Guck Favin

It looks like everyone's favorite political tweeter, and political sh%$-heel, Gavin Newsom is pulling out all the stops to kill California's billionaire tax.

F%$# him with Cheney's dick. 

Governor Gavin Newsom is mounting a last-ditch pressure campaign to stop a proposed California billionaire tax from ever reaching voters.

During a call last month, he assured a major Democratic donor the levy would be successfully negotiated away before a June 25 deadline, a person familiar with the call said, asking not to be named discussing a private conversation.

………

Now Newsom has less than two weeks to make good on his promise and convince the group behind the measure to withdraw its proposal, averting a costly showdown in the November general election. A spokesperson for the governor declined to comment on the call.

The proposal, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on a billionaire’s net worth, has become one of the most closely watched political fights in California, exposing divisions within the Democratic Party and serving as a test of the broader appetite in the US for taxing extreme wealth.

Powerful new allies recently joined Newsom’s crusade. Groups like the California branch of Planned Parenthood and the state’s largest teachers’ union now publicly oppose the tax.

Together, they’ve formed an unlikely bloc against the levy: Newsom and progressive groups as well as Democratic and Republican mega-donors, like Peter Thiel and Sergey Brin.

For SEIU-UHW, the healthcare union that proposed the measure, and its leader, Dave Regan, the growing opposition means the campaign is no longer just taking on billionaires. It is also going up against groups representing teachers and carpenters, as well as Democratic stalwarts.

They are all screaming that the billionaires will move to Texas and Florida to avoid taxes.

After a year, said billionaires will learn realize that THEY ARE LIVING IN FLORIDA OR TEXAS, and they will want to return to a place that is not a f%$#ing snake pit.

The taxes raised are not that important.  What is important is giving the billionaires in general, and the Tech Bros in particular, a loss. 

What About Class Solidarity?

It appears that Bill Gates' former bestie Warren Buffett has cut all ties with the Microsoft founder after revelations about Gates' extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

I'm shocked.

Normally billionaires stick together.

By virtue of the inherent exploitation it takes to become one, there’s ontologically no such thing as a good billionaire. To sort them along a spectrum of palatability is to miss the forest for the trees and a distraction from the fact that the continued existence of these roughly 3,500 billionaire sickos (and one almost certainly soon-to-be trillionaire sicko) presents an existential threat to the other nine billion humans they’re robbing, surveiling, and increasingly starting to hide from.

While you do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to” billionaires, it doesn’t hurt to call out good behavior in the rare instances where they demonstrate it, if only to demand more of it. Take self-described “class traitor” billionaire and California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer who, if (big “if”) he were to be elected and follow through on his campaign trail rhetoric, would aim to tax those like himself out of existence. Though it clearly pains many a left-leaning CA voter to regard a former hedge-fund manager who recently walked back his support for a moratorium on data center construction as the state’s most progressive candidate for governor, his DNC-backed opponent keeps collecting maxed-out donations from the full roster of Captain Planet villains—Chevron, Kalshi, Meta, Airbnb, and now Anthem BlueCross BlueShield. Those pesky Contradictions become near-impossible to ignore.

A similarly commendable action by a billionaire is highlighted in a Wall Street Journal profile published today about the breakdown of Bill Gates’ nice guy image following the revelation of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. In the Journal’s report on the hit to Gates’ meticulously manicured image caused by the DOJ’s tranche dumps in late 2025 and early 2026, it makes the case that Gates’ longtime friend and Berkshire Hathaway chairman, Warren Buffett, has gone full-on no contact with the Microsoft founder since the files dropped, referencing a March CNBC interview where Buffett says he hadn’t spoken to Gates since their release.

I still subscribe to the Honoré de Balzac quote, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

It appears that f%$#ing little girls is a bridge too far for Buffett though.  

Headline of the Day

Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

—Gizmodo, on Travis Kalanic claiming that LLM generatuive AI will be making massive scientific discoveries any day now.

This should not be a surprise, coming from a guy whose skill is political lobbying, raising venture capital money, and breaking the law.

I don't know if the Silly-Con Valley billionaires started off this stupid, of if they have destroyed brain cells from sniffing their own farts once they got rich, but they are morons. 

Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don’t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge.

Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at the company, appeared on All-In to talk with hosts Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya about the future of technology. When the topic turned to AI, Kalanick discussed how he uses xAI’s Grok, which went haywire last week, praising Adolf Hitler and advocating for a second Holocaust against Jews.

There's more in the article, but the fact that the leech who created Uber thinks that it's hunky-dory to use an overgrown Eliza program that has gone full Nazi as the way to enlightenment, something has gone profoundly wrong with him.

Quote of the Day

Wowsers

America represents 70% of of all value globally so if you think about it would you rather own the world would you rather own America for $70 or if you could own everything but America for 30 which would you pick and what that says to me is that America is overvalued

—Obsidian Wings noting a comment in the Kara Swisher/Scott Galloway Podcast Pivot where Galloway noted that 70% of equity and debt value in the world is in the US stock and bond markets.

Galloway goes on further noting that there are, "10 stocks that represent 28 to 33% of the value," of US markets, which means that about ⅕ of all global wealth is in 10 companies.

The most obvious point here is that the 10 highest market cap companies, in order Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta (Facebook),Tesla, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, Broadcom, and Berkshire Hathaway.

So, you have a luxury goods company who gets most of their profit from monopoly rents (Apple), a software company whose success is due to inertia (Microsoft), a niche product riding the unsustainable AI bubble (Nvidia), a monopolist whose primary product they have been enshittifying for years (Alphabet/Google), a monopolist whose primary product they have been enshittifying for years (Amazon), a company whose route to profit since its founding has been harming its users (Meta/Facebook), a company whose profitability is entirely due to government subsidies (Tesla), a company who makes the best computer chips in the world (TSMC), another company riding the unsustainable AI bubble (Broadcom), and an investment firm that is unlikely to survive a decade past the expiration of its nonagenarian founder (Berkshire Hathaway).

That's a f%$# ton of "wealth" accounted by companies that don't do anything of real value.  (Except for TSMC, they produce a real product with real quality)

When the music stops, we are going to be in a world of hurt.

Quote of the Day

My spicy view about just why some billionaires - people who seemingly have everything they could possibly want and are almost entirely unaffected by anything that actually happens to the rest of us - are so into converting the country into a neo-feudal hellscape is that there are a couple of things that, despite their unimaginable wealth, they would have a hard time getting away with anywhere in the world.

Specifically, they want literal slaves, including child slaves, with all that implies.

—Atrios

Obviously, Mr. Black intent here is to be provocative, but that does mean that this is not true.

In fact, I would argue that this is, to quote Charles Dickens, "True ……… as turnips is. It was as true ……… as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them."

Billionaires want to be God Kings who are exempt from the ordinary norms of human decency.

This is not a good or a healthy thing.

It would be best for society to arrest them, deport them to China, and force them to work at a Foxconn.

Short Version, They Are Nucking Futs

It is increasingly obvious that the hyper rich have some serious screws loose.  (We are talking Bond villain sh%$)

They start off with a screw loose, anything beyond the first $100 million or so is just hoarding, and then they surround themselves with yes men and sycophants, which, after a few years, completely disassociates them from reality.

These people are not geniuses, they are not threats, they are a clear and present danger to the rest of society:

Today, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman shares a key insight that his headline editor summarizes as The Rich Are Crazier Than You and Me. While this is true, what's even more key to me is why the most prominent tech tycoons (who are one of the most powerful cohorts of the rich) have gotten so radicalized.

………

But I've spent decades in this industry, often knowing the executives and investors long before they came to wield so much power, and... they're just a bunch of dudes. They're just as prone to becoming swept up in stupid conspiracized thinking as, well, everyone else in their demographic seems to have been. And it's important to remember, nobody becomes a billionaire by accident. You have to have wanted that level of power, control and wealth more than you wanted anything else in your life. They all sacrifice family, relationships, stability, community, connection, and belonging in service of keeping score on a scale that actually yields no additional real-world benefits on the path from that first $100 million to the tens of billions.

So you have a cohort that is, counterintutively, very easily manipulated. If you have access to a billionaire (and billionaires all have access to each other, because it suits their ego to think of each other as peers), most are very easy to program by simply playing to their insecurity and desire for acknowledgement of exceptionalism, and so they push each other further and further into extreme ideas because their entire careers have been predicated on the idea that they're genius outliers who can see things others can't, and that their wealth is a reward for that imagined merit. "I must be smart, look how rich I am." The rising power of movements meant to counter their influence has catalyzed a vicious, and frankly very weird, backlash where they want to put everyone else in their place. And, due to the insularity of their lifestyles, they very seldom have any corrective voices pointing out when they've clearly lost the plot. If it weren't for the deep harm they were doing to so many with these radical ideas, I'd have a lot of pity and empathy for the fact that they're clearly acting out due to social isolation and the existential emptiness that must come from pursuing wealth and power to such an extreme degree that there's no room left in life for someone to call them on their bullsh%$.

 (%$# mine)

This explains Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs, and Larry Page, and Sergei Brin, and (literal vampire) Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg, and all the rest of them.

When Anil Dash, the author of this article, refers to these folks as, "VC Qanon," he nails it.

I am not concerned about how these folks are created, I am concerned how to stop them.

Tweet of the Day

seeing reports that elon musk was immediately booed off a comedy club stage tonight in san francisco. very weird-- usually you need to be in a tesla to crash and burn that quickly

— thinking of becoming a necklace guy (@fart) December 12, 2022

For those of you who are not following the news, Dave Chapelle brought Elon Musk on stage, and the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir™ was enthusiastically booed off stage by the crowd.

Rather ironically, Chapelle introduced as the, "Richest Man in the World," but with Tesla stock tanking, Musk is no longer the richest person in the world.

Quote of the Day

There is a tendency, especially when it comes to the über-rich and powerful, to assume and to fantasize about what we can’t see. We ascribe shadowy brilliance or malevolence, which may very well be unearned or misguided. What’s striking about the Musk messages, then, is the similarity between these men’s behavior behind closed doors and in public on Twitter. Perhaps the real revelation here is that the shallowness you see is the shallowness you get.

—Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic discussing the text messages between Elon Musks and the other titans of industry when he started looking at buying twitter.

(Emphasis mine)

There is no man behind the curtain.  There is no curtain.  There are just a bunch of entitled, privileged white boys (mostly on the last bit) who won the birth lottery.

They possess no special talents, nor any great intellect, just luck, public subsidies, and the willingness to break the law brazenly.

To quote Honoré de Balzac, (sort of, the history is complicated) "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

Quote of the Day

These people want to be treated both as the financial leaders of the future and as cutesy “aw shucks, they’re just like you and me” artisans. They want to keep doing cool parties with confused celebrities and have their wealth and power totally unscrutinized.

To be completely clear, this is identical to how every massively wealthy person operates. The ultra-rich use varying means to obfuscate or entirely hide their wealth or use obtuse mechanisms within the tax code to escape liability. They create networks of shell corporations to hide money - something the average person does not have the means to do, of course - and then get mad when that source of money is revealed.

—Ed Zitron

(Emphasis Original)

Mr. Zitron is talking about the incomprehensible (to me, at least, they appear to be a brazenly transparent scam) of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, but this is also the behavior of the rich more generally. 

This is a destructive pathology shared by many, if not most, of the wealthy.

Bat Boy Billionaire to Ride Giant Space Dildo

Compensating for Something?

As you may have heard, Amazon chief and Bat Boy look-alike Jeff Bezos plans to be on the first manned manned flight of his Blue Origin booster.

I guess he thinks that having more money than God qualifies him as a test pilot.

You give an egomaniac enough money, and they think that they are Buckaroo Banzai:

Jeff Bezos has already selected a hobby for his post-CEO life: space travel.

Just two weeks after he steps down as CEO of Amazon, Bezos will climb aboard a rocket made by his space exploration company Blue Origin.

"If you see the earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It's one earth," Bezos said in a video posted to Instagram on Monday morning.

"Ever since I was five years old, I've dreamed of traveling to space."

I want to go into space, but this desire is NOT strong enough for me to share a space capsule with Jeff Bezos.

Tweet of the Day

Say what you like about Marvel Comics but this remains the best explanation for why Bloomberg just spent all that money on something other than, you know, helping people. pic.twitter.com/3zaHN4oVBo

— Joe Macaré (@joemacare) March 5, 2020

You will never convince me that this is not an intentional metaphor for self-entitled wealth, and an unintentional metaphor Mike Bloomberg's Presidential campaign.

Bernie's Houses

One of the criticisms of Bernie Sanders is that he has 3 homes, his primary residence, his DC residence, and a vacation home, and that this is excessive for a self-proclaimed socialist.

The three houses combined have a value that is a rounding error for the homes of Obama, Clinton, or Biden, as this TikTok video shows:

Here are the homes of #obama #HillaryClinton and #BernieSanders . One is not like the others... Use this for those pesky rumors. pic.twitter.com/GRDEiLuEJB

— Biden's Hairy Leg 🦵🌹 (@BernieWon2016) January 4, 2020

What a Concept

We now have a term for the mediocrities who go from failure to failure with lavish funding because they are children of extremely rich parents, the "Glass Floor."

This is pretty much where Rome was when it began to collapse:

In 2014, Zach Dell launched a dating app called Thread. It was nearly identical to Tinder: Users created a profile, uploaded photos and swiped through potential matches.

The only twist on the formula was that Thread was restricted to university students and explicitly designed to produce relationships rather than hookups. The app’s tagline was “Stay Classy.”

Zach Dell is the son of billionaire tech magnate Michael Dell. Though he told reporters that he wasn’t relying on family money, Thread’s early investors included a number of his father’s friends, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

The app failed almost instantly. Perhaps the number of monogamy-seeking students just wasn’t large enough, or capping users at 10 matches per day limited the app’s addictiveness. It could also have been the mismatch between Thread’s chaste motto and its user experience. Users got just 70 characters to describe themselves on their profiles. Most of them resorted to catchphrases like “Hook ’em” and “Netflix is life.”

After Thread went bust, Dell moved into philanthropy with a startup called Sqwatt, which promised to deliver “low-cost sanitation solutions for the developing world.” Aside from an empty website and a promotional video with fewer than 100 views, the effort seems to have disappeared.

And yet, despite helming two failed ventures and having little work experience beyond an internship at a financial services company created to manage his father’s fortune, things seem to be working out for Zach Dell. According to his LinkedIn profile, he is now an analyst for the private equity firm Blackstone. He is 22.

America has a social mobility problem. Children born in 1940 had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents. For children born in 1984, the odds were 50-50.

Most accounts of this trend focus on the breakdown of upward mobility: It’s getting harder for the poor to become rich. But equally important is the decline of downward mobility: The rich, regardless of their intelligence, are becoming more likely to stay that way.

You know, this explains a lot:  Donald Trump, Dan Lipinski, Liz Cheney, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Jared Kushner, and Hunter Biden.  (also, those folks from Hyannis Port)

Get lucky with the right parents, and any sad sack can become a mover and a shaker.