#EAS #WEA for Henry, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Rock Island, #IL; #Whiteside, #IL; #Clinton, #IA; #Scott, #IA: National Weather Service: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 10:15 PM CDT for DESTRUCTIVE 80 mph winds. Take shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Source: NWS Quad Cities IA IL ** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
#EAS #WEA for Henry, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Rock Island, #IL; #Whiteside, #IL; #Clinton, #IA; #Scott, #IA: National Weather Service: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 10:15 PM CDT for DESTRUCTIVE 80 mph winds. Take shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Source: NWS Quad Cities IA IL #Henry, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Rock Island, #IL; #Whiteside, #IL; #Clinton, #IA; #Scott, #IAwx** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR
#EAS #WEA for Henry, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Rock Island, #IL; #Whiteside, #IL; #Clinton, #IA; #Scott, #IA: Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued March 14 at 9:26PM CDT until March 14 at 10:15PM CDT by NWS Quad Cities IA IL Source: NWS Quad Cities IA IL #Henry, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Rock Island, #IL; #Whiteside, #IL; #Clinton, #IA; #Scott, #IAwx** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
#EAS #WEA for Hancock, #IL; #Henderson, #IL; #McDonough, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Warren, #IL: National Weather Service: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 9:15 PM CDT for DESTRUCTIVE 80 mph winds. Take shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Source: NWS Quad Cities IA IL ** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
#EAS #WEA for Hancock, #IL; #Henderson, #IL; #McDonough, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Warren, #IL: Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued March 14 at 8:37PM CDT until March 14 at 9:15PM CDT by NWS Quad Cities IA IL Source: NWS Quad Cities IA IL #Hancock, #IL; #Henderson, #IL; #McDonough, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Warren, #ILwx** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
#EAS #WEA for Hancock, #IL; #Henderson, #IL; #McDonough, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Warren, #IL: National Weather Service: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 9:15 PM CDT for DESTRUCTIVE 80 mph winds. Take shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Source: NWS Quad Cities IA IL #Hancock, #IL; #Henderson, #IL; #McDonough, #IL; #Mercer, #IL; #Warren, #ILwx** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIA
In the 2010s, the United States approached the Russian standard of inequality. Although no American oligarchical clan has as yet captured the state, the emergence of such groups in the 2010s (Kochs, Mercers, Trumps, Murdochs) was hard to miss.
—Timothy Snyder, The Road To Unfreedom (2018)
#usa #russia #oligarchy #koch #mercer #trump #murdoch
#EAS #WEA for Mercer, #WV; #Summers, #WV: National Weather Service: A FLASH #FLOOD WARNING is in effect for this area until 9:45 PM EST. This is a dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order. Source: NWS Blacksburg VA #Mercer, #WV; #Summers, #WVwx** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
Citizens for Self-Governance | ISLT | Article V convention | Convention of states | U.S. Constitution | Mercer Family Foundation | DonorsTrust
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/111090040427855200
#StateLegislatures #LegislativeCapture #StateCapture #protofascism #ISLT #ConstitutionalLaw #ArticleV #USconstitution CitizensForSelfGovernance #CSG #billionaires #Mercer #MercerFamily #RebekahMercer #DAF #DonorsTrust #DarkMoney
Secrecy begets secrecy.
In January, a very special two-day meeting was set up by officials of the United Arab Emirates
between a Russian contact said to be close to #Vladimir #Putin
and #Erik #Prince, who was reportedly acting as “an unofficial envoy” for Trump,
in the Seychelles Islands, another “secrecy jurisdiction”
—and one in which the UAE wields a great deal of influence.
(A spokesperson for Prince denied that he acted on Trump’s behalf, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that Prince had nothing to do with the Trump transition team.)
The Washington Post reports that the meeting took place about ten days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
Prince was a big donor to the Trump campaign, coughing up $250,000 for pro-Trump organizations during the election
—among them a political action committee helmed by #Rebekah #Mercer.
In keeping with its role as a hider of rich people’s money,
#Barry #Faure, the Seychelles secretary of state for foreign affairs, told the Post that
it’s a great place to have a secret assignation away from the media’s prying eyes;
in fact, it’s a selling point in the tourist board’s promotional materials, he said.
Different though they be,
the #Mercers and the #DeVoses share another common trait:
both families are part of the right-wing political donor network built by #Charles and #David #Koch,
principals in Koch Industries,
the second-largest privately held company in the United States, according to Forbes.
Yet each power-donor family has also built its own assemblage of political organizations and entities.
Most of these are nonprofit organizations, but a few, such as the Koch-controlled data firm #i360
—a platform for collecting and processing voter data that is poised to gain operational control over the Republican Party
—are privately held, for-profit companies.
This makes the Kochs much more than an outsize example of the destructive force of “corporate money” in the political system;
rather, their efforts exemplify the rapid cartelization of our public life under a network of private wealth.
The Koch donor network is, by and large, a confluence of capital collected by privately held companies.
In essence, the money that flows through the Koch network of interlocking political entities isn’t just “#dark #money”
—it’s money double-dipped in darkness, 
first through the rules governing the companies from whence it came, and again as it flows into a political system clogged with equally opaque nonprofit political operations that exist outside of the political party structure.
#Mercer money is often double-dark, as well.
It’s said that the father-and-daughter team would like to build a constellation of their own institutions
to challenge the Kochs’ sprawling collection of nonprofit think tanks, advocacy groups, and the occasional for-profit political venture.
Witness Robert Mercer’s investment in a for-profit voter data startup that the Ted Cruz campaign subcontracted to use in the 2016 election cycle.
(Both Mercers backed Cruz during the GOP primary.)
The wealth of #Betsy #DeVos,
by contrast, comes from a simpler operation:
the marketing of what some have called a pyramid scheme that goes by the brand name #Amway.
Founded by her father-in-law in 1959, Amway distributes home products like dish soap and cosmetics through a network of home-based sellers
who are pressured to recruit more sellers in order to earn a bonus on the amount of product the distributor would then sell wholesale to the recruit.
That recruit would also be a distributor, looking for recruits of his or her own, in order to sell more products wholesale in order to get that bonus.
Note the emphasis on recruitment and bonuses rather than the direct-selling to retail customers,
who, in the end, were the ones for whom Amway products were ostensibly intended.
In the business press, Amway is often described as a “multilevel marketing company.”
In the 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission described its business model as
an “inherent fraud,” as historian Rick Perlstein reported in The Nation,
and tried to shut the company down.
The FTC failed in that effort, but did issue orders in 1979 slapping Amway for price-fixing and misrepresenting the kind of money distributors could expect to make.
In fact, Amway was made to tell distributors that they could wind up losing money.
Three decades later, in 2010, a class action lawsuit by former sellers (um, “distributors”) alleging Amway’s engagement in an “illegal scheme” was settled out of court.
According to USA Today, Amway agreed to pay $55 million to former distributors,
closely oversee high-level distributors who run training businesses,
strengthen refund policies
and make other changes estimated to cost an additional $100 million.
In Forbes’ 2016 listing of “America’s Largest Private Companies,” Amway clocks in at number twenty-nine.
The education secretary, née Elisabeth Prince, did not come into the DeVos family empty-handed.
Her own family of origin, while not as wealthy as her husband’s, was quite well-to-do through her father’s enterprise, 
Prince Corporation, itself a privately held company until Johnson Controls bought it for $1.3 billion in cash in 1996.
Founder #Edgar #Prince, seeking to change the political culture to more closely resemble his own heartless Calvinism,
donated, according to Zack Stanton of Politico, “millions in seed funding to launch the Family Research Council,”
the right-wing organization that represents and organizes politically conservative evangelical Christians,
and was famously designated an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Prince’s son, #Erik, used his windfall to found #Blackwater, the military contractor that went on to infamy when, in 2007,
its mercenaries gunned down civilians in a Baghdad city square.
Four Blackwater contractors were convicted in 2014 of killing fourteen unarmed Iraqis “in what prosecutors called a wartime atrocity,” according to the New York Times.
Blackwater, since sold and renamed #Academi, was also privately held.
It enjoyed more than $1 billion in government contracts.
In 2010, according to the Washington Post,
Prince moved to the United Arab Emirates “amid mounting legal problems for his American business.”
Both the #Mercers and the #DeVoses pour millions into the political system.
You can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies: using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown.
According to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, #Robert #Mercer “gave $22.5 million in disclosed donations to Republican candidates and to political-action committees” to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
And that doesn’t include possible donations to nonprofit advocacy groups, now allowed,
since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC,
to conduct advertising for and against political candidates.
But unlike PACs, these nonprofits
—classified as “social welfare” groups
—are not required to disclose their donors.
Politico’s Stanton reports that Betsy and Dick DeVos pretty much own Michigan politics,
having spent “at least $100 million on political campaigns and causes over the past 20 years.”
The DeVoses used political giving and influence to cut funding to public schools and pave the way for a large influx of charter schools,
and to see Michigan, home to the once-mighty United Auto Workers,
turned into a so-called right-to-work state,
an anti-union designation that translates into greater workplace control for business bosses, but few rights for the bossed
Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.
(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is 
Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.
After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.
At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.
Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
Renaissance is spectacularly successful
—Investopedia named Renaissance Institutional Equities, the LLC’s largest entity,
the top-performing hedge fund of 2016,
after it yielded investors a return of 20 percent for the year.
Mercer’s genius as a data and systems geek is part of the super-secret sauce of this “quant fund”
that turned other people’s assets-minus-liabilities into riches for his investors.
It’s like a very complicated version of counting cards at the blackjack table.
But the best-performing fund at Renaissance is one that only its employees can join
—and indeed they must in order to actualize their full compensation package.
Bloomberg’s Katherine Burton described the employee-only Medallion fund as
“finance’s blackest box.”
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/what-we-do-is-secret-stan
A dollar is a dollar is a dollar
But some dollars are different, because of how their owners obtain them and move them about.
These are the dark dollars of private companies, dollars slithery in their expert avoidance of taxes, their paths rendered invisible by the absence of footprints.
Critics of the Trump White House point to the obscene levels of wealth that you find among the inner circle of President Trump’s appointees and associates.
Just as striking, though, is the provenance of all this loose cash:
Trump’s trusted advisers have come into much of this wealth through private companies,
whose financial balance sheets and so much more are shielded from public view.
At least ten of Trump’s close political associates, including some of his cabinet picks, hail from the carefully shrouded world of private capital.
Private companies play by a different set of rules than those governing firms that trade their shares on stock exchanges.
Unlike their publicly traded counterparts, private companies don’t have to worry about facing irate shareholders.
That’s because a private company’s principals have chosen those shareholders, who are often drawn from a founder’s family.
No proxy fights or hostile takeovers to worry about; no bending to the will of big institutional investors.
This is not to say that there are no big donors to Democrats who don’t also get their dough from private companies.
For example, Democrats have long enjoyed the largesse of the Pritzker family, who took their Hyatt Corporation public only in 2009.
Until then, it was a closely held private company.
But no Democratic administration was ever dominated by the owners of privately held entities,
and no administration of either party has ever represented so much wealth derived from such secretive entities.
Little in the way of financial disclosure is required of privately held companies. When it comes to financial regulation, these companies reap the benefit of the government’s failure to call them to account.
The same is true of private companies as large as the Koch Industries conglomerate or as adorably tiny as a startup founded by a lone millennial in a stocking cap.
Sanctums of Privilege
This is not a screed against private companies. As a red-blooded American, I revel in tales of heroic entrepreneurship
—of hatched-in-the-garage ideas that yield their underdog executors an unlikely pot of gold.
This is, rather, a scream, the wail of a blues tune sung to my fellow red-blooded Americans:
Your government is in the hands of super-rich people who never had to show anything to anybody!
And you can bet they plan to run the country the same way they have run their companies:
using shell games and pyramid schemes, fraud and shakedown, answerable to virtually no one.
These are people who have thrived in a culture of unaccountability and self-dealing.
They are also people who have convinced themselves that the accrual of wealth to themselves is a boon to the nation at large.
They like to think of themselves as job creators, dynamic players in shaping the global economy.
Because their magnificence exists to benefit us all, the reasoning goes, they need not show us the methods by which they perform their magic.
And indeed we do all stand, mouths agape, at the show, dazzled by the 22,000-square-foot mansion
(with a 6,200-square-foot guest house)
that serves as the home address of secretary of education #Betsy #DeVos,
or the 203-foot yacht (with an elevator inside) owned by #Robert #Mercer, the Trump donor and patron of chief White House strategist #Stephen K. #Bannon.
(Mercer’s daughter, #Rebekah, is said to have great influence in the West Wing.)
The source of Mercer’s wealth is Renaissance Technologies LLC, a privately owned firm known as a hedge-fund sponsor,
which was built by scientists who learned how to run algorithms that identify signals emanating from great masses of data in order to generate profitable financial trades.
After Renaissance founder and math wizard James Simons, a big donor to Democratic candidates and political action committees, retired and kicked himself upstairs to serve as the company’s chairman,
Mercer became co-CEO with #Peter #Brown, his longtime research partner.
At the Renaissance office in East Setauket on New York’s Long Island, no sign is visible from the road to tell you you’ve arrived at the headquarters of a rare kind of casino
—one that moves billions of dollars around the world.
Thick plantings of trees obscure any view of the low-slung Renaissance building from the public side of the security gate.
The Winklevoss twins, Rebekah Mercer, allies of Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and top Trump campaign aides recently joined a conclave of right-wing donors who are suddenly flush with power.
Just four days after being named the next White House chief of staff,
Susie Wiles was waiting patiently for an espresso drink at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas.
Overnight, she had become one of the most powerful people in America.
The value of a minute of her time could not be higher during the presidential transition:
Republican strivers are hounding her for desirable gigs,
and back at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump has kept courting controversy with his picks.
Yet here she was thousands of miles away, flanked only by a security guard,
alone in line at a Four Seasons coffee shop.
She had just peeled off from lunch with other top Trump campaign officials,
including her fellow campaign manager, Chris LaCivita;
the pollster Tony Fabrizio;
and the campaign’s fund-raising chief, Meredith O’Rourke.
“We’re all just chilling,” one member of the startled Trump entourage joked aloud when alerted that they had been spotted by a nearby New York Times reporter as they walked through the hotel.
What demanded the dayslong presence of all these Trumpworld figures during some of the most important weeks of their careers?
The fall gathering of a secretive group of wealthy tech executives and their allies who have ascended swiftly within the Republican Party’s donor class: the #Rockbridge #Network.
The group, which was co-founded five years ago by JD Vance,
sprouted from an informal set of dinners into a powerful coalition of Republican donors who have
given more than $100 million to Rockbridge projects since 2019, according to a person close to the group,
helping lead Silicon Valley’s march to the right.
For Rockbridge, Mr. Vance’s election as vice president was a crowning achievement
— and a tantalizing opportunity to wield new national influence.
But Rockbridge has largely kept its activities stealthy,
mindful of how groups of wealthy conservatives like the Koch Network have drawn attacks from both liberal detractors and Republican wannabes.
As caravans of black S.U.V.s shuttled in the billionaires from their private jets last week, members of the Rockbridge roster could be spotted around the hotel: #Rebekah #Mercer, the scion of one of the most prolific Republican donor families, greeted well-wishers in the lobby.
Working the happy-hour scene at the hotel bar were two close friends of #Elon #Musk’s
— #Ken #Howery and #Luke #Nosek, whose time with Mr. Musk at PayPal made them megawealthy themselves.
Don't mind me just trying to avoid the #SUV- pocalypse while crossing Spring and #Mercer #congestionpricing #KathyHochul #soho #climatecrisis
corriere.it by Redazione Economia
Pensioni, chi ha il sistema migliore? Olanda, Islanda e Danimarca: l’Italia solo 35esima. La classifica
Nella classifica mondiale redatta da Mercer, l’Italia si riconferma sotto la media europea per adeguatezza (mentre per sostenibilità e integrità del sistema pensionistico lo studio rileva un lieve miglioramento)
Translated:
Pensions, who has the best system? Netherlands, Iceland and Denmark: Italy only 35th. The ranking.
According to Mercer's global ranking, Italy remains below the European average for adequacy (while for sustainability and integrity of the pension system, the study reports a slight improvement).
#Mercer #Italy #European #Netherlands #Iceland #Denmark
https://www.corriere.it/economia/pensioni/cards/pensioni-chi-ha-il-sistema-migliore-olanda-islanda-e-danimarca-l-italia-solo-35esima-la-classifica/il-global-pension-index-2024_principale.shtml
[03:20 PM] Dutch pension system again ranked best in the world
The Netherlands has the best pension system in the world, according to the annual ranking by Mercer and Monash University.
https://nltimes.nl/2024/10/15/dutch-pension-system-ranked-best-world
#Netherlands #annual #Mercer #MonashUniversity
#EAS #WEA for Mercer, #PA; #Venango, #PA: National Weather Service: #TORNADO WARNING in this area until 6:45 PM EDT. Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building. If you are outdoors, in a mobile home, or in a vehicle, move to the closest substantial shelter and protect yourself from flying debris. Check media. Source: NWS Pittsburgh PA #Mercer, #PA; #Venango, #PAwx** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
