Tootfinder

The underlings and stooges continue to be imprisoned while the crime boss roams free.
https://apnews.com/article/taylor-johnatakis-capitol-riot-sentencing-f97acd68b8860d36b212e408ac80abd4

Man who used megaphone to lead attack on police during Capitol riot gets more than 7 years in prison
A Washington state man who used a megaphone to orchestrate a mob’s attack on police officers guarding the U.S. Capitol has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth on Wednesday said videos captured Taylor James Johnatakis playing a leadership role during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. The judge sentenced him to seven years and three months behind bars. Johnatakis represented himself with an attorney on standby. He has repeatedly expressed rhetoric that …

SVB agrees to sell its VC arm SVB Capital, which manages ~$9.8B in assets, to a new entity backed by Brookfield and Sequoia Heritage for $340M in cash (Dan Primack/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/03/svb-venture-capital-arm

SVB agrees to sell venture capital arm for $340 million
The fire sale of Silicon Valley Bank is nearly complete.

This is something we love to ignore about Capitalism. It is stingy with capital. Everyone has learned to optimize “return on capital” by sucking the capital out of operations. Recent history provides a demo of how that can cause havoc: a few disruptions in extremely lean supply chains rippled into global inflation. https://

Tilde Lowengrimm (@tilde)
Capitalism interprets resilience as inefficiency and tries to erode it. Capitalism will not stop until every aspect of society is so "just-in-time" that an unexpected stiff breeze causes widespread shortages.

I've been reading Ray Dailo's "Principles for dealing with the changing world order" in which he charts the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms and dynasties.
The main cycle, he reckons is:
1) Winner of a war consolidates power, unites the population (often through oppression)
2) A smart cooperative equitable educated society with meritocracy means good societal progress and wide sharing of the wealth.
3) Long period of peace, building good tech and military and financial systems.
4) Leadership corrupts: Excessive debt, money-printing, inequality, financial ruin, no sense of solidarity, then a natural disaster pushes it over the edge
5) The fall: Escalating rebellions, very bad inequality, internal conflicts
6) Civil war, revolution, eventually a strong leader proves the winner and back to 1.
We in the western civilization are very clearly in the late states of this kind of cycle, and it's frankly terrifying with the weapons we have these days when it comes to a war.
The leadership is too corrupt to try and fix the inequality or invest in that well educated, equitable, cooperative society.
He explicitly agrees with Marx and implicitly with me a lot more than I'd have expected from the rabid capitalist that Ray Dailo is.
It's interesting to hear his emphasis on inequality and how a prosperous society depends upon sharing the gains of prosperity widely. You tend to hear hyper-capitalists mostly emphasizing that capital's gains should go to capital, and Ray is certainly suggesting the opposite here. That if that happens, it corrupts the leadership and ends with cronyism and debt and revolution.
We seem to basically agree what creates good prosperous peaceful civil society, and that capitalism in the Anglican world isn't doing it, and that fucked up corrupt government is why we aren't doing it.
We'd offer fairly different prescriptions though I think.
#reading #books #economics

‘Quite excited to see this going on’: Writer for conservative media outlet whose ‘only regret’ was not stealing computers in U.S. Capitol riots on #Jan6 arrested, feds say

Writer for conservative media outlet faces charges in Jan. 6 riots, feds say
A writer for a conservative media outlet surrendered this week to face charges in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Man who used megaphone to lead attack on police during Capitol riot gets more than 7 years in prison (Michael Kunzelman/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/taylor-johnatakis-capitol-riot-sentencing-f97acd68b8860d36b212e408ac80abd4
http://www.memeorandum.com/240403/p61#a240403p61

👍 Man who bragged that he 'fed' an officer to the mob of Capitol rioters gets nearly 5 years in prison | AP News
https://apnews.com/article/jack-wade-whitton-capitol-riot-sentence-32ca23ad4b637214ae21f637de17227c…

Man who bragged that he 'fed' an officer to the mob of Capitol rioters gets nearly 5 years in prison
A Georgia business owner who repeatedly attacked law enforcement during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison. Jack Wade Whitton struck an officer with a metal crutch and dragged him into the mob of Donald Trump supporters on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace. Whitton later boasted he had “fed" the officer to the crowd. The 33-year-old Whitton expressed remorse for his actions on Jan. 6 before a judge sentenced him on Thursday to…

PitchBook and NVCA report: US VC investments in Q1 2024 hit $36.6B, lowest since 2017, across 2,882 deals, down YoY from $51.6B across 4,026 deals (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)
https://venturebeat.com/ai/u-s-q1-2024-venture-capital-investme…

U.S. Q1 2024 venture capital investments fall 29% to $36.6B | NVCA
The first quarter of 2024 was a relatively calm (or weak if you prefer) quarter for U.S. venture capital investments.

Former government employee charged with falsely accusing coworkers of participating in Jan. 6 Capitol attack (Robert Legare/CBS News)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-government-employee-miguel-zapata-falsely-accusing-coworkers-jan-6-capitol-attack/
http://www.memeorandum.com/240503/p46#a240503p46

UK digital bank Monzo raised $430M led by Alphabet's CapitalG at a $5B valuation, up from $4.5B in December 2021, and plans to use funds to expand in the US (Financial Times)
https://t.co/OPNkJvAbDA