Scott

Back for free speech

[Dave Lauer @dlauer]

Who is the SEC here to serve? What happened to investor protection? How has it strayed so far from that mission? How can it continue to turn a blind eye to manipulation & abuse in our markets, while proposing rule changes that will reduce transparency & increase manipulation?

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Billionaires have TRIPLED their wealth while the rest of us are struggling to stay afloat.

Let this be a wake up call that allowing billionaires to run the economy has been a disaster for everyone except the billionaires.

Time to put the economy directly in the people’s hands!

[Big Cat @BarstoolBigCat]

Good that we’ve started off with the refs getting involved

[Scott @speech4every1]

Where are all the campus protests? Billionaires are taking away their future.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@cobraalerts Let’s ride!

[Scott @speech4every1]

@bradsferguson You don’t need it personally, sure. But a business that care about their bottom line, and doesn’t want a rogue agent costing them millions of dollars does.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@PhathomResearch Do you believe there are more revenue streams outside of upselling current clients on AI features? That is what I am having trouble with. Will new AI features be allowed them to capture a new customer base outside of legacy systems?

[bad robot ventures @foxenflask]

In light of $EBAY rejecting the $GME offer this morning against their fiduciary responsibilities, let's take a look at Paul S. Pressler, the board Chair, who is a shining example of what failing upwards looks like in corporate America.

He has been a director since 2015. Chairs the Corporate Governance & Nominating Committee. Has been Chairman of the Board since 2020.

He was present throughout the 2019 stalking crimes, and now sits as Chairman of the full board. In 2019, he chaired the Compensation Committee, making him central to one of the most controversial decisions in the company's history: a board meeting was convened specifically to consider whether to activate the clawback provision on Devin Wenig's exit package, and the board voted not to proceed. That package was worth approximately $57 million. During a September 2024 deposition in the civil litigation, eBay's Director Ethics Counsel testified under oath that Wenig's departure was a firing, not a resignation, and that it was directly related to the stalking scandal. Despite this, the board publicly framed the exit as a mutual decision for months, a characterization that governance critics argue constitutes a material misrepresentation to investors.

Pressler's committee also oversaw a quiet exit for former SVP Wendy Jones, who was interviewed by eBay's internal investigators on August 30 and September 6, 2019 in connection with the criminal conduct and was nonetheless allowed to remain employed through December 2020. Jones ultimately received compensation packages totaling over $11 million upon her eventual departure. Pressler became Chairman in May 2020, taking the seat from outgoing Chairman Thomas Tierney immediately after those decisions were made.

The board waited until February 26, 2026 to reform its committee charters governing risk, audit, governance, technology, and compensation. That restructuring happened one day after the Steiners' civil lawsuit settled with undisclosed terms. eBay had not restructured governance at any point after the crimes became public in 2020, after entering a federal deferred prosecution agreement admitting to six felony offenses in January 2024, or at any time while the civil trial was pending. Critics at the time noted that reforming governance while litigation was active could have made those drafts discoverable and usable as evidence by the plaintiffs' attorneys. Pressler, as Chairman, would have been the chief architect of that timing decision.

Currently, Pressler chairs the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee, the same committee that oversees Aaron Johnson, eBay's Chief Ethics Officer. Johnson was copied on the August 2019 "Whatever. It. Takes." email from then-Communications Chief Steve Wymer before the crimes occurred. His promotion to lead company ethics, under Pressler's oversight, has drawn sustained criticism from governance observers.

Before joining eBay's board, Pressler served as President and CEO of Gap Inc. from 2002 to 2007. Former employees interviewed by BusinessWeek characterized his tenure as "total system failure." Gap recorded its third consecutive dismal holiday shopping season under his leadership, and the board moved to remove him in January 2007 after months of investor pressure and public calls for his ouster from Wall Street. Founder Don Fisher had publicly defended Pressler in the months before the termination, but the defense did not hold. The board's post-departure statement that it needed someone with "deep retail expertise" was widely read as a direct indictment of Pressler's qualifications for the role. His exit triggered immediate speculation about a sale of the company. He collected $14.5 million in severance.

Pressler served as Chairman of David's Bridal from 2012 to approximately 2018, during the period when the company was owned by private equity. By the time of his departure, David's Bridal carried approximately $760 million in debt. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2018 to restructure over $400 million of that obligation. It subsequently filed for bankruptcy a second time in April 2023, this time laying off more than 9,200 employees with no funds expected to be available to unsecured creditors. The structural financial condition of the company at the time of its first bankruptcy was built during Pressler's chairmanship.

As an eBay shareholder myself, I am calling for Paul Pressler to resign immediately. No golden parachute either.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@rnewton7777 So market cap increases while stock price decreases or stays stagnant. Does that mean RC gets his pay package while the stock holders get nothing?

[Scott @speech4every1]

@ButtFarm69 The reason the price of eBay is higher is because of Gamestop buying stock for the last 3 months. If they reject the stock will go back down to $70-75. Why not take the deal for $125

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

Proposal to acquire eBay.
https://t.co/FwjcxbDmyt

[Scott @speech4every1]

@DoucheBag168 @jakebrowatzke As long as the data keeps showing that the business is pivoting and growth is reaccelerating. No where in the earnings is showing that Anthropic is eating their lunch. Wall St is speculating that Llms are going to kill every saas company. That’s a bold thesis

[Scott @speech4every1]

@MagnusSigurdss @AnthropicAI Key word here is “users”. Claude works well for users. Path works well for businesses.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@stoolpresidente Parisi Bakery - Lower East Side. And it’s not even close.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@sama Just letting you know that you are high up on the list.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@0xOji0x @jakebrowatzke Why?

[Scott @speech4every1]

@venicehodl @jakebrowatzke Compliance, current partnerships, profitability, accountability, oh and the fact that they are already building what people think will replace them.

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

The Hollow Men

American capitalism is rotting from the head down. We have replaced the "Owner-Operator"—the risk-taker-with a new, parasitic class of corporate bureaucrat: The Risk-Free Insider.

By "Insider," I am not referring to a specific title. I am referring to the entire administrative state that has captured the modern corporation. This includes the Directors who exist solely to collect fees, the Executives who exist solely to collect bonuses, and the Managers who exist solely to hire consultants.

These are the hollow men of the boardroom. They are masters of PowerPoint. They wear the right suits. They say the right buzzwords about "governance" and "ESG." But they are mercenaries fighting a war with someone else’s ammunition.

In a functioning economy, authority is tied to liability. If you make a bad decision, you lose your own money. That fear of loss is the only thing that keeps a business honest. It forces you to cut waste, obsess over the customer, and stay late to fix what is broken.

Today, we have severed that link.

We have rigged the game so that heads, the Insider wins; tails, the shareholder loses.

If the stock goes up, the Insider collects a massive performance bonus. If the stock crashes due to their own incompetence, they are fired with a "Golden Parachute" worth tens of millions. They are gambling with the house’s money, and they never leave the table poorer than they arrived.

This looting starts in the boardroom.

We have normalized a "Country Club" culture where directors are selected based on social profiling rather than their ability to build a business. The modern board member is often a professional tourist—paid an average of $350,000 a year.

Let’s be brutally honest about what that number represents. The average director is paid nearly five times the GDP per capita of the United States. They earn more for attending four quarterly lunches than the vast majority of Americans earn in five years of hard labor.

And for what?

Most of these directors are "over-boarded," sitting on three or four boards simultaneously. They treat directorships as a gig economy for the elite. They fly in, rubber-stamp a compensation package they didn't read, and fly out. They collect checks from companies they do not understand, do not use, and certainly do not love.

They are not there to ask hard questions. They are there to be collegial. They are there to protect the other Insiders.

And what happens when these boards hire executives who also have no personal capital at risk?

We get the Delegation Economy.

When a Risk-Free Insider faces a crisis—bloated expenses, a broken supply chain, or a stale product—they do not roll up their sleeves. They hire a consultant. They pay a strategy firm millions of shareholder dollars to produce a 100-page deck telling them what they already know.

This is not management. It is intellectual money laundering.

They use shareholder capital to buy an insurance policy for their own careers. If the plan fails, they can blame the consultants. They delegate the work because they are terrified of the responsibility. They would rather preside over a slow, comfortable decline than risk a bold mistake.

While American Insiders are busy optimizing their severance packages, our global competitors are optimizing their products. They are not slowed down by bureaucracy. They are not waiting for a slide deck. They are outworking us.

If we continue to fill our C-suites with administrators instead of operators, we will lose our edge. We will see iconic American franchises hollowed out by fees, managed for the benefit of the Insiders, while the true owners—the shareholders—are left holding the bag.

The time for polite governance is over.

If we want to save the American economy from mediocrity, we must demand a return to the "Owner’s Mentality." We need leaders who treat shareholder capital with the same reverence they treat their own savings. The era of the Risk-Free Insider must end.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@iluminatibot Don’t tell Christians Jesus was born a jew and died a jew.

[Scott @speech4every1]

@someshhh_xyz @michaeljburry No one will want let alone be able yo afford a humanoid robot. The consumer is dying faster than they can replace them with AI. By the time they replace them, the consumer will not be able to even afford what they are making.