SCARAMUCCI: Why is it so bad to be a billionaire

     

                                     

  Why is it so bad to be a billionaire?' Trump adviser mocks attacks on rich cabinet members: 'It's not like they have their money located in a swimming pool in $100 bills'

• Financier and Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said it's 'categorically unfair' to oppose rich cabinet members just because they're rich
• 'It's not like they have their money located in a swimming pool in $100 bills,' he said: 'Their money is actually in their businesses'
• Trump has appointed billionaires to lead the Treasury, Commerce and Education departments
• President Obama has also had wealthy Americans in his cabinet, including super-rich Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker
• President Eisenhower's rich cabinet because known as 'nine millionaires and a plumber'

A top Donald Trump adviser told reporters on Friday that he has heard enough of 'categorically unfair' sniping aimed at billionaires tapped for key positions in the coming administration.

SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said in the lobby of Trump Tower that Americans who 'have been able to amass that kind of wealth' are 'super talented, or in what the president-elect says, they're actually "killers".' 

What you'll find about some of the nation's billionaires – it's not like they have their money located in a swimming pool in $100 bills,' he said. 

'Their money is actually in their businesses, they're in the capital accounts, the capital equipment structure of their businesses and they're putting people to work in those businesses.'

Anti-Trump lawmakers in Washington wasted no time complaining after the president-elect announced this week that he would make former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin his treasury secretary, and chose investment guru Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department. 

'I'm not shocked by this,' said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a reliable voice on the Democratic Party's far left wing. 

'It's a billionaire president being surrounded by a billionaire and millionaire cabinet, with a billionaire agenda ... to hurt the middle class. The appointments suggest that he's going to break his campaign promises,' Brown said in a statement on Wednesday. 

This 'demonization of success' is part of what Trump is pushing against, Scaramucci said Friday, praising the 'super successful' people Trump has decided on.

They also include future education secretary Betsy DeVos, who married into the multibillion-dollar Amway fortune; and Ameritrade scion Todd Ricketts, who co-owns the championship Chicago Cubs. 

'We want super bright people. We want super bright academics. We want super bright military experts. We want super bright people along a whole cross section of the economy, diplomats et cetera,' Scaramucci told reporters.

'I really want to push back very strongly on this whole billionaire criticism. Why is it so bad to be a billionaire, okay?'

Lewandowski: Trump has already accomplished more than 'Obama has done in the past 4 years'

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager says the president-elect has already accomplished more in the month since his election than President Obama has in the last four years.

“Donald Trump, in the first four weeks of his presidency, has done more to help this country than I think Barack Obama has done in the last four years,” Corey Lewandowski said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday.

Lewandowski, an informal Trump adviser expected to join his administration, said Trump has a shown a stronger “commitment” to the U.S. military and American businesses than the Obama administration’s second term by vowing “to reduce the amount of government regulations so they can continue to grow” at a rate higher than the current economy.

“His presidency is summed up in two words: America first,” Lewandowski said. “I love it.”

At an event at Carrier Corporation in Indianapolis last week, Trump touted his ability to broker a deal that he said would keep 1,100 factory jobs from being moved to Mexico.

“Those are hard-working Americans who are going to be able to keep their jobs here and have a great Christmas,” Lewandowski said. “You can say again, ‘Merry Christmas,’ because Donald Trump is now the president. You can say it again. It’s OK to say, it’s not a pejorative word anymore.”

But according the United Steelworkers’ union, workers at the plant were informed that Trump’s deal with Carrier will save 730 positions, while more than 550 are still being moving to Monterrey, Mexico.

“He got up there, and, for whatever reason, lied his ass off,” Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers 1999, which represents Carrier employees, told the Washington Post. “I almost threw up in my mouth.”

On Tuesday, Trump took credit for Japan-based SoftBank’s $50 billion investment in U.S. startups after a meeting with Masayoshi Son, the company’s chief executive, at Trump Tower.

“Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs,” the president-elect tweeted. “Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!”

But according to Bloomberg, SoftBan and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund unveiled a good portion of the venture before the Nov. 8 election.

No matter.

“Donald Trump is a businessman,” Lewandowski said. “Fifty billion dollars and 50,000 jobs in the first four weeks? We continue down this path, we’re going to have to have an increase in immigration to fill up all these jobs.”

The Fake News Conundrum and Facebook

         

                                              The spread of fake news on Facebook became a focal point of discussion after Donald Trump was elected president, drawing comments from the likes of President Obama, and had Hillary won the presidency, the hypocrite and the stuck up-for-Hillary-media, would have not only ignored fake-news, but it would have had upheld them.

A Twitter cofounder nailed the scope of Facebook's 'fake news' problem with one screenshot

On Tuesday, Twitter cofounder Ev Williams neatly pointed out how big Facebook's fake-news problem is with one screenshot.

Williams was reading Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's November 18 Facebook post, which updated the world on Facebook's progress and goals in tackling the spreading of fake news, when he noticed some suspicious posts on the side. Both turned out to be fake news.
Here is the screen shot:

"Despite appearances, the first one doesn't point to espn.com," Williams wrote in a Medium post. "It goes to espn.com-magazine.online and attempts to sell a muscle-building supplement using ESPN branding and a fake news story. The CNN-branded ad goes to less work. It just takes you to a site called Fine the Racers with an exclusive offer for a 12-week program to strengthen your toes. 

Though Facebook has already pledged to ban fake-news sites from its ad network, both of the posts that Williams highlighted were ads.
But, they do. 

"We do not integrate or display ads in apps or sites containing content that is illegal, misleading or deceptive, which includes fake news," Facebook said in a statement to Reuters on November 15.

The spread of fake news on Facebook became a focal point of discussion after Donald Trump was elected president, drawing comments from the likes of President Obama. A recent 46 by BuzzFeedshow showed that in the lead-up to the election, the top fake-news stories on Facebook outperformed legitimate news stories shared by some of the most popular media companies. One fake-news writer even said

 he thought he might have helped Trump win the election.

Facebook has said it's working on fixing the problem. Zuckerberg wrote on Friday (in the post cited by Williams) a few things that Facebook was working on to try to combat fake news. Here's a summary:

• Stronger detection: better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.
• Making it much easier for people to report stories as fake to catch more misinformation faster.
• Third-party verification via "respected fact-checking organizations."
• Warnings: labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties and the Facebook community, and showing warnings when people read or share them.
• Working with journalists and others in the news industry to get input and better understand their fact-checking systems and learn from them.

But it seems that Facebook has a long way to go.

Williams does have a bit of a bias here, however, as he founded both Medium, a publishing platform that in some ways competes with Facebook, and cofounded Twitter. But his point is certainly still well-taken.