschaft. The Trump Organization was always run as a family business, and now that Trump has made his dilettante daughter-in-law vice chair of the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party is becoming one as well. To impose a similar regime of personal rule on the country at large, Trump has to destroy the already rickety legitimacy of the existing system. “As in Machiavelli’s thought, the Prince is not only above the law but the source of law and all social and political order, so in the Corleone universe, the Don is ‘responsible’ for his family, a responsibility that authorizes him to do virtually anything except violate the obligations of the family bond,” Francis wrote. That also seems to be how Trump sees himself, minus, of course, the family obligations. What’s frightening is how many Republicans see him the same way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/07/opinion/donald-trump-mob-maga.html
…funny how they went for…the german words for the concepts they were after…but I’m sure that’s a completely innocent coincidence…still…never seems too hard for the audience to get the picture in the movies…but there I go off on a semiotic tangent when I promised I wouldn’t…so…let’s see
On Thursday, Pew Research Center released an extensive report looking at Americans’ views on questions about race, gender and cultural issues. It included questions that help delineate the unique ways in which Trump supporters view those issues and the extent to which insecurity about the status of White men, in particular, is elemental to the movement.
Take a question about whether the diversity of America’s population strengthens the country. Overall, Americans were more likely to say that diversity strengthened society than they were to say that it weakened society by a 54-point margin. Among Biden supporters, the gap was 78 points. Among Trump supporters? Only 30. Less than half of Trump supporters said that America’s diversity strengthened society.
[…]
Also notice the staggering low numbers among White Trump supporters, almost none of whom consider slavery to have ongoing effects and almost none of whom believe that Whites have systematic advantages in society. Instead, many Trump supporters and White Republicans in general view Whites as targets of unfairness and discrimination — a sentiment that has long been a driving element of Trump support.
[…]
Just as Trump supporters are less likely to believe that there are systemic obstacles for Black Americans, they are also more likely to believe that systemic obstacles for women have been overcome. For these questions, Pew broke out responses by gender and age, showing that Trump-supporting men, particularly those under the age of 50, believe that systemic sexism is a thing of the past.They are also more likely to see gains made by women in American society in zero-sum terms, with 4 in 10 Trump-supporting men under the age of 50 thinking that those gains have come at the expense of men. Biden-supporting men under 50 are also more likely than Biden-supporting women to hold that view, but at less than half the rate of Trump supporters in that group.
Perhaps Pew’s most pointed question on this subject centered on the increase in racial diversity in the United States over time, largely a function of the increase in immigration since the end of the baby boom. Most Americans, including most supporters of Biden and Trump, see the decline in the percentage of Whites in the population as neither good nor bad. But Trump supporters are 35 points more likely to say “bad” than “good,” compared with a 14-point gap overall.
[…]
Nearly 1 in 5 Trump supporters views the increased diversity in the United States as very bad for society.There is research that shows that White Republicans are more triggered by reports of the decline in the density of the White population in America and that the idea of hard lines of racial identity is overly simplistic. Pew’s research makes obvious how the former concern manifests on the right.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/06/trump-supporters-polling-race-immigration/
…so…you’d think it might come over a bit clearer when transubstantiated into partisan fodder than it seems to be to some folks?
If you’re a Democratic strategist, the perception gap between opinion and reality is a profound political problem. It’s hard for a presidential incumbent to win re-election when so many Americans are so deeply discontent, and these same strategists are confronting a political party that has every incentive to magnify American problems. Republicans want a stink of failure to surround the Biden administration.
[…]
The fundamental argument on the Trump right since 2015 has gone something like this: If America isn’t a failed state, it’s at least a failing state. It’s an economic and military paper tiger that has rejected God, can’t tell male from female, and is lapsing into a state of chaos that only a strong leader can confront. He, alone, can fix it.But MAGA is frustrated. The Constitution blocks Trump from doing what must be done. It blocks him from seizing the level of control that the far right believes the moment requires. And so now, for parts of MAGA, the Constitution itself is part of the crisis. If it doesn’t permit Trump to take control, then it must be swept aside.
…sure do look like he’s all about that
Elements of this argument are now bubbling up across the reactionary, populist right. Catholic post-liberals believe that liberal democracy itself is problematic. According to their critique, the Constitution’s emphasis on individual liberty “atomizes” American life and degrades the traditional institutions of church and family that sustain human flourishing.
Protestant Christian nationalists tend to have a higher regard for the American founding, but they believe it’s been corrupted. They claim that the 1787 Constitution is essentially dead, replaced by progressive power politics that have destroyed constitutional government.
Still others believe that the advent of civil rights laws created, in essence, a second Constitution entirely, one that privileges group identity over individual liberty.
…people will believe any old sh*t if they think there’s enough in it for them, I suppose
The argument that the Constitution is failing is just as mistaken as the argument that the economy is failing, but it’s politically and culturally more dangerous. Reversing a crime wave doesn’t require us to abandon the Bill of Rights. Achieving economic prosperity doesn’t require authoritarianism. But if your ultimate aim is the destruction of your political enemies, then the Constitution does indeed stand in your way.
…not that they see it that way…they aren’t the villain of their movie, after all…they’re on the side of the angels ushering in the return to the promised land
The original Constitution and Bill of Rights, while a tremendous advance from the Articles of Confederation, suffered from a singular, near-fatal flaw. They protected Americans from federal tyranny, but they also left states free to oppress American citizens in the most horrific ways. The original Constitution permitted slavery, of course, and the Bill of Rights, which includes protections for religious liberty, free speech and due process, restricted only the federal government, not the states.
Individual states ratified their own constitutions that often purported to protect individual liberty, at least for some citizens, but states were also often violently repressive and fundamentally authoritarian.
Through much of American history, various American states protected slavery, enforced Jim Crow, suppressed voting rights, blocked free speech, and established state churches.
As a result, if you were traditionally part of the local ruling class — a white Protestant in the South, like me — you experienced much of American history as a kind of golden era of power and control.
…but…you know…through rose-tinted lenses & all
And those who believe that the civil rights movement impaired individual liberty have to reckon with the truth that Americans enjoy greater freedom from both discrimination and censorship than they did before the movement began.
So why are parts of the right so discontent? The answer lies in the difference between power and liberty. One of the most important stories of the last century — from the moment the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to state power in 1925, until the present day — is the way in which white Protestants lost power but gained liberty. Many millions are unhappy with the exchange.
…which…all the cancel-culture-vs-culture-warrior bullsh*t aside…is dumb of more of them than not…what with “greater freedom from both discrimination & censorship” thing being pretty much in line with what they say they want than the jackbooted nightmare-fuel they all seem so hell-bent on chucking at an open flame
Consider the state of the law a century ago. Until the expansion of the Bill of Rights (called “incorporation”) to apply to the states, if you controlled your state and wanted to destroy your enemies, you could oppress them to a remarkable degree. You could deprive them of free speech, you could deprive them of due process, you could force them to pray and read state-approved versions of the Bible.
The criminal justice system could be its own special form of hell. Indigent criminal defendants lacked lawyers, prison conditions were often brutal at a level that would shock the modern conscience, and local law enforcement officers had no real constitutional constraints on their ability to search American citizens and seize their property.
…which…sounds like it has more in common with modern china than the US…but…that’s probably besides the point…also gonna resist the tangent of taking shots at whether getting in the president game was something derpenfuhrer only got talked into because he thought he already knew all there was to know about gaming the system of incorporated entities…& for another thing
Powerful people often experience their power as a kind of freedom. A king can feel perfectly free to do what he wants, for example, but that’s not the same thing as liberty. Looked at properly, liberty is the doctrine that defies power. It’s liberty that enables us to exercise our rights. Think of the difference between power and liberty like this — power gives the powerful freedom of action. Liberty, by contrast, protects your freedom of action from the powerful.
…see…told you I’d get around to it eventually way back at the beginning…that’s got to be worth something…it’s more evidence of bona fides than half a political spectrum can muster…so you’d think it might?
At their core, right-wing attacks on the modern Constitution are an attack on liberty for the sake of power. An entire class of Americans looks back at decades past and has no memory (or pretends to have no memory) — of marginalization and oppression. They could do what they wanted, when they wanted and to whom they wanted.
Now they don’t have that same control. It’s not just that Catholics and Protestants have equal rights (a relatively recent development), it’s that Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists and atheists all approach the public square with the same liberties. Drag queens have the same free speech rights as pastors, and many Americans are livid as a result.
…but what are you gonna do when your electorate doesn’t live in times as desperate as the measures you want them to let you get away with taking?
The topic of disinformation has rightly dominated much of our public discourse, but if anything the focus has been too narrow. Yes, vaccine conspiracy theories are deeply destructive. So are election conspiracies. But when a movement starts to believe that America is in a state of economic crisis, criminal chaos and constitutional collapse, then you can start to see the seeds for revolutionary violence and profound political instability. They believe we live in desperate times, and they turn to desperate measures.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/opinion/maga-constitution-trump.html
…not that feelings of desperation can’t be both valid & highly subjective
The falsehood, visible for hours on the default homepage for anyone in Ireland who used Microsoft Edge as a browser, was the result of an artificial intelligence snafu.
A fly-by-night journalism outlet called BNN Breaking had used an A.I. chatbot to paraphrase an article from another news site, according to a BNN employee. BNN added Mr. Fanning to the mix by including a photo of a “prominent Irish broadcaster.” The story was then promoted by MSN, a web portal owned by Microsoft.
The story was deleted from the internet a day later, but the damage to Mr. Fanning’s reputation was not so easily undone, he said in a defamation lawsuit filed in Ireland against Microsoft and BNN Breaking. His is just one of many complaints against BNN, a site based in Hong Kong that published numerous falsehoods during its short time online as a result of what appeared to be generative A.I. errors.
…you might be tempted to wonder if that homepage pick of MSN’s was maybe an AI choice…or that they might like to deny that…but…no comment
Microsoft had no comment on MSN’s featuring the misleading story with Mr. Fanning’s photo or his defamation case, but the company said it had terminated its licensing agreement with BNN.
…if only the rest of it was as lacking in surprises
During the two years that BNN was active, it had the veneer of a legitimate news service, claiming a worldwide roster of “seasoned” journalists and 10 million monthly visitors, surpassing the The Chicago Tribune’s self-reported audience. Prominent news organizations like The Washington Post, Politico and The Guardian linked to BNN’s stories. Google News often surfaced them, too.
A closer look, however, would have revealed that individual journalists at BNN published lengthy stories as often as multiple times a minute, writing in generic prose familiar to anyone who has tinkered with the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT. BNN’s “About Us” page featured an image of four children looking at a computer, some bearing the gnarled fingers that are a telltale sign of an A.I.-generated image.
How easily the site and its mistakes entered the ecosystem for legitimate news highlights a growing concern: A.I.-generated content is upending, and often poisoning, the online information supply.
Many traditional news organizations are already fighting for traffic and advertising dollars. For years, they competed for clicks against pink slime journalism — so-called because of its similarity to liquefied beef, an unappetizing, low-cost food additive.
Low-paid freelancers and algorithms have churned out much of the faux-news content, prizing speed and volume over accuracy. Now, experts say, A.I. could turbocharge the threat, easily ripping off the work of journalists and enabling error-ridden counterfeits to circulate even more widely — as has already happened with travel guidebooks, celebrity biographies and obituaries.
The result is a machine-powered ouroboros that could squeeze out sustainable, trustworthy journalism. Even though A.I.-generated stories are often poorly constructed, they can still outrank their source material on search engines and social platforms, which often use A.I. to help position content. The artificially elevated stories can then divert advertising spending, which is increasingly assigned by automated auctions without human oversight.
NewsGuard, a company that monitors online misinformation, identified more than 800 websites that use A.I. to produce unreliable news content. The websites, which seem to operate with little to no human supervision, often have generic names — such as iBusiness Day and Ireland Top News — that are modeled after actual news outlets. They crank out material in more than a dozen languages, much of which is not clearly disclosed as being artificially generated, but could easily be mistaken as being created by human writers.
…there is of course…that common denominator
BNN’s founder, a serial entrepreneur named Gurbaksh Chahal, had described it as “a revolution in the journalism industry.”
…you know the type
Mr. Chahal’s evangelism carried weight with his employees because of his wealth and seemingly impressive track record, they said. Born in India and raised in Northern California, Mr. Chahal made millions in the online advertising business in the early 2000s and wrote a how-to book about his rags-to-riches story that landed him an interview with Oprah Winfrey. A business trend chaser, he created a cryptocurrency (briefly promoted by Paris Hilton) and manufactured Covid tests during the pandemic.
…real man of the hour sh*t…sorry…real sh*tty man by the hour…or by (inadmissible) halves
But he also had a criminal past. In 2013, he attacked his girlfriend at the time, and was accused of hitting and kicking her more than 100 times, generating significant media attention because it was recorded by a video camera he had installed in the bedroom of his San Francisco penthouse. The 30-minute recording was deemed inadmissible by a judge, however, because the police had seized it without a warrant. Mr. Chahal pleaded guilty to battery, was sentenced to community service and lost his role as chief executive at RadiumOne, an online marketing company.
…so…another stable genius, then…so many of these business savants seem to be on this same spectrum…almost like there’s something correlative…or…maybe causative
After an arrest involving another domestic violence incident with a different partner in 2016, he served six months in jail.
…six months? …leaving it…moving on…but…if it were up to me he’d find moving painful before I’d feel like leaving off…anyway
Mr. Chahal claimed he had created ePiphany, but it was so similar to ChatGPT and other A.I. chatbots that employees assumed he had licensed another company’s software.
Mr. Chahal did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article. One person who did talk to The Times for this article received a threat from Mr. Chahal for doing so.
At first, employees were asked to put articles from other news sites into the tool so that it could paraphrase them, and then to manually “validate” the results by checking them for errors, Mr. Bakir said. A.I.-generated stories that weren’t checked by a person were given a generic byline of BNN Newsroom or BNN Reporter. But eventually, the tool was churning out hundreds, even thousands, of stories a day — far more than the team could “validate.”
[…]
Employees did not want their bylines on stories generated purely by A.I., but Mr. Chahal insisted on this. Soon, the tool randomly assigned their names to stories.
[…]
Mr. Chahal did not seem sympathetic. According to three journalists who worked at BNN and screenshots of WhatsApp conversations reviewed by The Times, Mr. Chahal regularly directed profanities at employees and called them idiots and morons. When employees said purely A.I.-generated news, such as the Fanning story, should be published under the generic “BNN Newsroom” byline, Mr. Chahal was dismissive.“When I do this, I won’t have a need for any of you,” he wrote on WhatsApp.
…so…are we at the bottom line, then?
The appeal of using A.I. for news is clear: money.
The increasing popularity of programmatic advertising — which uses algorithms to automatically place ads across the internet — allows A.I.-powered news sites to generate revenue by mass-producing low-quality clickbait content, said Sander van der Linden, a social psychology professor and fake-news expert at the University of Cambridge.
…or just careening down the slippery slope?
Many audiences already struggle to discern machine-generated material from reports produced by human journalists, Mr. van der Linden said.
…might have something to do with the internet (despite the popular assumptions that it’s primarily composed of p*rn & cat photos) mostly being in some ways a massive advertising targeting & delivery system with some window-dressing on the front end…but…that’s probably just the tinfoil talking
Local news outlets say A.I. operations like BNN are leeches: stealing intellectual property by disgorging journalists’ work, then monetizing the theft by gaming search algorithms to raise their profile among advertisers.
“We’re no longer getting any slice of the advertising cake, which used to support our journalism, but are left with a few crumbs,” said Anton van Zyl, the owner of the Limpopo Mirror in South Africa, whose articles, it seemed, had been rewritten by BNN.
In March, Google rolled out an update to “reduce unoriginal content in search results,” targeting sites with “spammy” content, whether produced by “automation, humans or a combination,” according to a corporate blog post. BNN’s stories stopped showing up in search results soon after.
Before ending its agreement with BNN Breaking, Microsoft had licensed content from the site for MSN.com, as it does with reputable news organizations such as Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, republishing their articles and splitting the advertising revenue.
…monkey see…monkey do
CNN recently reported that Microsoft-hired editors who once curated the articles featured on MSN.com have increasingly been replaced by A.I. Microsoft confirmed that it used a combination of automated systems and human review to curate content on MSN.
…but…you know…no comment
But Mr. Chahal wasn’t abandoning the news business. Within a week or so of BNN Breaking’s shutting down, the same operation moved to a new website called TrimFeed.
TrimFeed’s About Us page had the same set of values that BNN Breaking’s had, promising “a media landscape free of distortions.” On Tuesday, after a reporter informed Mr. Chahal that this article would soon be published, TrimFeed shut down as well.
…& he’ll leave it at that, no doubt…& besides…that’s just one bad actor…& he’s not a big fish or anything…& those are totally responsible corporate entities
Tech evangelists like to say that AI will eat the world—a reference to a famous line about software from the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. In the past few weeks, we’ve finally gotten a sense of what they mean.
…feel like I had a sneaking suspicion or two a fair while before then…but…ok…whaddya got?
This spring, tech companies have made clear that AI will be a defining feature of online life, whether people want it to be or not. First, Meta surprised users with an AI chatbot that lives in the search bar on Instagram and Facebook. It has since informed European users that their data are being used to train its AI—presumably sent only to comply with the continent’s privacy laws. OpenAI released GPT-4o, billed as a new, more powerful and conversational version of its large language model. (Its announcement event featured an AI voice named Sky that Scarlett Johansson alleged was based on her own voice without her permission, an allegation OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has denied. You can listen for yourself here.) Around the same time, Google launched—and then somewhat scaled back—“AI Overviews” in its search engine. OpenAI also entered into new content partnerships with numerous media organizations (including The Atlantic) and platforms such as Reddit, which seem to be operating on the assumption that AI products will soon be a primary means for receiving information on the internet. (The Atlantic’s deal with OpenAI is a corporate partnership. The editorial division of The Atlantic operates with complete independence from the business division.) Nvidia, a company that makes microchips used to power AI applications, reported record earnings at the end of May and subsequently saw its market capitalization increase to more than $3 trillion.
…not sure what to make of who’s where on the podium…what with this piece having a june 7 date & this claiming the market cap data is “as of june 6” while still putting MS ($3.1trillion) ahead of Apple ($3.0trillion) ahead of Nvidia at a mere $2.97trillion…but either way…if the top 6 highest value concerns by market cap are all from the one sector…that’s a lot of eggs in the one basket? …not to mention…as a window into how we rate stuff by value…if…say…veolia…who mostly take out trash & supply water…only rate $30-some billion…so…in the region of a thousand times less valuable…it all starts to feel a bit like the disconnect between “essential workers” & “well-remunerated employees”…in terms of the return on our indispensable investment…or whatever…but never mind that sort of distraction…plowing on
The pace of implementation is dizzying, even alarming—including to some of those who understand the technology best. Earlier this week, employees and former employees of OpenAI and Google published a letter declaring that “strong financial incentives” have led the industry to dodge meaningful oversight. Those same incentives have seemingly led companies to produce a lot of trash as well.
…like…a lot…enough that you’d think more people would be more concerned…but then after the first few burst into spontaneous flames or autonomously drove themselves into an ambulance or a pedestrian or whatever…you’d think less people would buy teslas…takes all sorts, I guess
Technology companies, in other words, are racing to capture money and market share before their competitors do and making unforced errors as a result. But though tech corporations may have built the hype train, others are happy to ride it. Leaders in all industries, terrified of missing out on the next big thing, are signing checks and inking deals, perhaps not knowing what precisely it is they’re getting into or if they are unwittingly helping the companies who will ultimately destroy them. The Washington Post’s chief technology officer, Vineet Khosla, has reportedly told staff that the company intends to “have A.I. everywhere” inside the newsroom, even if its value to journalism remains, in my eyes, unproven and ornamental. We are watching as the plane is haphazardly assembled in midair.
As an employee at one of the publications that has recently signed a deal with OpenAI, I have some minor insight into what it’s like when generative AI turns its hungry eyes to your small corner of an industry. What does it feel like when AI eats the world? It feels like being trapped.
There’s an element of these media partnerships that feels like a shakedown. Tech companies have trained their large language models with impunity, claiming that harvesting the internet’s content to develop their programs is fair use. This is the logical end point of Silicon Valley’s classic “Ask for forgiveness, not for permission” growth strategy. The cynical way to read these partnerships is that media companies have two choices: Take the money offered, or accept OpenAI scraping their data anyway. These conditions resemble a hostage negotiation more than they do a mutually agreeable business partnership—an observation that media executives are making in private to one another, and occasionally in public, too.
Publications can obviously turn down these deals. They have other options, but these options are, to use a technical term, not great. You can sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, which is what The New York Times has done, and hope to set a legal precedent where extractive generative-AI companies pay fairly for any work they use to train their models. This process is prohibitively costly for many organizations, and if they lose, they get nothing but legal bills. Which leaves a third option: Abstain on principle from the generative-AI revolution altogether, block the web-crawling bots from companies such as OpenAI, and take a justified moral stand while your competitors capitulate and take the money. This third path requires a bet on the hope that the generative-AI era is overhyped, that the Times wins its lawsuit, or that the government steps in to regulate this extractive business model—which is to say, it’s uncertain.
…weird…I thought the markets traditionally *didn’t* like uncertainty…but trillions of dollars in market cap says…pretty much exactly the opposite for some reason
The situation that publishers face seems to perfectly illustrate a broader dynamic: Nobody knows exactly what to do. That’s hardly surprising, given that generative AI is a technology that has so far been defined by ambiguity and inconsistency. Google users encountering AI Overviews for the first time may not understand what they’re there for, or whether they’re more useful than the usual search results. There is a gap, too, between the tools that exist and the future we’re being sold. The innovation curve, we’re told, will be exponential. The paradigm, we’re cautioned, is about to shift. Regular people, we’re to believe, have little choice in the matter, especially as the computers scale up and become more powerful: We can only experience a low-grade disorientation as we shadowbox with the notion of this promised future. Meanwhile, the ChatGPTs of the world are here, foisted upon us by tech companies who insist that these tools should be useful in some way.
…useful sounds like it has something in common with users…but…eh…begs the question about who uses what…or who…for what?
Over the past week, after conversations with several executives at different companies who have negotiated with OpenAI, I was left with the sense that the tech company is less interested in publisher data to train its models and far more interested in real-time access to news sites for OpenAI’s forthcoming search tools. (I agreed to keep these executives anonymous to allow them to speak freely about their companies’ deals.) Having access to publisher-partner data is helpful for the tech company in two ways: First, it allows OpenAI to cite third-party organizations when a user asks a question on a sensitive issue, which means OpenAI can claim that it is not making editorial decisions in its product. Second, if the company has ambitions to unseat Google as the dominant search engine, it needs up-to-date information.
…& if that passes for good news…coming soon to a theater of operations near you?
Zoom out and even this optimistic line of thinking becomes fraught, however. Do we actually want to live in a world where generative-AI companies have greater control over the flow of information online? A transition from search engines to chatbots would be immensely disruptive. Google is imperfect, its product arguably degrading, but it has provided a foundational business model for creative work online by allowing optimized content to reach audiences. Perhaps the search paradigm needs to change and it’s only natural that the webpage becomes a relic. Still, the magnitude of the disruption and the blithe nature with which tech companies suggest everyone gets on board give the impression that none of the AI developers is concerned about finding a sustainable model for creative work to flourish. As Judith Donath and Bruce Schneier wrote recently in this publication, AI “threatens to destroy the complex online ecosystem that allows writers, artists, and other creators to reach human audiences.” Follow this logic and things get existential quickly: What incentive do people have to create work, if they can’t make a living doing it?
If you feel your brain start to pretzel up inside your skull, then you are getting the full experience of the generative-AI revolution barging into your industry. This is what disruption actually feels like. It’s chaotic. It’s rushed. You’re told it’s an exhilarating moment, full of opportunity, even if what that means in practice is not quite clear.
…unlike…say
Nobody knows what’s coming next. Generative-AI companies have built tools that, although popular and nominally useful in boosting productivity, are but a dim shadow of the ultimate goal of constructing a human-level intelligence. And yet they are exceedingly well funded, aggressive, and capable of leveraging a breathless hype cycle to amass power and charge head-on into any industry they please with the express purpose of making themselves central players. Will the technological gains of this moment be worth the disruption, or will the hype slowly peter out, leaving the internet even more broken than it is now? After roughly two years of the most recent wave of AI hype, all that is clear is that these companies do not need to build Skynet to be destructive.
AI is eating the world is meant, by the technology’s champions, as a triumphant, exciting phrase. But that is not the only way to interpret it. One can read it menacingly, as a battle cry of rapid, forceful colonization. Lately, I’ve been hearing it with a tone of resignation, the kind that accompanies shrugged shoulders and forced hands. Left unsaid is what happens to the raw material—the food—after it’s consumed and digested, its nutrients extracted. We don’t say it aloud, but we know what it becomes.
This Is What It Looks Like When AI Eats the World [The Atlantic]
…AKA…the ensh*ttification continues apace…oh…& speaking of craptastic quantities of sh*t that spews out of an ass
On June 13th, Tesla shareholders will decide the fate of Musk’s compensation package, which is estimated to be worth as much as $56 billion. It will be the second time that shareholders will vote on the CEO’s pay, after a Delaware judge voided the first one earlier this year on the grounds that the approval process was “deeply flawed.” And now the company is engaged in a full-court press to convince shareholders to approve his compensation, as well as a proposal to reincorporate Tesla in Texas to circumvent the oversight of Delaware’s courts.
“Elon is not a typical executive, and Tesla is not a typical company,” Denholm writes in a letter to shareholders filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “So, the typical way in which companies compensate key executives is not going to drive results for Tesla. Motivating someone like Elon requires something different.”
…no…I know…but…not done with that one
…&…look…this has f*cked tesla coming & going…think about it
Tesla has claimed in a court filing that a proposed $5.2bn award for lawyers who mounted a successful challenge to Elon Musk’s pay package is grossly excessive and they deserve only $13.6mn.
…sure…why pay billions when you might get away with a few mil…but…it’s the basis of their argument that’s interesting
After the judgment, Greg Varallo, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs’ law firm Bernstein Litowitz, requested an award of roughly 29mn shares in Tesla stock. He argued that receiving that portion of the roughly 267mn net shares that Musk would otherwise have received was in line with recent Delaware precedents that guide how much lawyers get to keep of the “conferred benefit” to shareholders.
…but…tesla stock is some of the most notoriously over-valued stuff that exists outside a crypto exchange or an NFT auction…so…the economies of that twisted scale are punishing…possibly unduly so
Tesla said in its filing on Friday that the supposed benefits from the original ruling were “therapeutic or unquantifiable”. It pointed out that the requested award, which was initially valued at $5.6bn, would be 17 times larger than any fee in Delaware legal history and equal to the state’s entire 2024 budget. The company also calculated that the sum was equivalent to $288,000 an hour and would collectively make Bernstein Litowitz and two supporting law firms a top-three Tesla shareholder.
[…]
At the time of Musk‘s pay deal in 2018, Tesla took a $2.3bn accounting charge on the package. Tesla argued that this could be considered the maximum conferred benefit to shareholders, citing other legal precedents to arrive at the far lower $13.6mn figure.
…hard to feel sorry for them…but…easy to see how it’s funny to watch them try to have their cake but let him eat it?
The outcome of the vote at Tesla’s shareholder meeting next week is far from certain, and Musk’s future there may be at stake. If he loses, his ownership will remain at 13 per cent compared with more than 20 per cent if the award is granted. The billionaire – who also runs SpaceX and social media platform X – said he would prefer to develop future artificial intelligence products outside Tesla if he did not gain greater control.
Tesla’s chair Robyn Denholm has said that it needs to climb“Mount Everest”to win the votes, in particular for the reincorporation to Texas, which has a higher threshold for success.
Carmaker argues that victorious plaintiffs’ firm deserves far less for its work to throw out chief’s $56bn package [FT]
…but they do seem to be saying they shouldn’t have to honor the terms for the lawyers they want to honor for elon…both times on account of that he massaged their market cap beyond their wildest dreams…while saying it makes for an absurd valuation if attached to the award to the lawyers who nixed the much larger award they very much would like to give elon…like a sketch for a perpetual motion machine powered by refined anti-self-awareness or something…anyway…back to the other thing
Later, she implies that Musk could decamp to “other places” without proper motivation. “What we recognized in 2018 and continue to recognize today is that one thing Elon most certainly does not have is unlimited time,” Denholm says. “Nor does he face any shortage of ideas and other places he can make an incredible difference in the world. We want those ideas, that energy and that time to be at Tesla, for the benefit of you, our owners. But that requires reciprocal respect.”
…huh…reciprocity…really?
Denholm implying that Musk needs “motivation” in the form of the largest pay package ever approved for a CEO in order to stay at Tesla speaks to the fear many investors feel about his future at the company. Musk’s many different projects — heading companies like SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, X, and xAI — have taken his attention away from Tesla, which is the primary source of his wealth and popularity.
…I’d have thought reciprocity would probably include the primary source of his wealth (& being him moreso anything that could miraculously confer popularity upon him) getting the primary claim on his time & whatever abilities he might have…though the way I hear it that isn’t the sort of reciprocal action the engineers at tesla would be overly receptive to…when they get together with the space x engineers to cry into their beers about life in an elon-adjacent workplace…that absence is pretty much the one silver lining in the whole mess for them
Still, Musk is seeking more control over Tesla, in the form of a 25 percent stake, in order to achieve his goals of developing artificial intelligence and self-driving cars. (He currently holds about 13 percent of the company after selling billions of dollars of shares to acquire Twitter.) On X, he has threatened to spin out Tesla’s AI work into a separate company if his demands aren’t met.
…did I mention the “it’s not about the money” part?
“We all made a commitment to Elon,” Denholm writes. “Elon honored his commitment and produced tremendous value for our stockholders. Honoring our commitment to Elon demonstrates that we support his vision for Tesla and recognize his extraordinary accomplishments — this is what will motivate him to continue to create value for stockholders.”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/6/24173064/tesla-board-chair-warn-elon-musk-leave-pay-shareholders
…the value to stockholders…which the others no doubt appreciate but literally benefits him more than anyone else…may indeed be an extraordinary accomplishment…in some senses…remember bob the FT guy that went to the luxury convention in venice? …because he’d like to point out the real problem is it isn’t…&…gotta admit…he might have a point
There has been a fair amount of huffing and puffing this spring about the incentive pay package that Tesla awarded to its CEO Elon Musk back in 2018. If it stands, it will pay Musk $56bn. A Delaware judge voided the package in January, on the grounds that the board was insufficiently independent at the time of approval. Tesla’s board wants shareholders to re-ratify it at the company’s annual meeting next week. Last month two proxy advisers recommended that investors vote against it.
[…] The size of the award offends people, perhaps rightly. But it was agreed by the shareholders and the board. Without analysing the principles of board independence under Delaware law, taking the money back now feels like cheating. To invoke the rule of the playground: no takesies backsies.
What offends me is not the size of the award, but the structure. And, unfortunately, that structure has a lot in common with most public company pay packages.
[…]
The problem is that pay package like this has the effect of making it the executives job to get the share price up. This absolutely should not be the executive’s job. Before saying why it shouldn’t, it is important to point out that if getting the stock price up was Musk’s job, he has done that job unbelievably well. Yes, Tesla’s market cap, at $567bn, has now fallen below the top target in the pay package. But the stock price has compounded at 37 per cent a year since 2018. To the extent Mr Musk is in control of the stock price, he has done such a good job of driving it up that a lot of people don’t understand how it can be so high (a car company trading at 70 times earnings?). If his intention was to turn buying the shares into the entry fee for a cult, it seems to have worked.
[…]
On the other hand, to the extent that Mr Musk is not in control of the stock price, the pay package was very badly designed. We can all agree that there is a link between what chief executives do and the creation of economic value by the companies they lead. We can all also agree that there is a link between the creation of economic value at a company and the company’s share price. But we also know that those connections are loose rather than determinate, are only partly understood, and can be badly out of whack for a long time.This looseness is the first premise of an argument against paying executives on the basis of the share price. You should pay people for achieving outcomes they can understand and control. Defenders of share pay will quote some version of the claim, attributed to Ben Graham, that in the short term the stock market is a voting machine and in the long run it is a weighing machine. That is probably right in most cases, but the timeframe matters.
Is six years enough for the voting to become weighing? That is not the only timing problem. When can we determine whether the investment projects initiated by a chief executive have added long-term value, rather than being a stunt or a flash in the plan? This is to say nothing of the fact that it is a bit odd to reward executives based on the fluctuations in value of the stock market overall. Can Musk also control the market’s valuation multiple, or whether tech stocks are in or out of style with investors? And then there is the much-discussed problem of the asymmetrical incentives embedded in stock awards. A high-risk corporate gambit stands to make the boss rich if it succeeds, but will not ruin her if it ultimately destroys the company.
All of this makes a pretty clear case against pay packages like Tesla’s, in which executive awards are based directly on share price or market cap targets. But the very same arguments apply to pay packages that indirectly link pay to the stock price. Stock options vesting over three to seven years are the bedrock of compensation plans at most public companies. These are mostly based on the company hitting financial targets, but they still put the executives in the business of getting the stock price up. The stock price determines how much the executive will be paid when the financial targets are hit. But this is not what the executives should be focused on; they should be focused on making the company better at doing whatever the company does.
Executive pay is a mess almost everywhere [FT]
[…]
Better to pay in cash, based on financial metrics (returns) and operational ones (production). There are many reasons companies don’t do this. One of them, I would speculate, is that deciding on such a pay package would require the board to commit to a clear and specific view of what the company’s goals are, how the achievement of those goals creates value, and exactly how much it is worth to the company’s owners if those goals are achieved. Tying executive pay levels to the stock price outsources those difficult decisions to the market, letting the board off the hook.
…now…you can do a lot with a tweaked definition…for example…if you define progressive thusly
Two defining characteristics of progressivism are: the goal of minimizing the market’s role by maximizing government’s role in allocating society’s resources and opportunities. And confidence that the world is plastic to progressive government’s touch, and the future is transparent to progressives’ gaze.
…rather than…say
Progressivismis apolitical philosophyandmovementthat seeks to advance thehuman conditionthroughsocial reform– primarily based on purported advancements insocial organization,science, andtechnology.[1]Adherents hold that progressivism has universal application and endeavor to spread this idea to human societies everywhere. Progressivism arose during theAge of Enlightenmentout of the belief thatcivilityin Europe was improving due to the application of newempirical knowledge.[2]
In modern political discourse, progressivism often gets associated withsocial liberalism,[3][4][5]a left-leaning type of liberalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
…& definitely never went near
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_(disambiguation)
…then you too could produce a WaPo column that makes a claim that biden’s administration is hands down the most progressive in the nation’s history a liability rather than an asset…which is what georgie porgie is hawking by way of porkie pies
Biden’s aim: minimize the market by maximizing government’s role in allocating society’s resources [WaPo]
…but…let’s have a butcher’s at what the other side like to do to government’s role when it comes to resources allocated to the better off, shall we?
To wit: Republicans are trying to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to shirk their tax obligations, while making it harder for honest, working-class taxpayers to file their returns for free.
…really?
Americans overwhelmingly say the wealthy and corporations don’t pay their fair share in taxes. This view is, er, somewhat at odds with Republicans’ plans to grind down these groups’ tax rates even further.
…&…that’s not even “the good bit”?
This week, House Republicans released afinancial services appropriations billthat would slash the Internal Revenue Service’s fiscal 2025 funding bymore than $2 billion, or about 18 percent from current levels. This is part of a much longer-term planto sabotage the agency so it can’t collect taxes that are legally owed.
In fact, if you adjusted their proposed 2025 budget numbers for inflation, the IRS’s funding would be down43 percentsince the GOP’s war on the agency began back in 2010 – even as IRS responsibilities have grown more complex and expensive. In that time, the IRS has been enlisted to implement theForeign Account Tax Compliance Act, combatidentity theftandadministervarioussafety-net programs. Unsurprisingly, other resource-intensive priorities – such as audits ofmegacorporations and millionaires– have fallen by the wayside.
…what a surprising coincidence
There’s also much lower-hanging enforcement fruit:At least 25,000 millionaireshaven’t filed tax returnsat allsince 2017. The IRS has only recently begun going after these households.
…oh, aye…only recently, is it?
Reducing the IRS’s annual enforcement funding – as House Republicansexplicitly doin this bill, to force the agency to siphon money away from those longer-term investments – costs the government a lot of money. That’s because spending on IRS enforcement offers a huge return on investment, especially when the money is spent auditing the wealthy. In fiscal 2023, enforcement programs collected about$7 for every $1 spent. The longer-term deterrence effects of audits are even larger, as ablockbuster studyfound last year.
In other words, defunding the IRS not only allows existing cheating and noncompliance to go undetected; it encouragesmorecheating and noncompliance, and more lost revenue. That’s an unfortunate outcome if you care about reducing federal deficits, as Republican politicians (and voters) often claim they do.
…even for the ones whose fortunes are fortunate enough not to find it unfortunate…which…smells off?
Thirteen Republican-led stateshave signaled that they’llrefuse to cooperatewith the program. And in that newappropriations billI mentioned, GOP lawmakers inserted language prohibiting the IRS from ever using federal money to “develop or provide taxpayers a free, public electronic return-filing service option.” Which would, of course, kill Direct File altogether.
As always, I implore voters: Look at what politicians would actually do on the issues you care about before awarding them your votes.
The GOP’s tax policy is almost exactly the opposite of what voters want.
…still…hard to top them for hypocrisy
Generations have taken pride in the triumph of the West’s wartime bravery and ingenuity, from the assembly lines to the front lines. We reflect less often on the fact that the world was plunged into war, and millions of innocents died,because European powersand the United States met the rise of a militant authoritarian with appeasem*nt or naïve neglect in the first place.
We forget how influential isolationists persuaded millions of Americans that the fate of allies and partners mattered little to our own security and prosperity. We gloss over the powerful political forces that downplayed growing danger, resisted providing assistance to allies and partners, and tried to limit America’s ability to defend its national interests.
Of course, Americans heard much less from our disgraced isolationists after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
…really…mitch mc-freaking-connell can say that sh*t in a newspaper & not burst into flame like dracula greeting the dawn chorus…will wonders never cease?
Nothing else will suffice. Not a desperate pursuit of nuclear diplomacy with Iran, the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism. Not cabinet junkets to Beijing in pursuit of common ground on climate policy. The way to prove that America means what it says is to show what we’re willing to fight for.
Eighty years ago, America and our allies fought because we had to. The forces assembled on the English Channel on June 6, 1944, represented the fruits of many months of feverish planning. And once victory was secure, the United States led the formation of the alliances that have underpinned Western peace and security ever since.
Today, the better part of valor is to build credible defenses before they are necessary and demonstrate American leadership before it is doubted any further.
Mitch McConnell: We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s
…mitch…who any fool can see is a real military man…he seems pretty sure the answer is to get the military industrial complex up there in the trillion buck line item section of the budget…some might say that could be the opposite of a responsible sort of balanced diversification & might cause some unpleasant feedback loops with all the isolationist protectionism bollocks that no amount of historical lessons can apparently persuade a particular brand of genius to learn is fundamentally more self-harming than dishing it out the way the soundbites make out…little thing, though
Further evidence — not that any was needed — of the catastrophic idiocy of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is found in an internal study commissioned by Gazprom, a state-controlled energy firm and the largest company in Russia. As revealed by the Financial Times, the analysis concluded that the loss of European customers for Russian natural gas in response to Putin’s aggression cannot be made up by exports elsewhere for at least a decade.
…if you can believe that?
Russia is not a country that can afford to destroy profitable businesses. Its entire economy is smaller than that of Texas. Yet that’s what Putin has done. Proof of the damage to Gazprom came last month, when the state-controlled company reported its first annual loss of the 21st century — the first of many to come.
…&…well…sure…I mean…wait…smaller than texas?
…I mean…texas is the next biggest state economy after california…so…it’s not playing tiddlywinks…but…it’s also less than 10% of the US economy…so…if russia’s whole economic output was solely plowed into nothing but military matters…which is basically impossible…but…for the sake of argument…say it could…the US could just take all of texas’ money & still outspend the bitch?
…& the world’s spendiest military already enjoys about a 3.5% share of GDP…so…if russia’s dropping somewhere around $100billion a year on military entries in the budget…& the US GDP is…getting on for $30trillion…vlad’s lot are outspent by a factor of…hmm…300…ish…before mitch gets his fondest wish & ratchets that up until he feels secure…there’s not even 200 countries…not that it works like that, exactly…but…weighting is a thing & that’s nothing if it’s not lop-sided
Pipelines are not built overnight. In fact, nearly 28 months after Putin’s full-scale failing invasion of Ukraine,China has yet to agreeto the concept of a second pipeline from Russia to offset partially the loss of European exports. With spigots to the West turned off and China dragging its heels, the report concluded, according to the Financial Times, that Gazpromwill not return to profitability before 2035.
The war in Ukraine has turned Russia’s biggest company into a massive money loser. [WaPo]
[…]
This is the opposite of propaganda. It is a truth that Russian insiders are admitting to themselves. Their golden goose has been roasted on the whim of their delusional boss, and next up for the Russian economy is likely to be Venezuelan-style inflation, as the cost of the ruinous war is paid in currency that has scant economic output to bolster it.
[…]
Don’t believe Putin’s desperate hogwash about Russian strength and Russian victory. The backbone of his economy, Gazprom – a company far more important to its country than any single company has ever been to the United States – has shown us the truth. Now is not the time, Mr. President, to take your foot off the gas.
…now…assuming I didn’t lose him several thousand words back…I know this is where @lemmykilmister would have some questions…so
I can remember Western officials and commentators describing the sanctions as “crippling”, “debilitating” and “unprecedented”. With adjectives like these filling the airwaves, the situation seemed clear. There was surely no way that Russia’s economy would withstand the pressures.
[…]
Twenty-seven months on, the war rages on. Far from being crippled, Russia’s economy is growing. The International Monetary Fund predicts that Russia will record economic growth of 3.2% this year. Caveats aside, that’s still more than in any of the world’s advanced economies.“Debilitating” sanctions have not produced shortages in the shops. Russian supermarket shelves are full. True, rising prices are a problem. And not everything that used to be on sale still is – a string of Western companies exited the Russian market in protest at the invasion of Ukraine.
…so how come the circle still gets squared?
CEOs from Europe and America may no longer be flocking to Russia’s annual showcase economic event – but the organisers of this year’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum (once referred to as Russia’s Davos) claim that delegates from more than 130 countries and territories are taking part.
Instead of folding under the weight of Western sanctions, the Russian economy has been developing new markets in the East and the Global South.
All of which allows Russian officials to boast that attempts to isolate Russia, politically and economically, have not succeeded.
“It looks like the Russian economy managed to adjust to very unfavourable external conditions,” says Yevgeny Nadorshin, senior economist at PF Capital. ”Without any doubt sanctions broke a lot in the mechanism of operation inside the economy. But a lot has been restored. Adaptation is happening.”
…life…erm…finds a way?
“It’s not like flipping a switch and Russia disappears. What sanctions can do is to throw a country off balance temporarily until it finds the way to work around the sanctions, until it finds alternative ways to get shipments, or sell its oil. We’re exactly in that space where Russia has found a workaround.”
Moscow has redirected its oil exports from Europe to China and India. In December 2022, G7 and EU leaders introduced a price cap plan aimed at limiting the revenue Russia earns from its oil exports, by trying to keep it below $60 a barrel. But Western experts concede that Russia has been able to circumvent this quite easily.
[…]
“In a way, we refused to properly sanction Russian oil,” Elina Ribakova concludes. “This price cap is an attempt to have our cake and eat it. The priorities are to allow Russian oil on to the market and to reduce Russia’s revenue. And when these two priorities conflict, unfortunately the first one wins. That allows Russia to raise a lot of revenues and continue with the war.”Russia has become China’s biggest supplier of oil. But Beijing’s importance for Moscow extends far beyond energy exports. China has become a lifeline for the Russian economy. Trade between the two countries hit a record $240bn (£188bn) last year.
…&…I might have dug this up thinking of lemmy…but…mitch probably could do with pinning his ears back for the next bit?
Ultimately, however, it is not the automobile industry that is driving Russia’s economic growth.
Military spending is doing that.
Since Russia launched what the Kremlin is still calling its “special military operation” in Ukraine, armaments factories have been working round the clock and more and more Russians have been employed in the defence sector.
That’s driven up wages in the military-industrial complex.
But spend big on the military and there’s less to spend on everything else.
“Longer term, you are destroying the economy,” believes Chris Weafer, founding partner of Eurasian consultancy firm Macro-Advisory. “There is no money going into future development.”
….always assuming mitch give a flying f*ck about the future…& we know what they say about u, me & the ass…probably important, though…either way
That’s why it would be wrong to conclude that Russia has beaten sanctions. Up till now it’s found ways of dealing with them, getting around them, reducing the threat from them.
Russia’s economy is growing, but can it last? [“BBC In Depth”]
…so…a lot like the US & the convict who would be king, then…& hopefully neither will prove as invulnerable as self-advertised…still…when it comes to making the most of the land you’re potentially willing to die for…I’d probably start by coming at the thing from a different angle altogether…should appeal to the legions of fans out there productivity always seems to have, even?
About 30 million acres of U.S. cropland have been abandoned since the 1980s, a new analysis suggests. The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, offers a detailed look at land with immense environmental and economic potential — land that, researchers write, was abandoned at a rate of over a million acres a year between 1986 and 2018.
The analysis used satellite data and cropland information from the U.S. Agriculture Department to map the locations of abandoned cropland and how long it had been out of use. The researchers conclude that during the study period about 12.3 million hectares — or 30.39 million acres — of cropland went unused in the contiguous United States.
…no prizes for guessing the…uh…maybe it’s not a common denominator…but…at least the prime coefficient
The biggest changes took place around the Ogallala Aquifer, whose groundwater irrigates parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and which has been drying out because of excessive pumping and droughts. Other abandonment hot spots were located around Mississippi, the Atlantic Coast, North Dakota, northern Montana and eastern Washington state.
[…]
The study did not focus on the reasons farmers stopped using the cropland. But the researchers reported that less than 20 percent of the abandoned land was enrolled in the USDA Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to take out of agricultural production environmentally sensitive land that’s at risk of soil erosion, habitat loss or reductions in water quality.That surprised researchers. “A lot of the assumptions were that this former cropland had a lot of overlap with formal conservation programs,” Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment who co-authored the study, said in a news release. “But we saw that they’re almost entirely distinct pools.”
Tens of millions of acres of cropland lie abandoned, study shows [WaPo]
…huh…so…anyway…is it still sunday?
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