#Steve Mnuchin

[filosofablogger]

Black History Month -- Harriet Tubman and $20

This is a slightly edited & revised reprise from a post I wrote in May 2019.  Originally titled “A Slap in the Face”, it was not  a post written for Black History Month, but it ties in quite well, I think, with the ongoing struggles for equality that Black people have faced throughout history and still face today!  And it is also a post about one of Black History’s most remarkable heroes, a woman…

[refractorind]

Rabbi Sam wants TikTok

[msclaritea]

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

Here are some older articles on the tik tok ban bill from 2024. They are older but are still informative. And they go into the behind the scenes aspects of why they want to ban it in the first place. And also, some shady business deals involved with it.

[friskyfreddie2024]

America: You Fucked Up

You could have chosen Hope. You chose Hate.

You could have chosen Empathy. You chose Enmity.

You could have chosen a New Beginning. You chose the Nazi.

We could have finally been rid of this cancer on American democracy. He could have been banished to obscurity, remembered only as the worst president in American history, and finally held responsible for his numerous crimes.

The ignorant, racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, pathologicial liar is now going back to the White House. He is a convicted felon, an admitted sexual predator, a total fraud, and a demented old man. He belongs in prison.

What did you do?

You ignored that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, that inflation is at its lowest level in four years, that unemployment is at its lowest level in three years. You believed the lies about how terrible the economy is. I knew better.

You forgot about his 30,000+ lies while he was in office. I remember.

You forgot about his complete mismanagement and ignorance over COVID, resulting in the deaths of over one million Americans. I remember.

You forgot about the saber rattling over military exercises in the pacific, when Kim Jong Un threatened us with nuclear missiles, causing us to fear whether we'd see another day. I remember.

You forgot about waking up every morning dreading to hear the latest abomination he tweeted. I remember.

You forgot about "very fine people on both sides." I remember.

You forgot about "only the best people" like Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, and many others who were given cabinet positions despite having zero qualifications for the job. I remember.

You forgot that 40 of his former cabinet members and dozens of former generals and officials refused to support him, saying he was "unfit to serve." I remember.

You forgot about January 6, "fight like hell". I remember.

You forgot that when he was told that his vice president was secured because the rioters wanted to kill him, he said, "So what?" I remember

You forgot about The Big Lie, "Release the Kraken" and 60+ failed attempts to overturn the election in the courts. I remember.

You forgot about "I just need you to find 11,780 votes." I remember.

You forgot about "They're eating the cats! They're eating the dogs!" I remember.

What now?

When a woman suffering an ectopic pregnancy dies because she doesn't have access to medical care, that's on you.

When they take away your neighbor, your co-worker, your friend, and deport them, that's on you.

When a woman is forced to suffer the agony of carrying her rapist's baby to term, that's on you.

When a transgender kid harms themselves because they can't get the medical care they need, that's on you.

When your middle-class taxes GO UP, while billionaires get even more tax breaks, that's on you.

When schoolchildren are killed by an assault rifle in a mass shooting, that's on you.

When children grow up ignorant because you banned books and dictated how history is taught, that's on you.

When Grandma can no longer afford a comfortable life because the Social Security she paid into all her working life, and provided income on which she now depends, has been cut, that's on you.

When violence against Jews, Asians, Hispanics rises again, that's on you.

When prices on the goods you buy skyrocket due to tariffs, that's on you.

When Ukraine, deprived of our support, is overrun by Russia, that's on you.

When the U.S. is the laughing stock of the world (as we were 2016-2020), that's on you.

What should you have done?

You should have exercised critical thinking skills, recognized the thousands of lies you were being told, recalled that his administration had four years to live up to his promises and failed at all of them. You should have realized that he is a profoundly stupid individual who doesn't give a shit about you or your family or anything except himself.

You had the last nine years to see that, and you still fell for his bullshit.

[mariacallous]

“I can look into it,” Elon Musk posted on X on March 1. He was responding to a comedian named Terrence K. Williams who had written, “ELON MUSK!!! I’m begging you! Please ask President Trump to get rid of this ridiculous BOI rule that Biden Created It’s targeting conservatives and small businesses!” As part of the post, Williams claimed that he had received an email saying he needed to fill out a beneficial ownership report or be fined more than $500 per day and risk prison time.

The exchange seems to have been the impetus for a major change in U.S. anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) policy. The shift has caused regulatory chaos, especially for small businesses in the United States.

Less than 24 hours after Musk made his promise to Williams, the U.S. Treasury Department sent out a series of five X posts stating that the agency would not enforce any “penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners” with regards to adherence to the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). The act, passed during the first Trump administration with overwhelming bipartisan support as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, requires companies to identify who ultimately owns and/or controls them and bans the formation of anonymous shell companies in the United States. Shortly after the Treasury posts, President Donald Trump jumped on Truth Social to say:

Exciting news! The Treasury Department has announced that they are suspending all enforcement of the outrageous and invasive Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirement for U.S. Citizens. This Biden rule has been an absolute disaster for Small Businesses Nationwide. Furthermore, Treasury is now finalizing an Emergency Regulation to formally suspend this rule for American businesses. The economic menace of BOI reporting will soon be no more.

The CTA is one of the most important AML/CFT laws passed in decades, and while experts are still parsing out the full implications of its rollback, so far at least four key issues stand out.

First, lifting the enforcement of this law undermines anti-money laundering efforts, puts the United States out of compliance with international anti-money laundering standards, and even undermines some of Trump’s other executive orders.

While the rules governing the CTA were indeed written during the Biden administration, the law itself was passed after Congress overrode Trump’s veto. Its passage had been a priority for law enforcement groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police and good governance advocates for decades. Trump’s first treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, testified to the House in 2019 in favor of the CTA, and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (now Trump’s secretary of state) spoke in strong support of it in 2018. The ability to form anonymous shell companies has been a major reason why the United States was long considered the easiest place in the world to launder money.

Getting the CTA passed had been a bipartisan—but nonetheless decades-long—endeavor. The war on drugs and the fight against terrorism finance, especially after the 9/11 attacks, had shown a spotlight on the role that shell companies could play in undermining U.S. national security. Meanwhile, leaks of documents from auditing and law firms including the 2014 Luxembourg Leaks, 2016 Panama Papers, and 2021 Pandora Papers further highlighted the role that anonymous shell companies played in a host of illicit activities that were facilitating drug trafficking, sanctions evasion, corruption, and myriad other crimes. A 2012 study found that U.S. corporate service providers offered some of the easiest ways to set up anonymous shell companies, even when those seeking to open shell companies displayed significant red flags for possible ties to terrorism. By 2016, the United States—formerly a leader in anti-money laundering legislation—was out of compliance with international standards. Countering lobbying from the National Association of Secretaries of State and various business lobbies, law enforcement bodies such as district attorneys and police organizations tipped the balance of support toward enacting the legislation, with the CTA finally passed on Jan. 1, 2021.

U.S. efforts at beneficial ownership legislation largely mimicked European efforts, albeit with a lag. The European Union as well as more than 100 other countries either require or are implementing beneficial ownership registries for businesses. Yet, despite its national security importance and international AML/CFT standards, the CTA never entirely shook off its detractors. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, in its Treasury Department chapter, advocates for the law’s repeal and a review of all AML/CFT legislation and rules. As the comedian Williams pointed out, there were also concerns over the cost and time to input company beneficial ownership information, plus privacy concerns. In a standard limited liability company, however, providing basic information on a company beneficial owner is a simple matter and requires basic information such as the names of the owners and that of the business, the address, and the owners’ dates of birth. The Treasury Department estimated that it would only take 90 minutes to register companies with simple beneficial ownership structures; I was able to register the beneficial ownership of my own limited liability company in about 15 minutes.

Moreover, until a few days prior, the Trump administration had still been defending the CTA in court, with the National Small Business Association filing a series of lawsuits against it. To say that this freeze on nearly all CTA enforcement is a surprise is thus an understatement.

Freezing the CTA puts the United States grossly out of compliance with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards. The United States is due to be evaluated for its compliance in early 2026, and failing could land it on the FATF gray list as a jurisdiction requiring additional AML/CFT monitoring. Should the United States join countries such as Syria, Venezuela, and Mali on the gray list, American individuals and businesses will find it harder to do international transactions, especially banking.

Not only is this change in policy undermining the U.S. fight against money laundering, but it is also undermining the Trump administration’s own executive orders. For example, a Feb. 4 order about sanctions on Iran called for the FATF to evaluate beneficial ownership thresholds to constrain Iran from using shell companies and similar financial machinations used to avoid sanctions. But how can that happen if the United States—the country that incorporates the most companies in the world—will no longer gather hardly any beneficial ownership information? This rule undermines a host of other Trump priorities, such as fighting fentanyl trafficking, since narcotraffickers often use anonymous shell companies to launder their funds. It is also out of keeping with the feelings of Trump’s voter base: A recent survey by a conservative polling firm found that 81 percent of respondents agreed that small businesses doing 20 minutes of beneficial ownership paperwork was acceptable in order to fight “drug trafficking, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.”

It is the executive branch’s job to enforce the laws, but the Trump administration has increasingly decided not to. The Treasury Department on March 2 announced a new rulemaking whereby only foreign reporting companies will be required to declare their beneficial owners. This “interim final rule” came into effect on March 26 concurrently with the public comment period on the new rule. But Congress specifically legislated that nearly all companies—foreign and domestic—must declare their beneficial owners. Assuming the interim final rule continues to hold, more than 99 percent of companies will continue to be exempt from the CTA statute.

Another law within a similar subject area—the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)—is likewise not being enforced, at least in theory. Nonetheless, despite the enforcement freeze, jury selection has begun for two executives charged under the FCPA for paying bribes to Indian officials, making an already confusing legal situation even more chaotic. Individuals and businesses are increasingly finding themselves in a no-win situation.

The full ramification of this bizarre policy shift is still being sorted out, but the resulting havoc will continue.

[azspot]

That said, Trump has a contradiction in his overall agenda, which is that while he wants the stock market to go up, he also wants to help his working class coalition, which will likely require the stock market to fall. Breaking up big tech will probably be good for the stock market. But antitrust in general is designed to foster more competition, which tends to increase quality and cut prices, but could also lower corporate profits. So I suspect we’ll see merger law get rolled back. I watch CNBC every day, and I see Trump donors and advisors like Steve Mnuchin and Citadel’s Ken Griffin talking excitedly about the coming merger boom and the need for consolidation everywhere except big tech.

Monopoly Round-Up: Trump Lays Out His Antitrust Agenda

[senatortedcruz]

You can vote for or support any candidate you want it’s a free country but I do believe big Hollywood celebrities endorsing dems has hurt them in the long run because it makes the party seem like the party of the elites to the voters. Really rich CEOS can get away with it because, aside from the big names nobody knows who the fuck they are. There’s a difference in perspective on Beyoncé vs like 2016 Steve Mnuchin

[houseofbrat]

Democratic party civil war, you say?

Matt Stoller on Kamala Harris:

There's a fair critique here of Kamala Harris skeptics. What basis do we have for skepticism? I'll lay out my views, which are largely policy-centered. I realize no one cares about what kind of leader Harris will be as President, but if there's one lesson we should take away from this moment, it's that we as a party should try to think more than five minutes ahead instead of panicking ourselves into a rushed decision. I started paying attention to Harris when she became California AG in 2010, because some friends worked to get her elected. It was in the middle of the financial crisis, Bush's and Obama's handling of which eventually led to the emergence of Trump. While AG, she had her most important test as an executive presiding over a big political economy decision - what to do about foreclosure crisis in California. Her position was unusual, because California is a big state, so the AG office is, staffed with many lawyers who can do complex finance analysis. Most states don't. There are only a few places - Texas, NY, Illinois, California - who have the capacity to truly wage independent litigation against powerful institutions like big banks. Harris pledged to do so. [Harris] pledged take on the banks and get something genuinely meaningful for homeowners for a mass legal violation called foreclosure fraud that put them on the hook for trillions. The details aren't important but if you want to know them read Dave Dayen's Chain of Title. It's something I was involved in. After two years where it became obvious Obama was on the wrong side, it was exciting to see a Democrat finally stand up.

Only, she didn't. Harris signed a sham settlement with a big fake fine number, that mostly let the banks do whatever they want, and I believe even get a tax deduction for the fines they did pay. As a result, a lot of people lost their homes who shouldn't have. That was a tragedy. But then when she was running for President in 2020, she *bragged* about what she did. It was rancid, similar to the worst of Obama. https://theintercept.com/2019/03/13/kamala-harris-mortage-crisis… Later it came out that her staff had given her memos on how she should have prosecuted (later) Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's bank OneWest, but just chose not to. It's not hard to see that, had Obama (and Harris) actually put the bad guys away, a whole slew of Trump officials would have been in jail rather than in the cabinet. https://politico.com/news/2019/10/22/kamala-harris-attorney-general-california-housing-053716…

I didn't pay as much attention to her big tech work or her time in the Senate, but she's quite close to a whole slew of people in the industry, top execs at Google and Facebook like Sheryl Sandberg. While AG, which was when these companies cemented their dominance in America, Harris's office saw Facebook as "a good actor." She took no actions against big firms as AG, opposed important legislation, and even started a privacy-related "monthly working group that included representatives from Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Kleiner Perkins. In internal documents, Harris' office referred to the companies as "partners."' Again, standard operating Obamacrat stuff. https://businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-silicon-valley-big-tech-facebook-attorney-general-2021-11…… Harris's circle of friends and family are biglaw Obamacrats. Her brother-in-law Tony West was a high-level Obama official, and now GC of Uber. Her niece worked at Uber, Slack, and FB, and her husband was a biglaw partner at Venable and DLA Piper. His clients included Walmart, Merck, and an arms dealer, and there were ethics questions since DLA Piper had a long list of foreign clients. https://nytimes.com/2020/08/17/us/elections/doug-emhoff-kamala-harriss-husband-takes-a-leave-of-absence-from-his-law-firm.html…

How does this differ from Biden's track record? As a Senator, you could read him like Harris. Biden did whatever the credit card companies wanted, was in on bad trade deals, and was VP when Obama mishandled the financial crisis. But Biden always had a tinge of populism. In the 1990s, he went after Stephen Breyer in his hearing for the Supreme Court, calling him an elitist for instance. He was a foreign policy guy, and never liked the Silicon Valley and Wall Street execs, he always thought they looked down on him. As President, he delegated and ignored most domestic policy, and so some of it went to populists and union people while most of it went to neoliberals like Janet Yellen and Neera Tanden. The net result of Biden's choices is a mix - good policy in a few areas, and rank incompetence across a host of them, as well as fantastically incompetent messaging. What was Harris's role? As VP, she's largely been absent from most policy areas I follow, so I don't know how to think about her views on Biden's economic agenda. She's certainly never talked about or been involved in anything competition or regulatory minded that I can see. She does not seem to be a player in any of the big money areas. That said, Harris has proven incapable of managing important tasks like addressing or even explaining the obviously dysfunctional asylum process at the border, so it's hard to know how much she *can* actually do in terms of competence. There's also a lot of inertia here, it's not like she can change everything on a dime. She will inherit Biden's legacy and officeholders, and she hasn't done much as VP to thwart economic policy, for good or ill.

So how will she be as President? I don't want to overstate my read, it's just a guess. But since we're all just guessing, what I suspect is she'll lead to a total wipeout of Dems in 2026 and 2028 as the party turns wholly against working people, and a more complete Trump-y style realignment. And that's if she wins. So that's the optimistic scenario.

Dem Civil War commencing...

[odinsblog]

No one loves Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman more than America’s elite. In recent years, we’ve seen leaders, investors, and celebrities hold out a Saudi exception to human rights in the service of a blurry concept of national interests that requires the U.S. to constantly compromise its values in service of an autocrat. And so MBS has been welcomed back into the establishment fold, and he won over Washington. And now he’s taking a victory lap.

When Saudi Arabia convened a 2018 summit in Riyadh, businesspeople shielded their name tags from view, sheepish about seeking MBS’s money just days after journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. But the stigma has apparently worn off, and big names in finance, tech, media, and entertainment showed up at the Miami edition of Davos in the Desert.

The entire conceit of the conference is that Saudi Arabia can be abstracted from MBS, who is hardly ever mentioned yet remains the unspoken force behind the events. The host, the Future Investment Initiative Institute, a mouthful, is essentially the crown prince’s personal think tank. Session after session offered platitudes and ruminations on the least controversial ideas ever—AI is going to change the world! Climate is important! Sports bring people together! The two-day gathering was titled “On the Edge of a New Frontier,” itself a sort of redundant name. (Isn’t a frontier an edge?)

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of a major sovereign wealth fund that’s currently under Senate investigation, led the proceedings. The Public Investment Fund that Al-Rumayyan runs is the conference’s founding partner and powers its lavish events. That Al-Rumayyan has $70 billion in annual investments to dole out is enough to draw out financial titans, curious entrepreneurs, and former Trump officials.

Jared Kushner, who had grown a beard, was talking about his theory of investing, without noting that MBS’s sovereign wealth funds had reportedly contributed $2 billion to his Affinity Partners. Steve Mnuchin, who similarly snared $1 billion of Saudi funds for his Liberty Strategic Capital, wore a suit and dress sneakers and talked about Israel as a tech hub. Mike Pompeo, in a tie, said that U.S. leadership in the world requires a “stability model” that involves working with “like-minded nations,” though “they’re not all going to be democracies.” Little wonder he rushed U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia as secretary of state as part of an end run around Congress.

Doing business with Saudi Arabia has become so normalized that the CEOs of major corporations and investment firms showed up in droves. There was Accenture’s Julie Sweet, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, and Thiel Capital’s Jack Selby. David Rubenstein—the billionaire who has played host to President Joe Biden at his Nantucket estate—spoke alongside his daughter Gabrielle. (This year, the Biden administration didn’t send an emissary, but the deputy commerce secretary, Donald Graves, attended in 2021.)

Journalists have kept a distance from Saudi Arabia after the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi, but in Miami the moderators included CNN’s Bianna Golodryga, Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, Bloomberg’s Manus Cranny, and The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker.

MBS has especially used boldfaced names to rehabilitate his standing post-Khashoggi, his crackdown on women activists, and the destructive Yemen war. In Miami, there was a fireside chat with failed Senate candidate Dr. Oz. “Saudi Arabia is, I think, doing some wise investing and shifting mindsets by trying to leapfrog, in some cases, where the West is,” Oz said.

For Gwyneth Paltrow, it was just another fun public event. She spoke about how Goop had “built meaning” for its fans, in conversation with entrepreneur Moj Mahdara, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton. It was particularly incongruous when Paltrow discussed bringing more women to the cap table to fight the patriarchy.

Rob Lowe had some advice for Riyadh’s efforts to break into Hollywood and create its own film industry. “My view is there’s no reason that Saudi shouldn’t be the leader in IP in the same way they’re attempting to be the leader in sports and everything else,” Lowe said. “You need to have someone who can communicate: Why Saudi, why now.”

For all of the glitzy stage management and slick social media branding, at many moments there were fewer than 50 people watching the livestream on YouTube. But what mattered more were the opinion leaders, financiers, and tycoons in the room.

Big Tech was there, too, with Google’s Caroline Yap and Dell’s Michael Dell. Nothing was quite as obsequious as last year’s gathering in Miami when Adam Neumann, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz—all beneficiaries of Saudi Arabia’s financial largesse—gushed about how MBS is like a “founder,” except “you call him, ‘His Royal Highness.’”

(continue reading)

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

You wanna know what really fucking bugs me? The only Secretary of the Treasury whose name I know is Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump's corrupt little toady. I know this because every single dollar bill has the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury on it, and while most signatures are illegible caligraphic scrawls, Steve printed his name in block letters like a child. Nine out of ten bills I get as change have his name on them, clear as day, so I am consistently reminded of the nazi regime that destroyed us. I don't know George W. Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, I don't know Barrack Obama's, I don't know Joe Biden's, but I know trump's, and I can't even ignore it when I see it.

These bills will circulate for decades. People are going to collect them in the future. Someone is going to frame one and hang it on their wall as the first dollar they ever earned. It makes me so irrationally angry I could spit.

STeVen T: MNUChin with random capitalization as if he had to sound it out one letter at a time, fuckin ay...

[karadin]

So, Get This - Trump began the TikTok ban during his first admin because he thinks everything can be bought.

His Sec of Treasury creepy Steve Mnuchin wanted to buy it.

The US Supreme Court, in Trump's pocket upheld the ban - but didn't sign it.

The Biden Administration said it is up to the Trump Administration to enforce the ban - SO

Trump now has the Singaporean CEO of TikTok at his inauguration and can say he 'saved' TikTok.

It's gonna be a long four years.

[garudabluffs]

"Trumps Criminal Associates from A to Z”

Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump; >>> Greg Abbott, Ali Alexander, Samuel Alito, Rick Allen, Brian Babin, Jim Banks, Steve Bannon, Kathy Barnette, Bill Barr, Tom Barrack, Maria Bartiromo, Glenn Beck, John Bennett, Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Christina Bobb, Lauren Boebert, John Bolton, David Bossie, Kevin Brady, Mike Braun, Mo Brooks, Taylor Budowich, Ted Budd, Aileen Cannon, Madison Cawthorn, Tucker Carlson, Matthew Calamari, Kenneth Chesebro, Andrew Clyde, Jeffery Clark, Robert Cheeley, Chris Christie, Chris Collins, Susan Collins, James Comer, Kellyanne Conway, John Cornyn, Thomas Bryant Cotton, Kevin Cramer, Dan Crenshaw, Steven Crowder, Raphael Edward Cruz, Ken Cuccinelli, Warren Davidson, Louis DeJoy, Carlos DeOliveira, Ron DeSantis, Betsy DeVos, Lou Dobbs, Byron Donalds, John Eastman, Larry Elder, Jenna Ellis, Michael Ellis, Tom Emmer, Boris Epshteyn, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, Nigel Farage, Tom Fitton, Harrison Floyd, Michael Flynn, Matt Gaetz, Bob Gibbs, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Louie Gohmert, Sebastian Gorka, Paul Gosar, Trey Gowdy, Lindsey Graham, Charles Grassley, Mark Green, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ric Grenell, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Alina Habba, Harriet Hageman, Misty Hampton, Liz Harrington, Nikki Haley, Scott Hall, Sean Hannity, Josh Hawley, Jody Hice, Hope Hicks, Thomas Homan, Richard Hudson, Duncan Hunter, Laura Ingraham, Kay Ivey, Ronny Jackson, Jim Jordan, Mike Johnson, Ron Johnson, Alex Jones, Fred Keller, Keith Kellogg, Mike Kelly, Bernard Kerik, Charlie Kirk, Kim Klacik, Kenneth Klukowski, Jared Kushner, Trevian Kutti, Tomi Lahren, Kari Lake, Cathleen Latham, Bill Lee, Mike Lee, Stephen Lee, Mark Levin, Corey Lewandowski, Christopher Liddell, Mike Lindell, Billy Long, Barry Loudermilk, Cynthia Lummis, Nick Luna, Nancy Mace, Paul Manafort, Roger Marshall, Thomas Massie, Douglas Mastriano, Angela McCallum, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Ronna Romney McDaniel, Kayleigh McEnany, Johnny McEntee, Mark Meadows, Molly Michael, Chris Miller, Jason Miller, Stephen Miller, Barry Moore, Steven Mnuchin, Rupert Murdoch, Greg Murphy, Heather Nauret, Waltine Torre Nauta Jr., Peter Navarro, Carl Nichols, Kristi Noem, Ralph Norman, Oliver North, Devin Nunes, Bill O’Reilly, Candace Owens, Stefan Passantino, Kash Patel, Dan Patrick, Rand Paul, Ken Paxton, David Perdue, Scott Perry, Rick Perry, Mike Pence, Judge-Jeanine Ferris Pirro, Mike Pompeo, Erik Prince, Vladimir Putin, Sidney Powell, Kim Reynolds, Karrin Taylor Robson, Michael Roman, Chip Roy, Marco Rubio, Anthony Sabatini, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, George Santos, Steve Scalise, Dan Scavino, Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Jeff Sessions, David Shafer, Ben Shapiro, Bill Shine, Kyrsten Lea Sinema, Ray Smith lll, Victoria Spartz, Sean Spicer, Todd Starnes, Elise Stefanik, William Stepien, Shawn Still, Roger Stone, Jason Sullivan, Clarence Thomas, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, Tommy Tuberville, Mike Turner, James David (JD) Vance, Herschel Walker, Kelli Ward, Jesse Watters, Allen Weisselberg, Matthew George Whitaker, Susan Wiles, Ben Williamson, Chad Wolf, Lin Wood, Todd Young…Just to name a few. “Vote Blue in November: In numbers too big to rig, in numbers too real to steal….

381 Comments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY8rIL3xUKc

[luimnigh]

For my birthday, my parents got me a piece of paper with the signature of one of the Executive Producers a few movies I love: The Lego Movie, Edge of Tomorrow, The Man From UNCLE, Mad Max Fury Road.

Unfortunately, that Executive Producer is Steve Mnuchin.

It's a $50 bill.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

#20yrsago Wired runs a balanced Broadcast Flag story — last week to fight the proposal https://www.wired.com/2003/11/fcc-moves-to-stifle-tv-piracy/

#20yrsago 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/us/libertarians-pursue-new-political-goal-state-of-their-own.html

#10yrsago HOWTO protect yourself from Internet surveillance, EFF edition https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/ten-steps-against-surveillance

#10yrsago D&D with toddlers https://web.archive.org/web/20131107181349/http://gygaxmagazine.com/selected-content/dming-for-your-toddler/

#5yrsago Steve Mnuchin stole Cesar Sayoc’s house https://theintercept.com/2018/10/26/cesar-sayoc-foreclosure-steven-mnuchin/

#5yrsago The Copyright Office’s DMCA-defanging is nice, but man, there are: So. Many. Hoops to jump through https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-dmca-exemption-petitions-tinkering-echos-and-repairing-appliances-new

#5yrsago Chicagoans can actually play “Machine Learning President,” the election RPG https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/25/18010142/machine-learning-president-2020-election-larp

#5yrsago China Telecom has been using poisoned internet routes to suck up massive amounts of US and Canadian internet traffic https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=mca

#5yrsago Using science to fine-tune your fake blood recipe https://www.wired.com/story/water-flour-syrup-dye-mastering-the-elements-of-fake-blood/

#1yrago Uline's billions fund voter suppression https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/26/boxed-in/#bircher-jr

[mariacallous]

The difference is not so much Trump—it’s who surrounds him now compared with eight years ago. Yesterday’s yes-men, it turns out, weren’t quite so compliant as today’s. (Mnuchin nostalgia? It’s a thing.) A scene from Trump’s first term sums up the contrast: On April 26, 2017, Bannon, who was then still one of Trump’s closest White House advisers, had walked into the Oval Office hoping to get the President to sign a draft executive order for the U.S. to withdraw from NAFTA; the plan was for Trump to announce the end of America’s free-trade deal with Canada and Mexico at a prime-time rally as the marquee event of his first hundred days in office. Trump himself had long railed against NAFTA. But many of his other aides were dead set against abruptly blowing up relations with America’s two closest neighbors for the sake of an applause line at a political rally. Learning of Bannon’s ploy, Trump’s then chief of staff, Reince Priebus, urgently summoned Cabinet officials who supported NAFTA, including Trump’s first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, to the White House to stop it. Trump reluctantly agreed to wait, though he told the Washington Post ruefully the next day, “I was all set to terminate.”

Long afterward, Priebus would take credit for having “orchestrated” the successful pushback. But he understood what it has taken eight years for many others to figure out—Trump truly was prepared to do it. This time, it only took seventy-four days to smash the global economic order. Trump is liberated, even if the rest of us are not. In his second-term White House, they are all Steve Bannons now. 

Donald Trump’s Ego Melts the Global Economy