I feel defeated. I was brought up in a world where you were told to jump through the hoops, work hard and you'll end up with a modicum of accoutrements, more than satisfied. As for the rich, they were people who did something extraordinary, like entertainers. And rich was relative. It's one thing to be a millionaire, quite another to be a BILLIONAIRE! How is the average person supposed to earn a billion dollars? Rob a bank?
Well, that's one way, you can work on Wall Street, employing financial shenanigans that the average person cannot comprehend, that paid-off elected officials keep trying to remove the guardrails from. Yes, we've been told to let the market be free, that it will police itself. HUH? It colludes with itself!
Kind of like CEO salaries. I mean if you started the company, if you own the company, you're entitled to untold riches. But Michael Eisner didn't even start at Disney, and by time he retired he was the company's largest shareholder. How does that happen?
In a way that that the average person going to Disneyland has no understanding of.
So right now we're seeing Elon Musk self-immolate, light a match to $44 billion. I'm loving it. As for the loss of Twitter... It won't happen, and even if it did, if people really need to communicate in short bursts of words another platform will arise. Then again, never underestimate the power of the individual. Donald Trump single-handedly put a dent in democracy. Everybody believed in the sanctity of elections, now nearly half of the population does not. And yes, Musk did a good job at Tesla, then...
For a top-notch automobile he could never improve the interior, the appointments, Teslas are upscale vehicles, and upscale customers expect more. And Musk kept telling us his self-driving technology worked, when it turns out he put the kibosh on lidar and went solely with cameras. All evidence says Tesla's system doesn't work, that it's not roadworthy. So, Musk is leaving the door open for the usual suspect car manufacturers to catch up and supersede him.
And yes, SpaceX appears to be a phenomenon.
But why are we all convinced that if you succeed in one vertical, you're an expert in another?
You want to work for yourself, you want to put in 120 hours burning the midnight oil... Fine, but just don't expect others to. They don't care that much, there's not enough of an upside. And one thing about the market crash of the past year... All these techies, a bunch who are now getting laid off, have stock options that are underwater, i.e. WORTHLESS! Yes, that's the dream. You get paid in stock and you too become rich. Well, they'll adjust the strike point for the CEO, but not the rank and file.
Once again, there are two different worlds.
There's a club, and you ain't in it.
Not only do you have to be rich, you have to know people.
Cory Booker and the Stanfordites filing letters of recommendation to the court? God, these same people would write letters in support of Jeffrey Epstein! You defend your friends, irrelevant of what they do. And most people just don't have friends like that. They've got nothing to trade, so they're left out. Get arrested and you're going to JAIL!
Then again, there's a good chance there's footage. If you watch streaming TV crime shows you know there's a camera almost everywhere these days, your crime has been recorded. But if a CEO tells his CFO to do something, or if the CFO acts based on prior instructions, there's plausible deniability. Yes, it's damn hard to convict people. Even if you've got a ton of evidence.
And these criminals hire David Boies, who was doing Harvey Weinstein's dirty work, to intimidate truth-tellers. That's the key element in John Carreyrou's Theranos book. Boies and team, yes there's intimidation in numbers, came into the "Wall Street Journal" offices to try and get the story told their way, if at all, which was totally false. I'm going to let you in on something, most people can't handle the pressure. That old axiom "You'll never work in this town again."? That's much more true than untrue. Sure, we hear about the people who bucked the system, but most people were silenced and squeezed out, or now owe fealty to bad actors.
Yes, I spent four years in college. I've got a diploma. When did it become a badge of honor to drop out? And when did the arts and humanities get such a bad rap? When I went to college it was never about getting a job, never ever, it was about LEARNING! But now college is seen as a glorified trade school. As for the cost... Word is finally getting out, it's NEGOTIABLE! Almost nobody pays list price. Yes, college is run like a business, whereas it used to be seen as separate, with its ivy-covered walls.
Everything is a business, everybody wants to get rich. Check out how much a firefighter makes. It's the overtime that bumps their salary. And I'm not saying we don't need firefighters, but I will say teachers don't get overtime. And as a matter of fact, the private schools that keep being promoted as part of school choice usually pay their teachers even LESS!
I could go on and on, but I won't. I'm just saying it's every person for themselves in America today. You feel like nobody is on your side, everybody's expendable. And if you play by the rules, you're a chump. It's one thing to break through archaic rules as you disrupt an industry into the future, but that's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is people who take shortcuts, who think the rules don't apply to them.
That "Wall Street Journal" article about Elizabeth Holmes was printed back in 2015, over seven years ago. And what has happened since then? Holmes has been living the life of Riley. Yes, click on this link, it's free: on.wsj.com/3gnm6xx Scroll down to see the pictures Holmes's significant other sent to the court to show what a good person she is, that she deserves leniency. You see Holmes in Park City... It looks like nobody in these pictures works, they're gallivanting all over the country, willy-nilly, as if Holmes was a perfect specimen of society, bedrock. I mean only a rich prick like Billy Evans could be so tone-deaf as to not realize these pictures make Holmes look anything but remorseful.
And Holmes never expressed a speck of remorse until sentencing. She doesn't care about those she ripped-off, she just wants a lighter sentence, she and her lawyers will say anything to try and achieve this.
But this time it didn't work.
Oh, she's going to appeal and the wheels of justice move so slowly that her kids may be out of college before she goes behind bars, laughing all the while. Holmes is making a mockery of the system. If only she were like Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, who ultimately owned up to his bad behavior and paid the price. Holmes could have pled guilty, she could stop all these high-priced appeals, she could ask to be put in prison right now!
And I don't care if she only serves a year. As long as she thinks she's going to serve eleven plus. Holmes has got to pay the price.
As for it being sexist... Come on, look at the top of the same "Wall Street Journal" article posted above, can you say ENRON? Men have gone to jail for fraud for over a decade!
And fraud it was. What kind of person acts like this, FOR YEARS! You wouldn't, I wouldn't, but Holmes believed she was above it all, as she famously said, "I'm too pretty to go to jail."
No one is too pretty to go to jail.
And it's not only Holmes, Trump has to be convicted too. And spend some time in jail, if even only a day. Because you can't poke our eyes with your illegal b.s. and get away with it. If Holmes doesn't go to jail, and if Trump isn't convicted, why should anybody do the right thing?
I'm here to tell you, they're not. Let's start with phishing schemes, it's not all Russians. Unless people pay consequences behavior is legitimized. Which is why we're still feeling the aftereffects of Wall Street skating after destroying the economy back in 2008.
And whenever we catch someone, shine the light upon them, they always blow back, tell us we don't know, when in truth we do, because we were brought up right, we know the difference between right and wrong.
But if you can't put food on the table, or if you keep being exposed to the lifestyles of the rich and bogus, you too are going to get frustrated, you too are going to want your piece of the pie.
I want to see Elizabeth Holmes wipe that s..t-eating grin off her face. I want to see her scared to the bone. I want to see her begging for mercy. I want her to see that she did a bad bad thing, which she most certainly did. Come on, incorrect medical test results, knowingly? I can barely think of anything worse than that, it's truly life and death.
And we live and we die and nothing seems to change. Money talks, and the rest of us walk. And just because you have money that does not make you a good person, oftentimes just the opposite. But in our world, money is everything. The goal isn't to become an artist, but someone with a musical profile who can turn themselves into a brand.
Let's even talk about the Kardashians... I don't care how much money they have, if I was washed up on a desert island with them I'd kill myself. Because what would there be to say? That's why you go to college, to hear other opinions in the dorm, to learn not only facts, but how to analyze. There is very little black and white in this world, almost everything merits discussion, but if you're uneducated and ignorant this cannot be done. Even worse, those in charge want their constituents ignorant, they're more easily molded.
No, Elizabeth Holmes, you're not better than the rest of us, YOU'RE WORSE! In the interim you could have volunteered, given back, but NO! as John Belushi famously said, that's below you.
I hope to see you cleaning toilets soon.
Even better, I hope to stop reading about you in the press.
But I don't want you to be forgotten, I want you to be a lesson to both the citizens of today and those of tomorrow, teaching us that there are rules in society, and you break them at your peril. Furthermore, life is not solely about lifestyle, it's what's inside that truly counts. And Elizabeth Holmes, you're rotten to the core. Call me Crabby Appleton, I don't mind being the voice of reason in this era of groupthink, where no one ever blows the whistle on anybody else. That's right Holmes, the judge blew the whistle on you, get off the court, go straight to the locker room, jail, YOUR ROOM and don't come out until you've thought long and hard about what you've done and how you're going to repay society. Theoretically you can rehabilitate yourself, even Chuck Colson did. Best to start NOW!
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