Incoming presidents do not generally want to be seen as rewarding the hyper-wealthy with special political perks. Team Trump apparently doesn’t much care.
https://bsky.app/profile/joehick58.bsky.social/post/3lfsoyd6bzc2c

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/musk-bezos-zuckerberg-receive-key-perk-inauguration-day-rcna187793


President Biden is correct about the fact that there is now an oligarchy in control of the United States government

Up tsf's back side like a ventriloquist, a puppet master. Donnie will do anything for his new best friend.

That's the intended effect. They want a big, public display saying they have taken over and we must obey or else.

Of course, my only gets to nine places to the RIGHT of the decimal point!

Here in Michigan, Dems got an increased minimum wage into law, and they extend it to tipped workers which will see a more gradual increase over the next 5 years. There have been protests against this increase of wages to tipped workers, but not who you think, not the rich, not the bar and restaurant owners, but from tipped workers. Sure, they don't repesent most tipped workers, but there they are out screaming that they shouldn't make more money.

Why? Well, they been fed a line of crap about this from Rightwing media, they believe several things that are just not true. They've been told that raising their hourly rate will mean that tips will be eliminated when that's not true at all, no bar or restaurant has a plan to end tipping. Knowing that, some of them believe, "well, the prices will have to be raised for drinks and food, so I'll be tipped less." Um, that's not how tipping works, it's the opposite actually, people tip a % of their total bill, a slightly higher bill will mean slightly higher tips.

The propaganda is so strong that you have actual working people protesting for them to continue to make less money. It's insane. And sure, they probably believe a couple false things, but at its core, they're out there saying the rich need more and wokring people should work for less.

78 million people voted very clearly 2 months ago to take from working people so the rich can get more for themselves, and that's exactly what they're going to get in the next 4 years.

how capitalism works, and failing to teach anything about government.

Have known my bartender for over a decade, really nice lady. The conversation turned to minimum wage, she knows I'm a lefty so she asks, "What do you think minimu wage should be?" I said, I'm not sure, but at least enough for entry level workers to do as well as I did wokring my first jobs in the 80s." My guess is $15 or $16 here in Michigan. Then some people strarted talking about how much fast food costs these days, "The bartender says to me, so you're willing to pay a buck more per item so the workers there can make $16 or $16 an hour." She said it like a "gotcha." The irony of what she said ws completely lost on her until I answered, "Well, i am literally paying you a buck more per beer so you can get by and earn a living, so I guess the answer to that is yes." She's not a righty or anything, just one of the people who believes what she hears on TV. She was really worried about the tipped minimum wage going up in Michigan, I said to her, "You're still getting the same buck or two per beer tip from me regardless of what your hourly rate is and even if the base price of the beer goes up."

And don't get me wrong, I respect bartending as a profession, I've bartended, if you're competent at it, you can make a living doing it. But I go to a dive bar, this isn't some mixologist, she wroks at a dive bar during the day. She knows how to mix a hand full of drinks, pour beers, and wash the counter, it's not rocket surgery, but I and the rest of the regulars are more than happy to tip her well so she can take care of herself and her kid. But apparently fastfood workers don't deserve the same dignity as bartenders do.

And this is what Cons have done for 50 years now, they get working people to think other working people getting a little more are the problem. Look at the disdain you hear from non union workers towards union workers. Every good union contract gets met with jeers. Ford or Stelantis laying off laying off a thousand or so people and you hear, "See, that fatcat union contract cost people their jobs." All of the people working to make ends meet target other working people. And it goes to every profession. People will say teacher's get too good of benefits. People get mad college professors are making 6 figures. I even see it in my own building where production is jealous of us in engineering. Like we in engineering aren't a lot closer to the people on the shop floor in values and work ethic than we are to the guys in the corner offices at corporate headquarters or the board room. We're all just working stiffs, hoping to save enough to retire with a little bit of dignity.

billionaires. Their great wealth & influence is beyond anything the robber barons could have imagined -- they are princes, as Machiavelli used the term.

They won't listen to Biden.

It’s the bottom of the ninth and oligarchs are up by one orange run. We need a rally led by our best sluggers. We as citizens must act courageously and consistently, now.

https://www.fire.ca.gov/

I think one of the most effective ways is to hit them in their wallets.
1. Don't buy from merchants who supported the felon, if possible.
2. Don't engage on their social media sites.
3. Shun Corporate media. Don't give them the ratings.
4. Donate to Dems if you can.
5. Engage with folks in your circle who voted for the felon. This one will be difficult.

Please add to the list.

Donations to Dems who refuse to stand with those few up front now is iffy. Make the timid ones show up consistently before we pay up.
I agree wholeheartedly with all your other points.

He has always seen himself as 'better than them', yet he has to lie about his wealth because he doesn't have the smarts to take what he was given and turn it into staggering wealth. He is a total failure at everything he has attempted.

He did promise that nothing will fundamentally change.

I hope things like what's going on now makes people who are ostensibly on the left realize we're in a different era now and therefore need to act accordingly.

DO SOMETHING? If it is so important and dire? (Which it is)

Like get recounts in swing states as soon as experts started coming out with evidence of the theft.

Instead we get namby-bamby as usual.

Sorry Joe...you could have left a legacy as great as Lincoln or FDR. You blew it sir.

See how your Biden-bashing holds up, when we're knee-deep in the nightmare...

Everywhere. This speech touched a nerve. And awakened something deep within us.

I had hope for Bezos. He had (and may still have) some degree of a more progressive view of many matters of importance. His public statements when he bought WaPo were pretty good. But he's been sucking Trump's dick so hard since just before the election that Bezos' skin is, itself, taking on a bit of an orange pallor.

But, I've always perceived Musk as a humorless, tone-deaf, psychopath with no human empathy evident in any of his words or deeds - even before he became a right-wing tool.

Zuck has always been known as conservative. I think he closeted his conservatism until he felt license to come forward and bring it out with the coronation of a national Nazi leader like Trump.

I didn't think it possible, but Musk, Bezos and Zuck rank lower than the Kochs and the Waltons on my lists now. The Waltons and Kochs donated heavily to Republicans and Republican causes. But they at least had robust, high profile philanthropic programs that helped a lot of people.

Musk, Bezos and Zuck are far, far more dangerous in that not only do they donate to Republicans, but they have a more direct impact on the information ecosystem of the country than the Kochs and Waltons had or ever will have. They can all manipulate their social media empires to engineer public opinion in any way they see fit.

Part of our mission as liberals should be to dismantle the mass propaganda machinery of these bastards, either through competition with more left leaning social media, or though outreach to companies advertising or doing business on X/Meta/Amazon. Every time you see an ad adjacent to a racist/homophobic/hate post on social media, take a screen grab. Publish it elsewhere and sent it to the advertiser. We must fight this.

Or any of the contracts given in the industrial military complex. Musk would have funded the Dems if we did not ignore him when praising the car companies selling electric cars. That's when he went to the dark side.

This speech packed a wallop. He planted a seed and conveyed how this moment is unique, but also how the movement to defeat the oligarchy will be shockingly familiar.

What did we ever do to earn such ill will? How did we hurt them? Our politics are open hearted and welcoming to all. I just don't get it.

How exactly would we go about doing something like that today?

Voting? Future elections might be fixed so that we can't get out of this situation like that anymore. (But we won't know for sure until 2026.)

Boycotting? How would we go about organizing a country this large and so divided and likely lorded over by a fascist dictator?

Protesting? If Trump has his way, that'll be quelled by the U.S. military and possibly violently.

It looks like the robber barons of today can't be defeated but will only grow more rich and powerful as the American people become poorer and less powerful.

The kick in the head is that the American people have enabled this at the ballot box by voting for Trump combined with a great many people who voted for Biden in 2020 not voting at all in 2024.

The American people are the best friend the oligarchs ever had.

The American people collectively chose to be fleeced and disempowered by the oligarchs.

But maybe there's a way for us to get out of this that I can't foresee.

... the only measure of your fitness as an American, according to Republicans, is how rich you are.

===================

I don't recall a single bill being advocated or a single executive order that would compel these people to pay their fair share of taxes. Not one action to hold their social networks accountable for the hate speech they foster. Not one occasion when their attempts to monopolize industries were opposed even gently. Never an attempt to roll back the concentration of corporate control over our biggest media outlets. And certainly never a single step taken to prosecute any of them for price fixing.

Perhaps none of these things would have succeeded, given the narrow majorities that we had in Congress. But dammit, when you are President, you have to try. Even if you fail, you have to let the public know what you are fighting for.

When Democrats refuse to use the power the voters give them, then we have no right to complain when the voters don't stand with us the next time.

Link to tweet

But this is far more dangerous in many respects to the Republic.