Tulip Mania returns in the Trump nutball era

 

Well, (((Laura Loomer))) is not wrong

 

 A MAGA ‘Civil War’ on X between Musk and the far right over H-1B visas

The online rift over the H-1B skilled-worker visa program signifies a potential wedge between Trump’s core base and his new Silicon Valley supporters.

Far-right activists clashed online with billionaire Elon Musk and other supporters of President-elect Donald Trump over the need for a skilled-worker immigration program that has long been a lifeblood for Silicon Valley — signifying a potential rift between Trump’s core nationalist base and technology executives who have come to support him.

The fight that spilled into public view over the holiday week could preview a wedge within Trump’s coalition over how to execute immigration policy, an issue that animated Trump’s White House campaign.

The controversy spread across X after far-right activist Laura Loomer on Monday criticized Trump’s choice to name Sriram Krishnan, a technology entrepreneur and investor who was born in India, as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. She pointed to Krishnan’s previous support for removing some caps on H-1B visas, a program allowing foreigners with technical skills to work in the United States. The policy is “in direct opposition” to Trump’s agenda, Loomer wrote.

The critique ran headlong into tension with some of Trump’s closest advisers, notably Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk; David Sacks who will be the president-elect’s AI and crypto czar; and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-lead a commission to cut government spending. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent,” Ramaswamy said. “And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a--es handed to us by China.”

The online fight sparked a slew of racist posts from Loomer falsely describing Indians as “third world invaders" with low IQs, while saying it is fueling a “civil war” between Trump’s far-right base and the “tech bros” that have come to support his upcoming administration. ...

 

 

 

Crypto: The biggest scam of our time

 

 While the number of reported crypto-related crimes accounts for around 10% of financial fraud complaints received by the FBI last year, the losses from those crimes accounts for nearly 50% of the total amount Americans lost to financial schemes.

More. 

See also the Internet Crime Complaint Center report here.

 

Big Democrat donor Sam Bankman Fried wasn't at the Biden fundraiser last night because he had a previous engagement

 Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years for FTX fraud: CNBC Crypto World

You can't put bitcoin in your pocket like gold and silver, and gold doesn't require 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually for its existence

Crock of shit this bitcoin is. Same for anything digital.

But crypto has a dirty little secret that is very relevant to the real world: it uses a lot of energy. How much energy? Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, currently consumes an estimated 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually — more than the entire country of Argentina, population 45 million. Producing that energy emits some 65 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually — comparable to the emissions of Greece — making crypto a significant contributor to global air pollution and climate change.     

More.

 

LOL, Bitcoin mining operations in Texas threaten power limits, perverse grid operator blames coal and natural gas plants for being offline when overreliance on wind in summer is to blame

 From the story here: 

ERCOT blamed forced outages at coal- and natural gas-fed power plants, and low wind power generation. A spokesperson declined to provide details on the number or type of generating plants that were offline and prompted conservation measures. ... As on Monday, it avoided forced cuts when big power consumers agreed to halt operations. Lee Bratcher, president of Texas Blockchain Council, said all of the state's large-scale Bitcoin mining operations, which consume about 1,000 megawatts, are currently offline because of ERCOT's call for conservation and high power prices.

LOL, the Drudge help writes "takies" talking about "Thiel" "taking aim"

 Takies aim at Bitcoin's 'enemies' Dimon, Fink...

Gold fanatics never mention the potentially bad tax news

 The war in Ukraine has pushed more investors into gold, which some see as a “safe haven” in volatile times, and fueled a price rally.  ...

And because the IRS classifies metal coins as collectibles, ETF investors face the top 28% tax rate that applies to all collectibles when they sell shares.

 

The IRS outlined this thinking in a 2008 memo. (While the memo doesn’t carry the weight of official law, accountants have largely accepted its rationale, Lewis said.) ...

 

Stock investors generally pay one of three tax rates on their profits — 0%, 15% and 20%, the top rate — based on their income. These rates are preferential with respect to an investor’s regular income tax rates, of which there are seven (10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%).

Conversely, the capital-gains tax rate on collectibles aligns with these seven [ordinary income tax] rates, up to a 28% maximum. That means an investor whose annual income puts them in the 12% tax bracket would pay a 12% tax rate on their collectibles profits; an investor in the 37% bracket would be capped at 28% on their collectibles profits.

Read the whole thing.

I own fresh green vegetables and I've been interested in them for a while

Hop on the bandwagon, people. :-\

smdh

Frank Rich slams Gary Cohn in NY Mag, Cohn fires back in Bloomberg

Frank Rich on the 5th, here:

The Wall Street bandits escaped punishment, as did most of the banking houses where they thrived. Everyone else was stuck with the bill. ... But it’s a measure of how much the country is broken that we just shrug with resignation when the wealthy Democratic Goldman Sachs alum Gary Cohn joins this administration to secure an obscene tax cut, then exits without apology to enjoy his further enrichment at the expense of the safety net for the country’s most vulnerable citizens.

Gary Cohn here on the 6th:

In ’08 Facebook was one of those companies that was a big platform to criticize banks, they were very out front of criticizing banks for not being responsible citizens. I think banks were more responsible citizens in ’08 than some of the social media companies are today. And it affects everyone in the world. The banks have never had that much pull. ... In Washington nothing’s perfect, so I’m not thinking it’s perfect, it’s never going to be perfect. But the fact that we got something really important done, which is corporate tax reform, which made us competitive with the rest of the world, is good.