Hindsight : May 2022

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

GRANDDAUGHTERS AT CARNEGIE HALL

Kevin McCarthy’s Jan. 6th Coverup is Underway

Kevin McCarthy’s Jan. 6th Coverup is Underway

The man who wants to be speaker of the House refuses to cooperate with the Jan. 6th investigation.

by AMANDA CARPENTER

MAY 31, 2022 4:46 AM

Conditioned to accept the idea that most Republican officials are zombified “ultra MAGA” automatons for former President Trump, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy seems to be getting a pass for stonewalling the January 6th Committee.

He shouldn’t. Politically convenient subservience to Trump isn’t enough of an excuse for McCarthy anymore.

More than 1,000 people have cooperated with the Jan. 6th Committee. Yet, McCarthy, one of the few people who spoke with Trump as the attack was underway, refuses to be one of them. Why is this seen as acceptable?

The GOP House leader made his position plain on Friday, when he signaled his intention to defy a subpoena from the committee. In doing so, he has transformed from a powerful party loyalist who could claim he was merely doing the former president’s bidding into an active participant in the coverup.

Recall that in the waning days of Trump’s presidency, McCarthy said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack. Shortly after making that statement, McCarthy changed his mind.

Within days he traveled to Mar-a-Lago to talk with Trump about winning the House majority in 2022. McCarthy issued a statement saying, “President Trump’s popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time.”

What’s more, McCarthy said he had no regrets about tanking an independent, 9/11-style, bipartisan commission of the attack. After Speaker Nancy Pelosi then moved to create the House Jan. 6th Committee, McCarthy withdrew his all picks when Pelosi rejected his selections of Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks to serve as two of the five GOP members. (Note: Jordan has been subpoenaed by the committee as well. Choosing someone to serve on the committee who was also a target of the committee was an understandable non-starter for any worthy investigation. Additionally, Banks has since engaged in questionable behavior which proves why Pelosi was wise to nix him, too.) McCarthy has, nevertheless, blasted Pelosi for structuring the committee to “satisfy her political objectives.”

McCarthy’s opposition to the committee led to the entire Republican caucus voting against establishing it, with the exceptions of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Kinzinger’s Illinois district was eliminated by Democrats. McCarthy then targeted Cheney, endorsing her primary opponent after he greenlit her removal from GOP leadership and then installed Trump apologist Elise Stefanik in her place.

So why the change of heart? The Jan. 6th Committee wants to know; McCarthy won’t tell.

On January 12, 2022, the committee sent McCarthy a letter asking for his voluntary cooperation regarding his communications with Trump before, during, and after the attack. It said:

Despite the many substantial concerns you voiced about President Trump’s responsibility for the January 6th attack, you nevertheless visited President Trump in Mar-a-Lago on January 28th (the impeachment trial began on February 9, 2021). While there, you reportedly discussed campaign planning and fundraising to retake the House majority in 2022. The Select Committee has no intention of asking you about electoral politics or campaign-related issues, but does wish to discuss any communications you had with President Trump at that time regarding your account of what actually happened on January 6th. Your public statements regarding January 6th have changed markedly since you met with Trump. At that meeting, or at any other time, did President Trump or his representatives discuss or suggest what you should say publicly, during the impeachment trial (if called as a witness), or in any later investigation about your conversations with him on January 6th?

McCarthy declined a voluntary interview. The committee sent McCarthy and four other Republican members of Congress subpoenas on May 12. In response, McCarthy’s lawyer sent the committee an 11-page letter on Friday, questioning the committee’s legality and constitutionality and making other arguments previously rejected by the courts.

Although the committee has stated many times that “our investigation will inform our specific legislative recommendations, and ensure that we can take action to prevent another January 6th from ever happening again,” McCarthy’s lawyer, Elliot S. Berke, rejected the idea the committee had any legislative purpose.

“Its only objective appears to be to attempt to score political points or damage its political opponents—acting like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee one day and the Department of Justice the next,” Berke wrote.

Berke closed his letter with a request: that the committee give McCarthy a list of all topics and subjects it would like to discuss, as well as copies of “all documents” the committee would like to ask about, along with the “constitutional and legal rationale” for each of those requests.

Which is lots of lawyer-speak for people who bill by fractions of the hour.

What this request really meant was that McCarthy has absolutely no intention of acting as a cooperative witness. He wants information from the committee; he doesn’t want to give them any.

McCarthy, by his own account, pleaded with Trump to call off the rioters as the attack was underway. Despite McCarthy’s request, the attack (inexplicably) went on for more than three hours.

McCarthy can speak to what Trump’s state of mind was during that pivotal time; he may have knowledge about why the Capitol was not quickly secured. What did Trump say when McCarthy begged him for help? Why is that being kept a secret? How could any official sit on this information—let alone a man who could very soon be speaker of the House?

Also, how in the world did McCarthy go from blaming Trump for the attack to championing him for the midterms? No one in Washington with McCarthy’s level of power has flipped harder and faster on such an important question than McCarthy did in those short days. It stands to reason that if McCarthy had an honorable explanation, he would be proud to give it. So what is he hiding?

These questions, and more, need to be answered. Hopefully, some of them have already been answered by the hundreds of people who have spoken to investigators.

For now, one conclusion can be safely made in light of House Republican Leader McCarthy’s explicit refusal to talk. The GOP’s Jan. 6th coverup is still happening, even now.

Whether the coverup has succeeded or not will soon be revealed. The Jan. 6th Committee will be holding hearings during primetime beginning on June 9.

Monday, May 30, 2022

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

Peloton Has to Get Off the Bike

A star of the pandemic, the company now has to realize that selling hardware is like swimming with bike chains around its neck. Like many companies, it waited too long to transform. Don't make that same mistake.

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

Peloton’s new CEO Barry McCarthy, who’s trying to turn a great big bulky barge around with pep talks and a puny paddle, is in a whole lot of hurt right now. He’s short on cash and trying to borrow a bundle from big banks with their own problems and he’s stuck with a ton of excess inventory and a treadmill that’s still seen as a threat to toddlers. Even worse, the world is returning to health clubs and to office buildings newly stuffed with workout spaces and other amenities offered by desperate landlords trying to pull tenants back to their properties. (Even if they buy some Pelotons, people will share them, not own them.) But honestly, those concerns aren’t even his biggest problem. He’s on the cusp of becoming just another dinosaur in a digital world. Just like the folks hawking physical point of sale credit card readers.

Barry needs to bite the biggest bullet bearing down on him and bag the manufacturing part of his business before it drags the whole enterprise down with it. The rule per Rahm Emanuel is very simple: “if you have to eat a shit sandwich, don’t nibble.” These days, no one here really wants to be in the hardware business. Because hardware is hard. Hardware is a dirty and already over-regulated segment, as well as fiercely competitive with few barriers to fast followers and cheap knockoffs. And the next generation or two of consumers could really care less about owning “stuff.” We’re moving rapidly to a digital future where everything is about utility and easy access rather than possession and ownership. Kids already see Pelotons as their parents’ clothing racks. If they’re riding at all, it’s for the shared online experience of taking classes with their friends. As soon as those social connections are again available in real life, no kid I know is gonna be sitting all by themselves on a sweaty bike in their basement.

But for the moment, if there’s a short-term, silver lining for Peloton, it’s the high-value, clearly affluent subscriber base of around three million adults (estimated at its pandemic height). These are active customers albeit at varying price points and accessing Peloton services through various channels that don’t necessarily require owning a bike - much less one made by the company. McCarthy talks about growing the subscriber base to 100 million, which sounds laughable for a company without the cash reserves to attract and acquire new customers in an increasingly noisy, costly, and competitive market.

As his market cap continues to shrink, the best bet for the business and the smart money says that he should dump the durables and get as virtual as possible as soon as possible and then sell his subscribers in bulk to a better-financed and bigger buyer such as Apple, whose watches are likely already strapped on most of the Peloton subscribers’ wrists. Every day McCarthy waits to sell his wasting asset means less money for his shareholders on the inevitable day that the business is bought. Smart businesses get sold when the time is right; broken businesses get bought when their moment has passed.

The even broader message for many other companies who are slow to pull the trigger because they’re not taking a tough enough look at where their core business is ultimately headed, or because the current profits are just too good to give up, is that it’s never smart to be so greedy that you stay too long at the fair. Or take too long to react to serious changes, shifts in consumer behavior or preferences, and new competitive offerings in your marketplace. You never want to try to take the very last dollar off the table or to precisely time the market.

That said, timing is everything. And if you aren’t willing to make the hard choices, kill even a golden goose occasionally, and cannibalize yourself when necessary (before someone else does it to you), you’re going to be left behind. You need to know when to go - even if it’s not abundantly clear at the moment you decide - because 100% certain is almost always too late. You need to change before you have to or have no choice. A year from now, you’ll wish you made the necessary changes today.

Change is always expensive. It’s just a matter of when, what, and how much you pay: you can pay early to make the required changes or pay later-- and typically a lot more-- for not having made them. Making even costly changes at the right time is infinitely preferable to being forced to make them at a time that’s inconvenient, abrupt, and even embarrassing. Netflix waited way too long to ‘fess up to the millions of its users who weren’t paying for subscriptions and continues to pay every day.

The fat cat national automobile insurers soaked their low-mileage, limited-use consumers for decades by charging them the same standardized premium rates as they charged heavy, daily users and regular commuters. They continued this practice through much of the pandemic even as their insureds woke up to the obvious fact that they weren’t doing any driving or getting into accidents with their cars sitting unused in their garages.

Companies like Mile Auto, which charges its customers on a per-mile used basis, stepped up and seized the opportunity to offer a better, fairer and less costly alternative. Now the big guys are not only playing catch-up, but they’re also crushing their own existing books of business as each current insured they convert from a full pay prior policy to their new pay-by-the-mile services costs them serious premium dollars.

Waiting for the exact right time to move rarely works today. It may bolster short term results, but in the long run, the more likely result is lost opportunities, customers, and market share. Someone’s always waiting just around the corner to eat your lunch. If you’re smart, you’ll be the first in line for a bite.

In Flanders Fields by John McCrea

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved,

And now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch, be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.”

Sunday, May 29, 2022

CLEVELAND AVENUE TECH X EVENT

A lengthy list of Trump’s disastrous business deals

Column: A lengthy list of Trump’s disastrous business deals — compiled by his newest business partners

Donald Trump, business genius?

(Associated Press)

BY MICHAEL HILTZIK BUSINESS COLUMNIST

MAY 18, 2022 3:54 PM PT

Donald Trump’s business history has been so filled with disastrous ventures that it’s been hard to keep track of them all.

No longer. Digital World Acquisition Corp., which is the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, taking Trump’s “Truth Social” media platform public, has conveniently listed them in a document it is required to file publicly before selling stock. DWAC is aiming to raise at least $875 million.

Some followers of Trumpworld may find that the S-4 registration statement filed Monday in anticipation of the Trump-SPAC merger makes hilarious reading. It’s certainly thorough, though there’s always the chance that a business failure here or there escaped its drafters’ notice.

President Trump is involved in numerous lawsuits and other matters that could damage his reputation, cause him to be distracted from the business or could force him to resign from TMTG’s board of directors.

— Digital World Acquisition Corp. Form 2-4

The litany appears in a section of the S-4 headed “Risk Factors,” specifically “Risks Related to our Chairman President Donald J. Trump.”

Because the success of the merged company depends in part on “the reputation and popularity of its Chairman, President Donald J. Trump,” his background is obviously pertinent.

The document also lists other more typical risks, including regulatory and competitive issues and “fires, floods, earthquakes, power losses, telecommunications failures, break-ins, and similar events,” but never mind them now.

Let’s delve instead into the Trump-related risks.

“A number of companies that were associated with President Trump have filed for bankruptcy,” the document states. “There can be no assurances that TMTG [that is, Trump Media & Technology Group] will not also become bankrupt.”

Let’s start with Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City:

“The Trump Taj Mahal, which was built and owned by President Trump, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991. The Trump Plaza, the Trump Castle, and the Plaza Hotel, all owned by President Trump at the time, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992. THCR, which was founded by President Trump in 1995, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004. Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., the new name given to Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts after its 2004 bankruptcy, declared bankruptcy in 2009.”

Then there’s the list of “companies that had license agreements with President Trump [that] have failed”:

“Trump Shuttle Inc., launched by President Trump in 1989, defaulted on its loans in 1990 and ceased to exist by 1992. Trump University, founded by President Trump in 2005, ceased operations in 2011 amid lawsuits and investigations regarding the company’s business practices. Trump Vodka, a brand of vodka produced by Drinks Americas under license from the Trump Organization, was introduced in 2005 and discontinued in 2011.”

Also, “Trump Mortgage, LLC, a financial services company founded by President Trump in 2006, ceased operations in 2007. GoTrump.com, a travel site founded by President Trump in 2006, ceased operations in 2007. Trump Steaks, a brand of steak and other meats founded by President Trump in 2007, discontinued sales two months after its launch.”

The S-4 also observes that “President Trump is involved in numerous lawsuits and other matters that could damage his reputation, cause him to be distracted from the business or could force him to resign from TMTG’s board of directors.”

Among them, the document specifies that “a congressional committee is investigating President Trump’s role, if any, in violence at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Two groups of U.S. Capitol Police officers, in two separate lawsuits, have sued President Trump for allegedly inciting riots on that date.”

Further, the S-4 mentions other “ongoing litigation involving President Trump related to the 2020 election,” including a lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and a criminal investigation launched by “the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney’s office ... into President Trump’s alleged interference in the presidential election.”

Also, “the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform is investigating President Trump’s alleged destruction and removal of classified documents and White House records, as well as potential inaccurate financial statements filed by the Trump Organization in relation to the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. "

Separate investigations have been launched by “the New York County (Manhattan) district attorney, the New York attorney general, and the Westchester County district attorney to determine if the Trump Organization made false valuations of property to avoid tax liability and for other financial benefits.”

The document continues, “On April 25, 2022, a New York state court judge held President Trump in civil contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents related to the New York attorney general’s investigation of the Trump Organization. President Trump, along with his three eldest children (including Donald Trump Jr., a TMTG board member), are defendants in a class-action lawsuit accusing them and the Trump Corp. of defrauding investors in exchange for secret payments from multiple companies.”

Also, “The Trump Organization recently paid $750,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the District of Columbia accusing the organization of misusing nonprofit funds from the 58^th Presidential Inaugural Committee.”

On top of that, “President Trump is the defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by E. Jean Carroll who claims that President Trump defamed her when he denied her allegations of sexual assault against him. In the past, President Trump has been involved in multiple lawsuits and settlements — and the subject of numerous accusations that did not result in legal action — related to sexual conduct and alleged misconduct.”

For investors, the scariest line in the entire document may be this: “The foregoing does not purport to be an exhaustive list.”

The S-4 cites a USA Today article from 2016 finding that “over the previous three decades President Trump and his businesses had been involved in 3,500 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts. ... In the 1,300 cases where the record establishes the outcome, President Trump settled 175 times, lost 38, won 450, and had another 137 cases end with some other outcome. In the other 500 cases, judges dismissed plaintiffs’ claims against President Trump.”

So if you’re inclined to invest with Donald Trump, don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Michael Hiltzik

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik writes a daily blog appearing on latimes.com. His seventh book, “Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America,” has just been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/hiltzikm and on Facebook at facebook.com/hiltzik.

BECAUSE THE REPUBLICANS ARE A BUNCH OF MONEY WHORES OWNED BY THE NRA

Why do we let children buy firearms?

By Ruth Marcus

Deputy editorial page editor|

May 27, 2022 at 9:32 a.m. EDT

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Why do we let children buy guns? They can’t purchase alcohol or cigarettes in this country until age 21. But deadly weapons? Under federal law, you need to wait until 21 to get a handgun, although there are easy ways around that restriction. If you’re 18 and want a semiautomatic assault rifle? No problem, except for a handful of states with stricter rules — and those are being challenged in court as unconstitutional.

The back-to-back massacres of the past two weeks underscore the insanity of this approach. In Uvalde, Tex., Salvador Ramos bought two assault rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition just after turning 18 earlier this month. On Tuesday, he opened fire at Robb Elementary School, killing 19 students and two teachers.

Ten days earlier, Payton Gendron, also 18, allegedly killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket with a legally purchased Bushmaster semiautomatic.

Their young ages are sadly typical. In 1999, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, murdered 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. In 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, killed his mother, then headed to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where he fatally shot 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. Dylann Roof was barely 21 when he murdered nine people during a Bible study meeting at a Charleston, S.C., church.

Raising the minimum age for gun purchases wouldn’t solve the problem — not in a country with more guns than citizens. In the Sandy Hook shooting, Lanza used guns his mother had bought legally. Harris and Klebold persuaded an older friend to purchase some of the guns they used at Columbine. But in Uvalde, Buffalo and Parkland, the killings were carried out with guns that were legally purchased by the shooters themselves. What rational society allows that?

And although not all mass killers are young — the average age is 33, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government — the tragic fact is that the perpetrators of school shootings tend to be young, current or former students. A Post database of all school shootings found that the median age of the shooters is 16.

As President Biden put it in his remarks to the nation after Tuesday’s massacre, “The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong.” Indeed, even President Donald Trump, in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, called for raising the minimum purchase age to 21. “Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue — I hope!” he tweeted after meeting with Parkland students.

Basic neuroscience supports the notion of limiting the sale of lethal weapons to the young. Prefrontal cortexes, responsible for impulse control, don’t finish developing until the mid-20s. In the meantime, young people are more susceptible to acting on anger and aggression. Crime statistics bear that out. According to the Giffords Law Center, 18-to-20-year-olds account for 4 percent of the U.S. population but 17 percent of known homicide offenders.

There ought to be a law — specifically a federal law. The current system is riddled with loopholes. The rule restricting handgun purchases to those 21 or older applies only to federally licensed dealers. Private sales — remember the gun show loophole? — aren’t covered.

The 18-year-old minimum age for purchases of long guns also applies only to sales by licensed dealers, meaning that buyers even younger can get such weapons in the 17 states that do not set a minimum age for buying long guns.

Senate Democrats — Cory Booker (N.J.), Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) — have proposed a broader federal licensing bill that would impose a minimum age of 21 for all firearms purchases. Don’t hold your breath.

In the aftermath of the Parkland shootings, Florida adopted such a rule. But only five other states — California, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont and Washington — require that buyers of some or all long guns, including assault weapons, be at least 21.

And those laws, as my colleague Charles Lane recently observed, are under assault in the federal courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit heard oral arguments in March in the National Rifle Association’s challenge to the Florida law.

Just two weeks ago, a divided panel of the 9th Circuit struck down California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic rifles to anyone under 21.

The opinion, by Trump appointee Ryan D. Nelson, opened with a paean to Colonial-era youths. “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army,” he wrote, joined by fellow Trump appointee Kenneth Lee. “Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.”

Seriously? Tell that to the parents of the dead fourth-graders in Uvalde. This isn’t about who could carry muskets back then. It’s about who has access to deadly weaponry today, guns more lethal than the authors of the Second Amendment could ever have imagined.