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Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics

"Tesla shareholders are facing yet another rough patch as key insiders continue to sell off their shares at an alarming rate. This time, it was board member James Murdoch who added to the ongoing turmoil. On Monday, the company revealed that Murdoch had offloaded a significant amount of stock, worsening the already declining situation.

Murdoch exercised stock options for 54,776 shares, receiving them as part of his compensation for serving on the board. However, instead of holding onto them, he immediately sold them off for $13.2 million in cash. This transaction contributed to Tesla experiencing its worst single-day stock decline since September 2020.

Murdoch wasn’t alone in his decision to sell. Over the past few weeks, other high-profile figures connected to Tesla have also cashed out their shares. Chairperson Robyn Denholm, along with Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal Musk, and Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja, recently sold their stock as well. These moves have left dedicated retail investors feeling uneasy, as they rely on key figures in the company to show faith in the stock rather than selling at a low point."


 
Sardines said:
Today Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow him to end birthright citizenship.

In short, he doesn't consider that little girl a U.S. citizen and wants to make it official.

Trump is a ****ing monster.
Click to expand...
Oh and just to add some context. Birthright citizenship was part of making sure that emancipated slaves were considered as full U.S. citizens. So I can see a few reasons why Trump is against it.
 
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Red said:
A little forgiveness for mass murderers. Musk reposted a tweet that might annoy some…

www.independent.co.uk

Musk shares post that Hitler didn’t kill millions, public workers did. Union rages

‘Our nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians ... are not, as the world’s richest man implies, genocidal murderers,’ fires back angry union president
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk





Musk does seem to find a humorous side to the Holocaust:


View: https://x.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1882477385804919159
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Musk is not entirely wrong.

Sure Hitler and the nazi elite gave the orders BUT they were carried out by people at lower levels- often with enthusiasm.

You see the German people had been softened up with decades of a blizzard of lies about a minority group, against whom they already had their own prejudices

They subverted all the state institutions and got rid of dissenters. Everyone who disapproved was too scared to do anything about it

They had a plan to make Germany great again, which was swallowed hook, line and sinker by enough people to vote them into power

Does anyone see any parallels?

The nazis dismantled the State, incidentally also on accusations of inefficiency. What remained was then bypassed by a flurry of parallel nazi institutes.

Read:

Fritzsche, Peter (2021). Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-887112-5.

Joseph Goebbells promoted misinformation about minorities to incite the general public into acts of violence.

at Hitler's behest.

much the same is going on in the US right now.
Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk
 
fishonjazz said:
Musk is not entirely wrong.

Sure Hitler and the nazi elite gave the orders BUT they were carried out by people at lower levels- often with enthusiasm.

You see the German people had been softened up with decades of a blizzard of lies about a minority group, against whom they already had their own prejudices

They subverted all the state institutions and got rid of dissenters. Everyone who disapproved was too scared to do anything about it

They had a plan to make Germany great again, which was swallowed hook, line and sinker by enough people to vote them into power

Does anyone see any parallels?

The nazis dismantled the State, incidentally also on accusations of inefficiency. What remained was then bypassed by a flurry of parallel nazi institutes.

Read:

Fritzsche, Peter (2021). Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-887112-5.

Joseph Goebbells promoted misinformation about minorities to incite the general public into acts of violence.

at Hitler's behest.

much the same is going on in the US right now.
Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
As someone, usually attributed to Voltaire, once said, paraphrasing, “if you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities”.
 
Another reminder that the cruelty is the point. 10 year old U.S. citizen with cancer deported….

www.independent.co.uk

Texas child being treated for cancer is deported to Mexico with undocumented parents

‘The fear is horrible. I almost can’t explain it, but it’s something frustrating, very tough, something you wouldn’t wish on anyone,’ mother says
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk

A Texas child and U.S. citizen being treated for brain cancer has been deported to Mexico along with her undocumented parents.

The parents of the 10-year-old girl are now desperate to return to the U.S. to continue her treatment, after immigration enforcement removed the child and four of her U.S.-born siblings from Texas on February 4, according to NBC News.

The family was traveling from their home in Rio Grande to Houston for an emergency medical check last month when they were stopped at an immigration checkpoint. They’d visited the specialists five other times without problems, lawyer Danny Woodward, who is representing the family with the Texas Civil Rights Project, told NBC.
 

Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council staffer who served with President Donald Trump during his first term, tells Foreign Affairs that her one-time boss is utterly clueless when he has high-stakes meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During a lengthy interview on Foreign Affairs' official podcast, Hill recalled Trump talking with Putin one time and being absolutely enthralled with the respect he believed that he was receiving from his Russian counterpart.

"The first time I was in one of the phone calls, I was listening very carefully to the Russian, because the interpreters don't always capture everything, they don't capture the nuances, particularly when it's the Russian interpreter," she said. "And Trump said, 'What a great conversation!' and I thought, 'Not really!' There was all kinds of menace in what Putin had said, he chooses his words very carefully."

She noted that this put Trump at a natural disadvantage when the two men talked.

"Many times when Putin and Trump were interacting, Putin's actually making fun of him!" she said. "It's just completely lost in the translation. I can give you lots of episodes of this, always trying to goad him and urge him on to something, because he's always trying to see how he'll react and the translation smooths over all that and the context is absolutely missing. And he doesn't do a readout afterwards!"

She went on to say that Trump's approach to dealing with Putin was "amateur hour" because he wasn't getting the deep meaning of Putin's statements beyond surface-level talking points.
 
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Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., was confronted by angry constituents during a town hall meeting on Thursday night about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping cuts across the government.

“How do you justify cuts to staff of the VA helping veterans, especially those with long term care needs,” asked one constituent who was met with a standing ovation from the raucous crowd in Asheville, North Carolina.

The interaction turned so contentious and hostile that Edwards had to be escorted out of the building.

“You don’t get to do this to us,” yelled another constituent.

Republican leadership has told their members to avoid in-person town halls like these after several members were grilled in their home districts.

Edwards, however, went against their advice on Thursday.

Elon Musk split with the White House this week, suggesting that entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security could be on the chopping block next.

"The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements, so that's like the big one to eliminate,” Musk said earlier this week.

Those words have left some voters very concerned, with Edwards taking the brunt end of the attacks Thursday night.

“What are you doing to ensure the protection of our Social Security benefits,” asked on constituent to a round of applause.
 

On Thursday, March 13, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation's acting Inspector General. The complaint asks them to investigate if Elon Musk unlawfully influenced government decision-making and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) contracts involving his satellite business.

CLC's Kedric Payne said the following about the ethics complaint: "The American people deserve an unimpeded investigation to determine whether Elon Musk has violated conflict of interest laws by prioritizing his own personal financial interests over the public good," said Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director for ethics at Campaign Legal Center. "Based on his public statements, it appears that Musk has corrupted decision-making at the FAA involving the agency's use of his satellite internet business. Corruption happens when government officials abuse their powerful positions for personal gain - Elon Musk owes it to the American public to remove himself from overseeing policy decisions connected to his personal profits."
The complaint states the following: Campaign Legal Center writes to request that the Office of the Inspector General ("OIG") investigate whether the Federal Aviation Administration's ("FAA") business transactions with Elon Musk's satellite internet company are improper due to violations of the criminal conflict of interest law, 18 U.S.C. § 208. Specifically, public reports establish that the FAA began using Starlink services and considering contracts with the company in response to Musk's requests, who is a special government employee ("SGE") and the CEO of Starlink.1 Multiple FAA officials, including the Department of Transportation Secretary and one of the Department's lead engineers, publicly stated that Musk is the source of the directives for the FAA to implement Starlink technology.2 If Musk participated in or directed discussions with FAA employees concerning business transactions with Starlink, he may have violated the criminal conflict of interest law and corrupted FAA's business relationship with Starlink
For over 60 years, federal law has banned executive branch employees, including SGEs, from participating in business transactions where they may receive a financial benefit.3 Courts have found that this law is intended to protect public trust in government because when an executive branch employee profits from a government contract, the contract is tainted, and it diminishes confidence in government.4 OIG is responsible for investigating ethics issues connected to FAA's business partners, and its stated priorities include "fraud schemes that significantly impact DOT funds [and] employee integrity violations.

Accordingly, the evidence suggesting that Musk has blatantly and improperly influenced the FAA's decision to work with Starlink warrants a thorough OIG fact-finding. The public has a right to know that their tax dollars are being spent in the public's best interest and not to benefit a government employee's financial interests.

Pursuant to the federal criminal conflicts of interest law, "an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government . . . including a special Government employee," shall not participate "personally and substantially as a Government officer or employee, through decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or otherwise, in a . . . contract . . . or other particular matter in which, to his knowledge, he . . . has a financial interest.
 
And also related to the above: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...1&cvid=0cdbff3f82064cec88e845337c09d08b&ei=59

President Donald Trump’s trade representative received an unusual letter this week from Tesla Motors, stating that the company is “exposed” to retaliatory tariffs, The Financial Times reported on Thursday. The letter was unsigned.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a White House adviser and has taken an outsized role in the administration. His proximity to Trump makes the letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer all the more curious.

The letter comes as Trump has levied tariffs on imports from the two biggest U.S. trading partners, Canada and Mexico. Additionally, the president has imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, regardless of their origin. Automakers are expected to be hit particularly hard, so much so that someone at Tesla felt compelled to write to the Trump administration.

The Times reported:

In an unsigned letter addressed to US trade representative Jamieson Greer, Tesla said that it “supports” fair trade but warned that US exporters were “exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to US trade actions”.

“For example, past trade actions by the United States have resulted in immediate reactions by the targeted countries, including increased tariffs on EVs imported into those countries,” the Austin, Texas-based company wrote in the letter dated March 11.

Tesla’s letter follows two weeks of erratic trade policy announcements that have rattled businesses and financial markets as investors worry about the growing risks of the world’s largest economy being plunged into a recession.
Click to expand...
“It’s a polite way to say that the bipolar tariff regime is screwing over Tesla,” one person familiar with the transmission of the letter said. “It is unsigned because nobody at the company wants to be fired for sending it.”

The company told Greer that certain auto “parts and components are difficult or impossible to source within the U.S.” and urged him to consider “domestic supply chain limitations to ensure that U.S. manufacturers are not unduly burdened by trade actions.”

On Tuesday, Trump tried to give Tesla a public relations boost by hosting a promotion at the White House, where he praised the company’s electric vehicles, calling them “as good as it gets.”

Tesla’s share price has plummeted since reaching an all-time high in December after Trump’s victory, as it has lost more than half its value since then.
 

Canadians are pulling back on travel to the US amid a scrap between the two nations over tariffs first imposed by President Donald Trump.

According to Statistics Canada data released Monday, the number of Canadians driving to the US fell 23% in February compared to the same month last year, marking the second consecutive monthly decline and the second decline observed since March 2021.

Leisure bookings are also taking a hit. Flight Centre Travel Group, a major travel agency in Canada, told Business Insider that they saw a 40% decrease in leisure bookings to the US in February year over year.

"While Canadians remain eager to travel, they are increasingly shifting their focus to destinations outside the US," Amra Durakovic, spokesperson for Flight Centre Travel Group Canada, told Business Insider.

A Leger survey of around 1,500 Canadians found that nearly half said they were less likely to visit the US this year compared to last year, while six in 10 planned to vacation in Canada instead.

"The drop in Canadian visits is closely linked to the US tariffs imposed on February 1," Rachel J.C. Fu, director of the University of Florida's Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute, told BI.

"The 25% tariffs likely increased economic tension between the two countries, influencing Canadian consumer sentiment and travel choices," she said, adding that Trudeau's comments further discouraged travel to the US.

A drop in Canadian visitors could come at a cost to the US economy.

Last month, the US Travel Association estimated that a 10% decrease in Canadian travel could result in $2.1 billion in lost spending and 14,000 job losses, with Florida, California, Nevada, New York, and Texas — Canadian tourists' top US destinations — most affected.

"Canada is the US top visitor market, so the stakes are high," he added.

Tony Poletti, owner of the family-run Marketside Restaurant in Niagara Falls, NY — which sits on the border with Canada — told BI: "It's just a matter of time before we feel the impact of it."

"It's going to have a bigger impact on businesses in Niagara County than people could imagine," he added.

Poletti, whose family has run the restaurant since 1939, said his "very dedicated" Canadian customer base has already expressed reluctance to travel to the US.

"What Washington is doing is they're cutting off their nose to spite their face," he said, adding: "It's not going to be long before it's going to hurt Americans."

Economic uncertainty has already rattled financial markets this week.

Wall Street plunged on Monday after Trump refused to rule out a recession, saying the US is in "a period of transition" in a Sunday interview on Fox News.

Stocks slid again Tuesday after Trump wrote on Truth Social that he instructed his commerce secretary to place an additional 25% tariff on steel and aluminum coming from Canada into the US, bringing the tariff rate on those imports to 50%.

He later backtracked, with his trade advisor, Peter Navarro, telling CNBC on Tuesday afternoon that the 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum would no longer go into effect on Wednesday.

Markets continued to slide Thursday, with the S&P 500 entering a correction.
 
Just checked my 401k this morning. Holy crap it is down way more than I expected. I have lost a ton of money.
Last year my rate of return was double digits every time I checked. Sometimes as high as 16%. This year in january my rate of return was like 3.5%. Now my rate of return is negative 1%. Lost like $10,000 in the last 2 weeks. (That is a pretty big amount for me as my account isn't as high as many of my co workers since I stupidly started contributing way too late)

That sucks.
 
Those $5000 dollar checks that we probably won't ever get that would only increase inflation anyway wouldn't even cover the money that the trump administration has already lost me.
I would still be in the hole after the $5000 dollar check.
 
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