Pop singer and Kamala Harris campaigner Lizzo is speaking out against her former employees who accused her of sexual misconduct.
The post Lizzo Says She Had ‘Such a Fun Night’ in Infamous Banana-Vagina Incident from Employees’ Lawsuit appeared first on Breitbart .
Dr. Anthony Fauci joined Georgetown University’s faculty last year as a “distinguished university professor” but has yet to teach a single course, a new report says.
Georgetown announced in the summer of 2023 that Dr. Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would be serving as “a Distinguished University Professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases,” as well as an appointment at the university’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Georgetown calls the role bestowed on Fauci its “most significant professional honor” that is reserved for faculty members “whose extraordinary accomplishments in scholarship, teaching and service have earned them significant recognition in the Academy.”
However, as the College Fix reported on Friday, Fauci appears to have not taught any courses at the school since his appointment.
Fox News Digital reviewed the course catalog available on Georgetown’s website going back to the Summer 2023 semester and didn’t find any course listed with Fauci as an instructor since that time.
The private Jesuit college said Fauci would “participate in medical and graduate education and engage with students,” in its initial announcement.
Since his appointment, Fauci has “given lectures, seminars and fireside chats for undergrads and for students and others from the School of Medicine, School of Health, School of Public Policy, Law Center and Walsh School of Foreign Service,” instead of teaching, according to an August interview with The Georgetowner . He also “made himself available for one-on-one meetings. ”
Fauci also joined the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown as a “Distinguished Senior Scholar” in April 2024.
Georgetown said that Fauci would advance “the right to health” and provide “a critical perspective on identifying and responding to urgent national and global public health concerns” in this additional position.
As the public face of the federal government’s coronavirus pandemic response, Fauci has come under scrutiny for his handling of the pandemic. He faced renewed criticism this month after a report detailing the findings of a two-year congressional investigation into the pandemic was released.
The congressional subcommittee report found that the virus most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and that social distancing and masking were not backed with scientific data.
The report said Fauci “played a critical role in disparaging the lab-leak theory” among top scientific circles early in 2020 and later to the public. His congressional testimony to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the report states, misled the public regarding National Institute of Health funding of gain-of-function research at coronavirus labs.
Politico reported earlier this month that President Biden is considering preemptive pardons for Fauci and other political figures ahead of President-elect Trump’s return to the White House in January.
Georgetown did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about Fauci’s professor role or salary.
Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
‘Thousands of kids’ input’
On Thursday, the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting President-elect Donald Trump and others for alleged 2020 “election interference.” The Court held that Willis suffered from a conflict of interest because she hired her paramour, Nathan Wade, as a special counsel to investigate Trump.
Basic legal ethics and common sense dictate that both Wade, who resigned last March, and Willis had to go. The appellate court did not dismiss the indictment, stating that the record did not support imposing such an “extreme sanction.” The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia will now assign the case to a different prosecutor who will decide whether to continue, narrow, or drop the flawed RICO case.
There was never any question that Willis suffered from a conflict of interest; but like the other prosecutors who pursued Trump in the name of democracy, she threw all caution to the wind. For example, in July 2022 Willis attempted to investigate Trump ally State Senator Burt Jones even while headlining a huge fundraiser for Jones’s Democrat opponent. A judge had to bar the prosecution because of the clear conflict of interest.
GEORGIA APPEALS COURT DISQUALIFIES DA FANI WILLIS AND HER TEAM FROM TRUMP ELECTION INTERFERENCE CASE
A government official hiring her paramour is almost always questionable in and of itself. What’s worse is that Willis hired Wade after she already had hired Georgia’s premier RICO expert . She hired Wade even though he openly admitted that he had no prior felony or RICO prosecution experience. Willis paid Wade a higher hourly rate than a regular counsel and did nothing when Wade far exceeded even those amounts.
Some estimates place Wade’s total county income at over $650,000 per year – three to four times the salary of a regular prosecutor. Their many romantic trips and late-night meetings, which the judge examined on national television, exacerbated their conflicts of interest.
The Georgia appeals court inevitably found that the Trump prosecution was “encumbered by [a significant] appearance of impropriety” and carried “an odor of mendacity” such that Willis was “not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences.”
Willis and Wade also failed to voluntarily and timely disclose their romantic and financial relationship to the defense, and therefore failed to meet their “specific obligations to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice” under Georgia law. The rules also state that a prosecutor’s “duty is to seek justice, not merely to convict. This special duty exists because the prosecutor represents the sovereign and should exercise restraint in the discretionary exercise of governmental powers.”
Willis exercised no such restraint and Thursday’s decision saves the Georgia courts from having to later preempt her deeply flawed prosecution. Willis’s investigation threatened not just Trump, but also the office of the presidency.
Other prosecutors, such as Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg or U.S. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, lodged narrow, if creative, charges against Trump that they hoped would be easier to prove.
FANI WILLIS WAS ‘TERRIFIED’ BECAUSE HER CASE AGAINST TRUMP WAS ‘WEAK,’ ATTORNEY SAYS
Willis, in a striking example of prosecutorial overreach, charged Trump and his associates with running a vast RICO conspiracy that included almost every significant act of his campaign between Election Day 2020 and the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and beyond. She claimed 161 alleged acts, 19 charged defendants, 30 unindicted co-conspirators, and involved 7 states and the District of Columbia. This not only ran afoul of the First Amendment free speech rights of Trump, the co-defendants, and the Republican Party, it also posed a threat to all future presidents, who would have to worry about state legal liabilities when making the most difficult decisions in the nation and engaging in his duties.
For example, Trump’s post-2020 election televised speeches and tweets are protected speech and political activity, regardless of whether his statements turned out to be accurate. Trump’s plan to create alternate slates of electors and the legal advice supporting it, the cornerstones of Willis’s RICO charge, were within the bounds of reasonable legal argument. In the 1876 election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Tilden won the popular and electoral college votes, but Republicans challenged the election results in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, on the ground that Democrats had engaged in election fraud and intimidated Black voters.
Hayes eventually won with 185 electoral votes, but Democrats had presented alternate slates of electors from multiple states. No one was criminally charged.
In the 1960 presidential election, Democrats challenged Nixon’s initial win in Hawaii, signed alternate electoral vote certificates, and sent them to Capitol Hill. No one was criminally charged.
TRUMP CHEERS DISQUALIFICATION OF ‘CORRUPT’ FANI WILLIS, SAYS CASE IS ‘ENTIRELY DEAD’
After the 2016 election, the Hillary Clinton campaign and allied liberal groups recruited celebrities and others to importune electors to not cast their electoral votes for Trump; again, no one was investigated or charged.
Proposing alternate electors in the event that Congress or a court rejected a state’s vote as fraudulent falls within the free speech rights of a political campaign.
Furthermore, the prosecution failed to meet the standard requirements for a RICO prosecution. Neither Trump nor his co-defendants tried to gain money, property, or control of a business with their post-2020 election activities. Nor did they demonstrate any interest in initiating or joining a criminal enterprise to gain property, money, or businesses. Instead, Trump wanted to win the 2020 election, which is not illegal; fighting to stay in office would have ended one way or the other by inauguration day in 2021.
But the most serious flaw with Willis’s now-disgraced prosecution of Trump was its threat to the office of the presidency. Willis’s prosecution was part of the Democratic Party’s plan to break political and legal norms that had held for the history of the republic – all in the name of defeating Trump.
For the first time in American history, they brought criminal charges against a former president and the major, leading opposition presidential candidate during the actual campaign. If elected leaders, whom our constitutional system vests with the authority over prosecution, must break American political practice going back to 1789, they should do so for a compelling reason and with a case where the prosecution’s facts and law are airtight. Instead, Willis brought charges that were destined to fail in court and were clouded by her own conflicts of interest and potential financial corruption.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
But once Willis brought charges against Trump for his actions while in office, future presidents must factor prosecution into their calculus. And investigators may not even wait until after a president has left office.
State prosecutors could charge presidents while the latter are still in office; nothing in the Constitution requires states to wait.
This may well make presidents risk-averse, especially when partisan, elected prosecutors are the ones launching the investigations. At the very least, defending against one or more state criminal investigations will draw on the time and resources that a president could – and should – instead devote to carry out his constitutional responsibilities and protecting national security.
These concerns led the U.S. Supreme Court to grant former presidents sweeping immunity from federal prosecution for their official acts in Trump v. United States . But the Trump Court’s decision – broad as it was – does not reach (a) investigations by state prosecutors, (b) for alleged violations of state law, (c) by presidents acting in their private capacities. While the Trump Court held that courts should not allow any evidence, even when used to prove state crimes, from official presidential activities, it did not prohibit state prosecutors from proceeding against Trump.
Not only did Willis’s prosecution harm the presidency in the ways that concerned the Trump Court, it also promised to spark a cycle of retaliation that would further destroy important legal and political norms.
Nothing will prevent elected Republican district attorneys from opening investigations into Hunter, James, or even President Joe Biden for corruption, bribery, and money laundering – all they need is some link between the Bidens’ criminal enterprise (to borrow the Georgia description of the Trump campaign), and their jurisdictions. Opening such probes would make for good campaign fodder in deep-red counties; some D.A.s might even pursue charges just to engage in tit-for-tat retaliation for the New York City and Georgia charges.
While Democrats may embrace state prosecutors like Bragg and Willis, they should instead consider the whirlwind that they have now unleashed and choose to do the right thing: drop their legally flawed cases against President Trump.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JOHN YOO
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) dismissed scathing criticism of him from President-elect Donald Trump – including calls for his ouster – on Friday during an interview with Fox News after he and nearly 40 other Republicans voted against a Trump-backed bill to avert a government shutdown.
Roy reminded Fox News host John Roberts that former Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) called Trump a “cancer” before he ultimately joined the first Trump administration to run the Department of Energy.
On America Reports, Roberts noted Trump was furious at Roy and other Republicans for voting against the bipartisan bill to keep the government running.
“He’s now taken aim at you, saying that you, Chip Roy, you’re getting in the way of what he wants done, and he’s encouraging Republicans in Texas to primary you,” Roberts said. “I mean, you’ve really poked the bear here,” Roy replied:
Yeah. Look, at the end of the day, my job is to honor God, my family, the Constitution, and my voters – the voters who sent me here. That is what drives me. But I am working tirelessly to get what the president wants. I think the president knows that at the end of the day – look, politics are politics. Rick Perry called President Trump a cancer and then ended up in his cabinet. I’m not worried about politics.
I’m worried about the American people. I’m worried about inflation. I’m worrying about a $5 trillion debt ceiling increase with no spending cuts. The president is rightly motivated to block Chuck Schumer’s abuse, but we Republicans here in Congress, in the House have an obligation to get it done correctly. That’s what we’re working to try to do on behalf of the president and our constituents and our obligations under the Constitution.
Thursday, Trump took aim at Roy in a pair of posts on his Truth Social account. In one post, Trump wrote :
The very unpopular “Congressman” from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory – All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself. Republican obstructionists have to be done away with. The Democrats are using them, and we can’t let that happen. Our Country is far better off closing up for a period of time than it is agreeing to the things that the Democrats want to force upon us. Biden is President, and it’s his obligation to properly lead.
We’re there to do the right thing, and we can’t agree with what Biden and the Democrats are demanding. Weak and ineffective people like Chip have to be dismissed as being utterly unknowledgeable as to the ways of politics, and as to Making America Great Again. Put “America First,” and go for the Victory, even if it means shutting the Government down for a period of time. We had an overwhelming Victory just four weeks ago, and we’re not going to let the Democrats forget it so quickly!
Trump also called on Texas voters to oust Roy in the 2026 GOP primary:
Chip Roy is just another ambitious guy, with no talent. By the way, how’s Bob Good doing? I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary. He won’t have a chance!
Watch above via Fox News.
The post House Republican Dismisses Trump Calling for His Ouster: ‘Rick Perry Called President Trump a Cancer and Ended Up In His Cabinet’ first appeared on Mediaite .
Welcome to a new era in American democracy. For years many would say “It can’t happen here” referring to an ultra-extremist takeover or Nazism. Then immediately after the election some said “It has happened here.”
Now the new mood among many is “It has happened here. So what?”
But if a time comes when “it” has “happened here” for real — with a massive change in government, institutionalized and embedded rejection of traditional, political and societal and social norms, and flourishing extremism, will there come a time when those who yawned “So what?” will belatedly become alarmed when it’s too late?
Progress Pond’s Martin Longman, in a post titled “We’re All in a Big Yellow Taxi” asks that question. His sub headline is: The American people are not in the mood to uphold our institutions and we won’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone.
He looks a poll showing a decreasing number of Americans across the board (Republicans, Independents and Democrats”) who’d be concerned if a President Donald Trump suspend some laws and constitutional provisions and writes:
The American people just don’t seem to be in a mood to uphold much of anything, whether its norms against murder in the streets, the independence of the Justice Department, disqualifying politicians who commit business fraud, rape, and coup attempts, or the importance of upholding the Constitution.
I would never suggest that living in America has been a paradise, but I think this really is a case of people not knowing what they have until it’s gone. If there’s widespread rage on the frontend here, there will be another kind of outrage on the backend when people see what it’s like when everything breaks and radicals take away the things they take for granted.
[…]But the real challenge here is that someone has to preserve our right to vote out these people when we grow disenchanted. That’s where the importance of the Constitution really matters, because if no one will enforce the law there’s no way to ensure we’ll have another free and fair election.Heroes may be required.
One thing we’ve all seen over the past 10 years: the easiness with which societal, political and institutional norms and traditions can be shattered. And how many are also willing to ignore laws if applied to their political tribal sports team.
However, there have been other moments in American history when traditional American democracy seemed shaky and democracy survived.
And this time?
The post ARE AMERICANS INDEED IN A BIG YELLOW TAXI? appeared first on The Moderate Voice .
Have you ever had your turkey sandwich vanish mysteriously from the office fridge or found your bag of almonds missing from the breakroom cabinet? If so, you’re no stranger to the antics of the elusive office food thief .
It happens almost every holiday season and is now becoming a routine thing at the workplace. This culprit, lurking in workplaces everywhere, has a knack for sending employees into a fury of frustration.
It’s a universal dilemma. Many of us have silently wished for karma to strike these food pilferers with a lifetime of stomach troubles. What kind of person, we wonder, would stoop so low as to steal a coworker’s meal ? While the occasional leftover dessert may tempt even the most principled among us, most would never cross that line without asking permission or leaving compensation.
But who exactly is the office refrigerator bandit? Could it be:
WOMAN’S SANDWICH SABOTAGE OF HER HUSBAND GOES VIRAL ON REDDIT: ‘GRAPES OF PETTY’
Regardless of their motives, combating office food theft requires creative strategies. Below are five practical – and sometimes playful – ways to protect your cherished casserole or frozen meal from falling victim to workplace larceny.
1. Label Your Food
Writing your name on your food may not be a foolproof deterrent, but it can ward off less experienced thieves. However, beware – if someone in the office harbors a grudge against you, your name might become an invitation rather than a warning. Even so, labeling your food adds a layer of risk for the perpetrator, which could make them think twice before taking what isn’t theirs.
2. Choose Healthier Options
Office food thieves often gravitate toward indulgent, calorie-laden snacks and meals. Items like leftover desserts, Lean Cuisines and Hot Pockets are prime targets. In contrast, healthier options such as turkey sausages, hard-boiled egg whites or a plate of Brussels sprouts are far less enticing. By sticking to nutritious, less appealing fare, you might just save yourself the trouble of becoming a victim.
3. Install a Camera System
Modern technology makes it easier than ever to catch food thieves in the act. Affordable and discreet cameras can be hidden in the office kitchen, on bulletin boards or even inside the refrigerator itself. With many systems accessible via smartphone, you can monitor the situation from virtually anywhere. For less than $10, you can take the first step toward solving the mystery of your missing meals.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
4. Set a Playful Trap
Take a page from crime dramas and set a clever trap – without breaking any workplace rules. For instance, add an extra-hot dose of spicy sauce to your food or attach a humorous note claiming the contents to be something unusual (like baby formula or magical brownies). While harmless, such tactics can make would-be thieves think twice before risking embarrassment or discomfort. Just be sure to avoid anything that could land you in trouble with HR!
5. Opt for “Assembly Required” Meals
Convenience is a thief’s best friend. Pre-packaged or ready-to-eat foods, like sandwiches or snack bags, are easy pickings. In contrast, meals that require preparation – such as those stored in multiple containers or needing assembly – can be a deterrent. A thief is less likely to go through the trouble of preparing your meal when there are easier targets available.
Fridge theft in the workplace is more than just an inconvenience – it’s a growing phenomenon, particularly in offices with shared or open workspaces. But what drives someone to steal food from their colleagues? Is it pure hunger? Apathy toward getting caught? Or perhaps a bizarre sense of adventure akin to a sequel movie called – “Smoked Turkey and the Bandit”?
Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that office food thieves are here to stay. As workplaces become more collaborative and personal refrigerators become a luxury, employees must remain vigilant. By employing these strategies, you can safeguard your meals and avoid the frustration of opening an empty lunchbox.
Remember: the next time you prepare your famous casserole, consider these tips to ensure it doesn’t mysteriously disappear before lunchtime.
‘It no doubt seemed foolproof at the Biden White House’
One of the leading candidates to fill Vice President-elect JD Vance ‘s Ohio Senate seat recently traveled to President-elect Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as a decision from the state’s governor draws closer.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine traveled to Trump’s Florida home with fellow Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who is believed to be a top candidate to replace Vance, in recent days, although the specifics of any conversation are unclear, News 5 Cleveland first reported, and Fox News Digital has confirmed.
State law dictates that DeWine will select a Republican to take Vance’s spot in the Senate until a special election is held in November 2026 to determine who will serve the rest of Vance’s term, which ends in 2028. The winner of that special election could then run again in 2028 in order to start a new six-year term.
Multiple sources told Fox News Digital that a final decision on the Senate appointment is expected in the next few weeks as the new Congress will be sworn in on Jan. 3.
DeWine’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
The Governor’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, told Fox News Digital last month that DeWine will be looking for a “workhorse” who is “qualified and ready to earn the trust of Ohio voters for another term.”
VANCE WILL LIKELY BE 2028 FRONT-RUNNER, BUT RNC CHAIR ‘EXCITED ABOUT THE BENCH THAT WE HAVE’
Fox News Digital previously reported that DeWine is considering, along with Husted, several candidates for Senate, including attorney Mehek Cooke, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, former Ohio GOP Chair Jane Timken, Rep. Mike Carey and others.
“Governor DeWine has a crucial decision ahead in selecting Ohio’s next Senator,” Cooke told Fox News Digital on Friday night. “If Jon is the workhorse he picks, he is the right choice.”
“He’s battle-tested, with decades of experience fighting for Ohioans and securing a stronger future for our state. If Jon is the pick, I’m 100% behind him—there’s too much at stake, and we need someone who will put Ohio first. It was an honor to interview with the Governor, and he knows my commitment is to always put Ohio’s interests first.”
An endorsement from Trump and Vance will be critical for any DeWine appointment, given that both are popular in the Buckeye State, where their ticket won by 11 points in November.
Husted has served as Ohio’s lieutenant governor since 2019 after serving eight years as Secretary of State and a member of both the state Senate and Ohio House of Representatives before that.
Husted has widely been expected to run for governor to replace DeWine, and his team has recently taken steps to allocate resources to that race. Sources tell Fox News Digital that former presidential candidate Vivek Ramawamy’s interest in running for governor has caused some potential gubernatorial candidates to re-evaluate their options, given Ramaswamy’s deep pockets.
Husted has remained tight-lipped about the potential Senate appointment other than to say, “I will continue serving this state as long as the people of Ohio will have me. As for the future, I intend to make my plans known early next year.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump transition team for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Discussing Steven Taylor’s post yesterday that concluded, “I fear that we are seeing a significant shift toward direct oligarchic power in our elections which is not healthy in the least,” regular commenter @Beth observed,
I think Billionaires are a whole class of rich that is new, different, and way more destabilizing. I don’t have time now, but it would be interesting to compare say the Gilded Age Rich vs the Billionaires now. Or even just the growth of Billionaires in the U.S. I suspect that prior to about 1990 the number of Billionaires could be counted on 2 hands max. Now we have dozens if not hundreds of them and they can effect things more than the ordinary rich can because the difference between say having 100 million and having 1 billion is HUGE. Most people don’t understand how huge.
I remember being fascinated by the Book of Lists as a kid and at that time (the first edition came out in 1977), there were something like four or five billionaires on the planet. There are now so many of them in the United States alone that we can’t count all of them. The folks at Statista provide this handy dandy chart:
Certainly there has been considerable inflation of the 34 years covered–$1000 in 1990 has the same buying power as $2476 today—but that only gets us to 164. Ditto population growth—we only had 250 million people in 1990 and are up to 335 million now. But, again, that only accounts for a fraction of the growth. My guess is that the dot com boom of the 1990s created that initial spike; most of the growth since then looks much more natural.
A NYT Magazine feature from April 2022 titled “How Many Billionaires Are There, Anyway?” gets at the question. It starts with Malcolm Forbes’ idea in 1981 to create a now-famous list.
The resulting reporting project took a year, dozens of flights and thousands of interviews. At the top of the very first Forbes 400 list was Daniel K. Ludwig, a shipping magnate, estimated by the magazine to be worth more than $2 billion.
If you simply adjusted for inflation, that’s now at least $5.8 billion, a fortune that would land Ludwig in a seven-way tie for the 182nd spot on the last Forbes 400 list, alongside Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx; Gary Rollins, chief executive of Rollins, Inc., which owns several pest-control companies; and who could forget Peter Gassner, the head of a cloud-software company called Veeva. Fortunes at this tier hardly seem to merit media coverage anymore.
Indeed, one of the things that always surprises me about these lists is how anonymous most of the members are. Elon Musk, the current World’s Richest Man and the subject of Steven’s observation, is rightly a household name. For that matter, most have heard of Fred Smith and everyone has heard of FedEx. But neither Rollins nor Veeva ring a bell with me.
How can someone amass that kind of money in an enterprise that doesn’t even register with the public? I’m reminded of an old Chris Rock joke :*
In my neighborhood, there are four Black people. Hundreds of houses, four Black people. Who are these Black people? Well, there’s me, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and Eddie Murphy. Only Black people in the whole neighborhood. So let’s break it down, let’s break it down: me, I’m a decent comedian. I’m a’ight. Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the Earth. Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live. Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever, ever do it. Do you know what the White man who lives next door to me does for a living? He’s a f**king dentist! He ain’t the best dentist in the world…he ain’t going to the Dental Hall of Fame…he don’t get plaques for getting rid of plaque. He’s just a yank-your-tooth-out dentist. See, the Black man gotta fly to get to somethin’ the White man can walk to!
But I digress.
Almost everyone at the top of the list is easily recognizable for what they or an ancester did:
The process has become easier in one sense, because our access to information is so much better; and harder, because there are so many more billionaires. The 2022 World’s Billionaires list, for example, grew by 573 names compared with the last prepandemic list, in 2020. That year, the world was minting new billionaires at a rate, Forbes noted, of about one every 17 hours. At the top of the new list is Elon Musk, with an estimated net worth of $219 billion; behind him is Jeff Bezos, with $171 billion. From there, it goes like this: Bernard Arnault and family ($158 billion), Bill Gates ($129 billion), Warren Buffett ($118 billion), Larry Page ($111 billion), Sergey Brin ($107 billion), Larry Ellison ($106 billion), Steve Ballmer ($91.4 billion) and Mukesh Ambani ($90.7 billion), the richest man in Asia and, I confess, the highest-ranked person on the list I’d never heard of.
Not only are those numbers staggering but they’re volatile. Two years later, Musk’s wealth has reportedly almost doubled. He’ll make more money as I’m typing this sentence than I’ll make in my whole life—and I’m doing pretty well.
If you continue down, keeping your eyes on the Americans, most are familiar, names you know from the vast fortunes cast off by Silicon Valley, or Walmart (the wealthiest Walton heirs have around $65 billion each), or Nike ($47.3 billion), or divorcing Jeff Bezos ($43.6 billion), or living longer than Sheldon Adelson ($27.5 billion). But eventually, you start to encounter less-familiar names: Thomas Peterffy, who immigrated from communist Hungary and pioneered computerized stock trading (No. 80, $20.1 billion); Robert Pera, who founded something called Ubiquiti Networks and — this was fun to learn — went to the same state college that I did (No. 127, $14.6 billion); speaking of college, there’s Dustin Moskovitz, who was roommates at Harvard with another guy who had a cool idea for a social network (No. 167, $11.5 billion). Before long, you’re down with the Peter Gassners of the world, and there are a lot of them — America has some 735 billionaires now according to Forbes, collectively worth more than $4.7 trillion. A decade ago, Forbes counted only (“only”) 424. A decade before that, 243. They keep multiplying, and their collective wealth grows, even, or especially, as the rest of us fall behind.
Editorializing aside, the question is How? If someone earned $100 million a year—which is a lot!—it would take ten years to earn a billion and four thousand years to get to Musk’s number. And few people, indeed, can sustain that kind of income over four thousand years.
The NYT billionaires feature spends several paragraphs ranting about policy changes initiated during the Reagan administration, notably a huge cut in the top marginalized tax rate and the Fed’s prioritization of reining in inflation. While both doubtless help explain the accumulation of wealth in the United States, the fact that the explosion of the billionaire class is a global phenomenon suggests that Republican policies are not the chief explanation.
Regardless, this makes sense:
In his book “Ages of American Capitalism,” the University of Chicago historian Jonathan Levy describes the era of capitalism we live in as the Age of Chaos: a time in which capital has become more footloose, liquid and volatile, constantly flowing into and out of booms and busts, in contrast to the staid order — and widely shared prosperity — that characterized the industrial postwar economy.
[…]This shift to a highly financialized, postindustrial economy was helped along by the Reagan administration, which deregulated banking, cut the top income tax rate to 28 percent from 70 percent and took aim at organized labor — a political scapegoat for the sluggish, inflationary economy of the ’70s. Computer technology and the rise of the developing world would amplify and accelerate all these trends, turning the United States into a sort of frontal cortex for the globalizing economy. Just as important, the tech revolution created new ways for entrepreneurs to amass enormous fortunes: Software is by no means cheap to develop, but it requires fewer workers and less fixed investment, and can be reproduced and shipped around the world instantaneously and at practically no cost. Consider that the powerhouse of 20th-century capitalism, Ford Motors, now employs about 183,000 people and has a market capitalization close to $68 billion; Google employs about 156,000 people and has a market cap of around $1.8 trillion. This new economy would be run by, and for, knowledge workers, who would reap most of the gains, and therefore have more money to spend on services — a sector that would come to sort of, but never fully, replace the manufacturing this transformation did away with.
“During the Reagan years,” Levy writes, “something new and distinctive emerged that has persisted down to this day: a capitalism dominated by asset price appreciation.” That is, an economy in which the rising price of assets — stocks, bonds, real estate — would be, somewhat counterintuitively, a fuel for economic growth. It has been a good time, in other words, to own a lot of assets. And owning assets is mostly what billionaires do.
Whether a direct result of government policy or merely helped along by it, we simply have a radically different economic system. This isn’t new news, of course, but it does lead to the concentration of wealth.
In his book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the French economist Thomas Piketty notes that the new economic order has made it difficult for the superrich not to get richer: “Past a certain threshold,” he writes, “all large fortunes, whether inherited or entrepreneurial in origin, grow at extremely high rates, regardless of whether the owner of the fortune works or not.” He uses the examples of Bill Gates and Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune. Bettencourt “never worked a day in her life,” Piketty writes, but her fortune and Gates’s each grew by an annual rate of about 13 percent from 1990 to 2010. “Once a fortune is established, the capital grows according to a dynamic of its own,” Piketty notes, adding that bigger fortunes tend to grow faster — no matter how extravagant, their owners’ living expenses are still such a small proportion of the returns that even more is left over for reinvestment.
This isn’t shocking, of course. The Gates-Bettencourt illustration is a useful one. During all but the last two years of the period in question, Gates was the CEO of Microsoft. In that capacity, he generated a vast amount of wealth for the economy at large and has share of it, mostly in the form of Microsoft stock, while tiny as a percentage, was nonetheless enormous. An heiress, meanwhile, would earn the same return simply buying a ton of Microsoft stock in 1990 and holding on to it. In both cases, their wealth came from their money working, not their own labor.
Piketty was writing in 2013, while the economy was still recovering from the financial crisis of 2008. That recovery was buoyed by several years of near-zero interest rates, kept there by the Fed on the theory that, with credit widely available, the economy would regain its health. But low interest rates do two things: They push investors into riskier territory seeking better returns (and ideally creating jobs in the process); and they inflate the value of assets. Private equity and venture capital benefited greatly from this low-rate environment, helping both Silicon Valley and the financial engineers of Wall Street clean up once more. Even in less-dynamic sectors of the economy, the cheap money enabled an explosion in stock buybacks, some $6.3 trillion worth during the 2010s, or about 4 percent of our G.D.P. over the same period — more than we currently spend on defense. This, too, made asset owners richer.
The Trump years supercharged another bull market that would be supercharged again, paradoxically, by the Covid pandemic. When the Fed and Congress stepped in to prop up markets and assist the economy, they fueled yet another boom in asset prices — this time with more everyday Americans trying to get a piece of it, investing in everything from Tesla options to JPEGs of apes. The retail investors have seen winners and losers among them, while the billionaire class as a whole has absolutely flourished. Over the last five years, Jeff Bezos’ fortune has more than doubled; Elon Musk’s, fueled in part by retail investor exuberance, has grown by a factor of 20.
In fairness, 2019 was something of a trough year for Bezos, what with a $38 billion divorce settlement. That he’s managed to not only recoup that but significantly increase his pre-divorce net worth since is staggering.
But the more mundane cases are really more interesting than the famous ones.
I asked Dolan what her profile is of a billionaire whom she’d never find. She told me it’s someone who quietly sold a stake in a business for, say, $250 million in the ’90s, then invested it well. Today, a guy like that could use his wealth to do whatever he wanted: buy truckloads of Nazi memorabilia, try to persuade your mayor to privatize the city’s sewers or maybe both, and you’d be none the wiser. And in fact, he wouldn’t even have had to be all that smart with his money. If he parked $250 million in an S.&P. tracking index fund in 1992 and left it alone, he’d be worth more than $4 billion today. (Dolan cautioned that no one would be quite crazy enough to put all his money in the market; nevertheless.) He would have slipped through the billion-dollar barrier like an Olympic diver. And now he’s just a guy with an insane Schwab account, some interesting ideas about sewage treatment and the world’s largest collection of authentic Totenkopf rings.
The sneering tone notwithstanding, this re-emphasizes the key variable: having a large pile of money that can be left alone to grow into a massive pile of money while still enjoying a nice lifestyle. The quarter million in 1992 dollars would be worth $571 million in today’s money. But thirty years of compounded returns increases that seven-fold.
And, of course, the larger the pile the easier it is to increase it. If you have a few billion laying around, you can invest a few million in a couple hundred startups and, if even one of them makes it big, you come out ahead.
Here’s the top twenty on the Bloomberg billionaires list as of this writing:
Rather obviously, it’s dominated by people who call the United States home, including South Africa-born Musk. And almost all of the “new” money is in the technology sector (although, in fairness, Amazon started as, and in some ways still is, a retail company).
That Musk’s estimated net wealth has doubled this year—indeed, it has increased almost as much as Bezos’ total net worth—just boggles the mind.
That the three Waltons, all of whom inherited their money, are worth a combined $340 billion is noteworthy. Two others make the list at #40 (Lukas, at $39.6B) and #120 (Christy at a measly $18B).
Circling back to the subject of Steven’s post, it’s actually remarkable how few of these folks are front-and-center in American politics. Musk seems to have emerged in that role only in the closing weeks of the campaign. Charles Koch, the remaining living Koch brother, is ranked #22 ($65.8B) and has obviously been heavily influential for decades. But I recognize far more of them from their investments in professional sports than I do politics.
*There are multiple variants but this was the only one I could find a decent transcription of. The one I was looking for the punchline, “I had to host the Oscars to get that house — a black dentist in my neighborhood would have to invent teeth.”