Society Needs To Protect Itself From The Overly Rich-- Let's Try Taxation Before Guillotines

The Rich Are The Most Evil People On Earth

Republicans are horrible, right? In the horribly red state of Tennessee, they elected a kook to the state Senate, Frank Niceley, who's as devoted to Hitler as Madison Cawthorn is one state over. In voicing his support of a bill to criminalize homelessness, Sen. Niceley of Strawberry Plains told the state Senate that "I wanna give you a little history lesson on homelessness. In 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and body language and how to connect with the masses and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books. So a lot of these people... it’s not a dead-end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life. Or in Hitler’s case a very unproductive life."

And then there's Trump coup plotter, Charles Herbster, a GOP candidate for Nebraska governor. The Nebraska Examiner reported today that the far right crackpot is also a serial groper. So far 8 women, all Republicans, have complained.

During an event in 2019, for example, Republican State Sen. Julie Slama confirmed that as she walked by Herbster, he reached up her skirt, without her consent, and touched her inappropriately. The incident happened in the middle of a crowded ballroom at the Douglas County Republican Party’s annual Elephant Remembers dinner.

At the time, Slama had been recently appointed to the District 1 legislative seat representing southeast Nebraska. Herbster owns a farm and a house in the district.

Another person attending the 2019 event saw Herbster reach up Slama’s skirt and had told the Examiner about it. That witness and two others said they saw Herbster grope another young woman on her buttocks at the same event.

How about it Oregon, which is nearly as blue as Tennessee and Nebraska are red? Any crackpots there. Oh, for sure... and you don't even have to go to the red eastern part of the state to find them. A couple of days ago we met bitcoin billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who doesn't actually live in Oregon... but is trying to buy a Democratic congressional seat there for one of his retainers, phantom candidate Carrick Flynn.

Writing for the Salem Statesman Journal today, Connor Radnovich reported that "Flynn has voted just twice in Oregon since the turn of the century-- 2008 and 2016-- and only moved back to Oregon in September 2020 from Washington, D.C. Questions have also arisen online, with commentators accusing him of being a Manchurian candidate or in the pocket of billionaires." He isn't going to any events or public forums-- just sitting back and letting Bankman-Fried (through his Protect Our Future PAC and the Justice Unites Us PAC) spend millions of dollars on ads, mailers and billboards for his campaign. $10 million worth of ads are scheduled. On top of that, the House Majority PAC through in another million just to please Bankman-Fried one of Biden's top 2020 donors.

Billionaires buying seats in Congress? Look at German-born neo-Nazi Peter Thiel. He spent $10 million on JD Vance's Senate race and gave God-knows how much to Trump to buy an endorsement for Vance. This is insane-- whether from a Republican billionaire or a Democratic billionaire. Maybe if they had to pay a nice fair tax rate, they wouldn't be as likely to spend this kind of money buying control of government.

Elon Musk, another foreign Nazi billionaire, is trying to buy Twitter. Reporting for The Nation this morning, Victor Pickard pleaded that We Can’t Let Billionaires Control Major Communications Platforms. He's now Twitter's biggest shareholder and before dawn Pickard was holding out hope he could be stopped from swallowing up the whole joint. Too late. Later in the morning The Guardian reported that he <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/14/elon-musk-buy-twitter-share>made a hostile bid for the company<> with plans to take it private. What's a mere $40 billion to Musk, the richest person in the world, anyway?

In a letter to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, Musk said the site was not thriving as a company or a tool for improving freedom of speech, and “needs to be transformed as a private company.”

...“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in the letter to Taylor.

“However, since making my investment I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

“As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced.

“My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

The Twitter board is looking to prevent the hostile takeover by using a poison pill to prevent him from grabbing up the company, "essentially diluting an acquirer's stake via creating more shares in the market-- or allowing other current shareholders to buy more shares at a discount, creating a 'pill' that makes a hostile takeover more financially painful to achieve." Should billionaires exist? Nope. A marginal tax rate of 90-something percent for anything over $10 million should be pretty standard-- with very strict punishment guidelines for tax evasion.