Over the weekend, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared on Jake Tapper’s CNN weekend show. As anyone could have predicted, Tapper asked Blinken about the new Elon Musk biography that reveals the defense contract oligarch unilaterally shut down Ukraine’s internet access in Russian-occupied Crimea to prevent a covert operation against the Russian fleet, which is launching attacks on civilians from there.
Tapper asked if there should be consequences for Musk’s freelance meddling that stopped a U.S. ally from attacking a legit military target, and Blinken repeatedly dodged the question. Here’s the back-and-forth from Rolling Stone (the only video I can find is on Musk’s site, but fuck him — the text conveys the gist):
TAPPER: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has recently confirmed a report that’s in Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Musk that last year Musk blocked access to his Starlink satellite network in Crimea in order to disrupt a major Ukrainian attack on the Russian navy there. In other words, Musk effectively sabotaged a military operation by Ukraine, a U.S. ally, against Russia, an aggressor country that invaded a U.S. ally. Should there be repercussions for that?
BLINKEN: Jake, I can’t speak to a specific episode. Here’s what I can tell you. Starlink has been a vital tool for the Ukrainians to be able to communicate with each other and particularly for the military to communicate in their effort to defend all of Ukraine’s territory. It remains so, and I would expect it to continue to be critical to their efforts. So what we would hope and expect is that that technology would remain fully available to Ukrainians. It is vital to what they’re doing.
TAPPER: I don’t know that you can’t speak to it. You won’t speak to it. Musk says he was reportedly afraid that Russia would retaliate with nuclear weapons. Musk says that’s based on his private discussions he had with senior Russian officials. Are you concerned that Musk is apparently conducting his own diplomatic outreach to the Russian government? Really, none of this concerns you?
BLINKEN: Jake, I can’t speak to conversations that may or may not have happened. I don’t know. I’m focused on the fact that the technology itself, Starlink, has been really important to the Ukrainians. It remains so, and it should continue to be part of what they’re able to call on to be able to communicate with themselves and again to have the military be able to communicate throughout this Russian aggression. We ourselves have always had to factor in what Russia may do in response to any given thing that we or others do or the Ukrainians do. And we have. But what’s so critical now is that Ukrainians have had real success over the past year.
TAPPER: It sounds like Starlink is so important that the U.S. government doesn’t want to risk offending a capricious billionaire who did some things that I think, in another situation, the U.S. might want to say something about.
I’m not Tapper’s #1 fan, but his questions on this topic were legit, and his conclusion — that the U.S. government is reluctant to confront Musk because Starlink access is vital to the war effort in Ukraine — seems fair too. In every response, Blinken underscores how important Starlink access is to Ukraine. He also states U.S. expectations, i.e., “we would hope and expect is that that technology would remain fully available to Ukrainians.”
Blinken is a smart, experienced diplomat. I assume he, his State employees and everyone in the Biden admin appreciate how dangerous the present situation is, with critical U.S. national security and space travel capabilities subject to the whims of an unstable person with grandiose visions of himself as humanity’s savior and who, oh by the way, has been peddling antisemitic tropes and amplifying Nazi scumbags on his site.
I have got to believe they know this. And I sure as shit HOPE they are executing a strategy behind the scenes to extricate us from this untenable situation, while in the meantime sending Blinken out to mumble “nice doggie” at the snarling wolf. To buy time. For Ukraine and for us.
This might sound like a non sequitur, but bear with me: If American democracy survives the Hydra-headed forces arrayed against it in the upcoming election, we need significant tax policy changes. I am fucking serious, y’all. To paraphrase something I read elsewhere, it’s not just about addressing economic inequality anymore. It’s about national sovereignty.
Open thread.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure.
trollhattan
This is where the privatization of space really begins to pay off!
hueyplong
Giving at least indirect control of aspects of the military to a Bond villain seems like the kind of thing that didn’t require hindsight to call a bad idea.
piratedan
As much as I want to knee-jerk into a “do something” response, I understand that it’s unlikely due to do so because of the political ramifications.
I fully expect some quiet behind the scenes stuff to happen though, namely that if the statements/allegations are true that Musk left an ally high and dry during a mission and did so without notice to either the Government or the Ukrainians and there’s nothing in the contract that allows him to do so. I would expect something along the line of fines, contract termination or legal action to follow but that the Biden Administration would lean on the judgement of the DOJ as to what is allowable.
Does it seem like a cop-out, yes… but if we’re going to be the good guys and follow the rules, then be the good guys and follow the rules and encourage non-traitorous competitors into the field so that we don’t have to rely on these existing tech-bro fucktards to hamstring national security.
CaseyL
For the US to have designed, launched, opened, and maintained its own “Starlink” would have been prohibitively expensive, taken years, and – not least – would have been defunded, whittled down, and corrupted by the GOP.
There may be spy satellites already up there that could do much the same thing as Starlink – I don’t know their capabilities, I don’t know if we handed that job over to yet another oligarch (Google) – but if it is possible, I sincerely hope someone in DoD is working on it.
Jeffro
significant, yes; complicated, no
TAX
THE
WEALTHY
like we used to do, once upon a time.
cain
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
It absolutely is. Every billionaire in existence means there is less cashflow in the country. A billionaire is a couple cities worth of cash flow that is being held up.
JustRuss
We’re never going to see a competitive free market for access to space, the cost of entry is way too high. At best we’ll have 3 or 4 companies, and it’s likely they’ll all be run by monsters.
wjca
However, it may well not have been particularly obvious that it was an aspect of the military. I mean, does the US military use Starlink? Or is it simply something that the Ukrainians have innovatively adapted to their situation and needs?
J.
@hueyplong: Agree. Every time I read about Musk and SpaceX or Starlink, I think, “Did no one in the U.S. Government watch Moonraker?!”
Baud
I’d be shocked to learn that the US military relies on Starlink for its own purposes.
So I don’t know what you end up doing for a country in Ukraine’s position.
rikyrah
In this, the USA should be gangsta.
Strip Musk of any control of Starlink.
Period.
And then point out to Apartheid Clyde which charges he can be brought up on .
kindness
Were Jake Tapper’s questions hard hitting or was he hoping for a ‘gotchya’? To me it sounded like both. It’s not like the US could unilaterally take over the company, so we’re left at dealing with them as best we can. Having said that, Musk’s money forments his horrible toddler mindset. Me, me, me shouldn’t be appealing to anyone.
Roger Moore
Absolutely. This is a huge problem with an ultra-wealthy elite who basically see themselves as outside and above nationality. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing people like Musk, Thiel, and Murdoch, who basically treat their nationality as something necessary to achieve their political goals rather than a deep part of their personal identity, at a time when money is so easily moved around the world.
Geminid
Secretary Blinken is not going to formulate new national policy on Jake Tapper’s show.
Baud
@Geminid:
Exactly. That’s what Twitter is for.
wjca
I, too, would hope for all of that. But I completely understand if it is put on hold until Ukraine has either won or somehow created their own alternative system which will do the same job at least as well. Or Musk shuts it down, of course — perhaps the lawyers here can speak to the availability (and speed) of something like eminent domain for this situation.
Burnspbesq
So, let me see if I’ve got this right: Blinken should potentially (a) compromise a grand jury investigation, (b) reveal intelligence sources and methods, and (c) compromise a referral to the International Criminal Court for aiding and abetting Russian war crimes, to satisfy Jake Tapper’s morbid curiosity?
Fuck that. Blinken did the right thing.
MisterDancer
AMEN. I think we can’t think back that far, but I do not recall much pushback from folx when Musk made his initial announcement. Indeed, there was a chorus of gratitude because there’s no similar capability our DoD can provide without handing over, I suspect, a ton of information we cannot allow anyone not a close ally, to have.
There’s a lot of calls in hindsight that, at the time, were the logical thing to do. I will allow that it was a situation the US should have corralled into a formal contract ASAP, sure! But I can’t see Musk even allowing that, and trying to push that line in public would have meant a fight w/Musk at a time when he was getting a lot of goodwill in the press.
I know I’m behind on a certain post I promised, but more and more this reminds — as someone already mentioned in passing — of America’s situation with Henry Ford in the run-up to WWII. Taxing Musk won’t make these innovations align any better to US needs, no moreso than the series tax burden back in the day made Ford less an isolationist antisemitic monster, whom we nonetheless needed to fight a war.
You want this stopped? Nationalize SpaceX. That’s the solution, and politically, it will suck.
narya
When I read about this, the first thing that came to mind is just how many things didn’t get discussed in public (the big spending bills; the railroad strike; the debt ceiling) but then got worked out. I don’t mind Tapper asking pointed questions–but I also don’t mind Blinken not showing every card in the hand, and I cannot believe that no one is working on this.
Roger Moore
@wjca:
And, like a good Bond villain, Musk was able to hide that he was a Bond villain until it was too late. He spent a lot of time building the public persona of the guy who was on a quest to save the world, and it wasn’t just because he liked having his ego stroked. A lot of people bought into it, and the goodwill from it was extremely important for his business ventures.
JPL
@Jeffro: They don’t have to raise the rate that high is they get rid of deductions. Deductions make the tax code regressive.
Eric S.
I’m sure the US Military is not using Star Link for operations. I wonder how feasible it is (technically, politically, militarily) to let UKR use our system?
cain
@MisterDancer:
We could help fund a competitor. Sure it might be expensive from a tax dollars perspective but we could provide seed money. Clearly there is a market need.
The only problem is that if you have more than one of these starlink things – our entire atmosphere is going to be saturated with satellites.
Baud
Musk isn’t the first to attempt a satellite Internet system. He’s just been the most successful to date. Not sure why. I don’t even know if Starlink is profitable.
bbleh
Unquestionably. But don’t get your hopes up too fast. Tax legislation must originate in the House so we gotta win that, AND it has to pass the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority (or we need to end the filibuster) and that ain’t very likely in the next few years. And taxes are probably THE issue that links all the parts of the Republican Party together: the meatheads (most of whom have very little idea how much federal tax they pay) don’t want none o’ their tax dollers goin’ to THOSE folks and their welfare babies, the plutocrats (who know to the dime how much) don’t wanna pay taxes period, and the Poujadistes are the combination of the other two. And then there’s the “centrist” Dems who are half-Republican. Serious tax reform will be a HUGE lift, even compared to the ACA.
I hope at least various spokes-critters start making offhand comments about “the importance of control of key strategic assets” or some such, and perhaps a few quiet men in suits have a nice private conversation with Elon, just to make sure everyone knows there’s a line in the sand.
Burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
Not arguing with you, but it seems odd to think of the exercise of the power of eminent domain as “gangsta.”
On the other hand, I would be totally down with a ridiculous low-ball offer that forces him into years of litigation before he gets a fair price for SpaceX.
And while we’re at it, let’s sic the Antitrust Division on Tesla, and force it to divest the Supercharger network.
Kent
Honestly, this Starlink fiasco is as much on the US government as it is on Musk.
Interesting article over on Talking Points Memo that discusses this. They argue that once it because obvious that Starlink was being used for military purposes, the US government should have taken over paying for the service, and strictly outlined the terms of service it was paying for in contracts with SpaceX.
In other words, Musk should never have been given the authority to dick around in the first place and all of that could have been prevented by properly written contracts for service that outlined the parameters of that service.
That doesn’t relieve Musk from being horrid dick. But it was the US government that dropped the ball by letting him into that position in the first place.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
I couldn’t agree more, which is why we should just cut him from Starlink and bring him up on charges.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
Hahahahahaha
Roger Moore
@JPL:
The thing that really makes the tax code regressive is having much lower taxes for capital gains than for wage and salary income. At the very least, capital gains should be taxed the same as wages and salary, if not a higher rate.
sdhays
@Baud: As I understand it, it’s because SpaceX’s rockets are orders of magnitude more efficient, economically speaking. They lop off a couple of zero’s per kilogram for payloads to space – so between $1.5k and $3k. So they were able to put all of these satellites, which have a 5 year life expectancy, up at very low cost.
According to the article I read this weekend, if Starship ever works, the cost will $20/kg.
Clarifies why astronomers are worried about space junk from SpaceX making Earth-based astronomy impossible.
Jeffro
up on TPM – reader comment to Josh Marshall:
ETA: or what Kent was referring to just a few posts up!
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Because SpaceX really has brought down launch costs relative to everyone else. They’ve made launch costs low enough they can try a different approach from previous satellite phone systems, e.g. a large constellation of cheap satellites in LEO rather than a few more expensive ones in higher orbits. That lets them have a lot more bandwidth and use cheaper, lower power phones. It also makes the system much more resilient, since there are literally thousands of satellites up there.
Villago Delenda Est
I hope that Blinken was being dodgy because he didn’t want to give anything away about what actions not in the Nazi fuck Musk’s favor might be in the works. But you never can tell, it might have all been spin.
Jeffro
@JPL: I vote for both.
Let’s try running millionaire- and billionaire-funded surpluses for a few years, just to see if we like how it feels.
wjca
Absolutely. At the most basic level, income is income. If you are going to tax it, it should all be taxed the same.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: We know for a fact that xhitter isn’t.
Eolirin
@bbleh: Taxes can be done cleanly via reconciliation. The filibuster won’t be an issue.
Unless we want some kind of wealth tax, where the constitutionality of it is in question.
Burnspbesq
A lot of the more ridiculous stuff in the 2017 tax legislation sunsets at the end of 2025–not for any policy reason, but so that Trump could massage the reported impact on the deficit.
Get ready: the circus is coming to town.
Villago Delenda Est
@kindness: Tapper needs to be SpaceXd into orbit with no provision for a return to Earth.
feloniousferb
I think Tapper’s questions were “hard” because it’s a Democratic administration he’s “holding to account”. If this was a representative from a repub admin he wouldn’t have been nearly that assertive and would have sounded far more deferential.
Eolirin
@Burnspbesq: We really need to have at least one branch of the legislature going into that.
Chris
One of the things that always struck me about JennOfArk’s 4th of July post was the observation that if you really adopt Thatcher’s dictum that “there is no such thing as society,” what you’re really saying is that there is no such thing as country. Whatever it says on the paperwork, a country consists first and last of its people and how healthy it is depends on how healthy they are.
That was in 2010 or 2011, but it’s come back to me more and more watching the entire Trump debacle. The libertarian principle of “there is no such thing as society” is really a huge flashing declaration of anti-patriotism. And the jump from there to “Russia, if you’re listening” isn’t actually much of a jump, it’s barely a shuffle.
Baud
@Burnspbesq:
Another reason we see the coordinated push against Biden.
Anoniminous
US military already has the Defense Satellite Communications System up and running. It’s replacement is already in build. Farting around with anything like a Starlink would be foolish and a waste of money.
@Eric S.:
Giving Ukraine access to the DSCS would compromise its security. Dumb move, in the long run.
jonas
People like Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos and Gates are zillionaires not because they earn lots of money per se, but because they have substantial stakes in companies whose stock is worth billions, if not trillions, of dollars. I’m not sure how a change in the tax code would stop them from being so powerful. You could raise the capital gains tax, but I don’t know if that would put a huge dent in their overall fortunes. People have long talked about a wealth tax of some kind, but I haven’t really seen a proposal for one yet that looks administratively feasible given how easy it is now to move assets around globally.
rikyrah
Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) posted at 10:12 AM on Mon, Sep 11, 2023:
Survey shows faculty are refusing to come to Florida due to hostile new laws.
“More than 65% would not recommend their state as a desirable place to work for colleagues, while over 30% are actively considering interviewing elsewhere in the coming year.”
https://t.co/xBgVK08rmw
(https://x.com/tomaskenn/status/1701252299576762574?t=0UAU9rDBR0o09NgbXXCY9Q&s=03)
Dorothy A. Winsor
Your last paragraph doesn’t seem like a non sequitur to me at all. Musk’s outsized power comes from his outsized money.
rikyrah
ENTIRE SQUAD
Mike Sington (@MikeSington) posted at 4:45 AM on Mon, Sep 11, 2023:
Mean girls. The entire cheerleading program at Londonderry High School in New Hampshire was suspended by the school board after allegations of a “toxic and pervasive culture of bullying, harassment, and discrimination”. https://t.co/PlJBMqaoUy
(https://x.com/MikeSington/status/1701170124039110727?t=PY64_KnD_n8YpgDRQxj8wg&s=03)
rikyrah
Candidly Tiff (@tify330) posted at 11:20 AM on Mon, Sep 11, 2023:
Last week Sen. Feinstein introduced, Euni Lee, Biden’s nominee for the North District of California. DiFi is old but she is still working and looks much healthier than she did in May.
Stop disrespecting her acting like she is dead or unable to function. That’s not okay. https://t.co/QozM7amNy5
(https://x.com/tify330/status/1701269402790883467?t=LW7uKcdtG_r0ffahw-5R0A&s=03)
Betty Cracker
People are understandably focusing on Musk talking to Russian officials, but according to the biographer, Musk also talked to him about the “dilemma” of allowing Ukraine to use Starlink for the covert operation. I guess to Musk, forwarding the narrative that he, Musk, helped avert WWIII was important enough to compromise closely held info by sharing it with a rando.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Roger Moore: I prefer the terms “earned” vs “unearned” income. It makes the moral problem with the current tax code more obvious.
Hoppie
Diplomacy is REALLY hard, and you often have to choose among imperfect options. Bringing the third and perhaps the most populous country in the world closer together has useful value. Weaning as much of the “global south” off Putin has value. Already today Lula has walked back his idiotic Putin welcome mat.
Subsole
If this country ever fucked up badly enough to put me in charge, Peter Thiel and the rest of his clique would be eating multiple consecutive drone strikes.
Just saying.
But yeah. Tax them into the Cretaceous.
wjca
But there are so many far more deserving candidates: Koch, Mercer, Theil, etc., etc., etc.
hueyplong
@MisterDancer: I’m not buying a close correlation to Henry Ford. When Willow Run got going, Ford was most definitely no longer an isolationist, making bank as he was on all-out production. I also know of no instances when he shut down the production line at a time convenient for Nazi Germany to avoid an Allied attack.
Ford was a shit, for sure, but he didn’t do anything like what Musk did to shut down a Ukranian attack.
Something bad needs to happen to Musk, pour encourager les autres.
Eolirin
@jonas: It should be noted that a lot of that wealth, depending on the individual in question, is subsequently paper wealth only. Musk can’t, for instance, cash out a significant portion of his Tesla stock without massively tanking it’s value, which would significantly reduce how much he’s worth.
Simply taxing capital gains and income at higher levels would go a decently long way at limiting how much they could effectively spend money on because of it.
And the real problem with people like Musk and Zuckerberg, as opposed to people like the Kochs, isn’t their wealth, it’s how they’re running their companies. So that’s an extra level of difficulty to navigate. You could make Musk personally poor, but as long as he can make calls about what parts of Starlink are on or off or what Twitter’s moderation policies look like he can pull the same shit. (Though beggaring him would have prevented him from buying his way into those companies, so there’s still value. Wouldn’t fix the situation with Facebook though)
moonbat
These are fair questions by Tapper, but he’s still a dick. And if he expected Blinken to spill out the administration’s full legal and diplomatic response, he’s delusional, especially as it seems Musk is in regular contact with Putin.
This WAS a major breech of security (forethought, sanity) to give that twit control over the satellites so he could play favorites in the Ukraine War. But my guess is the reason it was allowed to happen as it did was because Musk dressed up this contract arrangement as a “donation” to the Ukrainians. Beware, apartheid princelings bearing gifts and all that.
Anoniminous
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Wealth, not money. Musk’s SpaceX stock holdings are currently valued at ~$140 billion. That wealth is non-taxable until it is turned into money – cash – and then only maybe.
Mike in NC
Leon Skum needed to be deported a very long time ago, along with Rupert Murdoch.
Eolirin
@moonbat: There’s not exactly a viable alternative for Ukraine either. SpaceX holds all the cards on this one. Even if there was an ironclad contract in place, trying to enforce it could disable the network for Ukraine. That’s a big risk.
Nationalization is the only solution that would work and it’s politically impossible.
mrmoshpotato
Hear! Hear!
We’ve needed to shitslap all of the rich fucks with Eisenhower-era tax brackets (adjusted for inflation, of course) for a LONG time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Anoniminous: Good point.
tobie
Our tax code is so messed up. Too many loopholes for the rich, big business, small business, etc. I know the last position (small biz) is not terribly popular to bring up but I recently had the experience of having my home declared a business and it fucking galls me the number of tax write-offs I’m now entitled to.
And, while we’re on taxes, can we also massively increase the number of temporary visas? You know who pays federal taxes? Immigrants who want to return in the future to work.
UncleEbeneezer
@narya:
I’ve been assured by Elie Mystal, Mehdi Hassan, Brian Beutler etc., that if the govt doesn’t tell us everything it is doing, on incredibly sensitive matters, it’s safe to assume it’s just not doing anything.
JPL
@Roger Moore: Definitely!!
JPL
@Roger Moore: Definitely!
It’s a duplicate but I’m keeping it because the comment deserves it.
Leto
I came across this a few days ago and it’s a visual scale to try to make normal people understand just how vast the wealth holdings of the ultra rich are, as compared to just the mega rich and the rest of us normal people. It’s why when people, like Martin, try to say that throwing more money at a specific problem (like education was his example) is a waste, I say that’s fucking nonsense. The amount of wealth that just 5 people have captured is… incomprehensible.
Wealth Shown to Scale.
You use shift+mouse wheel scroll to move the picture. I’ll see you back here in ten minutes when you’re finally able to scroll to the end.
zhena gogolia
@feloniousferb: Right.
Geminid
@bbleh: You can pass tax policy changes with a simple Senate majority, through reconciliation. Under current rules, it’s the non-fiscal stuff like voting rights, gun control etc. that needs a supermajority.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
You make everything simple and to the point.
But you are 10,000% correct – TAX THE FUCKING WEALTHY! In a proper manner as we used to do. Now at one time we may have over done the percent they paid but now? Not even close to over done, but closer to raw as frozen ground meat. Which is far from overdone. (Yes I’m mixing metaphors – deal with it)
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: The reporting by Isaascon should be taken with intense skepticism, since all he’s really reporting on are things Musk and other people are telling him and not putting in very much effort to verify any of that information.
See also his backtracking on what went down with the decision making because Musk contacted him to “set the record straight”. Even though other people are providing counterclaims and evidence that Musk’s new story is bullshit.
Stenographers can only be trusted to tell the story their sources want us to hear. That’s never going to be the truth.
JPL
@Leto: Thanks. Someone sent me a clip where Jeff promises to give away most of his billions and I mentioned that he could give away 90 percent and be left with under 20 billion. Poor guy!
Cameron
@rikyrah: No surprise. Florida has become really toxic for education, educators and students at all levels K-PhD. But at least the libs are pwned, and that’s really all that Pudding Paws cares about.
wjca
Fixed that for you. The current system has some big improvements (e.g. negative tax rates at the low end, child tax credits) which we don’t want to lose.
skerry
I don’t understand why the tax code couldn’t be modified to tax wealth – even if it is “paper wealth.”
I pay property taxes based on the presumed value/wealth of my home every year.
JCNZ
@Baud: Haha! (insert “like” emoji here)
Ruckus
@Burnspbesq:
Perfect. +one here.
smith
In addition to reforming our ridiculous tax system, we could also try enacting meaningful anti-trust laws and seriously enforcing them. Cutthroat trade practices are often the way the mobster-oligarchs get rich in the first place.
Eolirin
@skerry: It’s the difference between state and federal taxing powers. We needed a constitutional amendment for federal income tax. It’s not clear the federal government has the ability to implement that kind of tax without a similar amendment.
Ruckus
@Eric S.:
I’d say technically difficult, politically next to impossible and militarily utterly impossible.
smith
@rikyrah: Unsurprisingly, the same thing is happening in Texas.
Betty
@sdhays: That’s the discussion I remember about Starlink. So much junk with just a 5 year lifespan.
narya
@UncleEbeneezer: I like Mystal and Hassan, up to a point–they both have had some interesting things to say, from a perspective, and a personal experience, that I don’t have. OTOH, when they go haring off into DoSomethingLand, I just ignore them. I think I’m more tolerant than many here, but that’s okay; everyone has to calibrate their own eye-roll meter.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
It’s worth either:
Attempting a Logan Act prosecution of Captain Apartheid; or
Quietly urging Kyiv to consider quietly issue criminal charges and an extradition request which would immediately be honored while “forgetting” the niceties of a hearing in Federal Court in Texas – as in “oh, there was a Ukrainian military air transport waiting, so we turned him over to them”. See if Ukrainian jail among ordinary decent Ukrainian criminals wipes that stupid smirk off his stupid face.
M31
not to mention a real, functioning estate tax — the amount of damage that the Koch’s, the DeVos’s, the Waltons, etc. etc. do is gigantic
when you inherit, how’s about you get $10 million max, the rest goes to the gov’t
I mean, it’s just income, tax it
mrmoshpotato
@wjca: Fair enough. :) Thanks.
jonas
@Eolirin: I agree that the problem is not simply one of concentrated wealth, but the fact that these plutocrats really don’t see themselves as having any responsibility or accountability whatsoever to their country (or its allies) or its citizens. National interests, democracy, shared prosperity — those are such petty, declasse things to have to burden their beautiful minds with.
John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were ruthless sons-of-bitches, but at least they had a deeply ingrained sense that with great power comes great responsibility and that, having made their fortunes, their job thereafter was to see it put towards serious philanthropical projects for the benefit of nation. I think Gates and Buffet are somewhat in that mold (albeit with an even more global vision). Musk and Zuckerberg, Bezos, Larry Ellison, et al. could not give less of a fuck.
mrmoshpotato
@M31:
How is someone going to survive on just $10 million? Are you trying to put them into one of their poor houses? You monster!
Leto
@JPL: that’s the thing. I know it’s been talked about here, and other places, but the absolute size of their wealth is just beyond what we can credibly understand. You might as well say that they have elventygobblydegooks of bucks and it’s just as accurate. I mean all the Carnegie’s, Rockefeller’s, and Morgan’s gave away a vast amount of their fortunes to help the public, as well as maybe to stave off the guillotines, but they were still obscenely rich. This version of the those doofuses aren’t even pretending to do that. We’re actively hurting every part of our society by having just a handful of shitheels control this much of our countries wealth/output. We could have a 90% tax rate in place and they’d still be able to have their crappy yachts that require bridges to be torn down so they can get out to sea.
marcopolo
Was writing a post and lost it through a missclick so just doing the links for folks who want more background.
From Josh Marshall @ TPM: Musk, Starlink & Ukraine and What’s Unique about Starlink & Ukraine (i am a subscriber so hope this isn’t paywalled)
From DKos: Ukraine Update: This is why Musk Owns Us All
Have a nice day everyone!
Eric S.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
YES.
But. Or is it Butt?
I’d say it would be better but would it raise the cost of a lot of items, some actually necessary? And I see the answer as – it depends. Business accounting hasn’t been simple for a long time, and I know this as I’ve owned 2 businesses in my life, for a third of it in fact, but if you do what you are supposed to do it isn’t all that difficult either.
What I see is that the higher end of the tax schedules need to climb back up a bit because some are making enormous profits and many of our citizens still can’t make close to enough and some of those profits come off their backs. There are just too many ways to hid profits and not enough bodies to find them.
Ken
Why have Space Force, when we can just issue letters of marque and reprisal?
Eolirin
@jonas: The distinction I was trying to draw was between individual power due to personal wealth, and institutional power due to decision making authority at companies that have enough clout to be societally important.
Going after wealth without anti-trust reforms doesn’t really fix things. And effective anti-trust is complicated in the case of some of these companies.
Leto
@jonas: I see we had the same thoughts on the matter. Part of the way that you get around the problem of them not recognizing responsibility, national interests, etc… is tax them into the fucking ground. Ezpz, we’ll do all that for ya. You’re still going to be fabulously wealthy, still able to do whatever the fuck you want, but so will the rest of society. If you really have an issue with that, may I suggest a nice startup in Somalia that you can take over.
Chris
@Leto:
The biggest insight at the heart of the New Deal, I would say (and World War Two and the postwar reconstruction as well), is that there are a ton of problems which can in fact be either resolved or enormously lessened simply by throwing money at them.
HumboldtBlue
@rikyrah:
Now go read about Northwestern Football.
Burnspbesq
@skerry:
And who do you pay those property taxes to? Answer: state and local governments, that aren’t bound by the restrictions set forth in the U.S. Constitution (other than commerce clause and due process limitations). Historically, those restrictions have been interpreted to require that income not be taxed until it is “realized.” The realization requirement is why there is doubt about the constitutionality of a wealth tax
Ironically, a case pending in the Supreme Court, involving a provision in the 2017 tax legislation, threatens to blow the biggest hole yet in the realization requirement.
Burnspbesq
@M31:
“… nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”
Betty Cracker
@Leto: Thank you for the Wealth Shown to Scale app — bookmarked! Someone did a video years back using grains of rice that also effectively showed scale. I wish viewing that and playing with the linked app were required for every voter in the US because, as you noted, it’s hard to get your head around the scale.
I’m sure it would be very difficult indeed to relieve almost infinitely powerful and connected people of their obscene piles of cash, but we damn sure better figure out how. Musk isn’t a one-off.
Brachiator
@Burnspbesq:
Which case? Very interesting stuff. Is this an unintended consequence of how messy the 2017 legislation was crafted, or is someone just testing the limits of the law?
Miss Bianca
@Cameron: Just chiming in to say that the epithet “Pudding Paws” tickles me immensely, after my usual pre-adolescent style in humor.
Old Man Shadow
The political realities of the United States in which half or three-quarters of one party in a two party system is actively rooting for Russia while embracing Ayn Rand’s philosophies does not seem to allow for decisive and appropriate action against Musk.
Course, I wouldn’t complain if a Ukrainian intel officer wanted to help the man find his way down to the street from a fiftieth floor window and turn Starlink over to whatever half-developed clone he has willed his assets to.
Rebel’s Dad
I’m not going to poo-poo neoliberalism as just Republicanism in disguise; since I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, I’m very much a product of that time. I am working through the political and economic philosophy of neoliberalism along with its effects.
Having said that, Starlink is just another example of how the US has outsourced and dismantled our industrial and technological industries. Whether we like it not, we’re in a unipolar world and we’re the top dogs. Someone has to be on top; should it be us or the Chinese/Russians? For the world’s sake, it needs to be us.
Starlink should never have been allowed to develop independently of NASA or the US military. No one person or company should have the ability to decide the outcome of a war.
The same goes for AWS, SpaceX, and other Tony Stark bullshit. The most powerful and richest nation in human existence should not be held hostage to a wannabe Iron-Man.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore: Yeah, I’d compare it with Iridium, I believe the first serious attempt at a privately owned global satellite coms network. Each of the 82 weighs 1,500+ pounds and are launched in groups of as many as ten. They orbit at about 485 miles. My Garmin InReach communicator I take backpacking uses Iridium. I can exchange texts with home and contact the subscription emergency service, but no voice coms like Iridium phones provide.
Starlink presently has more than 4,000 up of a planned 12,000. Best as I can figure the plan is to occupy three orbital shells of 340, 710 and 210 miles, in succession. They launch at least 60 at a time at 573 pounds each.
Both systems have de-orbit capabilities after failure, hopefully avoiding yet more dead space junk. Starlink purportedly has autonomous crash avoidance.
FelonyGovt
I’ve been concerned for years about outsourcing our space program to SpaceX (and to Russia!) Musk and Rupert Murdoch are both toxic individuals who have been permitted to amass way too much power, to our country’s detriment, and now to the detriment of Ukraine and other allies. Not sure what should or can be done, but the situation needs to be fixed.
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
Why can’t we?? This would seem to be about as appropriate a use of the power of eminent domain as one could come up with.
Chris
@FelonyGovt:
Well… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRnpKRZwHFo
lowtechcyclist
@MisterDancer:
The point of drastically increasing the degree to which we tax the super-rich is to keep them from getting this powerful in the first place.
Obviously it’s a bit late to do that with Musk now, though hopefully once Ford and GM are making electric cars at scale, Tesla stock will plummet to the point where Musk’s wealth is in billions or tens of billions rather than hundreds of billions.
Timill
@FelonyGovt: So nationalize Boeing. They’re the ones NASA has been paying (handsomely) to be a competitor to SpaceX, and they haven’t delivered.
Penalize failure, not success.
lowtechcyclist
@JPL:
Oh, it’s a lot more than deductions. It’s complex ways of holding one’s assets to begin with – family trusts and all sorts of other shenanigans – to shield your assets, gains, and income from the IRS, perhaps legally, perhaps not.
Main thing is, up until now, the IRS couldn’t afford to hire the staff to unravel these complex schemes. But even after they do, the fact is that current tax law allows even the richest people to keep more than half their income each year. There should be new tax brackets at higher rates kicking in at tens and hundreds of millions, and then billions and tens of billions, topping off at 95% per the Beatles song “Taxman.”
And add in Liz Warren’s wealth tax too.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Yes. But.
Some things, because life always changes over time, is that things are never as easy as they used to be. And life will likely be like this till it’s end. Technology has changed just a tad in the last 75 yrs and at a rate faster than in most of the previous years/decades/centuries. As an example, what are we doing right now….
trollhattan
@Timill: This kind of success?
Paul in KY
@JustRuss: There might be these guys up in Canada, last name Fundan…
artem1s
You’re giving JD way too much benefit of the doubt. He only became philanthropic to avoid paying taxes – he gave Cleveland huge tracks of undeveloped land just to avoid having to pay back taxes to the city. The land wasn’t worth much at the time – and he got to avoid having to use cash. It wasn’t until Nelson that the family foundation became interested in actual philanthropic giving (cash donations).
The Carnegie’s on the other hand did some genuine good, especially with the public libraries they built.
wjca
Which, as any ultra-libertarian will tell you, means that any and all taxation is unconstitutional. :-)
Obviously there is some kind of slack here. At a guess (IANAL) something about equal treatment of everyone in equivalent circumstances. For example, if you are taking property for a new road, everybody gets equivalent payment (adjested for improvements). So a stardard inheritance tax, or even a wealth tax, should pass muster.
MisterDancer
So are we saying the point of heavy taxes is to avoid individuals buying up companies in the first place? Because lowering people to multi-millionaires seems to be, to just open up for more foreign interactions, as well as hedge fund activity. And the latter doesn’t provide much protection against this kind of activity — indeed, you can argue it’s the opposite. A group of hedge fund people can and do drive all kinds of activities in America that we only see the end tail of, look at Toys R’ Us.
I just don’t see high taxation alone as sufficient to avoid what Musk has done. I do think higher taxation is great for healing the poor and middle class! I think those are worthy reasons to increase taxes, and what we should support. But taxation as a punitive measure, even indirectly, sounds great, but risks some real knock on effects, as well as political ill-will.
Elizabelle
This is a really good thread. I agree about the dangerous and destabilizing effects of so much $$$ in the hands of a relative few. Beyond time to address it.
I think Democrats and democratically-minded independents should take the lead on this, on educating the voting public. If Manchin and creatures like him want to whinge and undercut the message, it is what he does. Still need to address the problem with facts and logic, even in an illogical and magical thinking world.
Leto’s link looks terrific for persuasive purposes.
Bill Arnold
What pisses me off most about this Musk/Starlink/Ukraine incident is that Musk was manipulated by a bespoke Russian influence operation, coupled with a much broader general Russian influence operation to increase fear in the general Western populations that Russians would start a thermonuclear war if they were unhappy about attacks on their forces directly involved in attacking Ukraine. The broader operation was/is/will be intended to cause shifts in politics in Western democracies.
The professionals in governments and militaries take note of such propaganda but almost entirely ignore it, focusing instead on shifts in actual military details, and doctrine.
Musk fell for it, though. He is gullible and easily manipulated.
wjca
Just a thought exercise. Suppose anyone** owning more than xx% of a US company was subject to US income taxes. On all of their income, worldwide. Plus the US wealth tax. Not saying you can’t, as a foreigner, buy a US company. Just that there’s a price.
** And, if a company, the company and its majority owners.
Burnspbesq
@Brachiator:
U .S. v. Moore is a challenge to Code Section 965, which required 10 percent shareholders of controlled foreign corporations to include a “deemed repatriation amount” equal to pre-2017 accumulated E&P in exchanged for never being taxed on actual repatriation.
Ruckus
@Timill:
SpaceX has a lot of customers all paying it a relatively small sum every month. Boing has a few customers paying it a hell of a lot for a few products a year. Yes it’s a production line business, just like your car, only a tad larger, with more tires and wheels and it and flies. But other than that……
What I’m saying, as someone who has made things for the aerospace industry (and others) the cost of the products are different than what you find at Target or Wallyworld. Designing them, building them, building replacement parts etc is about 4 million levels different than what I was on occasion, a tiny part of the business.
Burnspbesq
@wjca:
You’re conflating two issues that are treated differently under the Constitution, and need to be analytically separatt if we’re ever going to make any progress toward rational tax policy.
Burnspbesq
@wjca:
Would violate tax treaties that the US has with about 65 countries, including all of our major trading partners except Brazil. You want a global trade war? That’ll get you one.
Citizen Alan
@Roger Moore: Respectfully disagree. Only Bond villains have ever come across as anything other than repellant from their very first scene. (1) Trevalian in Goldeneye because in his first scene he was pretending to be a good guy, but he was repellant from his second scene on, and (2) Blofeld from Diamonds Are Forever because he made use of super-advanced technology to make people think he was actually country singer and sausage-maker Jimmy Dean. If I went into a Bond movie cold and saw someone who looked like Elon Musk and who was wearing an “Elon Musk” nametag, I would be like “Yep, that’s the villain, right there.”
Geminid
Some other news from the G-20 was that Turkiye’s crabby President R.T. Erdogan is grumbling about F-16s again. Senator Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Chairman, has been holding up the sale of 40 F-16s for Turkiye, and Erdogan implied that Turkiye’s National Assembly might not approve Sweden’s accession to NATO because of this.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister said last week that he hasn’t seen Turkiye gripe about their bilateral relations, but he can’t do anything about Menendez. Greece maybe could, and its FM and Turkiye’s had a good meeting last week in Ankara. The Middle East Eye had a good article sbout that meeting that I mean to excerpt here soon, but one relevant item was that Congress is putting together a package deal whereby the F-16 sale will be bundled with a sale of F-35s to Greece. Menendez may go along with that, grudgingly.
Biden could have said to Erdogan, “You know, Menendez is almost as stubborn as you are,” but the Turkish President might not have appreciated the humor.
Another Scott
@Kent: Necessity is a mother…
Space.com (from February 9, 2023):
True? No idea. Even if it were true – that Ukraine was forbidden by contract from using it in certain ways – wars of national survival have ways of changing the risk/reward calculus in evaluating contract terms.
There’s no “one weird trick” about this stuff. The DoD can’t just step in and do things – there has to be legal avenues, available funding, and all the rest.
What’s important is that Ukraine still has access, and the DoD is watching things carefully. And the rest of the US Government is watching Musk’s companies carefully…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Rebel’s Dad:
Not trying to be a smart ass here but that big war going on as we type and is because of one man – vlad.
And I fully agree that world wide communications cannot rely on one rich, it is 6 years old isn’t it, who seems to shave regularly.