stldoc

Engaged to promote and advance the Saint Louis region.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

If you voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, please don’t get on here and express righteous indignation that the debt is now $40 trillion. Anyone with a room temperature IQ knew that cutting taxes and increasing spending was going to balloon the deficit.

[JD™ @LostMyHats]

Young men, don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t a good capitalist because you rightfully complain about how hard it is to buy a home, pay your mounting bills, buy your family groceries, or keep a roof over your head.

It didn’t always used to be this way, the deck really is stacked against you, and turning you into debt cattle, tax slave, and lifelong renter were the goals of very wealthy and powerful people since they first assigned you a number. Because that’s what you are to them.

Your right to complain about it is written in your sweat and blood. And no. You are not experiencing “capitalism.” You are experiencing exploitation they call “capitalism.”

You are competing for a starter home against global capital with access to money you could never borrow at rates you could never get. You are paying taxes into a system that subsidizes corporations large enough to purchase the politicians who write the rules governing those corporations. You are watching losses get socialized while profits remain private, industries consolidate until “competition” means choosing which logo gets to fleece you, and financial institutions turn necessities like housing, medicine, education, and even food into investment vehicles to be squeezed for maximum yield.

That is not a free market. That is a market with a thumb and an entire federal bureaucracy sitting on the scale.

Real Capitalism requires meaningful competition, private property, enforceable contracts, and honest money. When the powerful can purchase exemptions, subsidies, bailouts, regulatory moats, preferential financing, cheap foreign labor, and political influence, while you get a mortgage at seven percent and a lecture about skipping Starbucks, somebody has rigged the %*#* game.

You work. You produce. You build. You fix. You haul. You create things people need. and then you watch an ever-growing procession of governments, banks, monopolies, middlemen, institutional investors, and politically connected parasites reach into your pocket to take it.

There is nothing anti-capitalist about objecting to that. That is a rigged table where the house writes the rules, deals the cards, owns the casino, lends you the money to play, and then calls you “anti-capitalist” and “unpatriotic” when you notice.

Heck, I’ll even complain *with* you. It’ll be fun. But we’ll have to do it while we work because a single day off might cause cascading financial ruin and then they’ll call us lazy.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

The magnitude of Trump's personal corruption and the monetizing of the presidency by him and his family have no precedent in US history.

It takes a total peasant mentality, or some weird cultish devotion, to defend or excuse this, especially if you objected to corrupt Biden transactions (as I did). It's on a completely different scale.

Trump set up a crypto company (World Liberty Financial) 4 days before his inauguration, then had the UAE pour hundreds of millions into his pockets for 49% of it, then gave rewards to the UAE. Jared getting $2 billion from the Saudis. On and on and on.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Follow the money on this one. It is rotten to the core.

The Pentagon just lent $620,000,000 to a tiny North Carolina startup called Vulcan Elements. The company is two years old.

It had fewer than 50 employees.

And three months before the deal was announced, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture firm quietly took a stake in it.

Here is the part the administration tried to bury.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing, Vulcan was the only deal initiated by a top White House aide. That aide was Peter Navarro, a close friend of Trump Jr. The order came down to move fast.

One official put it plainly: The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.

Staff worked late nights to push it through in weeks. Deals like this normally take many months of vetting. And when it closed, Vulcan’s valuation jumped from about 200 million dollars to roughly 2 billion.

A windfall for the investors, including the president’s son.

This is public money. Your money.

Routed through the Pentagon to enrich the president’s family and their friends. The Bush administration’s own chief ethics lawyer called it corruption we pay for.

And there is more coming.

A drone parts company Trump Jr. holds a stake in is also under Pentagon review.

This is not a one-off. It is a pattern. The president’s family is treating the federal Treasury like a private bank, and the bill lands on every taxpayer.

https://t.co/4kB1cZNmlE

[U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. @SenBillCassidy]

People are concerned about paying their mortgage or rent, affording groceries and paying for gas, not about putting together a $1.8 billion fund for the President and his allies to pay whomever they wish with no legal precedent or accountability. This is adding to our national debt. If there needs to be a settlement, the administration should bring it to Congress to decide.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.

Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.

IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.

The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.

The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.

Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.” 

Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.

The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.

This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.

Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r

[Chris Stritzel @chris_stritzel]

Be part of the future of Laclede's Landing. Imagine the possibilities.

Email my guy for more information on spaces in the shadow of the Gateway Arch - [email protected]

[Chris Stritzel @chris_stritzel]

My hometown of St. Louis is the best place to be for first time homebuyers.

Free museums, wonderful parks, multiple event venues, sports teams, great food and beverage scene, neighborhoods, housing types of all kinds, and great (public, private, charter) schools to choose from.

[Jeremy @Jeremybtc]

A man with no working truck convinced Wall Street he had built the next Tesla. His company hit $30 BILLION. All he did was push it down a hill with no engine.

> Trevor Milton founded Nikola in 2014, named after the same inventor as Tesla.

> The goal was to build hydrogen powered trucks that would make diesel obsolete. He had no trucks.

> In 2018 he released a promotional video called Nikola One In Motion. It showed a sleek semi truck accelerating smoothly down an open highway.
Investors went wild.

> What nobody knew was that the truck had no engine, no fuel cell, and no propulsion system of any kind.

> Milton's team towed it to the top of a hill, tilted the camera to hide the slope, and let it roll.

> He spent the next four years doing the same thing with words. On podcasts, television and social media.

> Investors were told Nikola could produce its own hydrogen. It could not. They were told the trucks were ready for production. They were not. They were told orders were flooding in. They weren't.

> In June 2020 Nikola went public. Within days the company was worth $30 BILLION, more than Ford.

> Milton's personal stake hit $7.3 BILLION overnight.

> A $32.5 MILLION ranch in Utah followed. A record for the state at the time.

> In September 2020 Hindenburg Research published a report calling Nikola "an intricate fraud" built on "an ocean of lies." Milton resigned within ten days.

> A federal jury convicted him of securities fraud and wire fraud in 2022. Sentenced to four years in prison the following year.

> He never went. He was free on $100 MILLION bail pending appeal.

> He and his wife donated $3.2 MILLION to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

> In March 2025 Trump gave him a full pardon. The pardon erased $168 MILLION in restitution to defrauded shareholders.

> Nikola filed for bankruptcy the following month, leaving thousands of investors with nothing.

The company never had a product. The only thing that was real was the $30 BILLION valuation, the $7 BILLION that landed in his pocket and the pardon that made sure none of it had to be returned.

[Denis Beganovic @Beganovic2026]

How we stack up against the neighbors to the east, west and southeast.

[Denis Beganovic @Beganovic2026]

From STL Aerials.

Yesterdays 5k through downtown

[stldoc @stldoc]

A lot a stake with the Midtown Data Center proposal

[Denis Beganovic @Beganovic2026]

My thoughts as PD wraps up its week long downtown series.

[stldoc @stldoc]

A lot a stake with the Midtown Data Center proposal

[Greg Johnson @PresbyterianStl]

The Times of London took the first direct flight here and really loved St. Louis. Even if we're a bit obscure.
https://t.co/KIN40PFHEa

[Brighter Futures @stlbrightfuture]

So many of our city neighbors that moved here say the same thing!

“But this region is just too good not to be great.” And WHY does this region hate itself so much?

A good article.

[stldoc @stldoc]

@FaebrookeGoats @CitySceneSTL We spent two of the last four weekends downtown. It’s fun, way safer than you think, has momentum and good leadership for a change. If more of the region came down from time to time, it’d be a boom town. Come support it again!

[stldoc @stldoc]

Got a beautiful day downtown for St Patrick’s & 314! Get downtown y’all

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.
Now the mask is off. Now we know.
And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.
– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

[stldoc @stldoc]

@Skriptkeeper17 Amen. All of the evidence and all of Trump‘s behavior for years on this topic is explained only by the fact that he was heavily involved in abusing these children with Epstein. He won’t ever hang himself like you’re asking him to do.