Too Dangerous to Allow Elon Musk Control Over So Much Data Says Washington Post


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance

The latest developments in the effort to purchase the unsustainable magic coffee shop are quite revealing.

According to the New York Post, “Musk himself is willing to invest between $10 billion and $15 billion of his own cash to take Twitter private, two sources close to the situation said. That’s up from the current 9.1% stake in the company he revealed on April 4, which is worth about $3.4 billion.”

However, more revealing about the overall issue are the comments from the PR firm of the U.S. Intelligence Community, The Washington Post:

(WaPo) […] “Putting so much power in the hands of one company is bad enough, but putting it in the hands of one person, as is largely the case with Facebook shareholder Mark Zuckerberg and would be the case if Twitter were owned by Musk, would be incompatible with democracy.” 

“There are simply no checks and balances from any internal or external force,” … “It would leave Musk, like Zuckerberg, with an amount of assembled data about people and the ability to use it to manipulate them “that cannot be compared to anything that has ever existed, and allows intervention into the integrity of individual behavior and also the integrity of collective behavior.” (read more)

People are starting to catch on to the reality that costs for data processing on many social media platforms (the free coffee), exceeds the ability of the platform to generate revenue.  People are starting to understand that behind the scenes of the Big Tech consortium, there is something else, some other operational construct and mechanism, that subsidizes & facilitates their existence.

It is very revealing how the intelligence apparatus of the United States had no issue with Twitter data and influence, until the potential for private ownership, perhaps uncontrolled private ownership, surfaced.  Do not be naïve in pretending not to know how The Washington Post represents the interests of the intelligence apparatus.

In the long arc of history, I truly believe we will discover the inflection moment for the merge of U.S. Deep State (intel community) and U.S. Social Media, will be identified in the early moments of the Arab Spring of 2010/2011.  That was when Facebook and Twitter became tools for the State Dept operation in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain and beyond.  That was the beta-test of synergy.

“Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011.” (LINK)

It was from that original, albeit misguided and manipulative partnership, when the actual details about how to create the social surveillance state was first tested.   Everything after those events more than a decade ago, has been this rapidly evolving blend of social media technology and the capacity of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to create and fund the underlying structures.

Daily, we see numerous examples of the ideological control that surfaces as a direct result of this public-private partnership, the closed-conversations between deep government interests (the Fourth Branch) and social media companies which are dependent on the subsidized technology for them to exist.

Perhaps 2022 represents the first time the commonsense of the American electorate begins to recognize the fallacy of the ‘free coffee’ business model.  Personally, I am very optimistic people will soon recognize what many have suspected for a long time.

Ultimately the question becomes, how far will the U.S. Fourth Branch of Government go to stop people from understanding?

Marc Andreessen believes Govt and Big Tech will double, triple and quadruple down to keep their public-private partnership, the backbone of the Free Coffee Shop, hidden.  I cannot say I disagree, because ultimately it is still only the minority of people who understand the stakes.  However, on the upside, the number of people who are starting to understand it, is growing almost exponentially thanks to Elon Musk.

(Source Link)

This is one of those situations where we should all welcome being called ‘conspiracy theorists’, because no matter how big the crowd is that refuses to believe it, ultimately the impossible business model of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop will reveal everything.

That’s why the public-private partnership must stop Elon Musk.  As the Washington Post noted, this level of revelation “cannot be compared to anything that has ever existed.”

“Very shadowy” indeed.

CNN New Subscription Based Service Likely to Collapse, Spent $300 Million Only Gained 150k Subscribers


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 19, 2022 | sundance

Put this in the tracking file for ratios and such.  Axios is reporting that CNN+ is likely to collapse as Warner Bros has suspended all external marketing and product development and fired the Chief Financial Officer.  The network has spent $300 million, and only generated 150,000 subscribers.  A major fail by any measure.

(Via Axios) Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios.

• Why it matters: Inside CNN, executives think the launch has been successful. Discovery executives disagree.

• CNN+ has roughly 150,000 subscribers so far.

• Warner Bros. Discovery wants to eventually build one giant service around HBO Max.

• New leadership has replaced CNN CFO Brad Ferrer with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s current CFO for streaming and international, as part of a broader finance team restructuring.

• Other high-level positions at WarnerMedia across different business functions are likely to be eliminated to cut costs and streamline leadership in coming weeks.

What to watch: Sources say a plan is being considered to replace Chris Cuomo’s 9:00pm EST primetime slot with a live newscast, instead of personality-driven perspective programming. (read more)

City of Detroit Displaces 100,000 Residents After Tax Error


Armstrong economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Apr 19, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Government incompetence caused 100,000 people in the city of Detroit to lose their homes. The city recently admitted that it overtaxed homes by over $600 million between 2010 and 2016, resulting in thousands of foreclosures. In the state of Michigan, property cannot be assessed at over 50% of its market value. Yet, Detroit managed to assess properties at up to 85% of their market value, resulting in over half a billion in illegal taxation.

Neither the state nor the city of Detroit has done anything to compensate the people who were forced out of their homes. Mayor Mike Duggan insists that state law prohibits his administration from helping residents by providing tax credits or cash compensation. Duggan not so generously proposed allocating $6 million in resources to help overtaxed citizens, many of whose lives have been ruined, but that represents only 1% of what the city collected in illegal taxes.

The Coalition for Property Tax Justice is now helping those affected by involving Michigan’s Attorney General. The tax advocacy group believes victims should receive compensation in their preferred manner, but it is alarming that nothing has been done to compensate the people. Why were the properties over-assessed to such an extent for half a decade? How did the city not notice the dramatic uptick in taxes rolling in? It seems that this is deeper than a clerical error.

Georgia Lawfare Leftists Attempting to Block Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene From Reelection Through Obscure Use of Insurrection Act


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 18, 2022 | Sundance 

A group of far-left Georgia voters, backed by a coalition of left-wing constitutional scholars, liberal activists and lawfare allies, filed a challenge against Marjorie Taylor Greene last month with state election officials. The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits officeholders from returning to elected positions if they supported an insurrection. The challengers claim that Greene can’t run for reelection because she “aided” the January 6 insurrection.

No one has been charged with “insurrection”, and the entire effort seems like a leftist political maneuver to avoid being crushed in the 2022 midterms. However, there’s a never-ending source of funding for these Lawfare schemes, so these efforts continue. An activist Federal Judge, Amy Totenberg (Obama appointee), from the Northern District of Georgia is anticipated to rule this week on whether the challenge can move forward.

MTG appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss. {Direct Rumble LinkWATCH:

Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the few congressional representatives who actually channels the appropriate anger and opinion of her constituents.  That makes her a target for the Lawfare leftists.

We need to watch these types of schemes.  This crap is what the Lawfare crew do when people are distracted.

Hours After Arrest South Carolina Mall Shooter Released on Bail, allowed to Go Home and Work


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 17, 2022 | sundance 

Earlier today, 22-year-old Jewayne Price was arrested in connection with yesterday’s mass shooting at a busy mall in Columbia, South Carolina. Jewayne Price is accused of shooting nine people leaving 14 people at the mall injured. The victims are ages 15 to 73.

Price was arrested after he was originally questioned as one of three gang related suspects identified as persons of interest in Saturday’s shooting at Columbiana Centre, a busy shopping mall in the state’s capital. A few hours after his arrest, Jewayne Price was released on 25,000 bail.

SOUTH CAROLINA – The suspect in a South Carolina mall shooting in which nine people were wounded has been released under house arrest and ordered to wear an ankle monitor after a judge set a $25,000 surety bond.

The suspect, Jewayne Price, is also barred from contacting any of the victims, Columbia police said on Twitter. Price will be allowed to travel from his home to work while he is under house arrest.  Neither Price nor his attorney could immediately be reached for comment. (read more)

Twitter Board of Directors Own Almost No Shares of Stock in Company, Elon Musk Notes “their economic interests are simply not aligned with shareholders”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 16, 2022 | Sundance 

In the ongoing public battle over Twitter as a speech platform, one actual user of Twitter, Chris Bakke, wanted to see who exactly these Board of Directors are, who are attempting to stop Elon Musk from purchasing it.

Chris Bakke then noted how little of the actual stock is owned by the company’s Board of Directors.  Sans Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey, the combined ownership of the entire board equates to 77 shares of stock, worth around $3,200 bucks.

The Board of Directors [SEE BoD LINK HERE] consists of academics, tech executives, business and policy wonks, and a random baroness who doesn’t even use the service.  These are the people who are making fiduciary decisions for all Twitter stock owners without any financial stake in the decisions they make for the company.

(TWEET LINK)

BOARD MEMBERS – (2) Bret Taylor, Independent Board Chair; Co-CEO, Salesforce (former Google exec). (3) Parag Agrawal,CEO, Twitter. (4) Mimi Alemayehou, Senior Vice President for Public – Private Partnership at Mastercard. (5) Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Professor at Stanford (former Google exec). (6) Egon Durban, Co-CEO, Silver Lake. (7) Robert Zoellick, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (8) Patrick Pichette, General Partner, Inovia Capital; Former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Google. (9) Martha Lane Fox, Founder and Chairperson, Lucky Voice Group; Former Co-Founder and Managing Director of lastminute.com; Crossbench Peer, House of Lords. (10) Omid Kordestani, Former Executive Chairman, Twitter (former Google exec). (11) David Rosenblatt, CEO, 1stdibs.com, Inc. (former Google exec). (12) Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder, Twitter; CEO and Co-Founder, Square.

Further evidence the motivations behind the Twitter board have nothing to do with stewardship for their shareholders.  Again, this is yet another datapoint highlighting the background structure of Twitter that Musk is exposing.

Twitter is not making a decision to decline the generous offer by Elon Musk because of stewardship or fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.  The financials of Twitter as a non-viable business model highlight the issue of money being irrelevant.  Twitter does not and cannot make money.  Growing Twitter only means growing an expense. Growing Twitter does not grow revenue enough to offset the increase in expense.

There is only one way for Twitter to exist as a viable entity, people are now starting to realize this.

What matters to the people behind Twitter, the people who are subsidizing the ability of Twitter to exist, is control over the global conversation.

Control of the conversation is priceless to the people who provide the backbone for Twitter.

Once people realize who is subsidizing Twitter, everything changes.

That’s the fight.

{Go Deep}

Black Lives Matter Leaders Spend Charitable Donations on Lavish Lifestyles


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Apr 11, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Black Lives Matter (BLM) has become a money-laundering operation. The problematic organization used a catchy slogan to spread hate while the people in charge became millionaires. It recently came to light that the group purchased a mansion in Los Angeles for $6 million in October 2020 with charitable donations. Dyane Pascall, a BLM member with close ties to co-founder Patrisse Cullors, purchased the mansion in cash before transferring the deed to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation days later.

Pascall simply stated, “I don’t owe you an explanation,” when questioned about the illegal transaction. “This home is not just a home — it’s, like, four structures,” Pascall told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a film studio, sound stage, commercial space, office space. It’s a campus. It’s got 20 parking spaces so people can come and work. It’s not a home per se. It’s an actual campus space for people to work from.” The 6,500 square foot mansion boasts six bedrooms and room for over 20 cars. Is that not a red flag?

Worsening matters, some news agencies are reporting that Dyane Pascall purchased the nearly $6 million mansion days after another BLM member purchased it for nearly half the price. This is not the only mansion that the organization owns under the tax-exempt status that was provided to them in December of 2020. Interesting that self-proclaimed Socialists would be interested in high-end luxury real estate. But as with all Socialists, the problem becomes when they run out of other people’s money.

BLM has become untouchable because people are afraid to be labeled racist. In reality, BLM has caused more harm than good for their own community. Since the left is desperate for voters, they have pandered to this organization and turned a blind eye to the blatant crime. BLM burned down shops and toppled police cars, yet there was never an investigation, and the protests were permitted to continue. The money that was supposed to help uplift those who they believe are systematically oppressed was instead used to make the founders multi-millionaires. California threatened to sue the organization for failing to report its finances, and Amazon removed the organization from its AmazonSmile charity program. The Department of Justice needs to investigate, and the donors should be outraged. Politicians such as Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau needed the BLM organization to create a racial divide and secure the minority vote instead of actually implementing policies that would help their cause.

Sunday Talks, Fauci Warns of Potential Return of Indoor Mask Mandate


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022

Appearing on ABC’s This Week to give his opinion on the current status of COVID-19, White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci warns the CDC may soon revert back to an indoor mask mandate.  This is additionally troublesome, because many people now define themselves by COVID-19.

There are many people who can only identify with other like-minded people fearful of COVID.  WATCH:

There are a significant portion of the American public who worship at the altar of COVID theatrics.  For them getting booster shots, following the CDC orders and participating in the mask theatrics is a profoundly religious experience that defines who they are in the modern world of pandemic fear.

Observing the behaviors of mask promoters, is almost like watching a livestream of unstable political expression.  It truly is one of the most bizarre new realities. Many of the Branch Covidians become mentally and emotionally unstable when they experience contact with a non-mask-wearing person.

Even after all of the ‘scientific evidence’ that shows masks provide no substantive benefit or lowering of infection risk, there are a great many people who cannot fathom not wearing one for the remainder of their lives.  The psychological training from two years of massively promoted COVID fear and the drumbeat of worry, has left a large portion of the American people in a permanent state of profound instability.

It is unnerving to realize how many people can be influenced to believe in something that lacks any logic or reason.  I’m not sure how long, if ever, this tear in the social fabric will last or take to repair.  Many of these COVID consequences have divided people permanently.  The full interview is below.

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Latest CBS Poll Reflects No Hope for Anyone, Including Joe Biden and Democrats


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 10, 2022 | sundance

CBS has released their latest YouGov Poll [DATA HERE], again showing the top priorities of the American people are not even on the radar of the American government.  The DC beltway disconnect is stark.

Interestingly, the recent survey of Pennsylvania voters done by Reuters, turned up this almost identical priority list, only Rusia/Ukraine did not even appear in the top five.  The economy, inflation, gas prices, crime and immigration are the top five issues across the board, in almost every poll.

Russia/Ukraine is a non-existent issue. Yet, that is the actionable priority -with questionable importance for U.S. security interests- for a totally out of touch government and media to focus on.  Sending $14 billion to help Ukraine’s border fight, while our borders are crushed with illegal aliens, is a sharp stick in the eye for every American.

Unfortunately, our opinion doesn’t matter, and frustratingly, the people using Biden as a tool to achieve their goals do not have any concern whatsoever about political fallout.  Biden is a disposable tool for a program of rapid single-term advancement of the democrat-communist agenda.

Under ordinary circumstances, this level of disapproval would automatically create panic and start a change in policy.  However, under their current program, a kamikaze mission to create maximum ‘fundamental change’, the people creating the policy outcomes simply don’t care.  Biden is a disposable tool to be thrown on the trash heap of history.

Joe Biden is clueless and entirely irrelevant to the objective.  He sits around eating pudding and muttering to himself until called upon to head to the stage set, and literally read what has been written for him.  Biden has no clue, other than, (a) he is in complete agreement with the goals, and (b) it takes a lot of pancakes to fill a canoe.  I swear, the puppet masters keep putting little girls in his orbit during public appearances just to laugh about it.

These people are sick.

(CBS) Higher prices are leading people to say they’re making cutbacks, especially on more discretionary items like entertainment and travel. (That may, of course, have a wider impact on the economy later.) About half are cutting back on food and groceries, and this is especially the case among those with lower incomes. (read more)

Ya think?

Justice Jackson


Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law Re-Posted Apr 9, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: So what do you think of the Supreme Court nominee?

DA

ANSWER: It is a joke. Biden ruled out everyone other than a black woman, which is in itself racist. This is all propaganda. In NYC, I have watched judges. A black judge will typically impose a harder sentence on someone who is black because they view that they have suffered prejudice because of them and the criminal can never claim racism. I saw a Jewish guy sentenced to an extra two years because the Jewish Judge went to the same school that he disgraced. I saw a black defendant who thought he would be treated fairly because he had an all-black jury. They found him guilty of everything because they do not like the young blacks shooting up their neighborhoods. I seriously doubt Justice Thomas would rule in favor of a black man simply because he was black.

To think that putting a black woman on the court will somehow support black women is just absurd. As I have stated before, just because a Republican president appoints a justice does NOT mean they will always rule in favor of Republicans. Justices do not always vote on Party Lines.

Roberts v Scalia

King v. Burwell upholding Obamacare was a political decision, not law, and it revealed the stark difference between Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by a Republican, and Justice Scalia, who was also appointed by a Republican.

It was Justice Scalia who spoke the truth. He wrote about Roberts’ decisions:

“… this Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years. The somersaults of statutory interpretation they have performed (‘penalty’ means tax, ‘further [Medicaid] payments to the State’ means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, ‘established by the State’ means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

This is what Biden is shooting for. Not the rule of law, but twisting the Constitution to achieve his progressive agenda to turn the Constitution inside out. This is when we really need Will Smith to slap people in the face to wake up in Washington as they keep moving to destroy everything that made America great. There is now absolutely NO guarantee of how Justice Jackson will rule. I did find it disturbing for her to say she could not define “woman.” If we cannot define that, then can a guy go into the lady’s room and look at girls in there, claiming he identifies as a woman? Where does this ever end? What’s next? A pedophile can claim he identified as a child and was just playing doctor? There are basic norms that have always existed in society and I fear they are going out the window with the baby and the bathwater. I hope she does not rule with this inanity.