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Is the White House running a pay-to-play loyalty program for wealthy donors?
More than HALF of the known companies bankrolling Trump's ballroom have won new or expanded federal contracts.
I have a bill to stop this.
I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.
This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.
In 1913, Teddy Roosevelt wrote America "had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”
True then. More true today.
Asked today how he feels about negotiations with Iran collapsing, Trump said, "I couldn't care less."
You'd think the president of the United States would care about service members dying and millions paying more for gas because of his illegal and unconstitutional war.
Today, I signed an Executive Order temporarily repealing bedtimes in the City of New York so that kids of all ages can watch our team in the NBA Finals.
As Mayor, you’re forced to make many difficult decisions. This was not one of them.
Go Knicks.
As President, I would read 10 letters a day sent to me by ordinary Americans. At the Obama Presidential Center, we’ll have some of the letters I read — and responded to — every night. I still get emotional reading them, and it’s one of my favorite exhibits.
AI is built on humanity’s collective knowledge.
The wealth it generates must benefit humanity — not just Elon Musk, Sam Altman and other AI oligarchs.
That’s why I’ll be introducing the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act — to give the public a direct ownership stake.
RFK Jr. said “the only people who lost coverage were people who were never entitled to coverage.”
But higher costs were the #1 reason people in Massachusetts chose to drop their ACA coverage last year.
They did everything right, and Trump still ripped away their health care.
This is what a rigged system looks like.
If you paid $1 in federal income taxes last year you paid more than Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, PayPal & Honeywell.
Trump enabled these corporate tax dodgers to shift their profits to offshore tax havens in Malta, Singapore & Switzerland.
BREAKING: Look at this.
$DELL just won a five-year $9.7 billion Pentagon software agreement for the US military.
But Trump also bought $DELL.
He bought multiple times since February 10th, up to more than $5,000,000.
On May 8th, he said: "Go out and buy a Dell."
Unusual.
Mexico paid $20 million for eight minutes in this movie. Then those eight minutes forced them to invent an entire cultural tradition.
Before Spectre, Mexico City had no Day of the Dead parade. The holiday was celebrated at home, at cemeteries, with family altars. Quiet, intimate, centuries old. Sam Mendes fabricated a massive street parade for the opening sequence, shot it with 1,500 extras in skeleton costumes across the Zócalo, and audiences worldwide assumed they were watching a real annual event.
Mexico's government had negotiated hard for the placement. Leaked Sony hack emails showed officials offered up to $20 million in tax incentives for four minutes of positive portrayal. Sony was drowning in a $300 million budget. The deal included script changes: the Bond girl had to be a Mexican actress, the villain could not be Mexican, and the city's modern skyline had to appear on screen.
Then the movie opened in 182 countries and tourists started booking flights to Mexico City for the parade.
The parade that did not exist.
Tourism authorities panicked. Visitors were arriving expecting the spectacle they saw in the film and finding nothing. So in October 2016, the government spent $500,000, hired 650 volunteers, built dozens of floats and giant skeleton marionettes, and staged the first real Día de los Muertos parade in Mexico City's history. 250,000 people showed up. They openly called it a "Spectre-style parade" in press materials.
Ten years later, the parade draws millions. Anthropologists call it the "pizza effect," where a cultural element gets exported, transformed abroad, and reimported as authentic. Mexico's most famous public celebration of its most sacred holiday was invented by a British director shooting a $300 million spy movie.
That tracking shot is doing more for Mexico City's economy every November than the $20 million they paid for it.
What kind of Twilight Zone ass reality are we in where Talarico is grilled harder for cringe 2019 comments than Ken Paxton is for alleged securities fraud, bribery, criminality in office, cheating on his wife, and impeachment by his OWN PARTY???