Just One Thing - Musk gets Twitter
I didn't think Elon Musk would get control of Twitter, but he did...at his price and at incredible speed. We'll talk a little more about it on the show but as I said on Monday the deal represents an admission by the current Board of Directors that Twitter's future, at least without Musk, was somewhere between mediocre and bleak.
Musk's prior statement of his overarching view of the valid purpose of social media was repeated in Twitter's press release about the consummated deal
Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html
As far as the future of "content moderation" aka censorship, we know that Musk will be the most pro-free-speech owner of a major social media platform (though some of the smaller platforms may remain even less restrictive of whatever Musk's policies end up restricting.) A week ago, Musk tweeted, "A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy."
And the guy whom a daft Axios writer said was acting like a supervillain also had this: "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means"
Some good analysis here: Elon Musk buys Twitter - by Casey Newton - Platformer
Donald Trump says he won't go back to Twitter. He's probably lying. He's trying to maintain some value in his Truth Social venture, but I think that company will be darned close to worthless fairly soon and most conservatives will come back to Twitter, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson's simple message on Monday:
Today's Interesting Guests
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) joins us for a little reminiscing about his friend, former Senator Orrin Hatch, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 88. I hadn't realized that Hatch was the longest-serving Republican in the history of the US Senate (and 6th-longest serving senator overall since it seems like Dems enjoy wearing out their welcomes.) Mike has a new book coming out (in early June) about protecting the integrity of the Supreme Court. You can preorder it here: Saving Nine: The Fight Against the Left’s Audacious Plan to Pack the Supreme Court and Destroy American Liberty
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Author Don Bentley returns to the show to talk about his third novel in the Matt Drake series. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book and enjoying the thrill ride but what I really want to know is what made Don, who finished writing this book months ago, decide that the plot should be about a Russian invasion of Ukraine?!? Don Bentley, author (donbentleybooks.com) You can pre-order the book here: Hostile Intent | Don Bentley (donbentleybooks.com)
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Yesterday we had CO Gov Jared Polis on the show to talk about the Democrats plan to "give" Coloradans money. Really it's nothing more than accelerating and slightly modifying TABOR refund payments required by law. It's laughably transparent that Democrats, maybe even including Polis himself, are scared to death of what's coming in November's elections and they're pulling out all the stops to buy the voters' favor. Joining us to talk about it is State Senator Paul Lundeen (R-Monument).
Note that even the Denver Post called out the state gov't for misleadingly not noting that the funding for the "Colorado Cashback" is just a constitutionally required TABOR refund that they're somewhat restructuring to make it more of a wealth redistribution scheme and less of a tax refund.
TABOR refund: $400 for Colorado taxpayers, $800 for joint filers by late summer (denverpost.com)
Here's the misleading original press release:
Other Stuff
Critical economic insight from a new NFIB survey: Small businesses are planning on raising prices significantly to cover their rising costs due to inflation. Please don't forget that while some of this problem is due to the war in Ukraine, most of it is simply bad government policy and bad Fed policy. New NFIB Survey: Surging Inflation Remains A Major Problem For Small Businesses
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China's ongoing "Zero COVID" policy, basically locking down whole swaths of the country to try to prevent the spread of the virus, is going to keep global supply chains utterly chaotic for some time to come, and keep many prices high (or even higher than they are now) for longer than many folks had hoped and anticipated: https://apnews.com/article/covid-business-health-china-beijing-546e033cadf71cea75f606ad65ee0e82
Beijing covid outbreak leads to grocery store run, fears of lockdown - The Washington Post
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I wouldn't make this many phone calls a day for anything: Airport Receives Over 12,000 Noise Complaints in a Year From a Single Person (odditycentral.com)
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Do you think she has a point? I hate looking after ill people so removing ‘In Sickness’ from my wedding vows - I don’t care people think it’s cruel (the-sun.com)
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Saved by yogurt: Woman stranded in California forest for six days survives off yogurt, snow (nbcnews.com)
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Great if you own a home already, I suppose, but overall probably bad for the country and obviously bad for younger adults looking to own a home for the first time: https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-price-growth-accelerated-in-february-11650978070
Denver is right there among the biggest gainers in home prices. Interesting data by ZIP code: Home prices rose across all but two Denver area ZIP codes - Denverite, the Denver site!
Today's Video
I don't know if there really are woke people complaining about Steve Martin's iconic "King Tut" routine or if it's just clickbait claiming that the woke are doing so, but in either case, here's the skit for you:
Steve Martin King Tut Skit Defended Against Millennials Who 'Don't Get It' (tmz.com)