Tag Archives: Elon Musk

What’s the name, what’s the game?

I saw the news a few days ago, and for the most it does not matter to me, but there is an awful lot of hypocrisy going around and the media is (as I personally see it) as tainted as anything else. The stage is set to Elon Musk, or better stated is set against Elon Musk. Why? Don’t really know the man, but he seems the modern day Midas. Whatever he touches turns to gold. He made an upheaval in the battery market, the mobile market, the energy market. The man is (allegedly) an inventor like me, or he can see proper innovation just like Steve Jobs. How is this a bad thing? Consider the news that he was getting involved in social media. Why not? I do not know if it is a bad idea. But he has the dough to become part of it. Yet the Sydney Morning Herald gives us ‘Elon Musk launches $58 billion hostile takeover of Twitter’ (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/elon-musk-launches-hostile-takeover-of-twitter-20220414-p5admv.html) as such lets take a look at what constitutes a hostile takeover? The definition gives us “A hostile takeover occurs when an acquiring company attempts to take over a target company against the wishes of the target company’s management. An acquiring company can achieve a hostile takeover by going directly to the target company’s shareholders or fighting to replace its management” is this true? CBS gives us ‘Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion’, so who is giving us the truth and who is giving a stakeholder a blow job? You think this is rude? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We can argue until the sun goes down, but the setting of finance is clear. If a company is worth it, or could become worth it, you buy it. This has been the case in many occasions. Yet no one is saying that about Microsoft and Blizzard. There we get ‘Activision Blizzard/Microsoft Deal Discouraged by Letter Penned by SOC Investment Group’, how quaint.

So it was today when I saw (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-adopts-poison-pill-fight-musk-2022-04-15/) ‘Twitter adopts ‘poison pill’ as challenger to Musk emerges’, it is the Guardian version where we see “The method, known as a “poison pill” in the finance world, suggests Twitter will fight Musk to prevent a hostile takeover. It would go into effect if a shareholder were to acquire more than 15% of the company in a deal not approved by the board and expires 14 April 2023.”You see my issue is with the ‘hostile takeover’ part. The guardian gives us those goods with “Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder and former CEO, noted in a tweet on Friday that such surprise purchases are always a risk for the company. “As a public company, Twitter has always been ‘for sale’,” he said. “That’s the real issue.” Musk is already facing legal action for his Twitter purchases, with one investor suing the Tesla executive in a potential class action lawsuit for failing to disclose his buy-up of shares before the required deadline to do so. The lawsuit comes as Musk faces a number of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his investment activities, including insider trading allegations related to his own tweets.” So we see ‘insider trading’, we see ‘hostile takeover’ but we are given no real evidence of either. Merely the word ‘allegations’ that everyone is overlooking. 

The stage becomes even weirder as we consider the actions that Microsoft unleashed on the gaming industry and it is casually trivialised by too many media outlets. 

In all this the statement “he wanted to release its “extraordinary potential” to support free speech and democracy across the world.” Is trivialised by “Twitter’s board on Friday unanimously approved a plan that would allow existing shareholders to buy stocks at a substantial discount in order to dilute the holdings of new investors”, there is no real setting of who these board members are, the media seemingly forgot about that part. These members that include Bret Taylor (SalesForce), Parag Agrawal (CEO Twitter), Mimi Alemayehou (Mastercard), Egon Durban (Silver Lake), Martha Lane Fox (House of Lords), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (Stanford), Patrick Pichette (Google), David Rosenblatt and Robert Zoellick (AllianceBernstein Holding L.P.) there was a unanimous objection to the purchase by Elon Musk and no media outlet had anything from these members with the simple question ‘Why oppose?’. There might be a very valid reason, but I and all others were not informed, so what gives?

We can speculate on why it was done. Elon Musk sees that the US is going after the billionaires. As such he might be buying anything he can to drop the tax rift, and lets face it, he has been turning things to gold and Twitter is a golden idea. So whilst we see all kinds of objections on how analysts see (and say) things like “KeyBanc Capital analyst Justin Patterson downgraded the social media company in the wake of Elon Musk’s buyout proposal. Patterson cut his rating to sector weight, after being at overweight since January 2021, saying that the potential for the Musk bid to “go up in smoke” will turn investor focus on a more challenging macro environment that elevates downside risk to financial estimates.” I personally honestly do not know what will happen, but when a person buys a company, a person that has transformed several companies into powerhouses, I wonder what really is going on. It could be simple, it could be complex, yet the larger station is that people laughed at Tesla and now we see “As of April 2022 Tesla has a market cap of $1.018 Trillion. This makes Tesla the world’s 6th most valuable company by market cap according to our data.” So as I see it, the joke is on them. What was an idea is now 6th on the most valuable companies on the market and that is behind Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, and Amazon and as I gave voice to Microsoft, there is every chance that it will head of Microsoft in the next 3 years. And that is whilst no one has a clue where Meta will end, because they will become part of the top 7 soon enough (2024), and that too is out into the market. So I have questions and the media is not asking the board members of Twitter, or Elon Musk a clear set of questions. And all that before someone decides to ask KeyBanc Capital a few uncomfortable questions. So what is in the name Twitter, what is in the name Elon Musk and what is in the shares game being played now. No matter what is happening, I feel certain that the media will not properly inform us, that mush seems a personal given. Yet in all this we see the approximation of “to support free speech and democracy across the world”, it seems to me that Elon Musk is giving us options, options in mobile technology and energy technology. Who else has been giving us that? I see questions and no one asking them, it is weird, is it not?

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Stop Stupid Spending

In light of my previous article (at https://lawlordtobe.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/a-dangerous-ploy/) ‘A dangerous ploy’, we now see the BBC giving us ‘Can the super-rich solve America’s budget problem?’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60904900) the simple short direct answer is ‘No, they cannot!’ You see, it is the American administrations who clearly overspend. When you create a $1,900,000,000,000, all whilst it represents double the amount you collect through taxation, you are the losing member of a losing party. And all the clever calculator games you play will not help you. It is a sliding scale from the decline of a decent amount of wealth deep into the debt and depth of bankruptcy is all you have to look forward to ad there is no going back from this path, the US is too deep in debt already. When it was clearly visible that the overhaul of tax laws was the only real path for over two decades, the superrich will not help them overcome anything, not even their own stupidity. So when we see “The proposal aims to capture more of the wealth created by the soaring stock market of the last few years. It targets the roughly 20,000 taxpayers in the US worth more than $100m (£76m). Investor Warren Buffett, Tesla boss Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would be among those affected.” Yes you can try that approach, but in light of the money you are spending, money you do not have, it will amount to nothing. The first thing that they face is to reduce their annual budget to no more than $730,000,000,000 that is the the first thing that needs to happen, reduce it by well over 50%, that is the impact they need to face. And then those additional taxations will need to be used for 100% to reducing debt. Even then they will come up short for close to 12-15 years. Should any millionaire and billionaires have remained in the US, they could have a chance, but only if US spending goes down by well over 50% until well over 2037. That is the reality of the plight they face. So when you consider the harsh reality of “Mr Biden’s budget also calls for raising the income tax rate on households earning over $400,000 from 37% to 39.6% and increasing the tax on companies to 28%, partially reversing cuts made under the Trump administration.” It merely works if the overspending of budgets is stopped, if not this is a waste of effort and when the Americans run away from their land to try and keep what they have, we will see that zero tax havens will suddenly get an investors infuse of 200%, all whilst all this was clearly out in the open from 1999 onwards. So whilst you all consider “For the 2022 financial year, the annual deficit is projected at more than $1.2tn. Overall debt passed $30tn last month.” All whilst this administration wants to spend an additional $700,000,000,000, you see the first reality out there and it is not taxing the rich, it is controlling stupid politicians spending money they never had in the first place and it goes back to the age of Clinton, it has been going on for that long and now we see some knee jerk action that has no impact, not until the US budgets are under control. But go on, spend billions on some joke (aka USS Zumwalt class) for the amount of $4,400,000,000. And whilst we think it is cheap, consider 

That it was delivered in 2016 and from then on it faced a trial of break downs and repairs, it required redeployment of weapons, the smart guns never worked and it is now a missile launcher at 500% of the price of such a ship. That is where the budgets fall short again and again and that is merely the defence budget, a budget that has shown failure after failure. All this beside the infrastructure requirements that have not been met in close to half a decade, and they now want some lame ‘tax the rich’ approach to fix it all, all whilst the spending tap is not closed by 55%-70%. And as such, the super rich will never solve this problem. Not until Washington DC wakes up and smells the junk they shovel in. So whilst we see think tank after think tank contribute colourful mentions like “America’s 400 richest families have more wealth than all 10 million of the country’s black families combined, according to a 2020 analysis by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.” No one is asking how large the price tag of that analyses was. We see a group of people blaming a group of people all whilst they enabled all this by not overhauling tax laws, it is now well over 20 years that spending needed to be overhauled, but no, even this administration overspends by close to $1,700,000,000,000 and it does not stop with the $1.2tn deficit, the interest of $30tn is also due and there is no solution for all that, the previous leaseholders of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue made that mistake and it is about to get a hell of a lot worse, that much seems clear and when the brain drain starts in the US, whatever is left there will not be suitable or liveable, that too is a clear consequence. And it was not rocket science. When you spend more than you collect, when you spend more than you have, this happens and it is happening now and the superrich were never part of any solution, their spending and their own tax system was, and it has been clearly out there since 1999. 

And when you wonder why I mentioned the USS Zumwalt? Well Yesterday we got “With political and economic stakes possibly riding on a defense project that saw a 17% cost overrun from $12 billion to $14 billion and the number of vessels being dropped from 32 to only three, besides a raft of nagging flaws in the overtly advanced system, the USS Zumwalt series of warships will not be scrapped” three overpriced dinghy’s and they are about to refit them for “Advanced Gun System (AGS) will be replaced by another defining weapon of our times – hypersonic missiles.“ A collection of ships, not a decade old will face billions in cost for refit, its stealth hull no longer doing what it was designed to do. On the other hand, I designed a weapon to sink it for a mere $250,000 per deployment, so who was stupid enough to sign that contract at $14,000,000,000 per vessels setting the stage from 32 ships to a mere three of them? You really think the super rich were the problem or these overspending politicians with their heads in the clouds? Someone OK’ed spending $14,000,000,000 on something that never properly worked and they are about to spend more. 

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A dangerous ploy

Today, we see President Biden play a dangerous card. It is his version of ‘tax the rich’. Now lets be clear, I have nothing against it, I find it unfair, in stead of ‘properly tax everyone’ he goes after one group, a populist approach to this issue. A setting we see but do we see it correctly. Presidents going back decades have been unwilling to overhaul tax laws in the US. The difference here is that it comes with an added bonus. The article (at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-budget-boost-military-raise-taxes-billionaires-2022-03-28/) gives us ‘Biden’s budget boosts military, raises taxes on billionaires, companies’ it comes with the added text “U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday submitted a $5.79 trillion budget plan to Congress that calls for record peacetime military spending while raising taxes for billionaires and companies and lowering government deficits.” In 2021 the US estimates that they expect to collect $3.86 trillion. Expected does not mean achieved, it is an educated guess. In 2019 they collected $3.46 trillion. The 2020 numbers are also expected. So in this, how does the US give us a $5.79 trillion budget, $1,930 billion more than they will collect. Money the US does not have and the billionaire fix get them nothing more than about $360 billion in the next decade, according to the document. So $360,000,000,000 in a decade does not tell us how the US will survive $1,930 billion more than they expect to collect. An additional of $1.9 trillion more and there is no space to wiggle, the chance is that those with more than $100,000,000 will more completely to the zero tax havens like Dubai, Bermuda, Bahamas, Monaco and a few other places. It will start an economic brain drain and a wallet drain to boot. It is a dangerous play, especially as (again) no proper tax overhaul follows. 

As I see it, this dangerous play will make the rich avoid the US like the plague, for a lot of them it no longer pays them to stay there and the moment this administration figures that out, the danger will overwhelm them. 

What I do not get is why the overhaul of tax laws are avoided to this degree. You see, it has always been about proper taxing people. A setting that might not make people like Elon Musk, George Soros, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos happy, but it is an essential one. As such the overall quality of life in the US will slip and slide to lower levels still. And when it does the average person will see no real reason to stay there, the exodus will start and it will stops the US industrial machine to a near standstill position.

So when we see “Called the “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax,” it would assess a 20% minimum tax rate on U.S. households worth more than $100 million. Over half the revenue could come from those worth more than $1 billion.” We need to realise that ‘Tax the rich’ is dangerous. I have nothing against taxing billionaires (I am not one, and the next 3-4 years I do not expect to become on and I am not American), but when it is unfair taxation, it merely means that the courts will overflow with cases and if the next republican president stops that setting the US will be nearly $2 trillion out of pocket yet again and no achievements were made.

That is the danger of the play and that is the case that will stop the US. Yes, the Americans are so much better off than the previous fellow, are they not?

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Don’t we have enough problems?

This started this morning. It started when three messages passed by my Chromebook. The first was (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/16/un-aid-drive-to-avert-yemen-catastrophe-falls-far-short) called ‘UN aid drive to avert Yemen catastrophe falls far short’, so in short, the UN cannot get it done, big surprise here (not really). The second one was from a different corner. The second one was Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2044566/saudi-arabia) which gives us ‘Saudi Arabia pumps $19bn into Yemeni aid program: KS relief chief’, so if I see this correctly, the UN was unable to get it done raising only $1.3bn at Wednesday’s conference in Geneva, a little short of the $4.24bn they had hoped to get, a mere 30%, so we see the failure of one, all whilst the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is pumping $19,000,000,000 into that place. And of course it comes with “He added that Saudi Arabia would continue to support Yemen through relief and humanitarian programs in coordination with international and local partners.” Yet the other side, the UN did not really give any notice of the efforts of Saudi Arabia does it, even as Arab News gives us “The event was also attended by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis, Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anne Lindy, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, and Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Wasel”, I saw no mention in the end in western papers. I did however find something else. 

The Sydney Morning Herald gives us (at https://www.smh.com.au/culture/celebrity/ex-bachelorette-georgia-love-slammed-for-instagram-posts-promoting-saudi-arabia-20220317-p5a5lf.html) the stage of ‘Ex-Bachelorette Georgia Love slammed for Instagram posts promoting Saudi Arabia’ and there we see “Georgia Love and Lee Elliott, who found romance in 2016 on the second season of Network 10’s The Bachelorette, have sparked controversy after the pair posted Instagram photos of themselves promoting tourism in Saudi Arabia.” The article by Robert Moran calls for more, hiding behind commenters whilst the SMH has not informed us on more than one occasion that Houthi terrorists were attacking civilian targets. The SMH also did not inform the people on the $19,000,000,000 event from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia all whilst the UN could not get 25% done, they raised less than 10% of what Saudi Arabia contributed. If we are all bout fair and balanced, we need to start being fair and balanced. Iran executed 280 people in 2021, so where is THAT Sydney Morning Herald article? 

Is Saudi Arabia a perfect nation, no it is not. Neither is Australia, a nation who refuses to do anything about ageism. Two people promoted tourism in a nation we are not at war with, two people are doing something to open doors that others cannot be bothered knocking on. 

I think that the SMH dropped a few too many issues to be knocking on some door regarding promoting a nation. Oh, and before I forget it should I get that notion in similar ways, I would offer the 5G IP I have to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia long before I would EVER offer it to Australia! Although, I would try to sell them some other IP first, including a story on how to assassinate a politician.

See how long it takes people to consider that Telstra is an increasing problem, not some solution. We see mere greed driven responses, instead of catering to the larger setting of the people. The AFR (Australian Financial review) gave us two weeks ago “A major upgrade of NBN services in country Australia will be part of a multibillion-dollar regional infrastructure package to be included in Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s pre-election budget.” And you think this is god for the people. No, it was because ‘Major NBN upgrade planned to fight off Musk’s Starlink’, so why is Elon Musk with his Starlink a negative thing? Is it because it is bad, or because it is bad for players like Telstra and their ‘friends’? If I look at all the issues we face, I think we have more than enough problems. And the anti-Saudi rhetoric whilst WE never did anything in that region when it mattered is just insane, but we are their for Ukraine, it is politically convenient. I reckon the Syrians and the Yemeni’s will have to live with that decision. 

So whilst news dot com dot au “Georgia Love and partner Lee Elliot have deleted their Instagram posts promoting Saudi Arabia but they can’t hide from those tagging them”, it is just another another set of bullies who do not know what they are talking about, because certain media prefers not to inform them. And in the end, do I care? Nope, I never seen of followed Georgia Love. I personally think that the Bachelorette and like minded programs are a waste of my time. But I do care about bullies and that should be on the front of the line. So how much reporting did Robert Moran do on Iranian culture? Their humanitarian efforts? You see it is more likely not his cup of soup and the fact that a person like Georgia Love made the papers (or internet) means that he had nowhere else to look regarding culture. So whilst ABC gave us ‘Women are isolated in sports media, we need more allies for real and lasting change’ three hours ago, the Sydney Morning Herald was all about bully tactics, that is how I personally see it and it is sad that some resort to that, but on the plus side, I can at least make the claim that I tried to better the world by melting down an Iranian nuclear reactor, how is that for cancel culture? In all the issues we face Georgia Love should have been a blip on the radar at present, I personally reckon certain people got upset with the effort and the SMH obliged. That is my take on the matter, but then I could be wrong. You make up your own mind on where I stood, right or wrong?

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The bad track

I am optionally on the wrong track, yet it is not an accident, it is an intentional choice I make. You see, we see too many ‘populist’ settings going on and I am starting to wonder if we are on the wrong track. Now, most of us are clear. The war in the Ukraine is wrong, Russia started this and there needs to be repercussions. Some have taken to confiscate whatever they could that is owned by Russian Oligarchs (weirdly enough I see almost no residence confiscations in London). Yachts and all other possessions are available. I have mixed feelings. Those with clear support to the Russian government and what is happening now is clear. The rest makes me wonder and for some reason the AP article ‘Fleeing sanctions, oligarchs seek safe ports for superyachts’ (at https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-boris-johnson-europe-united-states-10a82777a3b4a6ccafc38c223b659a03) something woke up. It was the quote ““We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets,” President Joe Biden said during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, addressing the oligarchs. “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.”” So, please explain to me (with evidence) those ‘ill-begotten gains’? It is a serious question. In this specific case we see Alisher Usmanov a metals magnate and early investor in Facebook. So how much did Facebook make him? Is that ill-begotten? There are two trains of thoughts. The first is that we see a new McCarthy mindset starting, which is their choice, but let’s be honest about it. The second track is that the US is so bankrupt that it is now in a stage to confiscate whatever it can to survive. I am not siding with Alisher Usmanov. And if he has done wrong, fine. But in that case this article was a piss poor job and then some. He was also one of the initial people connected to Mail.ru, so he seems to be a smart cookie who got involved with IT projects when it had the greatest impact, nothing ill begotten, merely good timing. Now, this does not mean that I am right, or that they are wrong. There is too much that I do not know. But this comes across as a legalised form of ‘Tax the rich’ which is now transformed into ‘confiscate whatever the rich has’ a democrat party BS approach. So what will happen when it is suddenly the wealth of Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Sergei Brin, Larry  Page, Tim. Cook and Jeff Bezos dealing with the bills the American government cannot deal with because they refused to clean house for over two decades? 

The AP does give us at the end “But actually seizing the behemoth boats could prove challenging. Russian billionaires have had decades to shield their money and assets in the West from governments that might try to tax or seize them”, which is fair enough. I am still in the mindset that SOME oligarchs should pay, not sure if all should, but I do admit I really do not know any of them and the media cannot be trusted, they are all on the populist track. OK, not all, but way to many of them are. We can consider that Roman Abramovich was either good or bad, I do not know. Too be honest, I never cared for football (read: soccer) so I am a little out of touch there. But as far as I can tell, everything Roman Abramovich did was to ensure the stage of Chelsea and it’s continuation. We can boast that giving the sale of Chelsea to Ukraine is a political push (the man is a politician after all) and a few other sides as well, and there perhaps his deception worked. Because I personally believe that the man is a soccer nut trying to preserve Chelsea. Does that make him evil? I personally do not think so. I also understand that some policies will hurt the good and the bad, but there is an increased feeling that the US is doing it for other reasons and as the media have no given us a really good stage of where all these funds go, we should wonder what is going on. 

I am not stating that what is done is wrong, but I am wondering why certain things were done and WHERE these funds are going to. Is that wrong? So I might be on the wrong track, but it is mainly because no one is properly illuminating the right track and the media are all about ‘the quote’ but are less about the clear explanation. I merely looked at two people, the US has a list of 96 oligarchs. I reckon there are clearly a few super pro-Putin people there, and we get it, it will rain on the good and the bad alike, but it seems that the media has a lot to make up for, especially when it comes to properly informing us, because that lack set me on the track I am on now.

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Not just America

This train of thought started when the BBC gave us ‘Inflation surge sends UK interest payments higher’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60117150). In the past, to be a little more specific with ‘Utter insanity’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/04/utter-insanity/) on October 4th 2021, with ‘How stupid are we?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/17/how-stupid-are-we/) on September 17th 2021 and even before that going back to 2015 and 2016 I made it clear that debts have interest. The US (now at 28 trillion), Japan (well over 14 trillion) and the EU with several at €5,000,000,000,000 as well as the UK with well over £2,000,000,000,000 now sees (via the BBC) the quote “The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said interest on government debt hit £8.1bn last month – up from £2.7bn a year earlier.” Is anyone even surprised? It was always going to be worse, but I admit that was before Covid took centre stage, as these elements unfolded, debts all over the planet is soaring and the interest is due. And if you think the UK is in a bad setting, consider that France and Germany have a similar setting, but with a larger debt. Germany has options, yet I am not sure how many France has and as I am taking notice of it the article more thoughts come to mind. You see, I wrote with some degree of speculation “The US laughed and sniggered when Wall Street offered vulture solutions to Argentina in 1998, now the vultures are ready and set to rip the US carcass apart. Is it a fair view? That is not in question, yet the stage is now that it is becoming a likely view the only people treated fair are the hard workers who just tried to get by.” And this view is not taking into consideration what the US will do to regard their registered patents and IP to be part of the debt leverage. It made me consider where to put my IP. In all this Canada was the safest bet, more important, Amazon could set the market upheave with securing up to $15 billion in IP, IP that is still unsecured. And as I notice a few articles in the BBC, there is ever chance that one of the IP settings could well over double. Another IP (a concept IP setting) could well exceed that if the IP for the printable displays takes hold. You see, power needs are exceeding massively what is available and the idea that we could optionally reduce power requirements to one device by well over 60%, the idea of doing that to up to 100,000,000 devices will count, the optional military setting (as their is a notion that this solution is speculatively EMP proof, would exceed the expectations by a lot more, by more than even I could imagine. But I will accept that DARPA is a much better source then I ever would be. 

So as debts and power needs rise to way above the acceptable norm, there could be a partial union between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (or whomever runs Amazon). And in this Reuters news from December 18th telling us ‘U.S. to face increasing power reliability issues over next 10 years’ merely fuels my IP value. There is optionally a larger stage that has everything to do with people moving from California to Texas and I wrote about it in the past. It doesn’t just set the environment with not enough power, it also sets the available power in the wrong place, giving places like Texas a few more headaches. In this the solution that Elon Musk has will be essential and needed almost immediately. 

But this is not about him, it is about Amazon and Amazon has as per today an optional solution for issues in the UK, issues in a few places in the EU and that is all before someone realises that Neom (Saudi Arabia) requires a very different approach to marketing and retail visibility. I based part of my IP on that shift in 2019 and now that it is closing in, someone will realise that whatever is set there could influence and strengthen it position in Egypt and Israel as well. This relates to the previous part because the US has done almost nothing in that regard other than alienate Saudi Arabia, the EU is in a similar position as they cater too much towards Iran and Saudi Arabia can together with Huawei set the 5G base to include Egypt which brings close to 100,000,000 subscriptions and they all want to do marketing. And in all this I have been right again and again and now that the UK is realising that an interest increase from “£8.1bn last month – up from £2.7bn a year earlier”, the need for commerce is overtaking all other considerations and Amazon has the inside track on several options. At that point do you think the US will be about fair play? They will take what they can and they will leverage IP as required to not fall over, because if the UK is facing this, then so are Japan and the US to some degree and none of them has the stamina to wage a long fight with debts drowning them, especially when the interest is too much too handle. In all this Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have the option to be saviours (at a price), especially when the short sighted governments should have seen this coming a mile away. Why? I saw this point as early as 2015, thus I was aware of the danger 7 years before the BBC informs its audience and this is not merely ‘speculation’, this was always going to happen, only through covid there is a chance that the UK will beat the US and Japan to that point of drowning. And when that happens it will the the one marker where all retirement funds will dry up faster than oasis in the Sahara. Feel free to doubt me, but I leave it up to you to await the bad news from your retirement funds. Some studies were made that in the US 40% will run out of retirement funds due to all kinds of risks and governments running out of cash is a big one, that is why (for them) patents and IP are so important, they are the leverage some companies prefer not to give them. They might prefer to call it ‘Leveraging Federal Resources’ but in the end that is where it is heading and it will not merely be the US, it will be a lot more places who play that game, so in the end, those who own their IP are in an exulted place of negotiating. Hence the benefit that Amazon and Musk will end up having and should either be a larger part of Neom, their value will merely go up, because it is not (merely) about  Neom, it is the strategic place it has for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. From there a whole range of options open up and the first one there gets to serve all the others. 

It is not about the US, it is not merely the US. You need to see that before it is too late to act, it might still be too late to act, but there is an option to reap some rewards in that mess and that is all up to you, I placed my IP in a strategic place, outside of government reach. It was a good as I would be able to steer it, now it is up to others and I might still miss out, but I gave it one hell of a try. 

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The more it stays the same

 On one side it is nice to the the US of A being s stupid as they were in the age of Joseph McCarthy. In the time he was in office (January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1955) he was able to become one of the strongest black pages in American history. To be honest, I cannot say whether the fear was real or not, this was all before my time. Yet the largest station of fear created was also the setting of the cold war, the anti Communism events and a whole lot of other settings, like McCarthyism and the second red scare. The problem is that there was a massive absence of evidence. We see the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, whilst there was an absence of evidence. Flaming was as good as it got and the media was part of this. The USA is now in a similar stance like ‘Tax the rich’, and the setting of ‘US sanctions drone maker DJI’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59703521) is now out in the open. We get to see “It has been alleged that DJI’s drone technology has been used for the surveillance of Uyghur Muslims in China.” If there was concrete evidence it is one thing, but to see ‘alleged’ so conviction without evidence is more than harsh. It shows how deep the US has sunk, a setting of BS and accusations that are followed up by convictions on alleged events. And all this is ‘simmered down’ by “the ban is largely symbolic as DJI is not a publicly-traded company”, my personal guess is that you miss the facts that follow, like “The company had close to an 80% market share in consumer drones last year in the US, according to Drone Industry Insights”, you see, it is a personal observation. Yet I believe that Huawei and DJI are showing the US how insignificant they have become. If I can come up with a dozen pieces of New IP, all whilst showing the US has nothing to oppose it, as I saw a solution where DARPA and the NSA struck out. When I created new 5G IP that NO ONE has, when I create movie ideas and new classes of hardware when the US and its companies have nothing to oppose me with I have shown to be the stronger party and that is why it is in hidden places in 4Chan. That is why, because the USA cannot steal it, they can replicate it and when I give the world the clear locations an how they can be read, all whilst at present one IP shows well over 10,000 hits, they will have no option but to admit that I got there first and before the market realised that China was there first. That is the benefit that they have in 5G, that is why the US keeps on lagging, and that is before you realise that the 6G advertisements might be preemptive as Huawei was already making headway there.

So as we realise that we re being told story after story, the realisation needs to be on what evidence there is. So when you read “Reuters has reported that the Biden administration is considering imposing more sanctions on China’s biggest chip-maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation” why this is done, to herald in a new era of McCarthyism now aimed at China, or is there evidence? You see if there was clear evidence and it was presented it would have been a different thing, but they haven’t done that and the BBC hiding behind ‘alleged’ is a problem, it is a huge problem because it implies that the rest of the world has no freedom of choice, if can only choose stuff that is approved by the Uncommonly Skint of America. When did you sign up for that? 

This is not some anti-America rant. I am not anti-American. I am anti-stupid and for the most the media can no longer be trusted. They did this to themselves. In all this I would be happy to be wrong, it merely requires the US to present evidence, a stage that is very unlikely to ever happen, they have done this before, and they will likely do this again. And whilst we see news on how much taxes Elon Musk will pay this year, no one is looking at the other 613 billionaires and the 5000 people who own well over $100,000,000, why is that you think? Why do we get flamed article by the ICIJ when evidence shows that a tax overhaul is essential and no one is moving into that direction, no the people will get a new version of McCarthyism, all flames and no adherence to evidence. You look for yourself and you judge, do not take my word for it, learn what is being done and then decide for yourself.

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The media as enforcer

It is a thought, it is my thought and I wonder if there is enough that I am correct? You see, most people are crying foul, blaming rich people. Making noises on the need to tax the rich and the media is helping out. That is the operative part, the media is helping out. To show you just how far they go, let’s take a little trip.

Search by Google
When you search for ‘Charles P. Rettig’ you see two results. One by LGBTQ Nation, one by Mondaq. Consider the following parts
1. Charles P. Rettig is the Commissioner of the IRS.
2. Taxes are on the plate of responsibility of the IRS.
3. The media has nothing to report on the IRS? They are merely all flaming the tax the rich part?

Looking at the media
The BBC gives us another flame article on how ‘How billionaires pay less tax than you’, yet no one is looking at the simple fact that people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other billionaires are doing what they are allowed to do, and it is not “special strategies to avoid paying income tax, say experts”, it is “Merely paying what Tax laws and tax codes are telling people how much to pay”. A setting that comes from the office of Charles P. Rettig, the people who were there before him like John Koskinen, Daniel Werfel, Steven T. Miller, Douglas Shulman, Linda Stiff, and Mark Everson a collection of people that were there for almost 20 years when nothing was done to overhaul taxes, and the media is not reporting on it, is it not news or is it part of the filtered information that some people do not want you to have. Yes, I am focussing here on the US, yet the mess in the EU is not better, it is actually worse as they got well over 20 nations to do NOTHING!

I am not stating that Elon Bezos and Jeff Musk are innocent (or was that the other way round?), I am stating. I am saying that they use tax laws as they are ALLOWED to be used, in black letter setting (meaning: literal interpretation) all whilst the media is shouting about the spirit of the law, the spirit of the law is not in writing, in writing we find “A tax code is a federal government document, usually numbering thousands of pages, that details the rules individuals and businesses must follow in remitting a percentage of their incomes to the federal or state government”, yes, and then the politicians added tax codes, exclusions, tax write-offs and that results in people like the ones we see mentioned as well as the Koch Family ($113,000,000,000), the Walton family ($220,000,000,000) and the Mars family (not the planet) with $127,000,000,000 we do not see these names do we? Just like Charles P. Rettig we see very little on them, we see houses bought and sold and two weeks ago we see ‘Influential Koch network rocked by an alleged affair scandal, donor departures and a discrimination lawsuit’ and I only see the CNBC mention, the other papers seemingly left it alone, why is that?

So whilst we see all flames we do not see anyone (including media) invoking the need to overhaul tax laws, no one seems interested in the essential step that is required. 

More important, no one in media is taking that step either, why is that? You still think that they are free to speak their journalistic minds, or does the hierarchy of Shareholders, stake holders, advertisers starts making sense. To realise that you the reader are a mere 4th place in any media source, how does that feel?

It is not a setting where the rich pay less, it is a setting that non-overhauled tax laws benefits the rich more and this is not semantics, consider that CNBC gave you “So if you want to find a way to lower your taxes like the rich do, it could be a good idea to meet with a financial advisor or CPA”, for a really rich person a CPA ($119,000 annual) is nothing, and they KNOW what tax laws are there to aid and which ones are not. And it was simple, it has been for decades and no one seems to focus on that part, they merely advertise the scream ‘Tax the Rich’ which is funny, because it goes nowhere and gets people nothing and when you realise that the taxation laws were the problem for decades, when will you see that the politicians and their IRS commissioners were part of the problem and never any part of the solution the USA desperately needs. So whilst the news is all about ‘Biden signs legislation raising US debt limit, averts potential default’, now consider your own situation. How much upgrades can you get on your credit card until is gets blocked, banned and retracted? How many upgrades can you get until you show more income? That is the stage; that is also why tax laws need overhaul. It is not names like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, it is the stage that the USA has according to some sources 614 billionaires. You still think that there is no gain in overhauling tax laws? Oh, and when we look at those with a value that tops $100,000,000 you get to a number of people that is slightly surpasses 5000. When you consider all this, do you think it makes sense that the media has zero interest in people like Charles P. Rettig? Consider that he should be in the targeting view of EVERY American media outlet, but he is not, why is that you think?

I am starting to believe that the media is nothing more than an enforcer that uses the old premise of panem et circenses, a stage introduced by the poet Juvenal. Decimus Junius Juvenalis (his original name) was around in the age of Nero and Galba and a whole lot of other emperors, including the year when they had 4 of them (it is a hazardous job). A stage we see now exploited by media, politicians and rich people. Making us all watch where they want us to look, not where we need to look and the US (EU too) is running out of time. When the US defaults, what do you think will happen to the Yen and the Euro? So when you get angry at Jeff Bezos, wonder why the media is so focussed on giving him the limelight and they are actively avoiding the limelight on a whole group of 614 equally filthy rich as Jeff Ross (sorry the other comedian) Jeff Bezos and we do not see their names, not ANYWHERE, why is that? Consider that for a moment before you start shouting ‘Tax the rich’. Let’s be clear I have nothing against taxing rich people, but that is what tax laws are for, to tax all 5000 of them, not the three overly mentioned in media and there is the rub, that is where the media needs to ask people like Charles P. Rettig and the tax laws makers behind him very serious questions, but the media is not doing that. Why is that?

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The call of a budgie

Yes, that is almost the foundation of a new cartoon, the story of Sylvester the cat and his sunny side show, Tweety. A show that was funny when we were younger than 13, but now? That is the stage we face (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59182278) with ‘Twitter poll calls on Elon Musk to sell 10% stake in Tesla’. What is this? It is like the BBC has lost its senses. Just like the Dutch government who claimed that they gave in to Twitter pressure when they made a deal with Sywert van Lieden, and no one is asking questions that matters. 

In the first Twitter is no valid source of information, none of the vote can be verified. It could will be three politicians each wielding a troll army of 235,000, we cannot tell. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter, it updates me from sources that give me information. Newspapers that have a good reputation, movie productions that give me time lines and optionally a trailer or two, new games. And sometimes a link to something that matters, but polls? A shouting app that allows the rude and the loud to set policy? Never! Its like giving the power of policy on meat to the vegetable store down the road. Or perhaps it lets the NBA make NHL rulings. The proverbial ‘fuck that!’ comes to mind. 

So in this case it is about a poll that allegedly (because a Twitter account can always be hacked) Elon Musk put in the field and the BBC turn it into a lie. They give you “Voters in a Twitter poll have urged Elon Musk to sell 10% of his stake in Tesla in order to pay tax.” That is not what happened. Elon Musk (allegedly) put a question to an audience where he stated “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” The response was that 57.9% said yes. We see no numbers, but it could be that 579 out of 1000 said yes. And it is a mere question he aired. And the setting is more. Tax avoidance, or black letter law is legally allowed, it merely means that he would pay what he is due, not what we THINK he is due and the larger stage is that it is again about tax laws, a setting both democrats and republicans have never ever adjusted, not in 2 decades. 

Then we see a part that matters, the BBC gives us “In an earlier tweet on Saturday, Mr Musk said he took no salary or bonuses from any of his companies – meaning he has no earnings on which to pay income tax. But he has made billions of dollars through a compensation package, which gives him power to exercise large amounts of stock options when the company meets performance targets and its shares hit certain prices.” He is legally allowed to do this and certain stupid players need to stop baiting the hook, the law is there, he can do this and he does. It is not good, it is not bad, it is allowed. To be honest, it a certain Randy Lennox takes the steps I could (hopefully) end up with 10% of $400M-$600M. Do you think I will not take these steps? You have got to be joking. The tax laws allow me to do this and I will, it is the law. 

And I am not alone, more and more take this step, because the law allows me to do this. The tax overhaul,. The one step that stops this is avoided by politicians, why is that? Why are these (stupid) people relying on Twitter to try to pressure people? We know it is not a valid source, it can be an informative source, but cannot be verified (so you need to take care on what to believe) and the list goes on (and on and on and on). So there we have a setting and the BBC justly adds to this with “Mr Musk has an option, which expires in August next year, to buy 22.86 million Tesla shares at $6.24 each – a fraction of Tesla’s closing share price on Friday of $1,222.

Under plans proposed by the Democratic Party in the Senate, billionaires could be taxed on “unrealised gains” when the price of their shares goes up – even if they do not sell any of their stock.” This would add another $23,000,000,000 non taxable funds (at the moment). The law allows him to do this, I saw some of my bosses (in the past) do this with much smaller numbers and it has been legal for at least 30 years. If it was such a taboo why didn’t they stop it them. In that time the US had Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and now President Biden, and so far none have done anything. Well the proposition is from the current president, but I reckon that the votes will fail. And even if it holds up, I feel 99.335% certain that there will be a hiatus and there will be ways around it. Thousands of tax lawyers ill be ready to take that proposition apart and drive wedges through its X, Y and Z axis. 

And as some players claim, the value does not always go up. Elon Musk is one man but hundreds of others do the same, if one gets taxed up to these hundreds can use that setting to make it all tax deductible a side the people are eager to avoid staring at, because they see this one Elongatedly uberly rich Musk and they forget that the one winner comes with 999 losers. Do you really wanna give a tax cut to the 999 that follow?

And credit to the BBC to add the comment by Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman who gives us “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll” the one sane view in the article. Especially as one of the other Musk polls or statements got ‘altered’ to attain the flaming audience. I too would have questions for Elon Musk, but it would be on his new mobile and other settings that accompany this. I wonder if there is a side that is the danger of a much larger dangerous issue in the works. I am not claiming it is, I am merely wondering on the chances of this, and not from him or his endeavour, but on the dangers of third parties doing something stupid (as they tend to do when their pupils turn to dollar signs). For now I merely wonder, perhaps I will see an opposing view when the clear facts are presented to the world. 

I know, it is merely the view of little (and seemingly old) me, and that does not constitute evidence, but it calls for all kinds of questions, does it not? The call of a budgie is nice when you are drinking tea (or coffee) yet the stage of Twitter remains that we can switch it off when we do something that is important to us, did you consider that? And I get that the BBC saw this as an opening, but I reckon they could have written it differently, but that is my personal view on the matter. Have a fun day!

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Fake it till you break it

I have been twisting and turning on this. This is not really my cup of tea, so I was happy to let it slide by. But then three things happened. In the first there were two stories, there was actually a third one, but I could not retrieve it. Then there was a tweet. Apparently the Glasgow COP had dignitaries at the scene, as such well over a dozen cars were running on idle during THE ENTIRE DAY, so how is that for the environment? But I digress. It was the second article, the one starting with ‘Thunberg tells Glasgow protest politicians are pretending’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59116611) that pushed me on. You see, she is right and I will hand over what I personally believe to be evidence over to you and I will let you decide. The article gives us “She told fellow activists from “Fridays for Future” that change would not come from politicians at the summit but from individuals showing leadership. The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was sailing up the Clyde, with plans to dock near the conference venue”, the article is almost a day old, I had been fighting with myself on this for a day. So it is the first article that was the tide setter. The article ‘World leaders promise to end deforestation by 2030’ started the trouble. This link is an hour old, but there was an earlier story. This article is at https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59088498. You see, if they were sincere about doing something, the promise would not be for 2030 when most of these losers would be out of office, it would realistically set to January 1st 2023, that would have been real, that would have been a decent mark towards some victory. But the greed driven need to capture whatever they can, mainly because some analyst in Wall Street seems to have given that deadline. So when we are given “warned a previous deal in 2014 had “failed to slow deforestation at all” and commitments needed to be delivered on” and no amount of posturing as is seen with “UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the global meeting in Glasgow, said “more leaders than ever before” – a total of 110 – had made the “landmark” commitment” is nothing more than a joke, a joke optionally forgotten by January 1st 2029, when most signatories are no longer in office and a landmark adjustment is made towards 2035, optionally 2038. I reckon that Greta Thunberg is right, they are merely pretending. I wonder how many of them have sold whatever they had at the coastline. So we can think whatever we want, but the person making the statement “end the role of humanity as nature’s conqueror, and instead become nature’s custodian” could be dead before that moment arrives. In this I find the response from Dr Nigel Sizer, the ecologist the most disappointing one “But maybe this is realistic and the best that they can achieve”, their best is not even close to acceptable, not in the cases we are seeing now. And in all this, I saw no commitment or actionable signs from China, the one who is still the alleged number one polluter. As far as some papers go, China made no commitments, one source gave us ‘no new commitments’, but so far (or as far as I can see) China hasn’t done anything in the old setting either. 

Where do we go from here?
I honestly do not know, the idea of culling the human population by 97.3% is still on the table as far as I can tell and if that happens, I will not be around for commentary, The super enabled will be part of the surviving 2.7% and in light of how drastic the situation might be, that is as good as it will get. And it is already starting. The Guardian gave us yesterday ‘Do not trust Brazil’s ‘greenwashing’ promises, say Amazon activists’, so the COP hasn’t even ended and the doubts are flying all over the field. So far it seems that a teenager named Greta Thunberg is seemingly a lot closer to the mark than any current or previous environmental editor in any newspaper. And when you realise that part, how much were the cost of meetings that go nowhere, because you the taxpayer paid for all that. And my skepticism is not unique. Elon Musk gave (via ABC News) the headline ‘Elon Musk offers $US6 billion to UN World Food Programme if it can prove it’ll end world hunger’, the UN, Environmental agencies, they have become the laughing stock for players in Wall Street play the delay game. Should you doubt that, consider the stage of full deforestation until 2030, that whilst an attempt was made in 2014, it failed and the so called critics with ‘it was voluntary’ is useless. It shows that governments need to fill their pockets, it is the need for greed and the setting where the population gets to One (see previous article). By 2019, 5 years after the ‘promise’ nearly all have failed. Russia and a few others weren’t part of this, but do they have to? If we cannot see the dangers we are facing it doesn’t matter what Russia does, we merely no longer deserve to live, hip hip hurrah to Wall Street. 

We can look at it from all the angles, but in the end it is all about fictive promises that will not be held by those in office when it counts, it will not set the stage of promises that are broken again and again. If they had set the promise towards January 1st 2023 when most would still be in office it is one thing, 2030 is just a joke, but as things go I will not live long enough to see that date come, so whomever is alive then, make sure that these politicians are held to account and if needed let EVERY newspaper print a page every day with the shame list of those who attended COP26 and were unable to keep their word. I reckon it will not happen, because it will stop business agreements and space for advertisements will be lost, and Wall Street wins again. 

Perhaps this will wake you up, in a stage of greed there is one winner, it is the ‘me-stage’ we face and that stage will not be defeated, it comes from the push and the reality that greed is eternal. 

P.S. WordPress still hasn’t fixed colours, I hope to find an alternative soon.

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