Harold J. Chow

Lawyer, writer, web designer, motivated and opinionated enough to tweet on occasion.

[Ethical Skeptic ☀ @EthicalSkeptic]

After hiking for kilometers and thousands of meters in elevation, I get to my site, only to find that the item I have come to see has been locked in a vault and that the public is no longer allowed to view it. This action is not published anywhere... they just did it without public oversight.

They made it clear that the UNESCO supervisor comes by regularly and checks the access to ensure no entry has been made.

I was pretty pissed. This is not their property. This is the intellectual property of mankind, not our pretentious overlords - no matter how virtuous they pose themselves to be.

They pay a lot of money to enact this - so it is no different in net effect than artifact black markets.

All this will do is ensure that artifact black markets thrive robustly, because few trust UNESCO or state management.

Archaeology bullies people with their fake courage when a lone investigator comes up with dissenting ideas, but in reality is SPINELESS where it should be applying skepticism and science. No respect for this pseudoscience.

[Harold J. Chow @HaroldChow]

@MTGSecretLair Please explain to @Hasbro shareholders how angering customers and leaving money on the table by not printing to order on products like this help profits and share prices. You don't profit off of after market sales and any demand generated by scarcity is offset by losing players.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Ro Khanna’s solution to taxing illiquid billionaire founders is so stupid it sounds like satire.

Say you founded a private company valued at $5 billion.

You do not have $5 billion (surprise).

You own shares that might eventually be worth $20 billion, $500 million or zero.

Government says congrats, pay up.

You say, “Cool, except I don’t have the cash.”

Ro’s fix? Pledge the shares to the government and borrow the money to pay the government.

This idea is absolutely bonkers.

The government decides what your private company is worth, taxes you based on its estimate, lends you money against it, and then takes the money back as taxes.

You now have debt against the government for imaginary taxes and if you don't pay you forfeit and the own a share of your company.

The government is now an appraiser, bank, creditor, tax collector and shareholder. Maybe we can fund more Learing Centers (I digress).

AND...it gets even dumber.

Under current federal tax rules, absent some special exemption, handing over collateral to satisfy nonrecourse debt is generally treated as a sale, which means another tax.

So California lends you $250M against startup shares so you can pay California its wealth tax. Ten years later the company is toast. You can lose your company, lose your shares and still owe taxes on money you never had.

And who exactly is valuing all of this?

Professional investors struggle to value private companies when they have data rooms, preferred terms, board access and actual money on the line.

Now government is supposed to put an annual mark on founder common and tax it?

A $10B preferred financing round does not mean founder common can actually be sold at that valuation. Different share classes exist. Liquidation preferences exist. Dilution exists. Secondary discounts exist. Sometimes there isn’t a buyer at any remotely comparable price.

So how do you solve this @RoKhanna?

We already know how wrong these marks can be. Roughly 67% of unicorns that IPO’d in 2025 priced below their last private valuation.

Yet somehow government is going to know the “correct” value every year.

You take the risk. You quit the job. You work for years. You take dilution. Most startups fail and your shares go to zero.

Government doesn’t share that downside.

Then policymakers look backward at Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk and Jensen, the handful of guys who actually won, and use them to rewrite the economics for every kid deciding whether to take the same swing.

Heads, the company dies and government says “no crying in the casino.”

Tails, you actually win and suddenly you’re an evil tech billionaire who owes government 5% of the paper mark every year.

GGs.

Ro has to defend the moronic economics. Bernie’s job is to make sure you’re too angry to examine them.

“Fair share.” “Billionaire class.” “The rich.”

Instead of asking whether taxing unrealized ownership makes sense, Bernie changes the question to whether billionaires have too much money.

Don’t discuss liquidity. Show the mansion.

Don’t discuss valuation or incentives. Show the yacht.

That is class warfare.

And it matters before the company even exists.

Nobody knew Bezos would become Bezos when he started Amazon.

Nobody knew Facebook would become Meta.

Nobody knew Nvidia would become the most important chip company in the world.

Policy written around the winners changes the economics for the next generation of potential founders.

You aren’t only taxing Zuckerberg after Facebook worked. You’re changing the math for the 24 yr old kid deciding whether to spend the next decade trying to build the next one.

America works partly because ambitious people from all over the world come here believing the upside is worth the risk.

Leave the comfortable job. Start something. Raise money. Fail. Try again.

And if it finally works, own a meaningful piece of what you created.

If the new deal becomes “you eat all the downside, but if your paper equity gets big enough we start taking 5% every year,” don’t act shocked when some people stop taking the risk or take it somewhere else.

Bernie and Ro love showing you the lifestyle and telling you what they deem “excessive” wealth. What they rarely show is everything sitting underneath it.

Take Bezos.

Show his net worth going up $20B and ask why one guy needs all that money.

Alright champ, let’s zoom out.

Amazon employs more than 1 million people in the United States. Independent sellers using Amazon support more than 2 million U.S. jobs and paid more than $100B in wages in 2024.

So before you even get to Bezos’ personal tax return, millions of people are earning money because this company exists.

Those wages generate income taxes and payroll taxes.

Amazon’s sales generate sales-tax revenue.

Amazon itself pays corporate income taxes, employer payroll taxes and state and local taxes.

In 2025 Amazon reported roughly $12.4B of federal income-tax expense, $7.9B of federal employer payroll and other taxes and fees, and $7.5B of state and local taxes.

Then there’s another $24.8B collected and remitted on behalf of employees and $33.4B in sales taxes.

Roughly $86B moved through those reported tax categories in one year.

Did Amazon itself economically bear all $86B? Obviously not.

Customers pay sales tax. Employees pay their withholding.

That's how this all works. The company created the jobs, wages and transactions that created the tax base.

Bernie wants you staring at Bezos’ personal tax return as though none of that exists.

The million-plus employees, sellers, suppliers, truck drivers, warehouses, contractors, construction crews, software companies and retirement accounts all disappear.

And quick reminder: Bezos getting $10B richer because Amazon had a good day in the market does not mean $10B landed in his bank account. The market repriced stock he already owned.

When he actually sells appreciated shares, that generally creates a capital-gains tax bill.

Jensen Huang got insanely rich because Nvidia became insanely valuable.

Nvidia also employs roughly 42,000 people, around 31,000 in R&D, and paid more than $20 BILLION in cash income taxes in its latest fiscal year.

Nearly $17B went to the federal government alone.

It also reported roughly $7.9B in taxes tied to employee stock plans.

So Jensen got richer. Shareholders got richer. Employees got richer. Government collected billions.

All four things can be true at once.

Meta spent more than $72B on capex in 2025. That money went into chips, data centers, power, construction, engineers and contractors.

Not Zuckerberg’s checking account.

A lot of people make money when successful companies make money.

That story just sucks for class warfare. It is much easier to show the billionaire’s net worth and pretend his gain was everyone else’s loss.

And federally Sanders and Khanna want to do this every year.

A 5% annual tax on wealth.

So forget the valuation mess for a second and just run the math.

Your assets make 8% and government takes 5% of the asset value?

That 5% tax just ate 62.5% of your 8% gross return, before income or capital-gains taxes.

Make 5%? Your entire nominal return is gone.

Make 3%? You’re selling principal to pay the tax.

Obviously people react to that. Investors demand more return, founders rethink where they live and capital goes looking for better economics.

Which is a bizarre experiment to run when America is already winning on startups and innovation.

The U.S. has roughly 950 private unicorns and produced more than half of the world’s new unicorns in the first half of 2026.

California attracted roughly $191B of venture investment in 2025, ~60% of the U.S. total.

Other countries spend decades trying to manufacture this ecosystem. Startup visas, tax incentives, special programs, anything to attract founders and capital.

We already have it. Maybe don’t fuck it up.

Bernie calls it “fairness.” Fine. Define fair @BernieSanders

The top 1% earned roughly 21% of U.S. adjusted gross income in 2023 and paid roughly 38% of federal individual income taxes, about $823B.

Washington spends $6.28T, annually, and already has a $1.8T deficit through July.

I don't think you need more money.

Before inventing another tax base, maybe explain where the money already goes and what outcomes we're getting for it.

California spent nearly $24B on homelessness and nothing got better. Billions lost to medicare fraud. There is reported $200-400B of what we know lost to it each year.

Not sure giving the government more money, especially California is a good idea.

But taking another dollar out of productive private capital does not magically make that dollar better allocated.

Other developed countries have already wrestled with this too.

The number of OECD countries with individual net wealth taxes fell from 12 in 1990 to 4 by 2017.

Maybe they all got captured by billionaires. Or maybe they learned something.

Valuing private assets is messy. Liquidity matters. Capital moves. People move. Incentives matter.

Tax income. Tax realized gains. Close actual loopholes. Audit the stuff you already spend.

America became the world’s innovation engine because people came here, took huge risks, raised capital, built companies and owned the upside when it worked.

You want more people making that bet.

Not fewer.

Be very careful messing with that machine, especially when the people asking for more of the capital are already almost $40T in debt.

“He can afford it” is not economics.

“Fair share” means nothing until you define it.

And envy is a terrible tax policy.

[John Stossel @JohnStossel]

Disney movies push the myth: Native Americans felt “every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name.”

Nonsense.

Author (@wil_da_beast630) explains: they “hunted buffalo by driving herds of them off of 100-foot-tall cliffs!”

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

How do I know that the climate *crisis* is a scam?

Here are five reasons:

1️⃣ None of the politicians, celebrities, or “scientists” yammering about it have altered their lifestyles by an inch. If they opted to forgo using O&G products, then I’d take them seriously. Actions speak louder than words.

2️⃣ Climate conferences aren’t being held virtually on Zoom using their large meeting extensions. It’s doable, they just choose not to. They like to fly overseas to lecture us about reducing our “carbon footprint” all the while they do nothing to lower their own.

3️⃣ Wealthier alarmists are still living on or buying oceanfront property. If ocean levels were really rising at a catastrophic rate (as opposed to the gradual increase that is actually occurring), then they would move inland and banks would not approve loans.

4️⃣ Alarmists rarely, if ever criticize China and India, and they always come up with all sorts of wonderful excuses as to why those nations get a free pass to continue emitting so-called “carbon pollution.”

5️⃣ The only solutions they offer involve increased governmental power. Higher taxes. EV mandates. Restrictions or bans on the energy sectors they don’t like.

And, as an added bonus, no real-world data proves, much less suggests that we are facing an “existential crisis.” Even the IPCC doesn’t use such rhetoric because it isn’t based on science.

[Art @ZarkFiles]

Communism through (my) ages:
1) When I was 15, a teacher told me "It isn't as bad as they say, and makes a lot of sense."
2) At about 19, college friends, "Socialism isn't communism."
3) At 20, on meeting my grandfather-in-law, "They are evil. We escaped in 1949."
4) At 30, "China is a wonderful developing Democracy"
5) At 35, I was sent to communist China on business. It was a crowded, smelly, dirty, factory of despair and hopelessness. This I saw with my own eyes.
6) At 36, "China doesn't count. Successful socialism is in northern Europe."
7) I moved to northern Europe when I was 40. It was much nicer than China, but also felt like I was living in the past. I had to wait 6 months for a hernia operation.
8) When I was about 45, the migrant crisis began. The socialist/globalist/pacifist allowed them entry into every country, regardless how many crimes they committed along the way. Just 20 minutes from my house, in Calais, I was shocked to see migrants jumping onto trucks, breaking open the doors, scattering the contents across the highway, then climbing in. They went through the Chunnel and got out in England.
9) At 52, the soft socialism around me had transformed into globalism. I was told I had to call people by their preferred pronouns, though it was a lie, and even if I didn't know what the preferences were. I quit.
10) I returned to the US, and am now 60. "Socialism" is no longer a dirty word here. People openly espouse the virtues of it. Politicians run as socialists and win.

Socialism has taken many forms, from the Bolshevism of Russia, to the CCP in China, the Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy, and the many forms of it found in Latin America. It is one of the two most destructive ideologies on earth. It is designed to deprive, despirit, and murder everything that comes in contact with it.

Socialism is a great lie at every level. It helps no one, not even those who benefit the most. This is because the cost is the imposition of one's will on everyone else, and that destroys the soul of the usurper and the life of the oppressed.

Socialism always fails on its own, but only after destroying almost everything in its train. It can also be conquered. Those are the options.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Correct. And when Pfizer data showed that natural immunity from a prior infection was as good or better than the shot, CDC and FDA covered that up too, so they could get more people to take the shot, exposing even more people to needless risk of serious side effects.

[James Woods @RealJamesWoods]

Amazing how greedy and uninventive Apple became.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

59 years ago today, Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters. 34 crew members were killed and 174 were wounded by the IDF.

Today, I spoke on the House floor to honor the fallen and to recognize the survivors who were present in the gallery.

[Bruce Lou @RealBruceLou]

While we’re all focused on this election, Democrats have been quietly undermining one of the most important victories of the last election cycle.

This is insanely shady. Why are they willing to go so far to protect shoplifters?

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

An important message from my friends in Koreatown who will never forget what Karen Bass did to their community: an endorsement of Karen Bass is an endorsement of racism.

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

Stupid left-wing millennials and fellow zoomers think that the reason they cannot afford groceries, car payments, and rent is because of rich people who are more successful than they are “price gouging” them.

No, the main reason for why things are expensive is because of inflation which has outpaced wage growth significantly since 2020. What causes inflation? Printing money. Why does that happen? Because the federal government spends more money than they take in via taxes, which causes the national debt to rise. They then “fix” it by having the Treasury print money to match the money supply to the debt.

Basic economics.

Why are we $40 trillion in debt, you ask?

Two reasons: The military industrial complex and welfare / entitlement programs like Medicare / Medicaid and Social Security that pay out more than people “pay in.” And, the latter has only become worse with a top-heavy age 65+ population.

Left-wingers want “free this” and “free that,” but the more of that they get, the higher taxes will have to be. And, the higher taxes are, the less money that you will have in your pocket to pay rent, pay for groceries, to take a vacation, or simply save / invest.

That’s how this works.

Corporate greed exists, yes. And, that should be dealt with accordingly.

But the main reason you cannot afford things is because of the government that you pucker your lips up for to kiss their ass. There is nothing lamer than being a shill for the Democrat and Republican uniparty running the show.

Quit being simps for the government. All they do is make your life more miserable. They aren’t here to help. Neither party. It would be best if young people quit having that illusion.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

If that addict on your street were your own son, what would you do? That is the defining question that guides my 5 step plan to fix the homelessness problem in LA. We *must* end this evil racket of corrupt politicians and NGOs who profit off the misery of these poor souls. They launder money and feed them more drugs, so they can keep their customers locked in this hell on our streets. We have a moral obligation from God to help them and make our city safe and clean for everyone. Karen Bass and Nithya Raman have forsaken this city. Time for real leadership. Time for real compassion.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

Chevron is letting customers know in California that it’s not Donald Trump causing the insane gas prices in the state, it’s California Democrats

Chevron just added these new signs to their pumps educating customers, “Sacramento policies did this. Now you pay more”

“California politicians are choosing foreign oil and fuels over local jobs and lower costs”

This is what we need. Huge companies willing to educate the public and tell the truth

It’s Gavin Newsom and Democrat policies causing $6.30+ average cost per gallon in California

[Shiloh Marx @Shilohmarx]

Gavin Newsom ran for re-election in 2022.

California reported 26,942,532 registered voters in 2022.

California’s citizen voting-age population was 26,028,290.

California had 914,242 more voters than eligible voting age citizens.

[Ethical Skeptic ☀ @EthicalSkeptic]

If your family was Covid Vaccinated...

Quietly (if you must) encourage change in your diet, health, and cancer screening practices inside your family.

This is vital... You do not have to agree with this or change your angry politics. At least have compassion for your family - warn them...

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

A new era of responsible journalism! Thank you to CBS for posting our full interview so the voters can hear from their next Mayor!

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

How much are diapers at Target compared to Gavin Newsom's government diapers paid for by YOUR taxes?

We went to take a look:

[Russell Brand @rustyrockets]

Bill Gates’ sinister plan to stop people from eating red meat?!

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

As I promised in the debate. Here’s the ludicrous $10M boondoggle in Nithya Raman’s district