Fred Tate

Small Business Financial Wizard. Passionate Baylor sports fan. Dedicated husband and father. A P1 of the little ticket. #sicembears #gopreports #baylor #httr

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@JRichieTX Irony, thy name is Willie Nelson.

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@GrandOleParr @TravisCoSheriff Scary stuff. Even scarier to think it was probably a single scammer using AI.

Also, they made a mistake. Since when would Travis County ever cooperate with the Feds. Just saying.

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@FreddyLA7

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@CurrentRevolt Reminder, a state party is a vehicle to park money for affiliated party entities. Plus it’s a depository for the primary funds. The question is, how much restricted cash the party has, and it’s the unrestricted cash that is the best measure for determining financial health.

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

Freedom is not Free.

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@leachfortexas One of the most beautiful parts of our country is we the people — a government by the people and for the people.

We the people have the power to fix what’s not working.

We have the power to make a more perfect union.

I am proud to be an American!

Happy 4th of July!

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

The European mind simply cannot comprehend a random citizen playing the national anthem with a semi automatic rifle in their backyard shooting range

[Flappr @flapprdotnet]

". . . his name was Shinzo and he was my friend. I think you would've liked him."

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Meeting with a few of my senior advisors on our next MAHA win.

[Girl patriot 🙏 🇺🇸 🦅 @Girlpatriot1974]

Welcome to The Land of the Free!
🇺🇸🌏
God Bless America. 🙏

[American Hooligans 🇺🇸⚽️ @AmericanHoolis]

Absolute CHILLS. Play this after every USMNT 🇺🇸 match please

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@scottbraddock They never mention how much money TLR has donated to republicans. It’s north of $100,000,000. Yes, nine digits. Context is important.

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@bradj_TX

[Rare 🇺🇸 @RareImagery]

Dude, this was it

[Fred Tate @FredTateCFO]

@smithfortx @WestTxStringer Just a reminder. A certain other agency in Texas, The Texas Ethics Commusson (TEC), really frowns on promoting complaints that have not been investigated for political gain.

https://t.co/A6vvafVVX9

[Rasmussen Reports @Rasmussen_Poll]

Lunchtime Eye Candy: Behold The LA Mayoral Race

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on 4 ways to spend money:

1) Your money on yourself (you’re careful about both cost and quality)
2) Your money on others (you care about cost, less about quality)
3) Someone else’s money on yourself (you care about quality, not cost)
4) Someone else’s money on others (you care about neither)

The last one is how government spending works.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Warren Buffett, in his first sit-down since stepping down as Berkshire CEO, gave the cleanest indictment of legalized gambling in a decade. He called it a tax cut for the wealthy. The math proves him exactly right.

Americans wagered $165 billion at legal sportsbooks in 2025. They lost $16 billion of that. FanDuel pulled $6 billion of the losses. DraftKings pulled $5.3 billion. Every state with legal mobile sports betting collected a tax on the bettor side. New York alone took in over $1.2 billion in 2025 sports betting tax revenue.

Layer the lottery on top. State lotteries generate over $90 billion a year. The bottom half of income earners account for roughly 70% of total spend. The average lottery player makes $38,000. A household earning $20,000 spends three times more on tickets than one earning $30,000. The implicit tax rate, meaning whatever the state keeps after prizes, runs 30 to 50% depending on the game. No other revenue source in America has that base and that rate.

The structural design is the engine. A single straight sports bet carries a hold of 4 to 5%. A four-leg parlay carries a hold above 30%. FanDuel and DraftKings spent five years rebuilding their apps to make parlays the default product. FanDuel's blended hold rate hit 11.4% in 2025, up from roughly 7% in 2022. The product got worse for the customer and the customer wagered more anyway.

Now look at the substitution. Nine US states have no state income tax. Seven of those nine run state lotteries. Seven of those nine have legalized sports betting. The states most committed to never taxing wealth are the same states running the largest extraction machines on people who cannot afford to lose. Read it as policy.

Here is what Buffett is actually pointing at. The state needs revenue. It can raise income tax on the top decile, or it can run a lottery plus a sports betting tax. The second option raises the money from the people who can least afford it. The first option becomes politically optional. New York's $1.2 billion in 2025 sports betting tax is $1.2 billion the state did not have to ask of someone earning $5 million.

DraftKings and FanDuel sell a privatized collection mechanism for a regressive tax that the state never has to defend at the ballot box again. Voters approve legalization once. Collection runs forever. The state takes a cut. The wealthy get a quieter top bracket. The bettor's cut shrinks every quarter as the parlay menu gets pushed harder.

The function of a government, Buffett said, is not to play its people for suckers.

Thirty-nine state governments now do.