LaffyMar 11, 2024

"Blood bath at #RNC" 1/...

"Trump’s newly installed leadership team at the RNC began the process of pushing out dozens of officials.

All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally, some vendor contracts are expected to be cut" #Trump https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/bloodbath-at-rnc-trump-team-slashes-staff-at-committee-00146368

Show threadLaffyMar 11, 2024

2/ He wants power and $$.

Just as he did in the WH.

Blather, wince, repeat.

Show threadLaffyMar 11, 2024

3/ I'm not gleeful about this, although I get why some of you are.

Fascism isn't funny, at least, not to me. But since the RNC is broke, I think they have about $8 million now? this will indeed hurt down ballot races for the GOP.

Whatever money there is will go to Trump's legal fees and campaign, or whatever else he needs (more ketchup?).

But I'm not laughing. I'm alarmed. Power/$ = the goal. He's aggressively pursuing those.

Democracy suffers again.

Show threadNicole ParsonsMar 12, 2024

@GottaLaff

On The Rachel Maddow Show tonight, she discussed what happened with Bud Light & TikTok.

In both cases Trump & the GOP went nuts on their own megadonors.

Anhauser-Busch & Jeffrey Yass are both major donors, yet Trump waged a year long attack on them until they forked over a fundraiser or cash.

Then Trump's assault on their investment suddenly stopped.

For the GOP, campaign finance is both bribery & extortion.

American democracy is in a "Everything Must Go" GOP fire sale.

Show threadMisuse CaseMar 12, 2024
@Npars01 @GottaLaff The push for a TikTok ban isn’t just a GOP thing. Meta has been lobbying for it (since 2021) since TikTok is their biggest competitor. American intelligence agencies don’t like TikTok because it won’t work with the data brokers they buy surveillance data from.
Show threadNicole ParsonsMar 12, 2024

@MisuseCase @GottaLaff

Jeffrey Yass is also hoping to get a forced sale pushed through so he can pick up the rest of the stock cheaply...

Or force a sale to another Republican anti-democracy donor like Larry Ellison or Walmart.
https://qz.com/2179741/oracle-finally-won-tiktoks-us-data-storage-business

https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/the-tiktok-saga-continues-deal-with-oracle-and-walmart-on-hold/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-sale-to-oracle-walmart-is-shelved-as-biden-reviews-security-11612958401

This is what kleptocracy looks like, the forced sale of your company to a favored crony.

In some respects, the sale of Twitter to a Saudi-funded Elon Musk resembled a similar forced sale.

Oracle finally won TikTok’s US data storage business

Two years after the Trump administration engineered a deal for Oracle to take over TikTok's US data storage, ByteDance announced “100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure."

Quartz
Show threadMisuse CaseMar 12, 2024
@Npars01 @GottaLaff Meanwhile you have a bunch of ostensible liberals cheering for some kind of ban or forced sale of TikTok because “TikTok is controlled by a totalitarian government!” without realizing how ominous this whole thing really is, or what kind of precedent it sets.
Show threadgrabe
@Npars01 @GottaLaff @MisuseCase I am a liberal, but allow one issue for consideration. The social media companies offered by corporations in the U.S. collect a great deal of information about users to target ads and for other vaguely understood purposes. Should social media be limited to use only to those from the country who runs the service? Should any social media service that collects information be banned?
Mar 12, 2024 at 6:33pmWeb
Show threadMisuse CaseMar 12, 2024

@grabe @Npars01 @GottaLaff If we ban any social media that operates in foreign countries what do we do to immigrant communities here? And we’re kind of behaving like some very unfree regimes if we do that. I mean, Russia, China, etc. block some American web services and social media platforms and we don’t like that! For good reason!

1/2

Show threadMisuse CaseMar 12, 2024

@grabe @Npars01 @GottaLaff California’s recently amended privacy law actually makes it really easy to stop abusive data collection practices/make the business model of abusive data collection practices unviable, and also get your personal information away from data brokers who could sell it abroad. A national law like that would stop a lot of the stuff we actually have to worry about.

2/2

Show threadgrabeMar 14, 2024
@MisuseCase @Npars01 @GottaLaff my position is similar. We put other countries in a much better position to block services originating in the US if the politicians in those countries can point to our policies when communicating with their citizens.