billbyte

investing, community service, glass art, endlessly curious about the human condition

[billbyte @billbyte]

@QCompounding How does 3i fit this?

[Dr. Alice Frost @PoliSciChick84]

I know I wrote a post like this recently, but I feel like I am going to explode if I hear another Republican misuse the word "socialism."

For my Republican friends out there, let me explain what socialism actually means. Socialism is an economic system in which the means of production are socially or publicly owned, including through state ownership.

Universal healthcare is not socialism. Social welfare programs designed to prevent homelessness and poverty are not socialism. Free public education is not socialism. In fact, it is entirely possible to have a highly capitalist economy alongside an extensive social welfare system. Even Milton Friedman, one of the most influential advocates of free-market capitalism, supported a negative income tax to provide a basic income floor for the poor.

So please stop with the BS accusations of socialism every time someone proposes a social welfare program.

Ironically, some of the most conspicuous examples of state intervention in private enterprise in contemporary America come from the Trump administration itself. Its increasingly dirigiste economic policies include acquiring ownership stakes in private companies, asserting government control over corporate decisions, and imposing economically damaging tariffs on American businesses and consumers.

If you are genuinely concerned about government interference in free markets, perhaps you should start there.

[theleahfiles @leahfiles]

Stephen Miller becomes White House Chief of Staff tomorrow, and from where I’m sitting, it looks like the man about to run the White House was bought and paid for before he walked in the door. I followed the money around him and his wife Katie, and it leads to Elon Musk, a foreign government’s lobbyists, her father’s mailbox and investors nobody is allowed to see.

Full article is up on my Substack now (link in bio and it's free). Highlights below:

🚩 Red Flag 1: A dark money group funded by Elon Musk sent $43 million to a group that Miller’s own charity controls. That is Musk money flowing into Miller’s political machine, and none of it has to be disclosed to you.

🚩 Red Flag 2: Musk’s super PAC paid Katie Miller’s firm $884,367, and some of that money came while she was working beside him at DOGE. She was on his payroll and inside the government at the same time.

🚩 Red Flag 3: Katie bought more than $1 million of stock in Musk’s AI company one business day before the Pentagon announced it would use that AI. The trade was never reported, and the rules say it should have been.

🚩 Red Flag 4: Abu Dhabi’s state AI fund owns a piece of that same company. Eight days before Miller got the job, a firm in the same consulting group Katie came from signed a $100,000-a-month contract with the UAE. So, a foreign government now has money on both sides of this household.

🚩 Red Flag 5: Miller was paid $202,000 through a family company listed in his father-in-law’s name. Its clients were the Trump campaign and the Trump-Vance transition, and the transition still won’t say who its donors are. So we don’t know whose money paid him (owns him).

🚩 Red Flag 6: The dark money group Miller’s charity controls paid $156,000 to Borglum LLC, a company with no Florida registration and no named owner. Its address was box 361, the same mailbox as that family company. Based on the records, I think that donor money landed with the Millers.

🚩 Red Flag 7: Katie Miller’s podcast gets about 15,000 views an episode, yet her podcast company has 3,333,333 preferred shares for investors who never have to be named. Nobody puts money into a 15,000-view podcast for the ratings. So who bought in, and what did they get?

🚩 Red Flag 8: About $1.4 million in their kids’ accounts disappears from his ethics form with no sale reported, and a sale of stock in a Pentagon-backed company was reported at less than half of what it was worth. That form is the only way the public can see what the Chief of Staff owns, and it doesn’t match the money.

Any one of these might have an innocent explanation. But eight of them around the most powerful staffer in the White House shows a pattern, and the public deserves to know who is paying him.

The full article is up now on my Substack (link in bio) with every receipt, including the filings, the mailbox records and the UAE contract.

Enjoy!

[Samurai Shiba @SamuraiShibaJP]

My wife has taught high school in Tokyo for twenty years.

Every year, a few of her students spend a year living with a family in America. When they come home, she asks each of them one question.

"What do you miss?"

She expects hamburgers.

She almost never gets hamburgers.

And these aren't old stories. Most of these kids came home in the last two years.

"Every time I left the house, my host mom said, 'Text me when you get there.' In Japan, nobody needs to know where I am. In Ohio, somebody always did." (Mina, 17, Ohio)

"If you walk toward a door, an American will hold it open. Even if you are very far away. So you have to run. I ran to so many doors." (Itsuki, 16, Georgia)

"My host brother screamed on the floor of a grocery store. A stranger walked by and said to my host mom, 'You're doing great, Mama.' She almost cried. I didn't know strangers were allowed to say that." (Aoi, 17, Texas)

"We went away for the weekend and left our trash can at the curb. When we got back, it was by the garage. Nobody said who. My host dad said if it had been there one more day, the neighbor would have knocked." (Haruto, 16, Minnesota)

"A car got stuck in the snow in front of our house. Four men came out of four houses. Nobody called them. They pushed, the car drove away, and they went back inside without saying their names." (Ren, 17, Michigan)

"Every American has jumper cables. Maybe half of them know which clip goes where. The other half help anyway." (Shin, 16, Montana)

"In July, my host family put a cooler on the porch. Cold water, snacks, and a sign: 'For our delivery drivers. Thank you!' I asked if they knew the drivers. They said no." (Nanami, 16, Arizona)

"Downtown, there are banners on the lampposts. Photos of soldiers from the town. Some old, some very young. My host grandpa walked me down the street and told me every name." (Yuna, 16, Iowa)

"I got a C-plus on my first test. My host dad said, 'I'm proud of you,' and put it on the fridge. In Japan, nobody is proud of a C-plus." (Takeru, 17, Pennsylvania)

Then the quietest girl in the class raised her hand.

Sora. Seventeen. Missouri.

"Nobody asks me 'home safe?' anymore," she said.

She was wrong.

In September, there was a typhoon warning for Tokyo. At 2 a.m., Sora's phone lit up.

It was her host mom. In Missouri. Watching the weather in a country she had never been to.

"Saw the storm. You home safe?"

Sora told my wife she cried for a long time. Then she typed the answer she had typed a hundred times, from football games and friends' driveways.

"Home safe."

Her host mom wrote back one line.

"Good. That's all I needed."

My wife has asked that question for twenty years. Not one kid has ever said they missed how big America is.

They miss how America says goodbye. And how it checks that you got home.

So, America. You think you've lost something.

You haven't. It's on a porch in Arizona. It's pushing a car in Michigan. It's awake at 2 a.m. in Missouri, watching our weather.

You don't remember doing any of it.

A kid in Tokyo will never forget.

[Monopoly Capital 💸 @mply_cap]

Highly requested $FER deep dive is out

This company quite literally owns a collection of toll roads

https://t.co/Gtw06JHywS

[Orion @MDSUJON85265037]

The FBI is warning about a scam that gets into your Gmail without your password, and keeps working even after you change it.

You click “Allow” once, and they’re in for good.

Here’s how to see who has access right now:

[Marc Johnson @SolidEvidence]

There is something really concerning (and disappointing) going on in the US right now.
A dangerous and preventable situation.
Let me explain.
https://t.co/zGjyCh9tKs
1/

[billbyte @billbyte]

@returnoncap Look for companies where founders, owners or managers have high stakes in total returns so that personal incentives align with retail.

[Democratic Wins Media @DemocraticWins]

BREAKING: Donald Trump just announced that he is planning to sue to try and stop Alaska from certifying their election results should Mary Peltola win. He is laying the groundwork for delegitimizing the midterm elections because he knows he's losing. This has to be stopped.

[Democratic Coalition @TheDemCoalition]

We don't know this man, Doug Whitley, but he's definitely an American hero for writing this excellent letter-to-the-editor.

#ResistTrump

[Dana @Danainhawaii]

Someone hacked my uncles Charles Schwab account and sold 49k of his stocks on Friday. Luckily he caught it on Monday morning and they were able to freeze the funds in time. Charles Schwab is trying to tell him that he must have shared his password or fell for a fishing
scam. Then the thieves tried to transfer the remaining funds to an account in Palm Springs. Looks like Schwab has been breached. And they are blaming their customers.

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

hospitals and banks. on the same day.

exactly what i have been warning about on TV for months.

[Rare DD @RareDealsHere]

You know what's interesting!?

@Georgetown professor James/Jim Angel was a very vocal MMTLP / Next Bridge Hydrocarbons detractor and FINRA cheerleader after FINRA U3 halted trading in December 2022.

Nearly 4 years later Angel doesn't post and he's long been silenced since his link to one of the Market Makers that might've helped to get MMTLP tradeable was discovered.

Not to mention the fact that his program at Georgetown is linked to @FINRA, and he has patents relating to dark pools etc.

I wonder if he was transparent concerning these links when he was posting and meeting with Congress? @FBI

[Twisha 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇺🇦🌻 @Kenner1234]

BREAKING: Votes Are Being Switched from Democrat to Republican!
This has been reported already in TN, FL, TX, and MS. If you vote in person, double check your ballot before you submit it. Many said it took three tries to get their votes to register for a Democratic candidate.

[Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) @adamscochran]

These machines have notoriously bad touch screens.

But it is concerning that people in multiple states are reporting this error consistently and only in one direction…

Especially since we know Trump asked the DHS about hacking voting machines and the company was bought out by a MAGA supporter.

I assume this is still horrific touch screen calibration on cheap sensors - but it is worth it to be paranoid this year.

Check your vote carefully and request a paper ballot if any doubt!!

[🖤 @DaizyZeeX]

There is a very disturbing trend being seen in early voting. Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio are reporting difficulties getting the machines to accept democratic votes. The machines change them back to Republican unless the voter persists, pressing several times to get the correct vote to go through.
Check your machine, check to see that it accepted the correct vote. Make sure your voice counts.

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

I’ll stipulate that Trump is an agent of Putin.

Go down the checklist.

1. Destroyed the Western alliance? Putin wanted that.
2. Threatened a NATO ally over Greenland? Putin wanted that.
3. Pulled out of the intermediate nuclear pact? Putin wanted that.
4. Withdrawing 25-40,000 troops from Western Europe while Russian bellicosity is rising? Putin wanted that.
5. Russian satellites giving coordinates to Iranians killing our soldiers, and his response is “they kill us, we kill them”? What American president says that?

I think he’s been compromised.

The election of Donald Trump may be the greatest foreign policy success in post-Czarist Russian history.

[billbyte @billbyte]

@mply_cap Yes. Deep dive is of interest

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

BREAKING: Approximately 10 current & former Pentagon/natsec officials have quietly advised officials in 10 states + bipartisan lawmakers on prepping for possible Trump admin interference in the 2026 midterms (troops/ICE at polls, nullifying results over fraud claims).

Things are getting serious.

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: George W. Bush's brother Neil just dropped a BOMB on MAGA by proudly announcing that he voted for James Talarico in the Texas Senate race.

This just gave Republicans a flashing green light to vote blue...

"I have never posted a political message on Facebook not wanting to offend friends whose views may be very different than mine. I'm breaking that tradition because I voted early today, and I voted for James Talarico for the United States Senate," Bush, the child of the late President George H.W. Bush wrote on Facebook.

"My vote was motivated by two things: deep concern about Ken Paxton's record and genuine admiration for the character and principles I see in James Talarico," he continued.

"I have been deeply troubled by Paxton's conduct as Texas Attorney General, particularly his decision to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in other states in an effort to help Donald Trump remain in power. I believe that effort was an affront to our democratic institutions and the peaceful transfer of power. My concerns about his judgment and conduct are hardly mine alone. He was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House, although subsequently acquitted by the Texas Senate."

"More broadly, I believe Donald Trump and those who have enabled him have done enormous damage to the Republican Party. I worry about a political culture in which loyalty to an individual takes precedence over loyalty to principle, and where those who hold power begin to believe they are no longer accountable."

"But my vote today was about much more than opposition to Ken Paxton."

"I've never met James Talarico, but I have been enormously impressed by the way he approaches complicated and controversial issues. He speaks with respect, seeks common ground, and seems genuinely interested in bringing people together rather than driving them apart. His faith appears to be a deeply rooted source of humility, compassion, and conviction rather than a political weapon."

I see in him the qualities I admire most in public servants: integrity, civility, humility, and a willingness to listen to those with whom he disagrees. My impression is that he is a principled, pragmatic leader who understands that public office is a responsibility to serve, not an entitlement to power."

"I have been a Republican for most of my life, and I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles. But character matters more than party affiliation. Our democracy depends on leaders who respect our institutions, tell the truth, accept accountability, and seek to unite rather than divide."

"Today, I voted against a style of politics that I believe has damaged our country. More importantly, I voted for the kind of character and leadership I hope will help heal it," he concluded.

Bravo, Mr. Bush! We commend you for speaking out boldly during these crucial midterm elections. Ken Paxton is a stone-cold crook who was impeached for bribery by his own party as state attorney general. He has zero interest in serving the people of Texas if he wins and will instead work to line his own pockets, accumulate personal power, and rubber-stamp Trump's destructive agenda.

Meanwhile, James Talarico is a devout Christian who is committed to fighting for better healthcare, an end to pointless wars, livable wages, more housing construction to restore the American Dream, and banning Congressional stock trading.

The Bush family still wields a great deal of influence in Texas, so this announcement is sure to cause political shockwaves. If you're a Republican who genuinely loves this country, it's time to cross the aisle and vote for James Talarico.

Please ❤️ and share to thank Neil Bush!