Gavin Newsom’s Giant Ponzi Scheme

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Gavin Newsom’s Giant Ponzi Scheme

California’s Con Man in Chief rips off American taxpayers while crushing small businesses to pay the state’s supersized population of scammers

A scheme too obscenely corrupt for his own party to stomach

Let them eat Gruel

By Leighton Woodhouse

Last November, the celebrity chef and restaurateur Andrew Gruel got a call from his wife, who manages parts of his business. There was an issue with their payroll taxes: They were $2,000 more than the couple had expected. Getting billed for thousands of dollars, without explanation, understandably alarmed the chef. So Gruel called their payroll company to find out what had happened. What he was told provoked him into posting a tweet that went viral the following day. “California has a budget shortfall,” his tweet explained, “and the federal government wants money back that it lent California for UI that it ‘lost.’ They are making up for it by having business owners pay it.” When Elon Musk commented with his signature one-word boost — “Really?” — Gruel replied, “Yup, state defaulted on their loan and the businesses were the co-signers (unknowingly).” In other words: During a time when California’s small businesses had already been decimated by debt they’d incurred because of COVID …

Jeremiad

Good Riddance to Shepard Fairey’s Awful ‘Hope’ Posters

How André the Giant became Barack Obama

Laughing at ‘Hope’ made you an asshole

The message of both posters was actually the same: OBEY

By David Jager

The Obama “Hope” Poster, probably the most iconic image from American politics of the last thirty years, is also the most famous work by artist Shepard Fairey. In it, a photograph taken from an Obama press junket was restyled into Fairey’s signature graphic style, forged through his early years as a creator of iconic stickers and stencils for skateboards and T-shirts. Heavily reworked and flattened into bold colors, it reframed Obama as an icon of new leadership, marked by the single fat, sans-serif word: Hope. Once it became officially embraced by the Obama campaign, the image emerged as an emblem of his presidential run and an icon of Democratic Party progressivism. It gave the campaign a grassroots life, eventually becoming its de facto symbol. After his victory, Obama thanked Fairey directly in a letter. This wasn’t Fairey’s first foray into viral imagery. He had initially generated underground buzz when he had colonized the streets of Chicago years earlier with decals featuring …

Gavin Newsom’s Giant Ponzi Scheme

Critic's Corner

Good Riddance to Shepard Fairey’s Awful ‘Hope’ Posters