You see there are two tiers of justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor. The rich skate while the poor plea bargain and go to jail.
And everybody knows it.
It's not like this paradigm has been hidden. That's what the O.J. Simpson trial was all about. Forget whether he did it, the Black man has been treated unfairly by the justice system, and Simpson's acquittal was pushback.
But both of them were guilty.
And O.J. is about race as opposed to money. He had the best defense money could buy. Which ran circles around the prosecution. Hell, Elizabeth Holmes had the best defense money could buy and she didn't even have to pay for it! Yes, an insurance policy delivered her defense. Does your employer have such a policy for you? I highly doubt it.
Now if you read all the press, the analysis has been what the effect of Holmes's conviction will have on behavior in the tech world, in Silicon Valley, BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT! That just demonstrates the myopic elitism that has people voting for Trump. Do you know what it means to be a member of the underclass today? And just about every American is a member of such group. And it's not only about money, it's about power, it's about being in control of your own destiny. It's been disheartening.
Let's see, the banks blow up the economy and no one goes to jail. But it gets even worse, these same banks are rescued by the government by one of their own on the inside, Timothy Geithner. It'd be like having a member of the gang as judge when you come up for trial. Imagine that!
And it wasn't only 2008, it was Covid too. If you were a member of the underclass you had to go to work, expose yourself to Covid, and this was before vaccines were available, Worst offenders? Meat-packing plants and Amazon warehouses. Which paid poorly for work done under heinous conditions by people who couldn't afford to quit. Meanwhile, those with a desk job could work safely from home, and while the government helped out some of the underclass financially, that paled in comparison to all the bread made by the truly rich. Imagine that, profiting from a disaster! But it's not only Covid, but Afghanistan, the rest of the Middle East wars. Forget whether we won or lost, the truth is the contractors made a fortune. But building infrastructure overseas is not as sexy as TikTok, so almost no one one knows. And if you think these contracts are open, fair bids, you also think American executives never bribe foreign officials to smooth business operations in their countries. Hell, the OLYMPICS is a hotbed of illegality. You want the games, you've got to bribe the officials!
And for a while there, being a tech entrepreneur was the new American game. Popularized everywhere. Hell, that's the genesis of "Shark Tank"...how do you think those sharks made all that money? And the show is never canceled because there are an endless number of people creating in their backyard trying to get rich, it's easier than working for the company that has no investment in your future and will fire your ass.
And for a while there, Elizabeth Holmes was the poster child for tech entrepreneurship.
Now here's where it gets dicey, when I talk about sex. After all, so much of the blowback about this trial and its conviction centers on the fact that Holmes is a woman. But the truth is the conventional venture capitalists in Silicon Valley wouldn't give her any bread. No, her investments were made by dirty old men reeled in by an attractive young woman. And there's nothing wrong with that, but Elizabeth Holmes knew exactly what she was doing. When confronted by an employee of the fraud at Theranos, Holmes said...I'M TOO PRETTY TO GO TO JAIL!
That's a quote.
And that's another reason we want her behind bars. No one is above the law. Except when they are. Like Trump and his cronies. I mean we live in a banana republic. Roger Stone is convicted for helping Trump get elected and then is pardoned by Donald Trump. This looks bad on the surface, forget the details. And let's not even mention Steve Bannon.
And Holmes has shown no remorse. Zero. Even worse, she and her team fought the truth every step along the way. She hired David Boies and his impeccable reputation to intimidate John Carreyrou and the "Wall Street Journal" from publishing the truth. They tried to get Tyler Shultz, one of the two main whistleblowers, to sign a document shutting him up. And with this and the Weinstein scandal, Boies's reputation has taken a hit, then again, this is just the kind of representation bad actors desire.
So Holmes is awaiting trial and...
She's living a life of glory. With a rich boyfriend in a big house with a new baby. She runs into old Theranos employees at lunch and wants to converse like nothing has happened. Meanwhile, their tours at the company impacted their careers, negatively, and no one is rescuing them.
So it's this hubris that drives the public wild. Like Elizabeth Holmes is better than us, that she's above the law. And I've got to tell you, if you're playing the home game, it's hard not to feel this is American reality. If you're rich and connected you live a completely different life, not only in lifestyle, but when it comes to laws. WE WANT A CORRECTION!
As for her abuse by her boyfriend...this is like 1/6. We can see the video of the insurrection, but they tell us what's on the screen is not truthful. That these were heroes quietly protesting. And if you don't believe that, it was Antifa. And if you don't believe that, we'll come up with another cockamamie explanation. Because facts are fungible, there are multiple truths, isn't that what Kellyanne Conway said when she spoke about alternative facts? Meanwhile, Kellyanne had to quit the Trump administration to save her marriage and her family. Then again, Trump has been married three times with children by each wife. Once again, if you've got enough money the rules don't apply to you. AND TRUMP IS PROUD OF THIS! Being duplicitous and not paying taxes. As for Elizabeth Holmes, the boss with ultimate power, the buck stopping with her, being held back by a boyfriend underling...next we're gonna hear from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos that their wives caused their philandering, caused their divorces, that all their bad behavior was attributable to their spouses!
So you watch the game and it's much more interesting than sports. Then again, we've got Formula 1, which rigged its seasonal championship so Lewis Hamilton wouldn't win once more, to make the sport look more competitive. I don't know if I can watch anymore, Formula 1's credibility has been sacrificed. Then again, Formula 1 is no longer owned by racing fanatics but Liberty, which is interested foremost in dollars, not rules. This would be like moving the fences a few hundred feet back while Babe Ruth's ball was in the air so he would hot hit a home run. This would be like the Babe hitting it over the fence between the foul poles and calling it foul instead of fair, making up the rules on the fly to make it a more competitive game.
Everything is done for the money and there's no fairness. Colin Kaepernick is an American hero but he's banned from playing in the NFL by rich old white men. They're taking away his right to earn a living. But racism is the scourge of America. That's right, when the Black underclass revolts against senseless murder it's equivalent to trying to topple the government. That's what white people who watch Fox believe. There's just no truth I tell you.
As for Silicon Valley...OF COURSE this will have a chilling effect on lying/obfuscation/fraud. To say otherwise is also hubris, working the refs. Believe me, the "Blurred Lines" decision had a chilling effect on music creation. But you create a take, stand with your brethren and push it down people's throats.
But Elizabeth Holmes has a BABY!
Yeah, right. If you knew you were possibly going to jail you wouldn't remove your IUD, thinking about the potential child first and foremost. It's hard not to see the pregnancy as a cynical effort to sway the jury and reduce the term of any potential sentence.
And then Holmes takes the stand and paints an alternative universe of Theranos.
And it's not like Holmes is some unknown tech insider. If you paid even minimal attention to the press...she was all over it, LAUDED, making you wonder about the veracity of what you read, maybe all those heroes paraded in front of our eyes are actually zeros.
And it's not like she turned down Harvard when they made her a member of the Board of Fellows of their medical school. And when corporations did not give her the pass/contract she wanted, she just used their logos anyway, she faked it. As she did by constantly saying the army was using Theranos's systems.
Used to be honor and morality were paramount. But now if you're accused of something you deny it and fight it, you don't own up to your faux pas unless you're an entertainer, who goes to rehab to try and salvage their career.
And today it looks like the Supreme Court will invalidate vaccine mandates.
Read about that antivax 46 year old lawyer in Orange County, the Republican doyenne? She didn't get vaccinated and she died. Meanwhile, the sick believe they can just get antibodies or a pill if they get Covid when the truth is the supply is so minimal that the treatments are essentially unavailable. Even worse, in the triage, if you got three shots you go to the back of the line, irrelevant of your comorbidities. Meanwhile, those who spurned the shot and got really sick are getting your treatment instead.
I'm just telling you the truth here. And the truth is I'm happy Elizabeth Holmes got convicted, joyous in fact. I don't like seeing someone's life ruined, but think of all the lives and fortunes she ruined! She's got to serve time, enough to hurt. Not like the brief terms of Lori Loughlin and the rest of the college admission manipulators.
Then again, Loughlin has become a pariah, she can't work, especially not in the wholesome movie field that was her bread and butter. The producers are afraid of the public reaction. But once again, that's entertainment, the opiate of the masses, the bread and circuses they consume while the people who run this world play by different rules and go unpunished.
Finally, someone has hit the wall. Finally, there is justice. And it's got nothing to do with the fact that she's a woman. She broke the law, her sex is irrelevant!
As for her appeal... The public doesn't realize that an appeal is not a complete retrial, it looks for errors in the original trial, and if there were none, the appeal is denied. But who knows, Holmes may stay out of jail until her kid goes to college, while she has another one or two along the way. Delay, delay, delay. When she could just bite the bullet, go to jail right now and serve her sentence, get out and have a life.
And who could live with the prospect of jail over their head?
Elizabeth Holmes and the rest of the delusional bad actors who think the rules don't apply to them...
BUT THIS TIME THEY DID!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
-- powered by phpList, www.phplist.com --
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.