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Musk's Greed: A Poster Child For Wealth Taxes
AND SPECIAL! Alito's "Tell" Told You Trump Will Lose The Tariff Case
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Why You Might Want To Read This: One Trillion Dollars. For One Man. Elon Musk is the poster child for a state-based wealth tax campaign—what I’ve been arguing for almost a year is an entirely winnable state-by-state ballot initiative effort throughout the country, including in so-called “red states”. The people will gobble it up. And it will lend a boost to Zohran Mamdani.
AND SPECIAL: I’m deeply immersed in this tariff issue so for folks who care about the big tariff fight, I’ve added a twist on the Supreme Court case that you won’t read elsewhere, which explains Trump will lose bigly…you can jump down below if you choose…
You could not conjure up a better farce if you, or Marie Antoinette, tried: millions of people are without homes, people are going hungry, health care costs are skyrocketing, folks can’t pay their bills or get a job that pays a real wage. And, yet, this obscenity can happen in clear daylight:
Tesla boss Elon Musk has had a record-breaking pay package that could be worth nearly $1tn (£760bn) approved by shareholders.
The unprecedented deal was approved by 75% of votes and drew huge applause from the audience at the firm’s annual general meeting on Thursday.
Musk, who is already the world’s richest man, must drastically raise the electric car firm’s market value over 10 years. If he does this and meets various targets, he will be rewarded with hundreds of millions of new shares.
The scale of the potential pay has drawn criticism, but the Tesla board argued that Musk might leave the company if it was not approved - and that it could not afford to lose him.
This travesty (which, talk about gross, people applauded???) happens, obviously, because of the power of corporations and the endemic corruption that is woven into the daily structure of this rob-the-people system.
But, in this unadulterated greedy act, Musk is an absolute economic and organizing gift to a state-based wealth tax campaign.
Which, as I wrote in the recent 3-part series, would actually bring in billions of dollars to meet the needs of people and every community, and *slightly* reshape the massive gap between rich and poor.
AND
Do what so many of voices in the chattering political classes say is lacking: talking to working class people. Or frankly just about any person who isn’t rich.
I’ll lay odds right here that each and every state-based wealth tax initiative—set at a very modest 2 percent tax for anyone with $30 million and up—would pass with the support of a wide spectrum of the electorate.
Musk is the poster boy—a symbol of the $30 million-and-up crowd who now sit on $38.8 trillion in wealth.
This is low-hanging fruit.
There are no arguments against a state-based wealth tax that hold any water, nor would any argument floated out by the very wealthy match the gut potency of the skanky “let-them-eat-cake” odor of Musk’s trillion-dollar pay day.
And here’s how a relentless wealth tax campaign helps Mamdani: Endless social media posts celebrating the election victory of Zohran Mamdani are not going to help him persuade New York’s governor, or the New York state legislature, to sign off on raising taxes to pay for the great agenda Mamdani is advocating.
A reminder: New York City does not have “home rule” (a consequence of the 1970s financial crisis). Which means the city cannot, on its own, raise the kinds of taxes on the greedy rich needed for Mamdani’s agenda. It needs the state political apparatus to agree—an apparatus that is...well, hell, Cuomo *was* elected governor back in the day. Enough said.
What would be immensely helpful to Mamdani is to be able to march up to Albany and stride into the legislative chambers with the backdrop of a national chorus of full-throated wealth tax campaigns in every one of the 26 states with a ballot initiative/referendum process.
And even if one or more of those state-based wealth tax efforts falls short, I can almost guarantee that the public campaign will pave the way for future wins in the electoral arena—especially, in cities—for candidates who are ready to battle the very wealthy.
And, now, for your tariff fix!
Way back in March I wrote about the malignant narcissist in the White House’s idiotic tariff spasm. To be sure, unvarnished cruelty seems mostly to be the point of virtually every policy cascading from this gang. But, the whole tariff debacle offers another lesson: the sheer ignorance and incompetence of a four-time bankrupt “businessman”, and the utter amoral makeup of all the sycophants who, as long as they have power and can stuff their pockets with cash, march merrily along like lemmings headed for a cliff.
Here’s your evidence. The folks, and their supporters (via a raft of amici briefs), that brought the Supreme Court case challenging the tariffs, Learning Resources, Inc v. Trump, were not left-wingers or unions but business interests. Essentially, their argument was that the tariffs were illegally imposed using something called the”International Emergency Economic Powers Act”, or IEEPA.
I listened to the entire oral argument. You might have read various media reports about the argument, mostly repeating the same points.
Those reports missed the exchange below between Samuel Alito and Neal Katyal, who was representing the small businesses (and is a former Deputy Solicitor General under Obama), which jumped out at me at the moment in happened because it was quite telling.
A few prep notes to set the stage:
Alito is, and has always been, the most dangerous, single-minded ideologically-motivated of the whole conservative wing. He cares very little about the Constitution when that troublesome document gets in the way of his personal agenda to push the so-called “unitary executive” theory and his desire to impose his illiberal, wing-nut, fundamentalist vision on the country;
In addition to the acronym IEEPA, “MFN” below refers to “Most Favored Nation” status, a designation within the trade law regimes—you don’t have to know much about that right here, so, chill :) ;
Sections 338, 301 and 252 are also part of the trade legal system—but you don’t have to know those, either, for the purposes of this particular discussion.
OK, so:
JUSTICE ALITO: You mentioned other tariff provisions that you think would be rendered redundant if we adopted the government’s interpretation of IEEPA. One that you didn’t mention, which is discussed in an amicus brief, is Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. Why doesn’t the plain language of that provision, which does speak specifically about duties, provide a basis for all or virtually all of the tariffs that are at issue here?
MR. KATYAL: Yeah. The government’s never made that argument, Justice Alito, and I think for very good reason, because it only applies to MFN violations, which are not at issue here. You can only tariff if the President “finds as a fact that a country satisfies two conditions, including that it discriminates against the United States.” There are all sorts of hosts of other reasons why Section 338 may have lapsed and that’s why no President has ever used it. But, look, we are --
JUSTICE ALITO: What is the -- what is the argument that it’s lapsed? It’s -- it’s regrettable -- I mean, we put this case on a very expedited schedule and, therefore, there are limitations on what -- and the parties’ ability to answer each other’s arguments or arguments that are made by amici. The -- the amicus brief says that it hasn’t lapsed. There are articles that say it hasn’t lapsed. What is your argument -- what is the basis for your argument that it lapsed?
MR. KATYAL: So two things, Justice Alito. Sections 252 and 301 have been understood by many to have superseded Section 338. And, second, I don’t think you have to get into this issue at all. We’re not here saying that the government doesn’t have a 330 -- 338 power. That’s something that can be decided by other courts at other times. As these folks come to the Court, as the government comes to the Court today, they’re citing one statute and one statute only, IEEPA, and we submit to you it doesn’t come even close to authorizing these worldwide tariffs that they’re seeking today.
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, what if the President tomorrow were to say, I’m reissuing these executives orders and -- and I’m invoking, in addition to other authorities, Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930?
MR. KATYAL: So I think, at that point, we’d have that case. I mean, I’m not here to say that 338 does or doesn’t do one thing. I’m responding to the government’s argument, which is the invocation of IEEPA and IEEPA alone. But perhaps that point, Justice Alito, may give them some comfort --
JUSTICE ALITO: So then, I -- I -- I mean, I understand party presentation and -- and all of that and not being a court of first view, but, in these circumstances, if that were to happen and it might be a realistic possibility, you think, well, okay, then the government would continue to try to collect these tariffs and the plaintiffs here would have to go back to the Court of International Trade or the district court and challenge it again, and it would have to progress through those lower courts and come back to us when, a year from now, six months from now, while the tariffs continue to be collected and the amount that’s at stake amounts into the billions? I mean, what are we at now? A hundred billion? We get up to -- up to a trillion? That’s what you’re suggesting?
MR. KATYAL: So, Justice Alito, I think a few things. One is I think it’s rich for the government to be making this argument about the refunds undermining us because they opposed a preliminary injunction in this case by saying, oh, don’t worry, we’ll give the refunds later and they sought a stay in the Federal Circuit on exactly that ground, which was you don’t need to do -- you don’t need to implement the Federal Circuit’s decision because we’ll give the refunds later on. And now they’re suggesting that the reason it’s too late --
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, that really wasn’t -- that wasn’t my question, Mr. Katyal. The question was whether it would make more sense for us to address that if that is a possible justification for these tariffs, for us to address that now and get it over with rather than having this continue for who knows how long while it goes through the -- through the procedures in the lower courts.
The bolded part above is the key. Alito was reading the room, and could see that at least two, and perhaps three, of the conservative Justices were very skeptical about Trump’s reliance on IEEPA (in short, because tariffs raise revenue, which is Congress’ role)
So, Alito tried to change the subject.
He suggested the Court focus on and rule on, instead, sections of the law that were not even part of the pending case.
Even more implausibly, and really improperly, he suggested the Court short-circuit the almost universal acceptable legal process of a case reaching the Court only after winding its way through lower courts.
It was an absurd suggestion, though, in line with my point above that Alito cares not a wit about the Constitution or precedent. But, it is, 100%, the “tell” that Trump will lose the case. (ok, fair enough, 95 percent because no one can stand certainty when it comes to predicting a Supreme Court decision based on the oral argument)
Last point: the tariff cluster-fuck is your Exhibit #1 of the complete incompetence, and manic insecurity that underpins the need to act like an authoritarian, of this malignant narcissist. He had all the normal tools at hand to impose tariffs, including authority granted to the U.S. Trade Representative (that’s the Section 301 power, for example)—but those tools demand “regular “order” and some process.
But, instead, in the now familiar pattern of acting irrationally, he bungled (by using IEEPA). I suspect that once the Supreme Court slaps him down, and as companies rush to demand from the U.S. Treasury refunds on the paid tariffs, one or two pro-corporate voices will, while changing his diaper, explain to the novices how to get done what they wanted to do in the first place.
Daybreak on the land
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