Chad Loder

From 2005 to 2012, one CBP officer or agent was arrested for corruption, crimes, or misconduct EVERY SINGLE DAY. By 2019, it had slowed to just one every 35 hours. Still a huge problem:

The Green Monster How the Border Patrol became America’s most out-of-control law enforcement agency.

My own reporting! I’m the source! www.politico.com/magazine/sto...

As of today, the only person in this Daily Penn visual that hasn't been fined millions of dollars or convicted of a felony is Luigi Mangione, believe it or not

take some fascists out at least. go down swinging

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Movie promo from Mel Brooks's "The Producers"

And this is how PE guys and VC's and bankers make $100M a year doing absolutely nothing, producing no value whatsoever.

It's why all the tech is so shitty and useless and full of false promises and it's what allows PE's to destroy and cannibalize the few remaining things you like.

Sound familiar?

It's actually pretty brilliant. They can make $100M a year doing absolutely nothing, producing no value whatsoever. It's pure evil.

An ASCII art flowchart illustrating a cyclical "loop of greed." At the top, "Ultra Wealthy PE & Bankers" send money down to "Politicians" via an arrow labeled "(Buy/Lobby)." The Politicians then direct policy down to "State Pension Funds" via an arrow labeled "(Divert to Infra to avoid taxing rich)." Finally, the loop closes as the State Pension Funds send money back up to the top, with an arrow labeled "(Invest Billions in PE Funds)" leading to "(Collect Fees & Capital)" returning to the Ultra Wealthy PE & Bankers.

Here's the full-circle scam

Ultra-wealthy PE's and bankers buy politicians who promise not to tax them

Politicians instead borrow from pension funds to pay for public infrastructure

Pension funds go insolvent and get stuck yield-chasing

Pension funds have to invest in funds managed by said PE's

"Are you saying that most pension funds are insolvent!?"

Yeah. Why? Because there's not enough tax revenue, so politicians use pension funds like credit cards to borrow money to pave roads and build schools.

They'd rather do that than raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy donors who got them elected.

Oregon, Illinois, New Jersey

Pension fund managers know that their projections of 7% or 8% returns per year, forever, are utter horseshit. Everyone knows it, in fact.

But they need an accounting fig leaf because otherwise, due to massive unfunded liabilities, pension funds would have to declare themselves insolvent overnight.

Because pension funds are broke. So they use accounting loopholes letting them project 8% returns every single year, forever.

Safe strategies yield about 4%. So pension funds are stuck in infinite yield-chasing mode. They need a high risk portfolio to legally justify that fake 8% yield prediction.

Whitey's on the moon

If you've ever wondered why tech bros keep trying to cram things down your throat that nobody wants, nobody asked for, could never turn a profit and never actually work, frankly -- this is why.

A lot of people are making a lot of money from "failure". If they weren't, they wouldn't keep doing it.

How do VC's make money from failed bullshit? Fee structure. Say you're a VC with a 20% carry if the venture succeeds.

You ALSO have a guaranteed management fee of 2% of AUM per year. So you create a $1B "Deep Tech" fund, that's $20M a year. These sci-fi projects take 10 years to fail. That's $200M.

One of the main fundraising whitepapers circulating did have a detailed treatment of thermodynamics and black body radiation, but ultimately it read like a hand-wave ("It's just a Simple Matter Of building massive unfurling heat sink arrays and solar shields to hide behind" and I mean MASSIVE

This. Also: Our current industrial presence in space (in the ISS) is about the size of a microwave oven. Leaving aside the Three Laws (and we know how well THAT goes!), it'd take DECADES to develop the needed infrastructure. These guys are delusional. Just saying "SPACE!" doesn't make magic happen.😂

These ridiculous mega-projects like "datacenters in space" (doomed by thermodynamics) make a LOT more sense when you realize they're massive Ponzi schemes designed to transfer wealth from pension funds to VC's through "fee stacking."

It's the old Assets Under Management con. It should be illegal.

For whatever reason in rural America the really good local processors are usually butch lesbians. I don't make the rules that's just the way it is.

my undergrad gen bio class had a shocking number of lectures on "here's a horrifying thing that can happen to you" and I'm still terrified of prions

These unkillable proteins teach your body to literally unravel itself and there's nothing you can do -- and we keep finding them in new animals

How We’ve Resisted ICE: Street Lessons From Chicago “I cannot imagine doing anything else in this moment,” says community defense organizer Gabe Gonzalez.

Our last episode of the year is a conversation about what resisting ICE has looked like in Chicago, what we've learned, what it's cost, and where we go from here. I'm so grateful to Gabe Gonzalez, Rey Wences, and Jocelyn Walsh for this convo. This one is special to me. Audio + transcript:

Congress just gave $900 billion to the US military in case you were wondering if there were any repercussions for blowing up civilian ships on the high seas. Meanwhile, the FIFA peace participation trophy guy still manages to keep the Epstein list out of the headlines.

On Tuesday December 2, the Los Angeles City Council shut down a proposal that would have restricted the LAPD’s use of tear gas and 40 millimeter foam rounds against protestors and people in Los Angeles.

@shoton35mm.bsky.social shares more details on the falied proposal.

Anyway, of course the moonshot ideas are stupid and impractical. But the VC's and backers are NOT stupid. They're just playing a different game.

mulch them

Every single public employee in California. Just about every public school employee in Canada. Every public school employee in Texas.

As you can imagine, I'm a big hit on Sand Hill Road. I'm often invited to the Rosewood

assets under management

It's exhausting. It's an Ouroboros of pure fucking bullshit. And ultimately it's not their money they're playing with, it's other people's money. Public employee pension funds.