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dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

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Listed: Three Lobed Recordings

For 20 years, Three Lobed Recordings has explored the outer reaches of psychedelic music, presenting Bardo Pond’s heaviest, most improvisatory albums, documenting the American primitive revival via recordings of Jack Rose and Daniel Bachman, listening to emanations from space-age folk troubadours like Wooden Wand, Sunburned Hand of the Man and Matt Valentine and generally pursuing the beauty of experiment, wherever it occurs. To celebrate these past two fruitful decades, label founder Cory Rayborn lists ten of the albums that define Three Lobed (and, necessarily, leaves out others equally valid and interesting). We look forward to lots more in the decades to come.

Personal Choice Cuts from the TLR Catalog (in no particular order, 9 of which might be different if you were to ask me tomorrow).

Gunn-Truscinski Duo — Ocean Parkway (2012)

Ocean Parkway by Gunn-Truscinski Duo

Every time I listen to this album, especially the title track, I feel transported. Long ago my college roommate Jon Nall articulated a test for transcendent songs, for the ones that impact you no matter how many times you hear them. He summed those all-time tracks up as the ones where the hairs on your arms uncontrollably stand up every time you hear them. While every track on this album does it for me every time, throwing me into a sort of uncontrollable head nod and body sway, I am always fully taken away by the entirety of the title track and Steve's swirling guitar build over the entire eighth minute punctuated by the ecstatic tones he hits at 9:06. Yow. The feeling I get from this album is why the label exists.

Various Artists — Eight Trails, One Path (2012)

Eight Trails, One Path by Various Artists

Record Store Day is tough. I love the attention and cash it puts into the hands of independent retailers but hate how commodified it has become over time by the powers that be / majors who see it as an excuse to pump out a bunch of junk that will end up being shelf warmers and ankle weights on those same retailers they claims to be supporting. The first few years when most of the titles were truly from and by indies it was a lot of fun. That was the feeling that led to wanting to put out an RSD title in mid-2011 (an illness I’ve since overcome). Originally conceived as a joined pair of split 7"s, it morphed into a triple 7" and then to a full length album. I wanted to showcase different approaches to solo guitar work and set out to ask a lot of my favorites. I also wanted to put together a special package which was fleshed out with help by Casey Burns on graphics, Grayson Haver Currin on words and Jeff Mueller on printing. I’m still amazed at the interlocked nature of all of the contributions to this one, from Six Organs’ spiritual sibling to “Ascent” in the form of “Stranded on Io” (a track that is a wordless tale all within itself) to the circular beauty of David Daniell’s “Housewarming” and everything else on here. I really love this record.

Tom Carter — Long Time Underground (2015)

Long Time Underground by Tom Carter

Late in 2013 I was chatting with Tom about what shape a record should take. He wanted to go to Black Dirt and get a good, clean capture of what he had been working on with Jason Meagher. TLR is always onboard with a Black Dirt election. Fast forward several months and family TLR was visiting some friends in Vermont around the same time Tom was in the area. We met up and he handed off the masters for a double LP. While we knew that the mix of Tom’s playing, Tom’s writing and Jason’s engineering was going to be magical but we had no idea of the exact form or how insanely potent the album was going to be. Damn. Seriously, just listen to this stuff and absorb that these are all single takes, no overdubs. Haunting and celebratory all at once.

Daniel Bachman — The Morning Star (2018)

The Morning Star by Daniel Bachman

It is pretty fun to watch the arc and path that Daniel’s writing, recording and performing have taken over the last 15 years. From powerhouse steamroller to the intersection of musique concrète and acoustic drone, his current location could maybe have been seen in his early recordings but you likely would have lost most of those dice rolls. The Morning Star speaks to me in so many ways but the stunning bookends of “Invocation” and “New Moon” always hit like a ton of bricks. What is amazing is how Daniel can turn these album cuts into live performances. I saw “New Moon” several times while Daniel was in the process of touring this 2016 self-titled album, always transfixed by it live — the album version loses none of that potency. On the other hand, Daniel re-created “Invocation” at the 2018 Three Lobed / WXDU Annual Ritual of Summoning to stunning effect.

The Michael Flower Band — self-titled (2008)

The Michael Flower Band by The Michael Flower Band

An audio / aural bomb blast, a kosmik rearrangement of the space/time directly around the listener. This take no prisoners statement from Mick Flower (guitar) and John Moloney (drums) is a deep slice for catalog enthusiasts. Just tune into “Balinese Falsehood” and try to not get fully lost. Years ago I described this as “biker psych for the third eye rider” and I’ll stand by that statement fully today.

Wooden Wand and the World War IV — self-titled (2013)

Wooden Wand & the World War IV by Wooden Wand & the World War IV

Picking between Wooden Wand titles is hard for this particular enthusiast but if forced I think I have to push the needle towards the intense Crazy Horse vibes of this studio corker. Surrounded by the “Briarwood” band, perhaps the most telepathic folks with whom Toth has ever played, the results are electric and transfixing. Will I kick myself tomorrow for not picking Clipper Ship? TBD...

Meg Baird & Mary Lattimore — Ghost Forests (2018)

Ghost Forests by Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore

I don’t remember when it came to me, the fact that there wasn’t a deliberately ground-up collaboration between Meg and Mary in existence. I had to ask them if that was purposeful or a gap that was truly something that we should remedy, a question where I had my fingers crossed the entire time. They were both really into the concept, it just took the triangulation of busy satellites to make all of our desires into reality. The results are as sturdy, sheltering and invisible at the edges as the album's title, facts that we are all the better for each time we wrap ourselves in this particular fabric. An all-timer.

Jack Rose — The Black Dirt Sessions (2009)

The Black Dirt Sessions by Jack Rose

I had the good luck and fortune to get to know Jack back in the Pelt days and watch his transition from that ensemble into the singular player and performer that he was for the last eight years of his too short life. Watching a Jack set was always a tiny miracle. I remember him calling me one day, telling me that he had gone to record with Jason Meagher and he had a record that he would really love for me to put out if I was interested. Not only was I most most certainly interested, but I was amazingly humbled and flattered that this friend who I also considered a modern master had recorded something specifically for me without even discussing it with me first. That level of trust was the gift and magic of Jack. If he believed in you that belief gave you all of the power you needed to make anything reality, you were suddenly bulletproof. Every track here is a stunner but “Cross the North Fork” always pulls me in, dares me to turn my attention anywhere else. Rest in power, friend.

Chuck Johnson — Crows In The Basilica (2013)

Crows In The Basilica by Chuck Johnson

Every track on this perfectly constructed and sequenced album is flawlessly beautiful but “On A Slow Passing In Ghost Town” is one of the top 10 tracks in the entire TLR catalog in my estimation. Exactingly and properly composed, performed and recorded.

Bardo Pond — Peri (2009)

Peri by Bardo Pond

The love of Bardo Pond was the seed that initially drove me to create a record label. Their single-minded determination to seek audio truth was apparent to me ages ago and so very inspirational. I ate up everything — the releases, the live shows, the live recording — and I hung on every note. The band had a lot of really, really great tunes that they had been working on between 2001 and 2003, the period between their departing Matador for ATP Records. I could never shake the power of several of the tracks from this era that sort of got abandoned to the shifts of time. After several conversations with Michael Gibbons two albums were born from that period and from some other exceptionally potent tracks. Batholith was the first of these two albums and Peri, the second. Both are so very special to me, the fruit of knowing folks needed to hear these compositions. When writing here I have to pick Peri today as it closes with “Silver Pavilion,” an all-time Bardo Pond thesis statement of sorts.

#dusted magagzine #listed #three lobed recordings #cory rayborn #gunn-truscinski duo #record store day #six organs of admittance #david daniell #tom carter #daniel bachman #the michael flower band #wooden wand and the world war iv #meg baird #mary lattimore #jack rose #chuck johnson #bardo pond

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shemalediary-blog · 7 years ago

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Shut Up, FFS--Arvin Vohra is NOT Why the LP Loses

Shut Up, FFS--Arvin Vohra is NOT Why the #LP Loses. Want to know why? I'll tell you.

First of all, before I get into this, it’s worth pointing out that the LP isn’t reallylosing. In fact, we just won a number of local and state elections. The LP has no national Congressional officials and has never won the White House, but Libertarians of all people should understand the power of local governments. Yet we seem to have the same fascination with the Federal Government that the Big…

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#2017 #Arvin Vohra #controversy #elections #Federal Government #libertarian party #local government #LP #Nicholas Sarwark #non-presidential election years #November #odd years #state government #the LP failures #the LP is failing #why does the LP fail #why does the LP lose elections

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go-redgirl · 7 years ago

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Why Democrats Won't Get Their Way on Immigration They were not elected to run any branch of government. That's hard news to break to the liberal base. by Megan McArdle @asymmetricinfoMore stories by Megan McArdle ‎January‎ ‎25‎, ‎2018‎ ‎9‎:‎47‎ ‎AM

As a right-leaning libertarian, my heart goes out to liberal pundits right now, who face the unenviable task of explaining to the Democratic base that they are probably not going to get very much of what they want on immigration. 1 This is going to be a deeply unpleasant experience, and I feel their pain.

I have walked a mile in their shoes, and boy, were they uncomfortable.

You see, in 2010, Republicans reclaimed control of the House of Representatives. Having made extravagant promises to go to Washington, shrink government and repeal Obamacare, the new representatives set out trying to find a way to keep their promises. Unfortunately, it turned out that there wasn’t actually any way to do so, given that Democrats still controlled the Senate and the presidency.

The base does not spend a lot of time thinking about the elegant checks and balances built into our constitutional design. They didn’t want to hear "Gosh, well, it turns out politics is a lot harder than it sounded when I was an orthodontist!" They wanted a smaller government, lower taxes and 100 percent less Obamacare, just like they were promised. Desperate conservative representatives decided that they would try to force Democrats to give them what they wanted by using the only leverage they did have: the looming need to reauthorize the debt ceiling so that the federal government could continue doing what it does. No concessions, they said, no hike in the debt ceiling.

This plan was -- for want of a better word -- moronic.

If you hold a mere one-third of the centers of federal power, you cannot expect to govern as if you hold all three. You will emerge from the standoff with even less political capital than you had before.

The Republican base who wanted smaller government and an end to Obamacare shouted: “What else are we supposed to do?” The informed response -- “accept that there is no way to get what you want right now” -- was universally unpopular.

So the Republicans in the House did it again in 2013, shutting down the government and distracting the news cycle from the early failures of the Obamacare exchanges.

And you know who sounds eerily like the conservatives who were yelling at me in 2011 and 2013? The Democratic base right now.

I confess that on Monday, I thought that the Democrats had actually managed to do a shutdown right. They closed down the government over a weekend, allowing them to tell their base that they had fought the good fight, without actually dragging things out so long that the rest of the country would notice.

But the shutdown seems to have merely whetted the activist base’s appetite for more -- and worse, convinced them that shutdowns are a good way to get it. Since the resolution of the shutdown was only a short-term funding measure, with another vote coming in a few weeks, it looks as if they are primed to demand a repeat.

All the same arguments are being dragged out that I waded through in 2013:

Polls show that relief for people brought here illegally as children is popular, 2 so Republicans have a duty to voters to do this.

There are lots of people in Congress who would like to vote for DACA (and never mind whether those folks are a majority of the majority party, who get to set the legislative agenda).

Therefore this is all the fault of Mitch McConnell (or Donald Trump, or both), so why are you trying to blame us?

If it weren’t for their venality and dithering, we’d already have passed a permanent solution for DACA!

To those people, I offer the same real talk I proffered to Tea Partiers in 2011 and 2013, in the hopes that I can pre-emptively spare my leftier brothers-and-sisters-in-ink some screaming. 3 To start with: you lost the election. You lost a bunch of elections, in fact. As a result, you do not have control of the political offices that have the power to make your political desires manifest in real policy.

It doesn’t matter whether your cause is just, right or economically sensible. This is politics, not kindergarten, and being right does not, by itself, generate the means to your ends. If you want to get something done, you are going to have to induce a sufficient number of fellow voters to vote for politicians who favor your policy. Throwing a tantrum and shutting down the government because you aren’t getting what you want is very, very, very unlikely to make those voters think “Now there’s someone I trust with the future of my country!”

Do you think that horrible people are getting away with something horrible, something terribly unjust, by abusing the power they won at the last election? My friend, welcome to representative democracy.

Do you think that a smart negotiator ought to be able to get more than the weaklings in party leadership seem to be able to? Negotiation is not primarily a matter of smart tactics; it is a matter of who has the best fall-back plan -- the superior Batna, or "best alternative to negotiated agreement." In 2011 and 2013, that was the Democrats; in 2017, it is the Republicans. And in both cases for the same reason: because if Congress does nothing, they get something they want, and lose nothing. The party that comes out ahead even if there is no deal is always going to walk away from the negotiating table with more of what they want than the party who needs a deal just to stay even.

You may have seen movies where that is not the case -- where a clever talker or deft strategist somehow overcomes the odds to win a surprise victory over a much stronger opponent. Look around you and observe that you are not surrounded by people of unusual pulchritude who speak in uncannily complete sentences. This tells you that you are not living in a movie; there is no screenwriter who can force the villain to give the audience what it wants.

Since you are not in a movie, and not in a position to demand that your opponents do what you think is right, you are going to have to make some concessions to reality. Stop pushing your politicians to deliver the impossible and start making it possible. Charm your fellow voters with the rightness of your ideas and the purity of your intentions. Get more Democratic politicians elected. But don’t try to substitute amateur dramatics for serious politics. Because neither you, nor the country, will benefit from another silly season of this drama.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

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wandashifflett · 5 years ago

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Ann Coulter: C’mon, let’s take out Mitch McConnell in November

I won’t be participating in the effort but I think it’s a fine idea to start the post-election party bloodletting early. Until something changes meaningfully about the pandemic and/or Trump’s approach to it, there’s nothing to say about November. Trump’s on track to lose, probably badly. And if he does, there’ll be an unholy cyclone of recriminations followed by a power struggle over what a post-Trump GOP should look like.

Why wait? Start the purges now.

Coulter’s effort is actually a counter-purge. McConnell’s the one trying to purge Kris Kobach by spending big money against him in the Kansas Senate primary. He tried to recruit Kansas native Mike Pompeo to run for that seat but Pompeo ended up passing. Kobach is the biggest name left in the field, with his only real competition coming from GOP Rep. Roger Marshall. Cocaine Mitch has at least three reasons to dislike him. One is that Kobach’s a populist, a stalwart border hawk who wasn’t above taking a sustained interest in Barack Obama’s birth certificate back in the day. People like that aren’t as easily controlled by McConnell inside the caucus as establishmentarians are.

Two is that Kobach’s proved he’s capable of losing a big statewide race against a Democrat, falling five points short in the gubernatorial election in 2018 — in Kansas. He’s not Roy Moore but he’s Moore-ish in the sense that he seems to have already alienated enough of his state’s Republican majority to make what should be an easy victory in a red state needlessly competitive.

Three is that McConnell knows what the GOP is up against this fall. Even Kansas isn’t safe from turning blue if you believe Republican internal polling. Kobach is an especially risky choice in a climate like that. The GOP may still have a modicum of influence over the Senate next year if Democrats end up with a narrow majority since centrists like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will be wary of left-wing policy programs, but every seat that’s added to Schumer’s margin gives a would-be President Biden more room for defections.

So … why not turn Kentucky blue too by electing Democrat Amy McGrath and let ’em go hog wild?

Three million dollars is a big ad buy in a rural state like Kansas:

After CNN reported on the effort Monday night, [Plains PAC] publicly announced its plans on Tuesday morning, attacking Kobach’s record and saying his loss in the 2018 gubernatorial race means he can’t win a Senate race in November. The group said it will launch a multimedia campaign — worth $3 million — with its first ad emphasizing Kobach’s “ties to white nationalists.”

“Kris Kobach gave Kansans the most liberal governor in our history,” Plains PAC Executive Director CJ Grover said in a statement. “Kansas Republicans support President Trump and his positive vision for America, but not Kobach’s consistent affiliation with a toxic ideology explicitly rejected by the President and Kansans of all stripes. Plains PAC’s mission is to remind primary voters why a vote for Kobach is too big a risk for our future.”…

The group’s media buyer, Mentzer Media Services, has worked on behalf of Republicans, including Senate candidates and the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Kobach’s campaign called the “white nationalist” charge garbage, stressing that they immediately severed ties with an independent contractor when they found out he held those views.

Coulter’s probably right that the only way to teach establishment dark-money groups to stay out of primaries is to take a scalp from one of their heroes. If McConnell gets to scalp-hunt, populists get to scalp-hunt too. An obvious distinction is that Plains PAC is hunting in a primary whereas Coulter’s going nuclear by hunting in a general election, with a Democrat the direct beneficiary of the “Stop Mitch” push. But a Democrat will benefit indirectly in Kansas from the PAC’s gambit against Kobach if he emerges as the nominee anyway, since the “white nationalist” stuff might stick to him in the general election campaign. And if the attacks on him work and Marshall ends up winning the primary, it’s an open question how many disgruntled Kobach fans will turn out for Marshall in the fall after their guy was savaged. Seems like a clusterfark in the making no matter what happens, which is very on-brand for the GOP in 2020.

As for Trump, he’s been quiet about this race as far as I’m aware. No doubt he’d prefer Kobach over Marshall, but (a) he’s probably spooked by Kobach’s dismal showing in 2018 and doesn’t want to gamble any of his own political cred on him and (b) McConnell’s doubtless begging him to hold off on endorsing, knowing that Trump declaring his support for Kobach might decide the primary. If anything, Mitch probably has Trump lined up to campaign for Marshall in case he defeats Kobach, as maybe only POTUS has the juice to convince Kobach voters not to hold a grudge against the nominee.

Given the way things are going for Trump right now, I wonder if Marshall would even want that endorsement. Better to keep his distance, run his own race, and trust that Kansas Republicans who turn out for Trump against Biden will pull the lever for him too, however reluctantly.

Anyway, before the purges begin, I think it’s heartwarming that ardent populists like Coulter are capable of aligning with ardent anti-Trumpers like the folks at the Lincoln Project (George Conway, Rick Wilson) in a common cause. The LP is trying to sink McConnell and other Republican senators as punishment for their years of loyalty to the president. Now here’s Coulter trying to sink McConnell as punishment for his years of machinations against populists. Together, the sky’s the limit on the number of red Senate seats these two rascally factions might potentially flip this fall. Two ads here for your enjoyment. Our unity is our strength.

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from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/ann-coulter-cmon-lets-take-out-mitch-mcconnell-in-november from The Ray Field https://therayfieldreview.tumblr.com/post/623423616122552320

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therayfieldreview · 5 years ago

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Ann Coulter: C’mon, let’s take out Mitch McConnell in November

Why wait? Start the purges now.

So … why not turn Kentucky blue too by electing Democrat Amy McGrath and let ’em go hog wild?

Three million dollars is a big ad buy in a rural state like Kansas:

Kobach’s campaign called the “white nationalist” charge garbage, stressing that they immediately severed ties with an independent contractor when they found out he held those views.

youtube

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/ann-coulter-cmon-lets-take-out-mitch-mcconnell-in-november

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englishchinesetranslations · 5 years ago

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General Motors did not fall due to natural forces. Like the twin towers on 9-11, GM was taken down. Like 9-11, GM was sabotaged from the inside. The corporate raiders who took down GM are part of the same network of Jewish Zionists who brought down the World Trade Center.

How much is the truth about the huge financial and terror crimes changing our world worth to you?

THE ZIONISTS BEHIND THE DESTRUCTION OF GENERAL MOTORS The bankruptcy of General Motors (GM) is very similar to the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Both catastrophic events are described in the controlled media as having occurred due to natural forces, while actually they are both the results of sabotage carried out by insiders. In both cases, the people who brought down the operation were Trojan Horses, people who had bought their way into positions of control in order to destroy them. The people behind the destruction of GM and the WTC are corporate raiders of the worst kind.

General Motors did not simply collapse as a result of market forces; it was bankrupted by corporate raiders who had infiltrated the company and taken control of its finances. Likewise, the evidence indicates that the twin towers of the World Trade Center did not collapse due to the stresses associated with the plane crashes; they were prepared in advance to be demolished using extremely powerful explosives, including tons of nano-thermite, or super-thermite. This was facilitated by the people who had obtained control of the towers shortly before 9-11, namely Larry Silverstein and the former Israeli commando Frank Lowy.

What is most remarkable is that these events are closely related. The same people are involved in the conspiracy to plunder and destroy both the World Trade Center and General Motors. This article identifies some of the key people and reveals the strategy behind the destruction of one of America’s oldest companies.

BANKRUPTING GENERAL MOTORS

General Motors Corp. filed for bankruptcy on June 2, 2009, as the Zionist-run Obama administration provided unprecedented federal funding and oversight. The bankruptcy filing by GM was the third-largest in American history and the largest ever in U.S. manufacturing. Now that GM is facing restructuring, its assets will be taken over for pennies on the dollar. The notorious corporate raider Carl C. Icahn, for example, is reportedly looking at taking over Delphi Chassis Systems.

So, how did GM go bankrupt? If one looks at the sales figures for GM, it simply does not make sense. In 2007, GM was the largest producer of vehicles in the world, manufacturing 13 percent of the total, and had the largest slice of the U.S. car and truck market with 23.4 percent of domestic sales.

In 2007, GM led in global production and U.S. market share. Graphics from Wikinvest.

Globally, GM sold 9.4 million cars and trucks in 2007, an increase of 3 percent over 2006. GM’s 2007 tally was, in fact, the second best global sales total in the company’s 100-year history and marked the third consecutive year the company had sold more than 9 million vehicles. That doesn’t sound like a company on the brink of collapse, does it? In its 100-year history GM had been through much worse downturns, such as the Great Depression and the Second World War, yet GM managed to survive and thrive. What is so different about the management at GM in the past few years that it caused America’s biggest auto manufacturer to go into bankruptcy despite three consecutive bumber years of global sales?

George Richard (Rick) Wagoner became president and chief executive officer of GM on June 1, 2000. The value of GM stock started the month of May 2000 at its peak of over $93 per share. The day Wagoner became CEO the stock finished at $69.81. By the end of the year it was worth less than $51 per share. GM stock had fallen to about $35 when Wagoner was elected chairman on May 1, 2003. Why promote a CEO who was clearly taking the company down the drain?

Despite the falling stock price, Wagoner remained CEO and chairman of GM until March 29, 2009. Under Wagoner’s leadership GM suffered more than $85 billion in losses — losing $82 billion in the last 4 years! Why wasn’t Wagoner replaced earlier? How was GM selling more cars than ever but losing more and more money? It simply doesn’t make sense.

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Were his hands tied? Rick Wagoner (center) with Mark Neporent (left), COO of Cerberus, and Eric Feldstein (right), chief executive of GMAC and treasurer of General Motors Corp. This photo is from the 2006 announcement of the Cerberus deal for a majority stake in GMAC in which Bernard Madoff’s partner-in-crime, J. Ezra Merkin, became chairman of GMAC. Is Wagoner responsible for $85 billion in losses at GM – or was he just a useful idiot?

In 2008, GM sold 8.35 million cars and trucks globally under the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall and Wuling. GM’s largest market is the U.S., followed by China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, and Germany. Despite three years of record sales, GM lost $18.8 billion during the first 6 months of 2008; by late October, its stock had dropped 76 percent, and it was considering a merger with Chrysler.

At the time the GM-Chrysler merger was being considered, Chrysler was primarily owned (80.1 percent) by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., headed by Stephen A. Feinberg and Jacob Ezra Merkin. Cerberus is named after the mythological three-headed dog of Hell. It should be noted that Feinberg and Merkin also controlled General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC), the financial services branch of GM.

GM sold 51 percent of GMAC in 2006 to Feinberg’s private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, and Jacob Ezra Merkin became chairman of GMAC. Had the merger gone through, Feinberg and Merkin would have probably become majority owners of both GM and Chrysler. This appears to have been the plan. Feinberg and Merkin, the owners of GMAC, had plundered and conspired to bring down GM so that they could take it over.

When Cerberus gained control of GMAC, they hurt GM’s domestic sales by raising the credit requirements for car loans. Feinberg and Merkin reportedly raised the credit requirements so high that they caused a very sizable chunk of sales to be lost due to customers’ inability to secure financing. Cerberus reportedly used this tactic to pressure GM into selling or trading their remaining stake in GMAC.

Ezra Merkin became a controlling owner of Israel’s Bank Leumi shortly before he got his hands on GMAC in 2006. Here he shakes the hand of the notorious war criminal Ariel Sharon as he hands him a check for $500 million. Ehud Olmert (center) held secret meetings in New York City on September 10, 2001. Merkin’s private Israeli bank has a branch in Switzerland that contains billions of stolen dollars held in secret numbered accounts.

Merkin is clearly a criminal. He is one of the key players of the multi-billion dollar criminal fraud carried out by Bernard Madoff. Merkin secretly diverted untold billions to Madoff’s fraudulent investment fund. One of Merkin’s funds lost $1.8 billion of investor cash with Madoff. Merkin was seen as “the Golden Boy controlling the Golden Goose.”

Feinberg and Merkin were also controlling co-owners of Israel’s Bank Leumi, which had been privatized in 2005 under finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bank Leumi also has off-shore banks and a branch in Switzerland in which billions of dollars are held in secret numbered accounts.

It was reported on December 30, 2008, that the U.S. Treasury would provide $6 billion more for GMAC, headed by Merkin and the extremely secretive Feinberg. Feinberg is so secretive his Who’s Who biography says he is deceased!

Stephen A. Feinberg, Ezra Merkin’s partner-in-crime.

The U.S. Treasury was reportedly buying a $5 billion stake in GMAC and lending $1 billion to GM. This “loan” was in addition to $13.4 billion of taxpayer dollars the Treasury had already lent to GM and Chrysler LLC. Once again, a plundered and bankrupted company was being “bailed-out” with taxpayer funds.

Merkin had been chairman of GMAC since November 2006. GMAC reportedly lost nearly $8 billion while Merkin was in charge. Despite Merkin’s huge losses at GMAC and his involvement in the Madoff criminal scam, the U.S. government evidently had no problem providing billions of taxpayer dollars to Merkin, whose Ariel Fund was one of the largest funds feeding billions to Bernie Madoff’s financial black hole. Madoff reportedly “lost” some $50 billion, or more.

Jacob Ezra Merkin, orthodox Jew and devoted Zionist, finally resigned as chairman of GMAC on January 9, 2009. How was Merkin allowed to remain in control of the privately-held GMAC operation for so long despite his history of financial fraud?

WHO RAN GMAC?

GMAC is a very interesting operation. A wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors since 1919, GMAC provided customers with more than $1.4 trillion in credit to finance more than 162 million vehicles. Originally designed to provide financing for people buying GM vehicles, it branched out into other fields, such as real estate. GMAC Commercial Mortgage (GMACCM), for example, provided the funds for Larry Silverstein and the former Israeli commando Frank Lowy to take over the World Trade Center in July 2001. The towers served as the collateral. GMAC Commercial Mortgage sold $563 million in bonds backed by a loan to Silverstein Properties for its purchase of the towers. If Silverstein and Lowy were part of the conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center, the people controlling GMACCM would probably also be. Who was controlling the purse strings at GMAC in 2001 when Silverstein was negotiating to obtain control of the World Trade Center?

Larry Silverstein, here with his daughter Lisa, made billions of dollars from the destruction of the World Trade Center. He is the former chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York, the largest Zionist fund-raising organization in the world.

At GMAC, the person in charge of the money was Eric A. Feldstein, born in Brookline, Mass. in 1959. Feldstein had worked in the office of the treasurer at GM Corp. from 1981-91 and was regional treasurer in Europe from 1991-93. In 1993, he returned to New York as assistant treasurer. In March 1996, he was named executive vice president and chief financial officer of GMAC and chairman of the GMAC Mortgage Group, where he oversaw corporate activities responsible for general finance, audit, and worldwide borrowings.

Feldstein became treasurer of General Motors in November 1997, and was elected vice president the following month. In June 2001, Feldstein was named General Motors’ vice president, finance, and corporate treasurer. When GM and GMAC failed in 2008, Feldstein went to work for Feinberg and Merkin at Cerberus, joining the team named after the three-headed dog of Hell. At Cerberus, Feldstein was made executive vice president.

Eric Feldstein, the treasurer of GM, laughs with Rick Wagoner and Mark Neporent, COO of Cerberus, as the Zionist-run fund took majority control of GMAC. By this point, GM was well on its way to losing $85 billion – all during Feldstein’s term as GM corporate treasurer and vice president in charge of finance.

Eric Feldstein is the son of Donald Feldstein, a high-ranking member of a number of Zionist organizations in New York and New Jersey. The elder Feldstein is one year older than Larry Silverstein and has a long history of leadership in the same Zionist organization as Silverstein. Donald Feldstein was an executive director of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation Jewish Philanthropies in New York City from 1976-81. This is the huge Zionist fund-raising organization that Larry Silverstein headed as the chairman of the board and where he is an honorary board member. The connection between Donald Feldstein and Larry Silverstein at this Zionist organization certainly played a role in Eric Feldstein’s decision to use GMAC money to back Silverstein’s bid for the World Trade Center. It is through such Zionist organizations like the UJA-Federation and the secretive order of B’nai B’rith, an international organization of Jewish Freemasons, that the Zionist network functions. In this way actions and decisions that affect whole nations can be made without anyone outside the “community” being aware.

GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., under the leadership of Donald Feldstein’s son, provided an $800 million loan to fellow Zionists Silverstein and Lowy to back their bid for the soon-to-be privatized World Trade Center in the summer of 2001. This privatization deal, initiated by the Zionist Ronald Lauder and managed by Lewis Eisenberg of the Port Authority, was finalized at the end of July 2001. The WTC complex was finally put into private hands – Zionist hands – only 6 weeks before it was demolished and pulverized with super-thermite.

FELDSTEIN JOINS ETON

After being fired from GMAC, Eric Feldstein went to work for Cerberus in March 2008. Three months later he became CFO at Eton Park Capital Management. Eton Park is a hedge fund run by 42-year-old Eric M. Mindich, formerly with Goldman Sachs, and Alan R. Batkin, the vice chairman of the fund. Batkin, 64, is the senior partner at Eton Park. Although Feldstein lost billions as the head of GMAC and was fired because he had destroyed the 90-year-old company, Mindich and Batkin made him chief financial officer at Eton Park. Feldstein’s colossal failure at GMAC evidently did not bother them. He was clearly being rewarded for a job well done.

Alan Batkin, the vice chairman at Eton Park, is very highly connected. Batkin was, for example, vice chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc. from 1990 through 2006. It is, however, his executive positions at some of the biggest companies of Israel, such as Israel Discount Bank (IDB) and Discount Investment Corporation, Ltd., that reveal the intense Israeli character of Eton Park. (The IDB has been privatized and is also closely tied to the Madoff scam.)

Alan R. Batkin is a member of the board of governors of Tel Aviv University and is treasurer of PEC Israel Economic Corp. (part of Discount Investment Corporation, Ltd.) where he has served as CEO, president, and director. He also served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Orama Ltd. (a venture capital firm founded in 1999 to support companies in the Israeli technology sector; a subsidiary of IDB Group, Ltd.)

From 1972 to 1990, Batkin was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, where he a Managing Director for 14 years. Batkin has been, since 1999, a director of Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. (OSG), which owns and manages a large fleet of transatlantic oil tankers. As a director of OSG, Batkin works with Solomon Merkin, the brother of Jacob Ezra Merkin. Their father, Hermann Merkin, was one of the owners of the company along with the Recanati family of Israel Discount Bank. Batkin is also vice chairman and a director of Hasbro Inc. since 1992.

Solomon Merkin

Batkin was a director of Infinity Broadcasting Corp. since April 1992. Infinity provided popular talk radio with a distinctly pro-Israel point of view. Foremost among Infinity’s talk show staff was Howard Stern, a vulgar and controversial radio personality. Other national radio performers employed by Infinity included Don Imus, Larry King, G. Gordon Liddy and Rush Limbaugh. Infinity merged with CBS Radio in 1997.

Alan Batkin is a scion of the intensely Zionist Batkin and Tenzer families and the son of Stanley Irving Batkin, a leading Zionist figure since the 1930s. Stanley Batkin is a recipient of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Medallion (1974) and the City of Jerusalem Medal (1976). These awards are given to Zionists for extraordinary service to Israel. The elder Batkin has served, since the founding of the state of Israel, as an executive of the following organizations (among many others): the Zionist Organization of America; the State of Israel Bond Committee; the Jewish Theological Seminary; State of Israel Bonds; Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science; Friends of Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design, Inc.; and Yeshiva University Museum.

Sources and Recommended Reading:

Bollyn, Christopher, “The Israeli Who Will Run the Obama White House,” November 6, 2008

Bollyn, Christopher, “Update on Madoff’s Guilty Plea,” March 12, 2009

Bollyn, Christopher, “Who is Bernard Madoff, the man behind the $50 billion fraud?” updated March 24, 2009

General Motors Data, Wikinvest

General Motors’ U.S. Sales History, Domestic Brands, 1908-2008, Automotive News, June 1, 2009

General Motors’ Top Ten Markets in Europe, 2008

“Obama gambles on reviving GM from bankruptcy,” Reuters, June 2, 2009

Source: http://thisiszionism.blogspot.com/2009/06/zionist-gang-that-bankrupted-general.html

In 2006, New York’s Sun reported:

A real estate investment company says in a $750 million lawsuit that it lost a chance to buy the General Motors Building in the city because of a bid-rigging conspiracy by a group controlled by billionaire investor George Soros.

Leslie Dick Worldwide Ltd. says in court papers the 50-story building at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan was sold to Macklowe Properties Inc. in a “sham” auction for $1.4 billion in September 2003 after the seller ignored Dick’s $1.5 billion offer.

The building was sold by Conseco Inc., which owned a majority interest, to raise cash after it declared bankruptcy in December 2002. Conseco, of Carmel, Ind., told the court that sale of the GM building “presents a unique opportunity to provide capital.”

After the auction, court papers say, Conseco accepted Macklowe’s $1.4 billion bid although “plaintiffs’ bid was superior to Macklowe’s bid in every material respect.”

Dick’s amended complaint, filed three weeks ago in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court, says Mr. Soros gave Macklowe $350 million, including the $50 million deposit Macklowe made, “essentially making Soros the real purchaser of the building.” […]

Macklowe Properties spokesman Howard Rubenstein said his client called the lawsuit “absurd” and said it was “totally devoid of any merit.”

The building once was partly owned by developer Donald Trump, who bought it with Conseco in 1998 for $800 million. Trump’s name was spelled out across the front of the building in huge gold-colored letters.

A RICO (racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations) complaint filed by Leslie Dick Worldwide’s attorney in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against George Soros, Donald Trump, Deutsche Bank, and other entities – the full text of which is available here – alleges, in summary, the following:

The RICO conspiracy of the defendants was to invest in, operate, and acquire control of various entities involved in continuing fraudulent transactions and surreptitious and conspiratorial alliances and agreements through unlawful means, including but not limited to Money Laundering, Bankruptcy Fraud, and Bid Rigging, acquired Conseco’s prime assets, including Conseco Finance and the General Motors Building in New York City, and thereafter attempted to conceal their illicit activities. […]

In or about May 1998, Conseco and Donald J. Trump entered into a contract to purchase the General Motors Building in New York City, located at 767 Fifth Avenue between 57th and 58th Street, across the street from the Plaza Hotel.

The unlawful Money Laundering through the sale of the General Motors Building, orchestrated and carried out by the RICO Enterprise, including George Soros, Soros Fund Management, SFM Management, Vornado Realty Trust, German American Capital, Fortress Investment Group, Donald J. Trump, and the RICO conspirators Conseco, Deutsche Bank, Lazard, Eastdil Realty, Harry Macklowe, Cerberus Capital Management, Lazard, Kirkland & Ellis, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Carmel Fifth and 767 Manager, and, upon information and belief, other members of the Enterprise and co-conspirators, operated through a pattern of racketeering and forms one of the cornerstones of the defendants’ illicit activities of Money Laundering and Bankruptcy Fraud, predicate acts of RICO alleged herein and Bid Rigging. […]

Upon information and belief, this was because, at or about the beginning of March 2001, the mastermind of the RICO Enterprise, George Soros, had contacted, among others to be found in discovery, Gary C. Wendt and Donald J. Trump to contrive a Money Laundering scheme to launder money through the sale of the General Motors Building by Conseco, a co-conspirator, through a pattern of racketeering activity. […]

Upon information and belief, at or about this time, the head of the Enterprise, George Soros, or someone else acting on behalf of the Enterprise, began implementing the pattern of racketeering activities which could be accomplished by having Conseco file for Bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, so as to acquire Conseco’s assets at a discount price, including Conseco Finance and the General Motors Building and launder money through these entities. […]

Upon information and belief, as part of the racketeering activity engineered by the RICO Enterprise, Soros or someone else on behalf on behalf of the RICO Enterprise approached Trump with a proposal to use Bankruptcy Fraud to acquire the General Motors Building and, once acquired by the Enterprise, Soros and the other individuals associated in fact with Soros, including Trump, to engage in a Money Laundering scheme through which they could launder money through the General Motors Building sale.

Mentioned in the Sun article quoted above is the fact that Jewish real estate developer Harry Macklowe, named in the Leslie Dick complaint as one of the Soros-Trump conspirators, was represented by Howard Rubenstein. Rubenstein, a disciple of Edward Bernays and founder of public relations firm Rubenstein Associates, has been described as “a kind of gentle fixer for those who run New York” – his other notable clients including media moguls, mayors, governors – and Donald Trump. A New Yorker profile of Rubenstein, in fact, features a caricature of the “fixer” with Trump lurking sinisterly in the background.

Rubenstein represented Trump most notoriously during his high-profile divorce from wife Ivana, the negative publicity from which, Rubenstein claims, resulted in his being “fired”. Beth Whitehouse relates Rubenstein’s tongue-in-cheek impressions of the episode:

“He never came to me and said, ‘You’re fired,’” Rubenstein says. “He said, ‘Howard, I think on this one, goodbye.’

“It hurt me to the quick. He stabbed me in the heart that day,” says Rubenstein, half-joking. “In a way it hurt, but not really. We always remained friends.”

Rubenstein says it would have been more painful had the Donald said, “I never want to see you again, you’re banished.” But Rubenstein was later rehired.

Indeed, Trump reunited with Rubenstein Associates when it came time for his 2016 presidential bid.

Rubenstein’s reputation as a PR man is simultaneously legendary and tawdry. “The former governor George Pataki,” recounts The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, “once said that had Howard Rubenstein been around to represent rats during the bubonic plague the headlines would have read ‘Rodents Unfairly Accused of Mild Rash.’” Auletta goes on to relate this revealing anecdote about Rubenstein’s services:

Rubenstein has a special talent for bringing his clients together for their mutual benefit. The real-estate developer Donald Trump got a call from Rubenstein after Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Wendy, bought a Fifth Avenue apartment, in late 2004—Laurance Rockefeller’s former triplex––for a reported forty-four million dollars. Rubenstein asked if Trump could help the Murdochs find a rental while they were waiting for their new place to be renovated. “Howard really wanted something special for Rupert,” Trump says, and he found something suitable for the Murdochs. Everyone was happy: the Murdochs had shelter from the rain and wind, Trump had done something for the owner of a paper whose attentions he enjoys, and Rubenstein had performed another service.

What is intriguing about this story is how it demonstrates that Howard Rubenstein and Rubenstein Associates are not merely a public relations firm; they are also favor brokers. New York’s “fixer” is reputed to have “strong feelings about the State of Israel” and he peddled spin on a professional basis for the government of Ariel Sharon. He has also acted as an advisor to Larry Silverstein, who described him as “a super confidant”.

Rubenstein’s relationship with Trump has received much more publicity, but the public relations titan also has ties to Hillary Clinton. In 2001 he represented Democratic Party fundraiser Denise Rich, whose husband, hedge fund manager Marc Rich, received a last-minute pardon from outgoing commander-in-chief Bill Clinton. Hillary was spotted hobnobbing with the likes of Al Sharpton and Dr. Ruth Westheimer at a Rubenstein gala described as a “sublime rat-fuck”.

Asked in 2006 whom he would like to see become the next president of the United States, Rubenstein replied that Hillary Clinton would be a top pick.

Read more: https://aryanskynet.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/donald-trump-the-soros-connection/

See also: Donald Trump: The Soros Connection

Stephen Andrew Feinberg

(born March 29, 1960) is an American businessman and investor, who is active in hedge fund management and private equity. He is known for turning around struggling businesses and making them profitable.[1] He is co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Cerberus Capital Management. As of March 2019, his net worth is US$1.5 billion.[2] In 2017 Cerberus also owned DynCorp, which is a major national security contractor with the US government, charging billions for overseas military and police training.[3] On May 11, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump named Feinberg to head the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.[4]

Early life and education

Feinberg was born to an Jewish family[5][6] and raised in The Bronx, New York. When aged eight, his family moved to Spring Valley, New York,[7] a suburb of New York City. His father was a steel salesman.[7] He attended Princeton University and graduated with a degree in politics in 1982.[8] While there, he captained the tennis team and joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.[7]

Professional career

After graduating from college, Feinberg worked as a trader at Drexel Burnham in 1982 and later at Gruntal & Co..[9]

In 1992, at the age of 32, Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management with William L. Richter.[9] At the time the firm had $10 million under management; its assets under management have since grown to over $30 billion in 2016.[10][11] In 1999, the firm hired former vice president Dan Quayle as a chairman of Cerberus Global Investment.[12] In 2006, the firm hired former United States Secretary of the Treasury John Snow, who serves as a chairman of Cerberus.[13]

In May 2011, Feinberg stated that he believed residential mortgage-backed securities may present “a real opportunity for continued investment for quite a period of time”[14] and that there were opportunities in buying assets from European banks.

Feinberg has been critical about the pay received by private equity executives, stating, “In general, I think that all of us are way overpaid in this business. It is almost embarrassing.”[15] He has also noted in comments made in 2011 that smaller private equity fund sizes may be better for investor returns: “If your goal is to maximize your return as opposed to assets under management, I think you can be most effective with a big company infrastructure and a little bit smaller fund size.”[15]

Feinberg has been described as “secretive” in The New York Times.[16] In 2007, Feinberg told Cerberus shareholders, “If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person. We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.”[17]

Cerberus is the parent company of DynCorp, which is a major national security contractor with the U.S. government.[18]

Political involvement

Feinberg is a major Republican donor.[19] In 2016, he served on the Trump Economic Advisory Council during Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign, donated nearly $1.5 million to pro-Trump PACs, and co-hosted a $50,000 per person Republican National Committee and Trump fundraising dinner alongside other financiers.[20][21] In February 2017, the New York Times reported that President Trump will assign Feinberg a role in the White House leading a review of the US intelligence agencies.[22]

He is a member of The Business Council in Washington, DC, an association of chief executive officers from a broad range of companies who meet several times a year for high-level policy discussions.[23] [24]

Personal

Feinberg reportedly made $50 million in 2004. His lifestyle is less extravagant than his peers in private equity.[25] He splits time between his homes on Manhattan‘s Upper East Side and Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife Gisela (née Sanchez).[7]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Feinberg

#zionism

0 notes

toomanysinks · 6 years ago

Text

Timing and why we’re all VCs

Timing is the single most valuable skill of the modern economy, but I would argue its’s the least understood and also the least practiced.

Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should you start a company? What company should you start? When should a VC invest? When should you join a company? When should you switch industries? When should you back a candidate for public office?

Every single one of our professional decisions is about timing, and yet, we do so little to practice and perfect it. Most employees only make 3-4 major career decisions in their lifetimes — hardly enough feedback for this skill to mature. Anyone who has worked in a large company further knows that timing a product launch or a new marketing strategy has more to do with internal politics than reading market forces.

Most of us want to make more money and accelerate our careers, but the truth is that these opportunities are few and far between. Most jobs have limited growth potential. Most startups die. Most VCs don’t make money. Most political candidates fail to get elected. The difference between success and failure sometimes has to do with hard work and tenacity, but far more often with the strategy of timing.

It’s obvious that we can be too late to these decisions of course. We can miss the round of financing, we can start a company a year or two behind someone else and lose the first-mover advantage. But we can also be way too early, ahead of the market and losing out on alternative opportunities that might have been more valuable.

Now, some perceive that “timing” is synonymous with “luck.” There is some truth there, in the sense that life is random and sometimes — completely unintentionally — people stumble upon a treasure chest of gold.

Don’t be distracted by that, because there are also people who just seem to have timing nailed. There are engineers (I know because I have seen their recruiter profiles) who have joined three unicorns in a row in the first handful of employees. There are VCs who get a string of wins that is far from chance. There are CEOs that always seem to guide their companies to the right place at the right time and drive their stock valuations up.

We talked a lot about why we can’t build infrastructure in America yesterday. One of the challenges is simply timing: so many things have to happen at once for these projects to get off the ground, and most governors and mayors lack the timing skills required to get them over the finish line.

How can you practice timing? Start writing down predictions about people, companies, and markets. Check in with the companies you talked with a few years ago — how are they doing? Ditto people you met a while back. Start evaluating your predictions: were they correct? Were they too early or too late?

More importantly, start cultivating networks of friends who have a sense of pulse on the frontiers of the economy. That could mean someone at the edge of a new science (quantum computing or AI) or someone who gets marketing to new demographics, or someone who tracks new regulatory and legal changes. Find a peer group of people who get timing and practice it as a craft.

Between TechCrunch today and my former roles in venture capital, I’ve had the opportunity to practice timing a lot. I have a list of companies that I would have backed, and some have turned into unicorns while others have ended up on the ash heap of history. I’ve predicted some trends well, while flubbed others. I’ve been way too early (a huge bias for me), and sometimes stupidly late.

But all along, I am practicing that timing muscle. It’s the only way forward in capitalism, and it’s worth every investment you can make.

Mithril Capital, management fees, and VC strategic drift

Peter Kim via Getty Images

Theodore Schleifer at Recode reported a rare deep dive into the internal intrigue at a prominent VC firm, in this case Mithril Capital. From the article:

Mithril had its best moment yet last week when a portfolio company, Auris Health, sold to Johnson & Johnson for more than $3 billion — returning at least $500 million to the fund.

All appears well. But behind the scenes, a far different story has been unfolding.

The late-stage investment firm has been a slow-burning mess for the past several months, angering current and former employees, limited partners, and, crucially, [Peter] Thiel himself, sources say.

Among the issues is the firm’s huge management fee … and I guess lack of expenses?

The firm is likely collecting as much as $20 million a year in management fees, sources familiar with the figures say.

We don’t know exactly how much the firm spends, but people close to Mithril say they can’t imagine that the firm, given its staff size, is spending more than half of that on operational expenses. [Mithril Capital founder Ajay] Royan’s salary, like that of other venture capitalists, is not publicly disclosed.

One limited partner called the fees, given the size of Mithril’s staff, “outrageous.”

What? I don’t understand this line of reasoning at all. The firm negotiates a fairly standard agreement with its limited partners, and then the LPs are pissed because the firm isn’t spending the money on massive staff and large, expensive offices? The whole point of delegating investment decisions to a GP is to empower them to organize their firm to win deals and get stuff done. If — and it’s a big if of course — they can do that on the cheap, then why should an LP care at all? Burn the management fee in a fireplace if it makes the deals happen.

Ajay Royan told Bloomberg in 2017 that Mithril does not “charge excessive fees.” But he was not exactly known for being thrifty with management money. Former employees describe Friday catered lunches where costs could run over $100 per person, and Royan was known internally for a “book ordering problem” — a former employee said that “unbelievable amounts of books” would be delivered each week to the office by Amazon to maintain the firm’s extensive library.

Pro tip: take on the mantle of book editor for a major tech publication, and the publishers will mail you books for free. We get at least a dozen at the TC offices every week, which is why we write about books so often around here these days. Alas, no $100 catered lunches.

The wider story here though appears to be one of a firm completely strategically adrift. Mithril is struggling to compete against ferocious competition in the growth-stage equity market. The best deals are obvious to dozens of firms, and the ones that are less obvious have huge risks attached to them that make it hard to write the big checks required.

“[Royan] literally did not want to compete. If there was a process or bidding war or something resembling a competition, he would just walk,” the employee said. “And he would just say, ‘I don’t want to outbid.’”

Mithril is hardly the only VC firm that is strategically adrift. Every time I go back to SF, this seems to be the norm these days among venture capitalists. There is a huge amount of money sloshing around, and very few deals that are in that sweet spot between obvious and highly risky. Startups either get three dozen term sheets or none at all, since every firm is walking around with the same frameworks and metrics in their head.

It’s so rare to actually hear a VC strategy that isn’t generic capital, that has some differentiation on sourcing, and picking, and growing businesses beyond the “we invest in great companies.” VCs don’t like strategy because it means making choices, and making choices means saying no to certain things, and those things might be the next Facebook. So they do everything, all the time, which really means they do nothing. And so we get book ordering problems and expensive lunches and weirdly angry LPs. What a boring mess.

Quality tech news from around the web

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Carl Larson Photography via Getty Images

South California is also seeing declining seed investment

Today, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) published its updated economic forecast for LA and the Southern California region. One interesting note in the report is an observed slow down in early-stage venture investing. The report highlighted that while growth-stage investments in CA were hitting record highs, total deal count and seed investing — both in terms of total seed dollars and seed deal count — were at their lowest points since 2012.

The data points in LA, Southern CA, and the rest of the state seem to follow the trend of declining seed rounds seen in the rest of the country. While the topic is one we’ve previously discussed and one which has heated up in recent weeks with commentary from Marc Suster, Fred Wilson, and others, it’s interesting to see the trend occurring even in more nascent startup markets.

Will “Diet CA-HSR” even get done as feds look to pull back California funding

The federal government announced that it would be pulling back $1 billion in funding that was slated for the California high-speed rail project through 2022, while also pursuing legal action to help recoup the $2.5 billion it has already coughed up. The Federal Railroad Administration is arguing that the state’s updated plan — completing only a route from Bakersfield to Merced — is starkly different from the plan for which the funds were originally allocated. Ouch.

As stock exchanges compete to attract IPOs, unicorns and investors win?

It might be getting easier for companies to go public around the world. With ample late-stage capital keeping more companies staying private for longer, looser rules from the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange may be on the way to help entice more IPOs.

In the US, the SEC proposed allowing all companies to market themselves to investors before announcing IPOs versus just those that fall under the agency’s “emerging growth” definition. Across the Pacific, Bloomberg reported that Chinese tech companies have been lobbying the HK Exchange for a number of more favorable rules, including allowing companies to maintain extra voting rights and letting major shareholders buy extra stock in the process. With a serious number of Chinese companies opting to list on foreign exchanges last year, the HK Exchange might be feeling pressure to cough up concessions that could help them win local listings — especially if the US moves forward with friendlier rules.

How Japan lost half its citizens with poor data

The Japanese government failed to pay out billions of yen in government benefits for years due to faulty data. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nikkei Asian Review reported yesterday that the government is struggling to even locate roughly half of those who are owed since they don’t have their current addresses on file.

As simple as it may seem, tracking the indebted is actually a tall task since citizens have changed residences, changed names, and since the Japanese government has historically destroyed benefit applications (containing address info) after the period required to maintain them. At this point, it’s unclear whether everyone who is owed will even end up getting paid, with the Japanese government now offering a prime example of how poor data maintenance and not just poor data collection can make a situation go from bad to a whole lot worse.

Can the race to build roads in Southeast Asia avoid development gridlock?

As we harp on our “Why can’t we build anything?” obsession, infrastructure development in Southeast Asia is continuing to heat up and everyone seems to want a piece of the pie. Japan announced plans to further accelerate investment into infrastructure and urban development in the region — where China is also actively engaged — with initial expansion talks focused on Cambodia and the Philippines. At the same time, a newly unveiled government budget in Singapore and the ongoing election in Indonesia have brought infrastructure development strategies into the spotlight, with open debate on how these projects have been and should be funded.

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to [email protected].

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/20/timing-and-why-were-all-vcs/

0 notes

fmservers · 6 years ago

Text

Timing and why we’re all VCs

Timing is the single most valuable skill of the modern economy, but I would argue its’s the least understood and also the least practiced.

But all along, I am practicing that timing muscle. It’s the only way forward in capitalism, and it’s worth every investment you can make.

Mithril Capital, management fees, and VC strategic drift

Peter Kim via Getty Images

Theodore Schleifer at Recode reported a rare deep dive into the internal intrigue at a prominent VC firm, in this case Mithril Capital. From the article:

Mithril had its best moment yet last week when a portfolio company, Auris Health, sold to Johnson & Johnson for more than $3 billion — returning at least $500 million to the fund.

All appears well. But behind the scenes, a far different story has been unfolding.

The late-stage investment firm has been a slow-burning mess for the past several months, angering current and former employees, limited partners, and, crucially, [Peter] Thiel himself, sources say.

Among the issues is the firm’s huge management fee … and I guess lack of expenses?

The firm is likely collecting as much as $20 million a year in management fees, sources familiar with the figures say.

One limited partner called the fees, given the size of Mithril’s staff, “outrageous.”

Quality tech news from around the web

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Carl Larson Photography via Getty Images

South California is also seeing declining seed investment

Will “Diet CA-HSR” even get done as feds look to pull back California funding

As stock exchanges compete to attract IPOs, unicorns and investors win?

How Japan lost half its citizens with poor data

Can the race to build roads in Southeast Asia avoid development gridlock?

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

Via Arman Tabatabai https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes

shenzhenblog · 6 years ago

Text

How the U.S. Can Navigate an Ever-Scarier World

Anybody who pays attention to the global security scene knows we are in a whole new world — one variously called the “post-post Cold War era,” the “return of great-power conflict” and the “struggle between liberalism and authoritarianism.”

But what does any of this really mean? The end of the U.S.-led global order? A hegemonic China? The rise of so-called illiberal democracy? That we can no longer rely on McDonald’s to bring world peace? (Actually, that one didn’t work out so well.)

On this topic, as with so many others, I decided to gain insight from somebody who actually knows what he or she is talking about: Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy who is now a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab 1 in Laurel, Maryland. (Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg Opinion, is a major donor to Johns Hopkins.) A giant in the military affairs/foreign policy/national security establishment, Danzig, along with 10 other fellows at the Hopkins lab — including Bloomberg Opinion columnist Admiral James Stavridis — has written a far-reaching paper entitled “A Preface to Strategy: The Foundations of American National Security.” (PDF available here.) We spoke about its points and more. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion:

Tobin Harshaw: So let’s start with the Applied Physics Lab report’s title, “Preface to Strategy.” What does that term mean to you?

Richard Danzig: A number of us were skeptical about the classic model of a strategy document, which attempts to be comprehensive and predictive about evolving interests, potential opponents, technologies, economic conditions, etc. We wanted to focus on certain basic propositions but go into them in considerably more depth than is generally the case. We focused predominantly on U.S. strengths and opportunities. We also wanted to show how present thinking is shaped by the past and how we might liberate ourselves — at least to some degree — in thinking about the future.

TH: You note that many of your predecessors in the national security establishment had articulated objectives and methods very clearly, and that’s been lost today. Is there a historical example that serves as sort of a model?

RD: Sure, in the early years of our combating communism there was George Kennan’s famous long telegram and NSC-68 — strategic documents that articulated a philosophy of containment.

An even more striking example is so evident we don’t even pause to think about it — the way in which Franklin Roosevelt rallied the nation to fight the Axis powers in World War II.

Today we face a much more complicated world. We haven’t been physically attacked in the way that we were at Pearl Harbor. But that makes it only more important for a strategic document to speak to the public. Our paper is intended to be read broadly by the American public.

TH: But before Pearl Harbor, of course, FDR had a great deal of trouble generating support for entering the war. He did what he could, for example, with lend-lease for the U.K. Now we have a president who’s kind of the opposite, who disparages alliances and commitments. Do you think that the American people are still engaged with the world? Or do you think that Trump’s election showed the isolationist mind-set of the populace?

RD: We think today’s position is quite different from the World War II situation or the Cold War competition. We think the general population is committed to the idea of U.S. primacy; that the U.S. should be the leader of the free world; that it should be engaged with the world. We don’t see strong trends toward isolationism.

But there’s less clarity about why we’re committed to that role. It’s pretty obvious if you’re being attacked or if you think, as in the Cold War, that there’s a risk that our opponents will come and take over America and impose totalitarian rule. Nobody really thinks that China or Russia will take over the U.S.

TH: We’ve been at war now for 17 years. My children have never really known peacetime. Do you think that the war on terrorism just becomes kind of a background noise? How does that affect the younger generations that are going to replace us?

RD: I think it creates public fatigue. The military forces get both stronger and more worn from use. But for us a less noticed but central concern is the way in which it affects the strategies and priorities of our military and civilian decision-makers. We believe they become too present-tense oriented.

The present tense involves certain kinds of transient conflicts. The long-term issues are larger. One of those is what happens if you get involved in a more fundamental struggle with an opponent like China. The risk is that we lose track of the fact that our military must, in all circumstances, attend to that basic, most fundamental challenge as well as deal with the present. Also, there are significant risks to the environment and global health that demand international cooperation. We must manage both long-term competition and long-term cooperation. That wasn’t so central a problem in the Cold War, and it can’t be addressed if America’s leaders are overly absorbed by the present.

TH: In terms of Pentagon acquisitions and readiness policy, what changes are called for?

RD: Everybody preaches “innovation,” and has a great deal more difficulty practicing it. We try to breathe life into our precepts. For example, we emphasize the need for investment in technological skills and then specify changes to the existing military manpower system that are required to attract, sustain and empower those with the relevant skills. At present, as we see it, people with particular technical skills have a great deal of difficulty entering the senior ranks. You’re not going to wind up as chief of your service if you have a deep technical specialty. You’re not going to wind up controlling the budget or policy. If you are an enlisted man or woman, you are not going to rise above the middle ranks. We think that needs to change. Or, as another example, we want to encourage innovation, dissent and debate, and we make some specific suggestions as to how civilian leaders can promote that.

TH: You mention that the private sector has taken on a great deal of the innovation responsibility that the government used to do. Is there a chance that the Pentagon can actually move toward the Silicon Valley metabolism?

RD: Yes. The software revolution is very helpful because it pushes away from the acquisition of hardware and its long lead time. It also reflects another very important concept which is that you don’t acquire a fixed good, as for example, you historically might have acquired a tank. You’re acquiring something that’s constantly changing and evolving. The challenge is for the bureaucracy to keep pace with that speed of adaptation.

TH: On the flip side, some of the technology companies are antagonistic toward the military and intelligence side of government — we have the big example of Google dropping out of its Pentagon drone-project contract. Do you think they’ll wake up to the threats we face?

RD: I’d like to see that and expect that we will. There are a number of companies that continue to work with the Pentagon and that are quite committed to it. Amazon is an example; Microsoft continues to be at the forefront of companies working with Pentagon; the same is true of IBM and others.

The Google objections to Project Maven are not persuasive to me. I think that you can rightly insist that your contributions be used ethically and be concerned about the consequences, both intended and unintended. But I don’t think it’s the right response to quickly walk away from that relationship. I think you want to inject as much responsibility into it as is required.

TH: Let’s jump to our new age of great power competition. One thing that I found really interesting in the report was noting that when we talk about threats to sovereignty, we tend to think of it in terms of geography. Putin grabbing Crimea is what we think of. But you say not only is that changed, it changed a long time ago.

RD: After World War II, American leaders created institutions that continue to dominate the international security framework. They created the strategies that shape the thinking of all of the present senior decision-makers. This thinking rested on premises, some of which were evident at the time, some of which we can see more clearly now, and some of which are probably still not evident to us.

One of these premises was that the main threat to American national security was from other militaries crossing borders. Now cyber poses a different kind of problem, one that doesn’t recognize a border and doesn’t manifest itself even as a military action, much less as an action involving an attack that crosses a physical boundary. And so we have difficulty dealing with it.

TH: A lot of people, without wanting to be in China or Russia, feel that there are great advantages to an authoritarian system in terms of consistency and policy, in terms of control over dissent, etc. But you and your co-authors also feel that democracy has a lot of strengths that are unique to it, correct?

RD: Yes. You lead into it nicely when you comment as a sort of subordinate clause, “without wanting to live there.” One of the striking things is how many members of the elites within those countries don’t want to live there. That’s a reflection of a whole lot of things. Among them, fundamentally, it’s a reflection of lack of freedom in their own societies.

Authoritarian systems have advantages in the short term. A directed economy and a directed political system force rapid consensus. But we also know that these systems have a great deal of difficulty correcting their errors. They have difficulties with latent dissent that tends to manifest itself in subtle ways that drag on the political system and the economy. In the long-term, we think the American system is likely to be more successful, whatever the challenges in the short term.

TH: Speaking of China, it’s estimated that its economy will surpass ours in the next decade and perhaps double ours later in the century. But I’m old enough to remember when this was supposed to be the Japanese Century. That didn’t happen, obviously. How could the Chinese stumble on this path to global dominance?

RD: A lot could happen. You’re right in pointing out that the Japanese likely success was, in retrospect, exaggerated. Like you, we wouldn’t assert too much precision about this. Nobody knows what it will be like in 2050 or whatever. But it does seem highly likely that Chinese GDP will grow to exceed ours. And our basic point about that is that we haven’t, in our lives, experienced an opponent with a GDP anything like equal to ours.

China could stumble. We note, for example, that this could happen because of its environmental problems; because of its very large population — so that its GDP per capita is considerably less than ours; because of its problems of corruption; because of its problems dealing with dissent and so forth. GDP is not, by any means, some talismanic measure of national power. It’s a rather outmoded, 20th century way of calculating well-being in wealth. And it doesn’t necessarily correlate, by any means, with military power.

But while acknowledging these diverse considerations, as national security analysts we need to plan for challenging cases. The dominant very plausible one is one in which China’s economic power exceeds ours. We think strategic planning needs to proceed from that premise.

TH: The paper points out that another advantage is that America has a vast network of allies and partners. China and Russia don’t have friends, and you say that’s not coincidental.

RD: This is another manifestation of the failures of an autocratic regime as distinguished from one that prizes freedom and is based on that range of values. It gives us exceptional power. And one of the concerns many of us have, about the present administration, is the undervaluing of alliances.

TH: We have a president whose rhetoric is, well, poisonous to our allies. Does this do permanent damage to these alliances?

RD: This paper is not about President Trump, pro or con. It is about where, we think, from a national security perspective, we ought to be investing. And one of those things we ought to be investing in is alliances.

I think we can come back from any interruption in that investment. But the interruptions make it harder to come back. And they sow seeds of doubt that risk enduring.

TH: We throw around the term “soft power” a lot. You also call it “sharp power” in the paper. We know how that’s worked in the past. But it’s been devalued, even before Trump. What is soft power for this next era of great power competition?

RD: One example is provided by what the Chinese are doing with their so-called Belt and Road Initiative, trying to reach out both overland and by sea, which is the fabled Silk Road.

So the Chinese are investing an estimated $90 billion a year in aid, infrastructure projects and the like. Chinese access and Chinese values tend to go with those investments. China’s vision of the internet or of surveillance or of control through systems of facial recognition and the like become more accessible to the rulers of those countries. That’s an example of something that is very distant from military power but very relevant to influence. Of course, more direct hard power can also flow from these investments as bases are established and data is collected.

TH: So what is our Belt and Road then?

RD: Presently, we might invest on the order of $30 billion a year, a third as much. In our view, we ought to be encouraging more aid and trade in those contexts. We place a lot of emphasis on business relationships as a useful mechanism for spreading values and rules of law. When Americans are abroad selling their goods, they carry with them American values.

A different example is in the spread of information and our efforts to present our point of view. We think there are rich opportunities in those arenas. To the extent we withdraw from the world and don’t invest that way, we undervalue that aspect.

TH: Last question: There are, I think, 11 names on this paper. That’s a lot of chefs in the kitchen. How do you all work together to not just get your individual opinions in but to make sure that you have sort of common agreement?

RD: That’s another unusual aspect of this paper. It’s not uncommon for strategy documents to be written by committee. But I think anybody who reads this will feel that this is not a committee product. We didn’t dumb down the language, make the views lowest common denominator and the like. I was delighted that, in the end, we all felt we could sign this paper.

Note : This article was originally posted on Bloomberg by Tobin Harshaw

How the U.S. Can Navigate an Ever-Scarier World was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

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courtneyvbrooks87 · 6 years ago

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Bitcoin Maximalists’ Impossible Dream

Bitcoin maximalists never give up. Bitcoin’s price has crashed from over $19,000 a year ago to under $4,000 today, and there are no signs that the price is going to rise again any time soon. But maximalists don’t care. They are in this for the long haul. Their belief? Eventually, Bitcoin will replace all government-issued money. So all they have to do is HODL on to large amounts of the future world currency, and they will become the next generation of fantastically rich elites. Or so they think.

Of course, what we mean by “Bitcoin” is disputed. The Bitcoin community resisted hard forks for a long time, but eventually Bitcoin was forked, creating Bitcoin Cash, whose advocates claimed that it was the “true Bitcoin” as defined in Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper. Bitcoiners who held to the “one true faith” firmly expected Bitcoin Cash to die. But if there is one thing that the cryptocurrency forkfest of the last two years has taught us, it is that old coins don’t die. Both the new chain and the old one continued to be mined, often by the same miners, who rather enjoyed the arbitrage opportunities that two versions of the same coin create. Exchanges eventually listed both versions of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash was never worth as much as Bitcoin, but it certainly didn’t die.

Old coins also keep forking on. Bitcoin has now forked multiple times. Hard forks don’t just create new coins, they also create new tribes: each version of Bitcoin has its tribe of fervent advocates. So, we now have proliferating tribes of ardent Bitcoiners, each claiming that its version of Bitcoin is the “true Bitcoin.” Some of them appear to be willing to fight to the death to defend their coins, too: recent price falls have been partly blamed on a “hash war” between two versions of Bitcoin Cash.

So what would replace government-issued currency is not exactly clear. However, most Bitcoin maximalists are supporters of the version of Bitcoin that remained after the first hard fork, now known as Bitcoin Core or simply “Bitcoin” (BTC). It is also sometimes called “digital gold.” It is this version that maximalists believe will become the base unit of account for a new worldwide payments system which will eventually replace all government-issued currencies.

Here is Bitcoin Magazine predicting what will be in the history books of the future:

Bitcoin Magazine tweetTwitter

Bitcoin maximalist philosophy in a single tweet. However, this is the last in a series of tweets, so to understand the context, we need to look at the other tweets.

The first tweet in the series is about this article from Time magazine. The article argues that for an estimated four billion people worldwide, Bitcoin could be a useful way of protecting their wealth from predatory governments and hyperinflation. “For people living under authoritarian governments,” it says, “Bitcoin can be a valuable financial tool as a censorship-resistant medium of exchange.” And it highlights four countries:

Venezuela, whose collapsing economy is overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government. Exchange rate controls have failed, which as I predicted four years ago, has triggered hyperinflation. Its currency, the bolivar, is currently hyperinflating at a rate of over one million percent per year;

Zimbabwe, which has a long history of political corruption, economic lunacy and hyperinflation. Its citizens will use any currency other than the country’s official currency, the Zimbabwean dollar;

Russia, which has a predatory government and is subject to international sanctions, both of which are making it difficult for people to remove their money from the country;

China, which has an authoritarian government and capital controls.

Time’s article is well-argued and reasonable. There are indeed very good reasons for people in these countries, and some others, to use Bitcoin as an alternative to government-issued currency, though personally I doubt that Bitcoin would become the main currency in any of these countries. But nowhere in the article does Time suggest that Bitcoin might replace government-issued currencies for anyone other than the four billion, who are slightly more than half the world’s population and disproportionately concentrated in China. So how did this lead to Bitcoin Magazine’s claim that all government-issued currencies would eventually disappear?

Tweeting the link to Time’s article, Adam Back said it discusses using Bitcoin to protect against government “cashless and negative rate policies”. But it doesn’t. Time’s article is about authoritarian governments and economic basket cases, not democratically-elected governments in stable developed countries using negative rates to counter deflation and recession. True, it warns against the dangers of a cashless society, and cites Sweden briefly in this context. But it doesn’t even mention negative rates, which are currently used not only by Sweden but also by the Eurozone, Switzerland and Japan.

It seems that Adam Back deliberately misrepresented Time’s article to promote Bitcoin as an alternative to government-issued currencies in stable Western democracies. Samson Mow, a paid apologist for Bitcoin Core, then went further. According to him, far more than four billion people can’t trust their governments:

The total population of the world is only about 7.7 billion. Mow is in effect saying that no government in the world can be trusted. This is full-on libertarian “destroy the State” thinking.

From here, it is only a short step to “all government-issued currencies will disappear.” It’s not just government-issued currencies that would disappear, though. After all, if no-one trusts government, democratic government can’t exist. In Bitcoin Magazine’s brave new world, therefore, democratically-elected governments would also disappear, presumably replaced with technological superstructures automatically executing code written by unaccountable elites, blind and deaf to the horrible consequences of applying rigid rules to the messy lives of real people. We have already gone too far down this road. The resurgence of nationalism around the world is a reaction to the dominance of unelected, unaccountable, supranational elites. Replacing one set of elites with another is no solution.

Fortunately, Bitcoin Magazine’s terrible forecast may never come to pass. History is littered with attempts to replace national currencies with undemocratic and unaccountable international currencies. They have all failed, except for (so far) the Euro and its African offshoot, the CFA franc (though the CFA franc is under growing political pressure because of its colonial origins.) There is no particular reason why Bitcoin should be different, or the Euro, for that matter. I predict that history books of the future will contain interesting discussions of the reasons why some crazy people thought they could replace government-issued currencies, and why they failed.

Sadly, though, this will not be the last such attempt. Humans have short memories and long beliefs; ideological belief in a single world currency has proved extraordinarily resilient despite overwhelming historical evidence that supranational currencies either become national currencies (e.g. U.S. dollar and British pound) or are eventually torn apart by massive political and economic forces.

But perhaps Bitcoin has something to teach us – if we are able to listen. The forking of Bitcoin has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that a currency is fundamentally an expression of tribal identity. This is true regardless of who or what issues it. Just as the various versions of Bitcoin have their own “tribes,” so too do government-issued currencies. If a government issues a currency, and the people accept it, the currency expresses their national identity. History shows us that currencies issued by governments that have lost all credibility with their own people fail – indeed, Venezuela is showing us this right now. So too do currencies that are not anchored by a stable tribal identity; this is why the currencies of states that lose wars often hyperinflate. The reason why we have multiple versions of Bitcoin is that someone still believes in every single one of those versions. So Bitcoin does at least have a tribal identity or twenty. But it’s not exactly stable, is it?

If currencies are fundamentally tribal, how can Bitcoin possibly become the “new gold standard”, as maximalists dream? Humans don’t take kindly to attempts by other tribes to eliminate their tribal symbols and impose those of another tribe. They have to be persuaded, not coerced. Currently, Bitcoin maximalists can’t even persuade other Bitcoiners to support their coin. The idea that they could persuade all the people of the world to throw away their tribal currencies and adopt their version of Bitcoin is laughable. When’s the next fork, by the way?

Bitcoin has shown us the tribal nature of currencies. For that, we should be grateful. But Bitcoin becoming the One True Currency for the whole world? No, that is an impossible dream.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2CFPIzM

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

0 notes

adrianjenkins952wblr · 6 years ago

Text

Bitcoin Maximalists’ Impossible Dream

Here is Bitcoin Magazine predicting what will be in the history books of the future:

Bitcoin Magazine tweetTwitter

Bitcoin maximalist philosophy in a single tweet. However, this is the last in a series of tweets, so to understand the context, we need to look at the other tweets.

Zimbabwe, which has a long history of political corruption, economic lunacy and hyperinflation. Its citizens will use any currency other than the country’s official currency, the Zimbabwean dollar;

Russia, which has a predatory government and is subject to international sanctions, both of which are making it difficult for people to remove their money from the country;

China, which has an authoritarian government and capital controls.

The total population of the world is only about 7.7 billion. Mow is in effect saying that no government in the world can be trusted. This is full-on libertarian “destroy the State” thinking.

Bitcoin has shown us the tribal nature of currencies. For that, we should be grateful. But Bitcoin becoming the One True Currency for the whole world? No, that is an impossible dream.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2CFPIzM

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

0 notes

mccartneynathxzw83 · 6 years ago

Text

Bitcoin Maximalists’ Impossible Dream

Here is Bitcoin Magazine predicting what will be in the history books of the future:

Bitcoin Magazine tweetTwitter

Bitcoin maximalist philosophy in a single tweet. However, this is the last in a series of tweets, so to understand the context, we need to look at the other tweets.

Zimbabwe, which has a long history of political corruption, economic lunacy and hyperinflation. Its citizens will use any currency other than the country’s official currency, the Zimbabwean dollar;

Russia, which has a predatory government and is subject to international sanctions, both of which are making it difficult for people to remove their money from the country;

China, which has an authoritarian government and capital controls.

The total population of the world is only about 7.7 billion. Mow is in effect saying that no government in the world can be trusted. This is full-on libertarian “destroy the State” thinking.

Bitcoin has shown us the tribal nature of currencies. For that, we should be grateful. But Bitcoin becoming the One True Currency for the whole world? No, that is an impossible dream.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2CFPIzM

0 notes

patriotsnet · 3 years ago

Text

Are Republicans More Wealthy Than Democrats

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-republicans-more-wealthy-than-democrats/

Are Republicans More Wealthy Than Democrats

One San Francisco Accountant Finishes Every Client Conversation With A Discussion About What A Biden Administration Could Mean For Portfolios

Some rich Americans aren’t waiting for Election Day results to start planning now.

San Francisco accountant Scott Hoppe had a client who was planning to stretch the sale of founder shares in a tech-sector company over a three-year period.

Instead, the client compressed the installment sale into a one-shot transaction this month.

What accelerated the deal?

The 2020 presidential race. “Assuming all else was equal, that was the driver of the choice,” said Hoppe, principal of the accounting firm Why Blu.

Right now, Hoppe’s client, worth between $10 million and $20 million, will be taxed on capital gains at a rate of 23.8%.

If Democratic candidate Joe Biden beats President Donald Trump — and Democrats retain the House of Representatives and flip the Senate — that client could have potentially been staring at a 39.6% tax rate in two out of the installment sale’s three years.

The compressed transaction, then, could have saved the client approximately $320,000 in taxes on the $6 million sale. “The seller, for sure, was motivated, and the buyer had the wherewithal” to pay the full price upfront, said Hoppe.

Biden’s tax plan would put the marginal rate for top earners back at the Obama-era 39.6% rate, up from the current 37% rate. That 39.6% rate would apply to the capital gains of people who earn more than $1 million. It’s one aspect of a tax proposal where the of an increase in taxes, according to a budget model from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

Facebook Cofounder Dustin Moskovitz And His Wife Former Wall Street Journal Reporter Cari Tuna Donated $77 Million To Democrats

Net worth: $11.8 billion

After leaving Facebook in 2008, Dustin Moskovitz founded workflow management platform Asana, according to Forbes.

Alongside his wife Cari Tuna, Moskovitz has donated millions to health and LGBTQ+ organizations through their foundation Good Ventures, Forbes reports.

Moskovitz maintains a 3% stake in Facebook, according to Forbes.

If A Party Gets What It Wants In The Pursuit Of Delivering Something Most People Want Most Of The Time So Be It

There’s nothing morally wrong with being the party of corporate interests. There’s nothing wrong, for that matter, with viewing politics as the preserve of the few, not the many. What’s wrong is lying about it. What’s wrong is treating the opposition as if it does not have a legitimate claim. What’s wrong is setting off a conflagration of white-power fury that consumes nearly everything, even the republic itself, in order to slake a thirst for power. The day Joe Biden decided to run for president was the day this white-power fury burned through Charlottesville, screaming, “Jews will not replace us.” That day, according to published reports, is the day Biden chose to fight to “restore the soul of America.”

Maybe he’s full of it. Maybe Biden and the Democrats don’t really believe what they say when they talk about everyone being in this together. That’s certainly what the Republicans and their media allies believe. A critic said Thursday that we can expect to see from Biden “lofty rhetoric about unity, while acting below the radar to smash norms to implement the Left-wing agenda.” The same day, a Times reporter asked the White House press secretary why the administration has not offered a bipartisan “fig leaf” to the Republicans, given the president putting so much emphasis on unity. Maybe the Democrats don’t mean what they say. Maybe it’s just politics-as-usual.

Charles Schwab The Founder Of The Eponymous Brokerage Firm And His Wife Helen Gave $8531440 To Republicans

Net worth: $8.2 billion

Charles Schwab, 81, founded his brokerage firm in 1971 and served as its CEO until 2008, according to Forbes. Schwab’s fortune comes from his 11% stake in the firm.

Helen is a philanthropist and serves as the president of the board of the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, according to the organization’s website.

The couple resides in Woodside, California and has 5 children, according to Forbes.

Former Breitbart News Investor Robert Mercer And His Wife Diana Have Given $6544024 To Conservatives

Total donations: $6,544,024

Party: Republican

Net worth: Unknown

Robert Mercer, 73, is the former co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund valued at $50 million in 2017, according to The New York Times. Mercer left the hedge fund in 2017 after clients, including the retirement fund for Baltimore’s police and firefighters, withdrew their investments from Renaissance over concern about Mercer’s political donations and involvement with Breitbart, The Times reported.

The $6.5 million that Robert and his wife Diana donated to Republicans in 2018 was the smallest figure they’ve given in any election cycle since 2012, CNBC reported. The couple, once among President Trump’s biggest supporters, have become fatigued by the resulting media attention, sources told CNBC.

Democrats Have Much To Gain And Little To Lose By Running On A Progressive Economic Message In 2020

Between Donald Trump’s election and last year’s midterms, the Democratic Party shifted its economic agenda to the left and narrowed the focus of its message to “bread and butter” issues. Whereas Hillary Clinton’s paid messaging had centered on her party’s commitment to multicultural tolerance, the Democrats’ 2018 candidates favored a relentless focus on health care and tax policy.

This “Better Deal” agenda was insufficient to lure the GOP’s “big government” conservatives out of Trump’s camp. But Democrats did make major gains with economically left-wing independent voters. According to the VSG survey, Clinton won that contingent by 19 points in 2016, but Democratic congressional candidates won it by 42 points two years later. Since economically liberal independents make up about 7 percent of the electorate, the Democrats’ improved margin with such voters netted them a 1 percent gain in the national popular vote. Critically, this gain was not offset by any losses among economically right-wing Democrats or independents, as both of those voting blocs became slightly more likely to vote Democratic in 2018.

The GOP is far more dependent on the support of economic liberals than Democrats are on the votes of economic conservatives. While the Republicans’ burgeoning low-income wing is aberrantly liberal on fiscal issues, the Democrats growing professional-class contingent is just as — if not more — left-wing than the rest of the party on questions of federal economic policy .

Home Depot Cofounder Bernard Marcus And His Wife Billi Wilma Gave Nearly $8 Million To Republicans

Total donations: $8,000,018

Net worth: $6.5 billion

Bernie Marcus cofounded Home Depot in 1978 with Arthur Blank after they were fired from their jobs at another hardware store, according to Forbes. Marcus was the company’s first CEO and retired in 2002.

Marcus was a major contributor to President Trump’s 2016 presidential bid and will support the President again in 2020, Business Insider previously reported.

Democrats Are Gay Republicans Are Rich: Our Stereotypes Of Political Parties Are Amazingly Wrong

Here’s a quiz question for you: What percentage of Democrats identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual? Here’s another: What percentage of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year?

Got your answers? Now keep reading.

arrow-right

It’s pretty well known that Democrats and Republicans like each other less than they used to. And it’s pretty well known that being a Democrat or Republican can bias how we view virtually everything, including objective facts such as the state of the economy.

Now new research illuminates a key source of partisan animosity: Our internal pictures of the opposite party are terribly inaccurate. When asked about the groups historically associated with each party, we think these groups make up a vastly larger fraction of each party than they really do. In other words, we think each party is essentially a huge bundle of stereotypes — and this tendency is particularly pronounced when we’re characterizing the opposite party.

The research, by political scientists Doug Ahler and Gaurav Sood, can be tidily summarized in this graph. It shows people’s average guesses for what percentage of each party is in each group, as well as the true percentage.

On average, Americans thought that 32 percent of Democrats are gay, lesbian or bisexual. The correct answer is 6 percent. And they thought that 38 percent of Republicans made more than $250,000 a year. The correct answer is 2 percent.

Depressed yet? It gets worse:

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg Donated Over $95 Million Nearly All Of It To Democrats

Total donations: $95,098,168

Net worth: $52.4 billion

Michael Bloomberg, 77, is the founder and CEO of financial media company Bloomberg LP.

Bloomberg will spend $500 million on the 2020 election in hopes of defeating Trump, Politico reported in February. On November 7, The New York Times reported that he was actively preparing to enter the Democratic primary.

Mike Pence Admits Republicans Prioritize The Rich And Whines About Democrats Helping The Poor

The Christmas season is supposed to be about helping those who are struggling and the Bible literally commands Christians to reject wealth in favor of lifting up the poor. But outgoing Vice President Mike Pence made it clear where the priorities of Republicans lie.

During a speech in Florida, Pence made an a** of himself by riling up the crowd to continue scheming to keep outgoing President Donald trump and himself in power even though they LOST the election to President-Elect Joe Biden fair and square.

But then he began boasting about what the Trump administration has done over the last four years, which includes massive tax cuts for the wealthy and dangerous rollbacks of regulations that protect workers.

In the process, Pence outright admitted that Republicans only care about rich people, and demonized Democrats for trying to help poor people as if it’s a bad thing.

“ want to make rich people poorer, and poor people more comfortable,” Pence said.

Here’s the video via Twitter:

Vice President Mike Pence: “ want to make rich people poorer, and poor people more comfortable.”pic.twitter.com/LXB8pvKSR8

— The Hill December 22, 2020

Again, a central tenet of Christianity is all about making the poor more comfortable. If anything, Pence should be demanding that the government do more for struggling Americans, especially since he claims to be the poster boy for evangelism in America. But he only demonstrated that he’s a fake Christian.

Featured Image: Screenshot

Investor Joshua Bekenstein And Philanthropist Anita Bekenstein Gave $77 Million To Democrats

Total Donations: $7,713,540

Party: Democrat

Net worth: Unknown

Joshua Bekenstein is the co-chairman of Bain Capital, the private equity firm cofounded by Mitt Romney, according to Fortune.

Anita, Joshua’s wife, is a philanthropist who manages the couple’s private fund, which supports health, education, arts, and environmental non-profits, in addition to serving on the board of patient advocacy non-profit Upstream USA, according to her biography on the organization’s website.

The couple lives in Boston and has five children, according to Anita’s biography on the organization’s website.

The 10 Richest Americans Are Just Beginning To Take Sides In The 2020 Presidential Race

The 10 richest Americans have a combined wealth of well over half a trillion dollars.

And we might only be beginning to feel the influence of all that buying power in the 2020 campaign.

Michael Bloomberg sits at No. 6 on this elite list and of course is running for president himself. He’s already spent hundreds of millions and is promising to spend over a billion before it’s all over .

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison sits at No. 4 on Forbes’s list with an estimated fortune of $62.5 billion. He is set to jump into the 2020 fray in a big way with a fundraiser on Wednesday featuring President Donald Trump at the Oracle founder’s estate in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

According to a copy of the invitation, the golf outing this Wednesday will cost donors either $100,000 or $250,000 with funds being disbursed among Trump’s primary and general election accounts, the Republican National Committee, GOP state parties, and the Republican National Convention.

Here are the different ways the 10 members of the 0.000003% are publicly engaging in the 2020 campaign.

Silence From Congressional Liberals As Democrats Move Toward Salt Tax Cut For Wealthy

Congressional liberals have gone silent as Democrats have moved toward raising the cap on federal tax deductions for paid state and local taxes, a move that would result in large tax cuts for the wealthy.

This week, Senate Democrats paved the way for raising the $10,000 cap on SALT deductions, which was imposed by Republicans in the 2017 Trump tax overhaul, by approving a budget resolution that will allow them to pass a major spending bill without GOP votes. Leaders have said the SALT cap relief would be included in that legislative package.

The idea of raising the SALT cap is strongly supported by representatives of high-tax states that stand to see their finances strained by the loss of the full deduction.

But a number of liberal Democrats oppose raising the cap on the grounds that the bulk of the benefits would accrue to very high-earning households. Enough House Democrats have opposed such tax cuts in the past to make it impossible for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass the bill without GOP help if they stood firm.

But the Democrats who have opposed removing the SALT cap did not respond to requests for comment by the Washington Examiner this week.

DEMOCRATS PREPARE PLAN TO PASS ‘SALT CAP RELIEF’ TAX BREAK FOR WEALTHY

The issue has made odd bedfellows of Republicans and some Democrats, with the liberal-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy blasting a repeal as “inequitable.”

Her office also did not respond when contacted by the Washington Examiner.

Collectively Their Gains Have Outpaced The Market Net Worth Is Five Times Us Median

The people’s representatives just keep getting richer, and doing so faster than the people represented.

The cumulative net worth of senators and House members jumped by one-fifth in the two years before the start of this Congress, outperforming the typical American’s improved fortunes as well as the solid performance of investment markets during that time.

The disparity becomes clear after examining the most recent financial disclosures of virtually every current lawmaker. The news is not likely to do them any good during a midterm campaign year when disapproval of Capitol Hill remains in record territory and sentiment remains strong that politicians in Washington are far too disconnected from the lives of their constituents.

The total wealth of all current members was at least $2.43 billion when the 115th Congress began, 20 percent more than the collective riches of the previous Congress, a significant gain during a period when both the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose slightly less than 10 percent.

Watch: A Guide to Roll Call’s Wealth of Congress

Beyond that grand total, the median minimum net worth of today’s senators and House members was $511,000 at the start of this Congress, an upward push of 16 percent over just two years — and quintuple the median net worth of an American household, which the Federal Reserve pegged at $97,300 in 2016.

Opinion:why Do Some Deluded Democrats Think Raising Taxes On The Rich Is A Bad Idea

At a moment when President Biden is still riding high in the polls and Democrats are focused on passing a popular bill to do popular things, an old and distasteful specter is rearing its head: the timorous Democrat, one so terrified of Republican criticism that they eagerly do the GOP’s work.

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Biden has proposed paying for infrastructure by raising taxes on the wealthy, but as The Post reports, some Democrats aren’t too sure about the idea:

Rep. Sean Maloney , chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee responsible for party fundraising, has privately warned the tax plans could hurt vulnerable House Democrats up for reelection in 2022, said two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. …Congressional Democratic leaders firmly support the measure, although that could change if the approximately 30 “front-line” House Democrats vulnerable in 2022 believe they are being hurt by the proposals.“The anxiety is anytime you raise taxes there is a belief among some Democrats and some in the consulting community that Democrats always get blamed,” said one Democratic official involved in the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss internal dynamics.

One struggles to adequately describe how stupid this is.

So what would make a bunch of moderate Democrats believe that if their party does a popular thing, they’ll lose at the polls?

Net worth: $12.7 billion

Poll Finds Startling Difference In Vaccinations Among Us Republicans And Democrats

FILE – Two men talk as crowds gather on L Street Beach in the South Boston neighborhood of Boston.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll has found a startling difference between Democrats and Republicans as it relates to COVID-19 vaccination. The poll found that while 86% of Democrats have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, only 45% of Republicans have.

In addition, the survey found that while only 6% of Democrats said they would probably decline the vaccine, 47% of Republicans said they would probably not be inoculated.

The poll also found that 60% of unvaccinated Americans believe the U.S. is exaggerating the dangers of the COVID-19 delta variant, while 18% of the unvaccinated say the government is accurately describing the variant’s risks.

However, 64% of vaccinated Americans believe the government is accurately describing the dangers of the delta variant.

Iran fighting COVID 5th wave The variant is having a global impact. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has warned that the country is on the brink of a “fifth wave” of a COVID-19 outbreak. The delta variant of the virus, first identified in India, is largely responsible for the rising number of hospitalizations and deaths in Iran, officials say.

All non-essential businesses have been ordered closed in 275 cities, including Tehran, the capital. Travel has also been restricted between cities that are experiencing high infection rates.

Reports say only about 5% of Iranians have been vaccinated.

Health Care And Drug Addiction Seen As More Pressing Problems Than Inequality

When asked about 11 major issues facing the country today, concern about economic inequality ranks around the middle of the pack, with 44% saying this is a very big problem. By comparison, about two-thirds say the affordability of health care and drug addiction are very big problems.

The affordability of college, the federal budget deficit and climate change are also viewed as big problems by higher shares of adults. Inequality is roughly on par with concerns about illegal immigration and racism. And more view it as a very big problem than say the same about terrorism, sexism and job opportunities for all Americans.

Adults with lower incomes are more likely than those with middle or upper incomes to say that economic inequality is a very big problem in the country today. About half of lower-income adults say this, compared with 41% of middle-income Americans and 42% of those with higher incomes.17

Lower-income Americans are more likely than other income groups to say reducing economic inequality should be a top priority for the federal government

The degree to which Americans see reducing income inequality as a priority differs by income and by party. Adults with lower incomes are more likely than those with middle and upper incomes to say this should be a top priority. And, by a margin of roughly three-to-one, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the same .

Personal FinancesEconomic InequalityEconomic PolicyEconomy & WorkIssue Priorities

Who Is Richer Democrats Or Republicans The Answer Probably Wont Surprise You

Which of the two political parties has more money, Democrats or Republicans? Most would rush to say Republicans due to the party’s ideas towards tax and money. In fact, polls have shown about 60 percent of the American people believe Republicans favor the rich. But how true is that? can help you write about the issue but read our post first.

Investor George Marcus And His Wife Judith Gave $9610125 Mostly To Democrats

Total donations: $9,610,125

Net worth: $1.5 billion

George Marcus is the founder of real-estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap Company, according to the company’s website. Marcus is also the chairman of Essex Property Trust, a multi-family real-estate investment trust, and he serves on the board of California-based commercial bank Greater Bay Bancorp.

The Marcuses gave $10,400 to Republicans in 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to Democrats.

More Democrats Than Republicans Sit On 10 Richest Members Of Congress List

Stephanie Merrick

While Republicans often get the reputation for being “the party of the rich,” seven of the 10 richest members of Congress are Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics .

CRP compiled a list of the 10 richest members of Congress using 2012 personal finance disclosure information, the latest available.

These wealthy Democrats are not afraid to use their big bucks and high-powered connections to get ahead.

Here are the seven Democrats in the top 10 list:

Experiment Shows Conservatives More Willing To Share Wealth Than They Say

Across 60 nations, Trump supporters are outliers on their views on economic inequality. But their actions suggest it’s not a core philosophical difference.

American conservatives are global outliers in views about the fairness of income inequality, and they’re among the most likely to attribute such inequality to merit, an ambitious global survey reveals.

Yet when it comes to actual behavior — whether to redistribute money to workers in an experimental setting �� American conservatives act a lot like everyone else.

The results suggest that policy preferences are not based on core philosophical differences so much as the stories that parties tell themselves about why people are rich and poor to begin with.

Privilege And Entitlement Starting On Third Base Is Deserving A Home Run

The elites of certain churches, universities, private schools or ethnicities may unconsciously accept their position as any crowned head assumed the “divine right of kings”. Growing up inside such an elite seems natural and right; those in power enable others like themselves. If they studied hard and played on the football team, compared to their classmates who did not work as hard, they know they are deserving. For one in that position, it’s a forgivable failure of imagination to not consider that the student across town who also worked hard and perhaps did not achieve the same SAT scores, may have often gone to bed hungry, may have surmounted far greater obstacles to achieve a lot – capacity and determination which should be counted in. The privileged may not see the distortions that benefit them. This is not confined to one party, one class, one ethnicity, one gender. Some of us simply benefit from a surfeit of privilege.

Off with their heads is not an answer. Possible answers include: wealth tax; higher marginal inheritance taxes; and crediting overcoming the privilege deficit, without demonizing people who won the birth lottery – a 21st-century rework of affirmative action.

Looking to make a difference? Consider signing one of these sponsored petitions:*Rantt Media may receive compensation from the partners we feature on our site. However, this in no way affects our news coverage, analysis, or political 101’s.

6. Their life experiences open the corruption door.

Billionaire Financier George Soros Donated Over $20 Million To Democrats

Net worth: $8.3 billion

Soros built his fortune leading Quantum Fund, once the world’s largest hedge fund. Since retiring from money managing in 2011, Soros has turned his attention to philanthropy. He started donating to campaigns in 2003 because of his dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, Business Insider previously reported.

Soros has also found himself at the center of numerous conspiracy theories about his involvement in governments from the United States to Hungary to Russia, many of which are anti-Semitic and have never been supported by evidence.

Party Of The Rich: Democrats Are 7 Of 10 Wealthiest Members Of Congress

Republicans have long been smeared by Democrats as the party of the rich, even though all of Hollywood, all of Silicon Valley and all of Wall Street are in their pockets. It’s a cheap and long-debunked tactic, and now we have another piece of evidence to corroborate the obvious fact that Democrats are the party of rich white men.

According to a study conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics, financial disclosure forms reveal that out of the ten richest members of Congress, a whopping total of seven are Democrats.

Collectively, the total wealth of the seven richest Democrats in Congress amounts to $1.1 billion.

To be fair, however, the richest member of Congress has an R next to his name, Rep. Darrell Issa, whose wealth totals $330,050,015. The other two Republicans, Rep. Dave Trott of Michigan and Rep. Vernon Buchanan, rank at number 5 and 6.

Four of the 10 richest members hail from California.

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The Center for Responsive Politics gathered their numbers by the :

Majority Of Americans Favor Wealth Tax On Very Rich: Reuters/ipsos Poll

6 Min Read

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK – The idea of imposing a wealth tax on the richest Americans has elicited sharply divergent views across a spectrum of politicians, with President Donald Trump branding it socialist and progressive Democratic presidential contenders Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders prominently endorsing it.

But it may have broad public support, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found nearly two-thirds of respondents agree that the very rich should pay more.

Among the 4,441 respondents to the poll, 64% strongly or somewhat agreed that “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs” – the essence of a wealth tax. Results were similar across gender, race and household income. While support among Democrats was stronger, at 77%, a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agreed with the idea.

A wealth tax is levied on an individual’s net worth, such as stocks, bonds and real estate, as well as cash holdings, similar in concept to property taxes. It is separate from an income tax, which applies to wages, interest and dividends, among other sources.

Asked in the poll if “the very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality,” 54% of respondents disagreed.

The results may reflect how the economic changes of the past roughly 20 years, from globalization to the financial crisis, have shaped attitudes about economic policy.

How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If you’re a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If you’re a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the “basket of deplorables,” support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this year’s report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

Congress: More Democrat Millionaires Than Republican And Here’s Why

American Politics, News | | | Subscribe |

In a report from AllGov.com, we learn that for the first time more than half of all members of Congress are millionaires. But what’s really interesting about the story is that it tells us there are more Democrats than Republicans in Congress who are millionaires.

That is not surprising to some of us, but it might be to a lot of people who have bought the Democrat/lamestream media narrative that Republicans are “the party of the rich.”

Let me tell you why this really is.

First, let’s understand there is nothing wrong with being a millionaire, or a billionaire for that matter. Contrary to what the rhetoric of the Democratic Party suggests, the vast majority of rich people have earned their fortunes by working hard and accomplishing things that have benefited others. That includes those who have made their money by investing, because they have put their capital at risk to help finance businesses that create jobs and produce goods and services people want and need.

Having said that, how can it be that there are more Democrat millionaires than Republican millionaires when everyone knows the conventional wisdom that Democrats are the party of the working man and Republicans are the party of the rich?

Because that’s a load of crap, that’s how.

Democrats Prepare Plan To Pass ‘salt Cap Relief’ Tax Break For Wealthy

Democratic leadership outlined plans Monday to bypass GOP filibusters to alter the cap on deductions for state and local taxes paid, a tax break largely for the wealthy opposed by most Republicans and some Democrats.

The fiscal 2022 Senate Democratic budget proposal released on Monday calls for “SALT cap relief” among its sweeping measures. While the budget is not legislation and is not binding, approving it would unlock a legislative process that would allow for Democrats to enact legislation with a simple majority in the Senate, meaning that Republicans could not block it using the filibuster.

The proposal comes after vocal advocates in the self-described “SALT caucus” pushed for changes to the tax code. A $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction, which largely benefits high-income households, was imposed by Republicans as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was signed by then-President Donald Trump.

Members of the SALT caucus, which include both Republicans and Democrats, hail from high-tax states and argue that the cap doesn’t just affect wealthy people because of the cost of living in their districts, although the Tax Policy Center found that only 3% of middle-income households would pay less in taxes if the cap is removed.

‘TONE DOWN A BIT’: CLYBURN CAUTIONS DEMOCRATS THREATENING TO DERAIL TAX PLAN OVER SALT CAP

Washington Examiner Videos

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teiraymondmccoy78 · 6 years ago

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Bitcoin Maximalists’ Impossible Dream

Here is Bitcoin Magazine predicting what will be in the history books of the future:

Bitcoin Magazine tweetTwitter

Bitcoin maximalist philosophy in a single tweet. However, this is the last in a series of tweets, so to understand the context, we need to look at the other tweets.

Zimbabwe, which has a long history of political corruption, economic lunacy and hyperinflation. Its citizens will use any currency other than the country’s official currency, the Zimbabwean dollar;

Russia, which has a predatory government and is subject to international sanctions, both of which are making it difficult for people to remove their money from the country;

China, which has an authoritarian government and capital controls.

The total population of the world is only about 7.7 billion. Mow is in effect saying that no government in the world can be trusted. This is full-on libertarian “destroy the State” thinking.

Bitcoin has shown us the tribal nature of currencies. For that, we should be grateful. But Bitcoin becoming the One True Currency for the whole world? No, that is an impossible dream.

Original Source http://bit.ly/2CFPIzM

0 notes

bullvtproof · 7 years ago

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Which Asset Protection Tool is Best?

The first thing a lawyer will do when considering a case against you on a contingent fee basis is to do an asset search. It’s the same thing an experienced litigant will do before handing over a hefty retainer. When he or she is attempting to discover the amount of money you possess, you need to remember that real estate deed copies and taxes paid on your property are available for public consumption. Anyone can access them. As an asset protection lawyer, one of the best tools we have is to remove your name from the public records database of real estate. Average income in your neighborhood – easily accessible. The car you hold title to in your name – easy to find. Where you work – a simple Internet search will usually do. How much you make and how much you’ve saved – this organization has repeatedly seen private investigators find out without much effort. The secret for how to protect your assets? Secure your wealth and prevent your asset information from going public by using the proper legal tools.

Land Trusts

With a land trust, you can hold title to your property in the name of the trust/trustee instead of your own name. This keeps your name from being associated with it in the public records. So, if someone unknown to you attempts to find out where you live, what property you own or what your real estate holdings are worth, finding that information becomes more difficult. This cloaking is provided by the land trust, which keeps your real property holdings private.

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If you plan to establish land trusts for your personal residence or other real estate holdings, the good news is that they are available for use in all states, through common law, whether or not their statutes specifically address them. Remember, not every possible human act has been codified into law. Just like there are no known laws specifically authorizing the wearing of red shoes, what you will eat tonight, and who dates your daughter, not all state statutes specifically address the use of land trusts. They don’t need to. Unless there are laws to the contrary (of which there are none known in the United States), their use is permitted. This organization has established land trusts for use in all U.S. States.

Whereas the land trust is not an asset protection device, it is a privacy tool. Consider making the beneficiary of each land trust a separate limited liability company. For your personal residence, it usually makes most sense to name yourself as the beneficiary from a tax perspective. That way you can take advantage of the interest deduction, the allowable tax-free profits upon the sale of the home, etc.

A mortgage lender cannot forbid the transfer of a home into a land trust if the property is between one and four dwelling units and the owner remains as beneficiary of the trust (Garn St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982). It would be wise to inform the insurance company that your properties are in land trusts.

Title Holding Trusts

Title holding trusts are similar to land trust in that they provide privacy of ownership of non-real estate assets. A title holding trust can be used to own vehicles privately. Since automobile ownership is a matter of public record, why own them in your name? If you own a newer 500 series Mercedes-Benz, a 600 series BMW, high-end Tesla or the like, a potential plaintiff or contingent fee attorney can easily find out. That could get his or her juices flowing that you are a deep-pocket.

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Filing a lawsuit or taking a case on a contingent fee basis is a business decision. When they look for what you have and find no real estate and no cars, they’ll think twice about proceeding with case. Like land trusts, title holding trusts are not asset protection tools, they are privacy tools. This organization has seen hundreds of people keep cars that they would have otherwise lost by merely disguising their ownership in title holding trusts.

Living Trusts

For estate planning, there are few tools as good as the living trust. When you form a living trust, the trustee can be you or someone else. A living trust can act as the serving tray upon which your assets are served to your heirs up on your death. Your estate can avoid probate fees – the legal process of transferring assets from the deceased to the living. There are no such fees because the title to the property doesn’t need to change. It’s still in the trust. Your heirs simply become the new beneficiaries.

Instead of hearing, “First I’ll need a $10,000 retainer,” from an estate lawyer your heirs simply take the trust and a death certificate down to the bank and the money is theirs. Alternatively, you may have the trust drafted such that a trustee or trust company steps in and provides specified amounts at specified ages, regular support payments, payments for education, living expenses, etc. You can require your heirs to accomplish specified goals, such as certain levels of educational attainment in order to receive specified amounts. Your trust, your choice. This gives you control of how your assets are distributed long after your death.

Just like there are different motor vehicles for different uses, there are different trusts for different uses. There are powerful asset protection trusts that are available. However, a living trust is not an asset protection tool. It is an estate planning tool. Its main purpose is to give your heirs access to your assets when your days are done.

Corporations for Asset Protection

Corporations are useful for legally protecting yourself from business lawsuits. A corporation is considered a separate “person.” When that person is sued, the lawsuit is directed at it, not you. Thus, the corporation can act as a wall between you and your business to help protect your personal assets.

When you operate your business as a privately held corporation, then you can generally sell stock in your company free from public disclosure, protecting both the price paid and the name of the buyer. Just make sure you comply with the state and federal securities statutes. If it becomes a publicly traded company, more disclosures are required.

Most states require corporations to release the names of officers and directors. If you wish, you may elect to have nominee officers and directors who show up in “name only,” but you, as the voting shareholder, have the ultimate control. The names of stockholders typically stay out of the public records.

Corporations also allow for creative maneuvering of assets. For instance, if you are in the process of purchasing expensive equipment or vehicles that are already owned by a corporation, you can have the owner leave the property in the corporation, or place it in a new one, and then transfer the stock in the corporation to you. Make sure to get advice from a CPA on how a transaction of this nature is best handled from a tax perspective.

LLCs and Limited Partnerships (LPs)

For real estate assets, both limited liability companies (LLCs) and Limited Partnerships (LPs) work well for protection. LLC owners do not generally have liability for business debts or actions of employees. The benefit of an LLC is that the one(s) in charge, the managers, are shielded from business liability. With a limited partnership, on the other hand, the general partner (GP) is vulnerable. So, LLCs are now used almost exclusively instead of LPs.

Furthermore, as long as your LLC has been properly established, if you get sued in your personal life, there are legal provisions that can protect you from losing your membership in your LLC. They may get a judgment against you. But there are laws preventing them from taking your LLC or anything inside of it.

LLCs are also great tools to own passive investments. Unlike a corporation, which doesn’t usually work well from a tax perspective for owning a stock brokerage account, a LLCs default tax flow-through status allows you to take deductions and report gains as if you held the investments in your own name. However, unlike holding them in your own name the LLC offers favorable asset protection advantages which are discussed below,

It is usually a fast process to form an LLC in most states. Have it set up professionally because there is quite a bit to it, including drafting the articles, operating agreement, membership certificates, etc. You want to make sure that when you need it to protect you that it was set up right. If you missed something, you can believe that your opponent’s attorney will make a major issue of it in court and drive a truck right through it. So don’t scrimp. Have it set up by someone who does it every workday.

LP and LLC Background

Before the invention of LLCs, limited partnership were one of the most common tools used to own real estate. With either structure, your property can protected when you are sued personally. Why can someone not take your LP or LLC if you are sued? There is a reasoning behind this; mostly, fairness. To make sure the actions of one partner or member do not affect the actions of others, judgment creditors generally cannot take these entities, nor can they seize the property inside.

An LP used for asset protection purposes is typically structured as a family limited partnership, or FLP. An FLP is simply a limited partnership where the only partners are members of a family. (The same is true for members of a family LLC or FLLC.) Both an FLP and LP are set up with written agreements between at least two individuals. There are at least two types of partners, a general partner and a limited partner.

The general partner runs the business and is liable for debts of and lawsuits against the partnership. That is why a corporation or LLC is usually placed in that position.

The limited partner is a passive investor and does perform actions within the business. The limited partner is also not liable when the LP is sued. If a limited partner does start to manage the LP, however, he will be legally considered to be a general partner with all of the associated liabilities. So, if a limited partner wants to perform services for the LP, he or she will want to perform those services as an agent of the corporation or LLC that serves as the general partner. Contracts will be signed, for example, “Pat Smith, Manager of XYZ LLC, as general partner of ABC, LP.”

LLC & LP Owners

Whereas a one-person LLC is quite common, an LP requires at least two partners. A one-human LP, however, is possible where one partner is a natural person and the other is a legal person, such as a corporation or LLC. A man named John can hold, for example, a 95% interest as a limited partner, and the LLC he owns can hold a 5% interest as a general partner.

Profit sharing can occur between or among partners depending on their percentage of ownership. If the written limited partnership agreement allows it, the general partner can receive income over and above his, her or its proportional ownership interest.

Free Initial Consultation with an Asset Protection Lawyer

When you are ready to protect your assets, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

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