Jim Lakely

EVP @HeartlandInst, EP @InTheTankPod, Host: The Climate Realism Show. Love liberty, Steelers, Pens, #H2P. Ex-DC Journo. "Climate hero" says @junkscience

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history.

The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet.

Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention.

He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette.

He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents.

A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

@japan_nobunaga 💔😂

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

@japan_nobunaga This is funny for AI. But the reason for this is that the chickens on the spits were the day of or after the “sell by” date. Cooking and selling for $5 is a way to profit instead of throwing them away and getting nothing.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Impossible.

[Mann Made Cinema @Hotshot_Movie]

Raman gets last place on mail-in votes. Raman gets last place on in-person votes. Then suddenly surges ahead *only* with mail-in ballots submitted AFTER the election.

LMAO.

[Nick Searcy, Actor/Director/Producer/Author @yesnicksearcy]

No, it wouldn't fund anything because corrupticrats like @edMarkey would grift it all.

[Dirty Texas Hedge @HedgeDirty]

Over 4000 workers just became millionaires by owning the means of production and the socialists are pissed

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Name one thing you built on you own, @SenMarkey. I will accept you saying a treehouse or snow fort. But I won’t be impressed.

[Ed Markey @EdMarkey]

Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire. While working people struggle to get by, the billionaire class is becoming the TRILLIONAIRE class. It's disgusting. I'm fighting to tax the rich so we stop rewarding trading stocks over punching clocks.

[US Oil & Gas Association @US_OGA]

Hello Senator....

This November it will be 50 years since you were first elected to Congress, so we want to be the first to say .

"Happy 50th Anniversary of drawing a taxpayer funded salary."

That is quite an achievement.

In fact - you are 2nd longest-still serving member in Congress.

It has been a long time since you held a private sector job.

AND yes 50 years ago - in 1976 (it was America's Bicentennial that year) - people still punched clocks back then. The world has changed a lot.

During your 50 years in Congress - you watched as the creators and inventors and producers changed the world, creating trillions in new wealth, millions of new jobs and dramatically raising living standards for everyone rich and poor alike.

And for 50 years you have voted to raise taxes and regulate and oversee every move of the private sector.

You have never created or invented or produced. Just taxed and regulated and outraged.

But thank you for using the platform the "TRILLIONAIRE class" has provided to the entire world for free to tell us all how disgusted you are.

We would never know otherwise.

[Mike Benz @MikeBenzCyber]

You could give “the typical American” 11 MILLION years and they still would not create PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, xAI, Neuralink, Boring Company, Ad Astra, all while single-handedly saving free speech for all mankind while lifting humanity out of the grip of Big Tech tyranny.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Elon Musk has "done notning." Marxists have always been full of shit.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

It is a moral failure of our country that we changed the rules to create a trillionaire while doing nothing about the 771,000 homeless and over 18 million who do not have enough to eat.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

@DarrigoMelanie Elon Musk has "done notning." Marxist claptrap is eternally Marxist claptrap.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Take your second-ever swig of beer, Liz. And also sit this one out.

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire.

The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk's level of wealth.

We need a wealth tax.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Why would anyone try to punish success with many add-on beneficiaries? Because the people "mad" at Elon are simply jealous. No more complated than that.

[Steve Guest @SteveGuest]

.@ScottJenningsKY just torched the liberal meltdown over Elon becoming the world's first trillionaire:

“All day long, I've been listening to liberals, count and spend Elon's money for him. This envy, jealousy, hatred of success. Why is it immoral? Why is it wrong for somebody in our system, our capitalist system, in the greatest nation on earth, to go out and build a company, build companies, build technologies, go into space, aim to go put a colony on Mars, give internet to half the world, all the things he's doing? Why is any of this wrong or bad? Why would we want to discourage entrepreneurship? Why would we want to discourage anybody building anything?”

Exactly. Success isn't a crime.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Obama fixed "health care costs" a decade ago, or so I was told. Not so much. HC costs through the roof once government got even more involved.

Letting you shop for your own health insurance would have done what you want. It would have pushed prices way down.

But Marxism does not allow choice. It enforces the will of the political kommisars. They are always stupid and create missery.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

The "wealth inequality" stuff from these Neo-Marxists is a scam. Ro's wealth is above that of the richest person 99% of Americans personally know. And good for him. Attacking billionaires and the first trillionaire (Congrats, @elonmusk!) doesn't make life better for a single person in America.

The federal budget is $7 trillion every year. $2.5 trillion is for Social Security and Medicare. Another $1 trillion or so is for Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, and other social programs. And almost another $1 trillion services the national debt — pushed up endlessly by politicians like Ro Khanna.

If you could "solve wealth inequality" via the government confiscating even more from the wealthy and spending even more, perhaps we'd have seen some results when the federal budget was only $4T annually. The government has never created prosperity for anyone, except their political allies scamming a good bit of that $7 trillion annually.

Government cannot create wealth. It can only take it and waste it — with much of it falling into the pockets of politicians and their friends in a strange but constant "coincidence." That's the scam.

[Ro Khanna @RoKhanna]

That some do not see how the rapid acceleration of wealth inequality is tearing this country apart is a misreading of history. Read about the Gilded Age or the causes of revolution. I am for Team America. If America has been good to you, you need to do good for America.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

At least Ro is being honest here. And it's the free-marketers (Republicans, sometimes) whom history has proven correct. Government "investment" in health care and education has made both worse and more expensive by every possible metric.

I hope @RoKhanna is enjoying the combined holiday of "Disclosure Day" and "Engagement Day" on the platform Elon Musk bought and saved to be the world's free speech town hall.

[Ro Khanna @RoKhanna]

This the basic difference.

Republicans believe that that if you let the wealthy spend capital it will make Americans prosperous.

Democrats believe that the federal government investing in the healthcare & education of our people will make America prosperous & productive.

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Why should I be outraged? Musk stole from no one, least of all me or the poor. The many risks he took with his own skin in the game — failure would have ruined him — created thousands of jobs and improved countless lives. Wealth accumulation is not a moral wrong. Envy is.

[Simon Ateba @simonateba]

Be brutally honest: Are you deeply outraged that, while hundreds of millions of Americans and I are struggling financially, @elonmusk has just now become the world's first trillionaire, with more wealth than he could spend in 1,000 lifetimes? Yes or no?

[Jim Lakely @jlakely]

Why should I be outraged? Did he steal from me? No. Did he steal from people who are struggling financially? Again, no. The risks Musk took to build his fortune — and he'd have been ruined if he failed — have created jobs for countless thousands, improved the lives of countless more.

Elon Musk has committed no moral wrong. It is those who see the accumulation of wealth as an inherent evil — instead of at worst, neutrally — who are allowing envy to poison their hearts and minds and X posts.

One can have empathy "for the common man" without having animus towards Elon Musk.

[MAZE @mazemoore]

This clip of Charles Payne during Obama's second term is really incredible. Well done Charles.

In 2010 Obama put the federal government directly in charge of lending money to students. Eliminating private lending made the loans much easier to get, but they were not less expensive.

Before Obama took office, outstanding student debt was less than $100 billion. By 2015, outstanding student debt was approximately $800 billion and almost a third of the borrowers were in default. Of course the price of college continued to soar the entire time.

This is the best part. Payne predicted that someday the politicians would be promising to forgive student debt as a way to buy votes. He was spot on.

There are people like Ro Khanna on this site right now arguing that Elon Musk should be paying down the student debt when it's a problem that politicians created.

[Jon Gabriel @exjon]

The amount of money in Elon Musk’s bank account has no bearing on the amount of money in my bank account.