Isn't It Time Bill Gates Get His Own APPR Evaluation System?

GF Brandenburg has a post demonstrating how the heath initiatives of the Gates Foundation are as failed as their education reform initiatives.

Brandenburg links to this Seattle Times story from a few days ago that suggests it's time Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation get their own data-driven, metric-measuring system to evaluate their "philanthropic" efforts:

When he took the stage this fall to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his signature global health research initiative, Bill Gates used the word “naive” — four times — to describe himself and his charitable foundation.

It was a surprising admission coming from the world’s richest man.

But the Microsoft co-founder seemed humbled that, despite an investment of $1 billion, none of the projects funded under the Gates Foundation’s “Grand Challenges” banner has yet made a significant contribution to saving lives and improving health in the developing world.

“I was pretty naive about how long that process would take,” Gates told a gathering of nearly 1,000 people in Seattle.

Launched with fanfare a decade ago, the original Grand Challenges program mobilized leading scientists to tackle some of the toughest problems in global health. Gates handed out nearly half a billion dollars in grants to 45 “dream teams” of researchers working on everything from tuberculosis drugs and new vaccine strategies to advanced mosquito repellents and bananas genetically engineered to boost nutrition.

But five years in, Gates said he could see that it would be at least another decade before even the most promising of those projects paid off.

Not only did he underestimate some of the scientific hurdles, Gates said. He and his team also failed to adequately consider what it would take to implement new technologies in countries where millions of people lack access to basic necessities such as clean water and medical care.

While continuing to support a handful of the “big science” projects, the foundation in 2008 introduced a program of small, highly focused grants called Grand Challenges Explorations.

With headline-grabbing goals like condoms that feel good and waste-to-energy toilets, the explorations initiative has probably garnered more media attention than anything else the giant philanthropy has undertaken.

But none of those projects has yet borne fruit, either.

At the 10th anniversary meeting, Nobel Prize-winning biologist Harold Varmus urged a foundation known for its obsession with metrics to undertake a critical evaluation of Grand Challenges.

“Was the program actually a success?” asked Varmus, who served on the founding board. “We don’t know.”

I still see laudatory stories about Gates and the Gates Foundation in the media.

Americans in general - and seemingly many elite media people in particular - worship and respect wealth and seem to assume that if a guy could become one of the richest men in the world, he must be one of the smartest too.

But the truth about Gates is, he's no genius.

He's simply a ruthless man who engaged in monopolistic business practices to make Microsoft into the juggernaut it was.

That's not to say that he isn't a smart guy on some things - just to say, he's no visionary with insight into how to fix the world's problems.

The track record of the Gates Foundation bears that out.

Part of the problem is, Gates is a tech guy who thinks tech will fix all.

Another part of the problem is, he's a guy with no social skills and little understanding of the need to bring stakeholders in with his initiatives.

Lastly, he's an authoritarian with an ego the size of Michael Bloomberg's - he thinks he's right on everything and looks to impose his will on others.

These three personal flaws add up to major disaster - we have a billionaire egoist with no social skills who is tunnelvisioned on tech as the only solution to the world's problems.

Bill Gates has been granted a pass for far too long on his "philanthropic" efforts, both in the health field and the education field.

It surely is time that Gates and his merry men and women in philanthropy at the Foundation get some independent measurement of their efforts.

And then, if it's found that they've failed at most (or all) of their philanthropic initiatives, the Foundation can be closed down like a "failing school," and the harm these people are doing can be put to rest.

If measurement of "achievement" is good enough for schools and school districts, as Mr. Gates says it is, than surely it is good enough for his Gates Foundation programs and initiatives too?

Bill Gates Has Some Leadership Lessons For You

Great start to week breakfast with @BillGates in DC #LessonsFromLeaders ... the ultimate thought-leader
— Nick Owens (@MSPLLC) September 29, 2014

Lesson #1:

Only listen to yourself. No one else knows anything but you.

Lesson # 2:

Have more money than God so you don't have to listen to anybody else.

Lesson #3:

Be as ruthless in business as possible, stealing as many ideas as you can from others and crushing as many opponents as you can - buy ideas and opponents only when you have to - so that you can make more money than God and never have to listen to anybody but yourself.

Lesson # 4:

Take some of the money you made from being a ruthless cutthroat and go into "philanthropy," spreading the message far and wide what a good guy you are even though you really are nothing more than a selfish, self-centered self-absorbed jerk.

Lesson # 5:

Repeat.

Salon Covers Bill Gates' Common Core Obsession

Michael P. Mazenko on Bill Gates and the Common Core at Salon:

It’s hard to envision Bill Gates not getting exactly what he wants, or backing down from anything. However, that was before he became the sugar daddy and primary backer of the Common Core State Standards, which have raised the ire of parents, students and educators in the past year. As Common Core critics began pushing back against adoption of the standards and influencing several state legislatures to cut ties with Common Core, Gates and his foundation found themselves in the unusual position of backpedaling last month.

In a surprising act of damage control, the pro-Core Gates Foundation took to the pages of the New York Times with an open letter calling for a two-year delay in the use of Common Core-linked tests as measures for teacher and student accountability. Gates Foundation director Vickie Philips conceded frustrations with Common Core, writing, “No evaluation system will work unless teachers believe it is fair and reliable. The standards need time to work. Teachers need time to develop lessons, receive more training, get used to the new tests and offer their feedback.”

Of course, educators know those considerations should have been obvious from the beginning, long before states were coerced into adopting the standards, in some cases unseen. For a successful businessman, Gates has been rather negligent in testing, piloting and evaluating an unproven product like Common Core before selling it to an unsuspecting public. Experts in education like Dr. Diane Ravitch know there is a time-honored process to review policies and standards. Bill Gates, however, is far from being an education expert.

He is, instead, a billionaire who believes his wealth and business success qualify him to set education policy.

This isn’t the first time Gates has reversed his position on education after realizing he knows less than he thought he did about how to “fix schools.” Gates poured more than $600 million into his “small schools campaign,” only to later concede he was wrong and the idea was virtually fruitless. While that doesn’t seem to bother a man who can literally waste billions of dollars, it’s more disturbing to hear him admit, “We won’t even know if it will work.” Playing so frivolously with institutions like public education should not be so easy. Clearly, whenever scandal is brewing in politics, it’s always a matter of following the money. And with Common Core, there’s little doubt about the money trail.

Read the whole piece and send it along to your friends and family.

The more people who become aware of the Gates machinations on education, the better.

As Mazenko points out in the piece, this is a guy who spent $600 million on his small schools initiative, then said "Whoops! That didn't work! We'll move on to our next great idea - the Common Core!"

Public education and public schools should NOT be playthings for a billionaire who wants to try out his theories.

The More Money These Philanthropists "Give Away," The Richer They Get

In case you missed this news:

NEW YORK: Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the wealthiest living US entrepreneur, with an estimated net worth of $80.2 billion, according to Wealth-X.

The list of 10 billionaires was dominated by "technopreneurs" as six of them made their fortunes from technology or technology-related businesses, including Gates, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The 10 entrepreneurs are collectively worth $407.4 billion, accounting for about 20 per cent of the total ultra-rich wealth in America, according to Wealth-X, the global wealth intelligence and prospecting firm headquartered in Singapore. The combined market capitalisation of these 10 individuals' primary companies is $1.7 trillion, which means they have created wealth that's four times what they themselves are worth.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett, who at 83 is also the oldest person on the list, was ranked second with an estimated wealth of $64.2 billion.

 Buffett was followed by Ellison of Oracle with a net worth of $48.2 billion and businessman and Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg with $33.7 billion.

Sheldon Adelson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, was ranked fifth with a net worth of $32.8 billion, while Google's Larry Page was placed sixth with a net worth of $31.3 billion.

 Zuckerberg, 30, is the youngest person on the list and was placed seventh with a net worth of $30.9 billion, followed by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com (8th, $30.5 billion); Google's Sergey Brin (9th, $30.1 billion) and Carl Icahn (10th, $25.5 billion).

All the self-made entrepreneurs on the list are active in the world of philanthropy, and six of them have joined the Giving Pledge, a campaign initiated by Gates and Buffet to encourage the world's most affluent individuals to pledge at least half of their fortunes to charity, the Wealth-X report said.

How is it that so many of these "philanthropists" who have taken the "Giving Pledge" to "give away" at least half their fortunes before they die keep getting richer and richer even as they engage in their so-called "philanthropy"?

It seems the more money they give away, the more money they accumulate.

Odd, isn't it?

Bill Gates As Bond Villain

Bill Gates responds to criticism that he's making money off the Common Core:

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.

Sure this is about giving money away - and getting an agenda promoted in return

Gates gets a couple things out of his philanthropy:

He gets to call the shots on a whole host of issues - from education policy to global warming response to disease eradication policy.

Gates claimed in today's Post article that he wants "competition" in the R and D efforts around education policy - but it's pretty clear from his past at Microsoft and the present at the Gates Foundation that what Gates likes most is stifling competition and making sure he's the only one strong enough to have any affect on either the computer business or philanthropic efforts.

Which is the second thing Gates gets out of his philanthropy - ego aggrandizement.

This guy's got a messianic complex and he truly believes he's got the answers to the world's problems if people would just let him provide the funding for the R & D to figure out how to make public education better, to mitigate environmental problems, to tackle disease and pestilence around the world.

It never occurs to him that maybe he's wrong about things, never occurs to him that maybe somebody other than him (or one of his funded shill groups) might have a better way to go about things.

In a lot of ways, Gates is like a Bond villain from the 60's - certain of his own brilliance and genius, hell bent on controlling the world and proving his genius and brilliance to us all.

I'll say this for him:

Gates is a genius at one thing - he's a genius at ruthlessly pushing for what he wants, either in the computer software business or the philanthropic world and convincing enough of the public that he's not just another egoist trying to have his way on everything.

But that's been changing, as people on both the right and left start to view Gates's philanthropic monopoly in education policy, environmental causes, disease eradication and other areas with either suspicion or outright hostility because that monopoly pushes out any other solution other than a Gates-funded one.

Jay Greene noted this problem in the Washington Post piece:

Jay P. Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, says the Gates Foundation’s overall dominance in education policy has subtly muffled dissent.

“Really rich guys can come up with ideas that they think are great, but there is a danger that everyone will tell them they’re great, even if they’re not,” Greene said.

Let's assume that Gates is being honest with us, that he's really not trying to make more dough off the CCSS and its ancillary reforms (a dubious assumption, as he seems to be worth more every year even as he claims he wants to give away all his money before he dies.)

Even if it's true that Gates is spending billions on education policy out of the goodness of his heart and his desire to do some good, the other two things that Gates gets out of his philanthropy - assuaging his own ego and getting to call the shots on nearly everything - are quite problematic.

It is beyond the time to start questioning the so-called "good" that philanthropy does - Gates obviously still thinks it's a decent enough defense because he runs to use it when he's pressed over the CCSS.

But as men like Gates and Michael Bloomberg run around the world using their billions to buy the policies they want in their pet issues, it is becoming clearer and clearer that "philanthropy" is no longer a public good.

There's no difference than a Bond villain wanting to own the world and run it his way or Bill Gates wanting to fund solutions to every problem and make sure that whatever gets tried is a Gates-promoted solution.

Behind both the Bond villain and Bill Gates is a fevered ego in need of control - and it's time to dump some water on that fevered ego and cool it just a bit.

Get Ready For Some More Gates- And Helmsley-Funded Common Core Propaganda

Here's some "grassroots" support for the Common Core:

ALBANY—Critics of the Common Core in New York have been winning the debate about the controversial education standards, but now they'll face a counterattack backed by a considerable investment.

High Achievement New York, a nonprofit coalition of mostly business groups, plans to launch a roughly $500,000 phone and digital advertising campaign over the next several weeks in an attempt to promote the controversial curriculum standards.

...

While most of the coalition members are business groups, including several chambers of commerce, the membership also includes advocacy groups that have been vocal in supporting the Common Core and other education reforms, including Educators4Excellence and StudentsFirstNY. The latter has been a major supporter of charter schools.

A spokesman for High Achievement New York would not disclose information about the nonprofit's finances. The spokesman said the bulk of the funding will be grants from philanthropic organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The group has applied for grants and expects to receive them.

Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Gates Foundation and some astroturf education reform groups funded by Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Gates Foundation - you just can't get more grassroots than that, can you?

 Bakeman calls the $500,000 for the pro-CCSS campaign a "considerable investment,"  but given how much money these groups have and given how much they have spent in the past on other education reform efforts, I think that they're only spending $500K on this campaign is quite telling.

In the end, I don't think a half million dollars for pro-CCSS robocalls and a digital ad campaign is going to move the needle much on the opposition to Common Core.

If they really wanted to try and persuade people to their cause, they'd go up with a coordinated TV ad blitz the way Moskowitz did over the charter co-locations and put millions behind it.

Even then, I don't think they'd move too many people over to their side, given that the CCSS issue doesn't give ad makers the built-in melodrama the co-location issue gave the Moskowitz ad makers ("Why does Mayor de Blasio hate our children?")

That they're only ponying up $500,000 for the pro-CCSS phone and digital ad campaign tells you that even Gates and Helmsley are starting to lose faith in winning the CCSS propaganda battle.

They're making the effort, sure, but if they really wanted to win, they'd be throwing Moskowitz money into this propaganda war.

Tony Benn On Hitler, Stalin And Bill Gates

From Tony Benn's last speech to Parliament:

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

There's an old Brooklyn joke that goes something along the lines of "The three worst human beings in the 20th Century were Hitler, Stalin and Walter O'Malley" (the man who moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn.)

That Benn statement about Hitler, Stalin and Bill Gates gives that joke another gloss.

As a side note, Benn's right about his five questions - especially that last one:

"How can we get rid of you?"

Powerful, unaccountable humans who seek to impose their will on the masses need to be gotten rid of or this civilization is going to end up in a very bad place.

Bloomberg Strokes His Ego On The View

In touting his accomplishments as mayor - including making the school system "dramatically better" - Bloomberg said the following when asked by the hosts of The View what he might do next:

“I’ve always thought that Santa Claus is a short, Jewish, balding 72-year-old guy, so I’ll give it a go,” he quipped.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha - that line is almost as funny as the one about making the school system "dramatically better."

Or the story about how his malanthropic unit plans to bring all the data-driven successes of NYC like CityTime and the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard plow job and plunging test scores and phonied up crime stats to the world at large.

Funny stuff, Mike.

If you had $30 billion less, people would tell you to your face how full of crap you are.

But $30 billion blinds a lot of people to reality - and not just the hosts of The View.

Do you think any mayor other than the billionaire Bloomberg who over saw a 911 system redo that is over a decade overdo, cost over $2 billion dollars and STILL doesn't work would be able to tout his accomplishments without that mess being mentioned in the press?

Or the CityTime scandal, the worst fraud ever perpetrated on NYC citizens?

Or the Boxer Day Blizzard catastrophe that saw deaths when Bloomberg couldn't get the streets outside of Manhattan plowed for days?

Same for the 911 system mess, which may have contributed to the death of a four year girl on the Upper West Side after she was hit by a car and the 911 system caused delays in emergency response.

This fevered little ego known as BLOOMBERG who needs to put his name on everything he owns - literally - would certainly get a lot more scrutiny than he has if not for the $30 billion in wealth, the press he already owns (or his friends own) and the press he is rumored to be in the market for (like the NY Times or the Financial Times.)

As it stands now, he gets to do his little "I'm Amazing" shtick without anybody calling him an imcompetent ego maniac to his face.

But that's America for you.

As some cynic more famous than me is alleged to have once said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

I see that more and more every day.

TIME Magazine: Neither Retirement Nor Death Shall End The Reign Of Bloomberg

 You only think he's going away:

Mike Bloomberg is about to be unemployed for the second time in his professional life. The first was in August of 1981, when Saloman Brothers fired Bloomberg from the only full-time job he had ever known. The second time will be January 1, 2014, when he hands control of New York City over to the next mayor.

The cover story of this week’s TIME magazine is about what Bloomberg will do next, with a clear focus on his enormous wealth and his determination to spend it down changing the world to fit his vision. We live now in a new age of mega-philanthropy, when newly minted billionaires have enormous powers to influence politics and how we live our lives.

Mike Bloomberg, the man with so fragile an ego that he must put his name onto everything he owns, plans on continuing to influence politics and shape how we live our lives long after he leaves office, indeed, long after he shuffles off this mortal coil.

In three or four hundreds years from now, if the human race hasn't destroyed itself through its own arrogance and stupidity, people will look back and say, "Can you believe they let these people with billions of these little pieces of paper with faces on them make all the important decisions around health, education, welfare and the like?"

Democracy - American style, 21st century brand.

Looks an awful lot like plutocracy, doesn't it?

Why Gates, Buffett and So Many Other "Philanthropic Givers" Are Part Of The Problem

From Peter Buffett, son of Warren Buffett:

The Charitable-Industrial Complex

By PETER BUFFETT

I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society. In addition to making several large donations, he added generously to the three foundations that my parents had created years earlier, one for each of their children to run. 

Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism. I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms. 

Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex. 

But now I think something even more damaging is going on. 

Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed. 

Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups. 

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity. 

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life. 

And with more business-minded folks getting into the act, business principles are trumpeted as an important element to add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it comes to alleviating human suffering, as if return on investment were the only measure of success. Microlending and financial literacy (now I’m going to upset people who are wonderful folks and a few dear friends) — what is this really about? People will certainly learn how to integrate into our system of debt and repayment with interest. People will rise above making $2 a day to enter our world of goods and services so they can buy more. But doesn’t all this just feed the beast? 

I’m really not calling for an end to capitalism; I’m calling for humanism. 

Often I hear people say, “if only they had what we have” (clean water, access to health products and free markets, better education, safer living conditions). Yes, these are all important. But no “charitable” (I hate that word) intervention can solve any of these issues. It can only kick the can down the road. 

My wife and I know we don’t have the answers, but we do know how to listen. As we learn, we will continue to support conditions for systemic change.  

It’s time for a new operating system. Not a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from the ground up. New code. 

What we have is a crisis of imagination. Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it. Foundation dollars should be the best “risk capital” out there. 

There are people working hard at showing examples of other ways to live in a functioning society that truly creates greater prosperity for all (and I don’t mean more people getting to have more stuff). 

Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine. 

It’s an old story; we really need a new one. 

Peter Buffett is a composer and a chairman of the NoVo Foundation.

I doubt Bill Gates would hear any of this, but he really is one of those people who allegedly is out to "solve" problems he has helped create.

Take poverty in Asia.

His wife, Melinda, did a three part Q & A series for the NY Times with suck up journalist Nick Kristof about alleviating poverty in Asia a few years back.

While hosting the Q & A, not once did Kristof ever ask how Melinda can talk about alleviating poverty in Asia with a straight face when her husband's company employs slave labor to make it's products in Asia, thus helping to cause poverty in Asia.

It's as if this contradiction didn't exist for either Melinda Gates or Nick Kristof as they breathlessly talked about bringing free market solutions to Asia to solve all the problems there.

So it's good to see Peter Buffett put the idea out there into the NY Times that all this philanthropy does not really solve anything.

I doubt the people its aimed at - the oligarchical/philanthropic class - will hear it or understand it.

But it's good to see it there in any case.

Investment Bank And Hedge Fund Backed Education Reform "Supergroup" Forms

From the criminals/hackers at the NY Post:

Groups backing charter schools, vouchers, merit pay for teachers and limits on teacher tenure plan to unite under a new, statewide supergroup, The Post has learned.

The New York State Education Reform Council will include the new StudentsFirstNY — which has hired away Mayor Bloomberg’s Albany lobbyist — Democrats for Education Reform, and charter-school-advocacy and upstate organizations.

“We’re going up against one of the most powerful interests in Albany,” Democrats for Education Reform Executive Director Joe Williams said, referring to the New York State United Teachers and United Federation of Teachers. “We don’t stand a chance if we’re not aligned and focused.”

“We’re going to have access to a lot of resources that will enable us to counter the resources of those who want to protect a failed status quo,” added Bloomberg lobbyist- turned-StudentsFirstNY-Executive-Director Micah Lasher, who will team with Williams to chair the council.

The umbrella group won’t have its own staff, but Lasher’s and Williams’ organizations are backed by hedge-fund and investment-banking money.

The men said the initial aim is to get the member groups working together on common issues, which the unions claim also include barring teachers from almost any role in shaping curricula or determining working conditions.

Great, just what New York State needs - a "supergroup" funded with blood money from criminals at the investment banks and hedge funds looking to hand out suitcases full of cash to Albany politicians ready and willing to do their bidding.

The education reformers like to depict themselves as underdogs and portray the teachers unions as all-powerful in the machinations of politics, but the reality is, New York State government has been bought and sold by the financial industry, the investment bankers and the hedge fund managers and these guys get whatever it is they want when they want it.

You can bet Bloomberg will put a lot of money into this effort and continue to influence education policy in this state long after he is gone from office - and even long after he is gone from life.

Like the Rockefellers before him, Bloomberg is going to put his personal stamp on an entire century of policy.

And whatever money Bloomberg doesn't pony up, the hedge fund crooks and Wall Street criminals will donate to this malanthropic supergroup .

Fascism and totalitarianism in the 21st century comes from foundations funded by business and corporate interests.

This couldn't be more clear than in this story where a "supergroup" of education reformers funded by some of the scummiest and most evil people on the planet (i.e., Goldman Sachs) promotes an anti-democratic agenda behind the scenes using the blood money expropriated from the 99%.