The Crazy Years

SCANALYZER The Happening World
2661

WASHINGTON — A pension fund has filed suit against the board of directors of Amazon, claiming they “acted in bad faith” in approving launch contracts for the Project Kuiper broadband constellation that awarded billions of dollars to Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

The suit, a public version of which was filed with Delaware’s Court of Chancery Aug. 28, alleges that Amazon’s board and one of its committees spent “barely an hour” reviewing contracts with Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, whose Vulcan Centaur rocket uses engines from Blue Origin, before approving them in March 2022. Delaware Business Court Insider first reported the lawsuit.

⋮

According to the suit, Amazon management informed the board’s audit committee in July 2020 it was considering Arianespace, Blue Origin, ULA and a fourth company whose name is redacted in the public version of the complaint for launch contracts. The committee, the suit stated, “did not take any steps to oversee the negotiation process or to insulate the process from conflicts of interest.” [emphasis in original] Bezos, at the time, was chief executive of Amazon and remains its largest shareholder, while also owning Blue Origin.

The full board was briefed in November 2020 on plans for Project Kuiper, including its consideration of Blue Origin and ULA, among others, for launch contracts, which the suit said did not result in the board taking any action about potential conflicts of interest: “no guidelines, no oversight, and no expressions of concern.”

While the identity of the fourth potential launch provider is not made public in the suit, it does state that Amazon’s board was informed SpaceX was not under consideration. That included not just the overall launch contracts but a smaller interim contract that Amazon announced in April 2021 for nine Atlas 5 launches from ULA. While the value of the Atlas launch contract is redacted in the suit, it argues that SpaceX’s list price for Falcon 9 launches was significantly less.

⋮

The public version of complaint redacts many details about the launch contracts, including specific dollar values. It does state, though, that the combined contracts were “the second-largest capital expenditure in Amazon’s 25+ year history” after its $13.7 billion acquisition of grocer Whole Foods. Amazon’s second largest acquisition, of studio MGM in 2021, was valued at $8.5 billion.

While the suit redacts the contract values, it does state that nearly 45% of their overall value goes to Blue Origin, either through the direct contract between Amazon and Blue Origin or ULA’s purchase of BE-4 engines from Blue Origin to satisfy its own Amazon launch contract. Amazon has spent about $1.7 billion on those three launch contracts to date, including $585 million directly to Blue Origin.

Here is the public (redacted) version of the complaint as filed on 2023-08-28 in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Now, for the best part, and why this qualifies for “The Crazy Years”. Who is the shareholder-plaintiff in this action, complaining “Amazon’s directors and officers consciously and intentionally breached their most basic fiduciary responsibilities”? Walt for it…the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund. Well, I guess they’d know.

6 Likes
2662
  1. Similarly, as recently as June 2023, Musk reiterated that SpaceX’s proven launch services remain available to Starlink competitors—on the same terms available to anyone else. While discussing SpaceX’s launches for OneWeb, Musk stated that “[w]e charged them the same as anyone else.”
6 Likes
2663
6 Likes
2664

In other words, the rubber stamp Board Members did exactly what they were expected to do in order to earn their fat compensation – Don’t Get In The Way!

The concept that Directors of a company should be looking out for the interests of the stockholders is so outdated! Their behavior would be different if each Director had to tie up a significant chunk of her total net worth in the company’s common stock.

3 Likes
2665

I realize I am responding to an almost 9 month old post here but…most Intel CPUs are fabbed here and then shipped to and assembled in Malaysia. They have been doing this for decades. Growing up in Intel land in Oregon I had several friends whose fathers were rotated to Malaysia and then back.

5 Likes
2666

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/opinion/kia-hyundai-tiktok.html

According to the Council on Criminal Justice, “The number of vehicle thefts during the first half of 2023 was 33.5 percent higher, on average, than during the same period in 2022 — representing 23,974 more vehicle thefts in the cities that reported data.” In Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New Orleans, Buffalo and Durham, N.C., motor vehicle thefts this year have more than doubled relative to last year, according to stats collected by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst. This week, The Baltimore Sun reported that “auto thefts are on pace to more than double the total from last year, as reports through the first eight months of 2023 are already up 88 percent compared to all of 2022.”

Why are so many cars getting stolen? Police departments and city officials point to this: Millions of Kias and Hyundais are ridiculously easy to steal.

⋮

This strikes me as bizarre blame shifting. It’s Kia and Hyundai, not TikTok, that sold theft-prone cars. I’m not against tech companies moderating their platforms to curb the spread of potentially dangerous information. But you know what would be better? Making cars that can’t be stolen with a USB cable.

They could also try catching and locking up the thieves, but that might have disparate impact.

The author of this New York Times opinion piece is Farhad Manjoo, opinion columnist since 2018. From Wikipedia:

Manjoo, self-described in the New York Times as a “stereotypical, cisgender, middle-aged suburban dad,” stated in 2019 that they prefer to be referred to with singular they pronouns.

⋮

Manjoo wrote for Wired News before taking a staff position at Salon.com. In July 2008, they accepted a job at Slate magazine writing a twice-weekly technology column. In September 2013, they joined The Wall Street Journal as a technology columnist; their final column for Slate, urging men to wear makeup, was published on September 20. They moved to The New York Times in 2014.

Dunno…whenever I hear this “singular they”, it sounds to me like the person has a tapeworm.

5 Likes
2667
5 Likes
2668

David Hughes, 26, of Pen y Wern, Rhosllanerchrugog, appeared at Wrexham Magistrates Court on Tuesday (August 22), and admitted being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control and being the owner of a dog worrying livestock. Hughes was banned from keeping dogs for five years and ordered to pay £900 in fines. The incident involving the dogs happened on private agricultural land in Rhosllanerchrugog on March 6, after the pets escaped from their home.

“…dog worrying livestock”, indeed.

This is, indeed, a meaning of “worry”:

  1. to seize, especially by the throat, with the teeth and shake or mangle, as one animal does another.
8 Likes
2669

Newsweek continues the Viveksection of Brahminswarthy.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s artful narrative, meticulously tailored for the GOP primary voter, weaves a tale of principled sacrifice and success. According to his version, he helmed the leadership of Roivant, a multi-billion-dollar American pharmaceutical company he founded, and gallantly relinquished his CEO role in 2021 due to his unwavering stance against ESG principles, despite facing opposition from his liberal workforce. While this narrative might seem appealing, it is akin to the endless “flip-flops” that have plagued his campaign—an elaborate work of fiction that unravels upon a modicum of scrutiny.

Let’s start with the basics. Ramaswamy has funded his campaign through the sale of over $32 million in Roivant stock options in February of this year. This could lead one to believe that Roivant, based in Bermuda, is thriving and that Ramaswamy is a great entrepreneur. Except the company reported staggering losses of $1.2 billion in its financial report of March 2023. This isn’t a one-time slump: In March 2022, when Ramaswamy was still Roivant’s chairman and a major shareholder, the company reported an annual loss of $924.1 million.

Ramaswamy’s defenders may argue that Roivant performed better during his tenure as CEO in 2021, but alas, the numbers tell a different story. The reality is that Roivant’s finances were abysmal under Ramaswamy’s watch. During his tenure in 2019, the company’s net operating loss exceeded $530 million. By 2020, the losses had doubled to over $1 billion, accompanied by a 65 percent decline in revenue.

These numbers raise a puzzling question: How can a company consistently bleeding billions trade at over $10 a share?

The answer might lie in Ramaswamy’s implementation of Roivant’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative, called Roivant Social Ventures, during his CEO tenure. Launched in 2020 while Ramaswamy was still CEO, this initiative aimed to foster “DEI opportunities for future leaders in biopharma and biotech.”

While Ramaswamy vocally opposes ESG principles, Roivant’s major institutional investors—including Morgan Stanley, Viking Global, and BlackRock, the very firms he criticizes by name—are among its largest stakeholders, owning over 500 million shares. Ramaswamy himself holds more than 80 million shares, making him an essential partner of these major ESG funds.

In a deeply ironic twist, Ramaswamy’s anti-“woke” campaign is being bankrolled by the profits reaped from the very policies he denounces.

⋮

Axovant had acquired the drug for $5 million in December 2014, six months before the IPO, after the majority of Phase 2 trials had “failed to meet their primary endpoints” in 2010. Ramaswamy devised a solution: His mother, Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy, conducted a new Phase 2 trial in 2015 involving “684 subjects.” This trial conveniently claimed to demonstrate sufficient improvement to “support Phase 3” trials.

The aftermath was a triumphant $350 million IPO in 2015, followed by a drastic fall. By September 2017, the stock had plummeted 75 percent after Ramaswamy and his mother announced the Phase 3 trial’s failure. Subsequent trials continued to disappoint, culminating in a 99 percent loss in value and a name change for the company.

While investors suffered significant losses, Ramaswamy profited from a higher media profile, IPO payouts, and the sale of remaining Axovant assets in 2020.

Wikipedia notes:

While campaigning for the presidency, Ramaswamy called himself a “scientist” and said, “I developed a number of medicines.” His undergraduate degree is in biology, but he was never a scientist; his role in the biotechnology industry was that of a financier and entrepreneur.

⋮

Ramaswamy remains the sixth-largest shareholder of Roivant, retaining a 7.17% stake. Roivant has never been profitable.

5 Likes
2670

Sounds like a question that could have been asked of Bezos and Amazon up until it’s first year of profit in 2012. How indeed?

2 Likes
2671

If the Republican Party in Michigan were smart they would propose a law saying that all official communications must take place in English and any breaches of the laws are subject to a $1000 personal find that may not be paid by the state or political party. Since Michigan’s Republican Party is a bunch of limp wristed ninnies they will do nothing.

5 Likes
2672

Oh so they are like the national party.

4 Likes
2673

Newsweek opines: “Both parties are already led by scandal-plagued octogenarians.”

Strange! I must have missed the issue where Newsweek detailed the many scandals that plague the Biden octogenarian.

6 Likes
2674

image

image

image

6 Likes
2675

Isn’t this what we should expect from the goddess Gaia’s anger at calling the gathering “Burning MAN”? Does the burnt offering even have genitalia? If, indeed, it has male ones, the incineration thereof might be considered a redeeming virtue for the apparent “mis-gendering” - especially if that region of the effigy burns especially hot.

8 Likes
2676
7 Likes
2677

All those ICE vehicles and not much solar. Gaia is just not happy. Hopefully, nobody is using gas powered generators or the raining may never stop.

6 Likes
2678

Peter Hitchens on the U.S., then and now.

After I visited the USA for the first time, in 1977, I could not sleep properly for a month. As soon as I got home, I wanted to go back, probably for good, but I couldn’t. And this was something of a surprise to me because, as a fairly standard English snob and left-winger, I had expected to despise America. Then, for the rest of my life, I didn’t. This change had much to do with the providential way I got there. I actually won a competition, in (of all places) the Economist, and so was able to go, in some style, to a country most British people seldom saw in those days, when England was much more English and America much more American.

The Economist provided me with two return tickets to Washington, D.C., on the supersonic Concorde (in those days it was not allowed to fly to New York City), and a week in a hotel overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. I also persuaded them to send us between the two cities by train. We also managed a couple of nights in one of the loveliest hotels in North America, the Tabard Inn. This was so much the opposite of everything I had expected America to be that it did much to change my prejudiced mind. There was no television, lots of character, a strong feeling that the past was present—the Civil War had only recently ended and the Indian Wars might still be taking place a thousand miles to the West.

Our actual arrival at Dulles Airport, floating on a cloud of airline Dom Perignon, would be impossible now. We were in a state of exhilaration, having been invited on to the flight deck to observe things most people will never see—the curve of the earth’s surface and the unimagined, thrilling dark blue of the sky at 60,000 feet. The Dulles entry procedure did nothing to dispel this euphoria, as it would now. We were wafted past uncrowded immigration desks in minutes. I possessed at that time an easily-obtained multi-entry U.S. visa whose validity period was misspelled as “indefinetly” (I used it without problems for many years afterwards, until the era of “security” overwhelmed us).

But 46 years ago, nobody was especially interested in it anyway. The whole apparatus of suspicion and fingerprints which now besets the arriving visitor did not even exist. The main problem lay in getting there at all. British visitors to America were in those days greatly restricted by our own government’s refusal to let us spend scarce hard currency abroad. There was a special page in your passport to record how much money you had taken with you. Thus English visitors in America were so rare that I was repeatedly and bafflingly asked if I was Australian. I grasped after a while that this was because I did not speak American properly, and there may in those days have been more Australian visitors to the USA than British ones.

⋮

The Washington Metro, clean and new, running through its majestic, vaulted stations, seemed to destroy the idea, until then fixed in my mind, that Americans had chosen private affluence at the price of public squalor. We liked the giant bookstores, the food, the different cadence of the language, the children’s books born from a different civilization (especially one called Blueberries for Sal), the local swim team, the thrilling closeness, in time and space, of the Civil War battlefields and the Founding Fathers. I think Monticello is still my ideal of what a house should be like. We were in love and when, for reasons beyond our control, we had to leave, we felt bereft and perplexed as we watched Manhattan sink below the horizon from the stern of the Cunard liner that took us home.

⋮

And then it all changed. It was of course 9/11 that signaled the alteration and darkened the sky, the growing mistrust, the boot-faced bureaucracy. This was bad enough for Americans, but perhaps even more dismaying for foreign admirers. Bit by bit, the glitter came off. There were actual crashes on the D.C. Metro. Washington became enormous, sprawling forever into Northern Virginia and Maryland. I felt increasingly as if it was somewhere else, unlike the optimistic, spacious America I thought I knew. Travel round the country, once so relaxed and spacious, became tedious with excessive security, more spartan and more crowded. I know these are only impressions, but what else do I have? The trains grew worse, and Amtrak began serving its breakfasts (once superb) on plates made out of some ersatz composition instead of proper china.

On my last visit a change of planes at a major mid-western hub was so dingy and exhausting, and the airport itself so tired, crowded, and unwelcoming, that the experience was almost as bad as that Mach 2 plunge into twilight back in 1977. Everywhere there were long lines of dispirited people, looking like a defeated army. Even some years ago the growing state-sponsored squalor of San Francisco was becoming evident in some parts of the city. Now I dread to go back at all. But behind it lay a feeling of a country in decline. I do not just mean that the country seems poorer and shabbier, a sensation that has grown stronger and stronger since the Iraq War. I no longer have that sensation of sunny liberation I had back in the 1970s and 1980s whenever I set foot there. Some years ago I wrote a little optimistically about how the first sight of Cape Race in Newfoundland (the first American landfall for those arriving by sea from Europe) lifted my spirits because the continent beyond was mostly under the rule of law and protected by jury trial and the Bill of Rights. Now I think it is suffering a new birth of unfreedom, in which these safeguards grow weaker every day.

⋮

The last few times I have been, I have been glad to depart, despite the kindness and hospitality I have received. And when people ask me to visit, as they still sometimes do, I think for a minute and then decline. I have fallen out of love with America.

7 Likes
2679

https://www.yahoo.com/news/squatters-ravage-wyoming-downtown-stomach-212859524.html

5 Likes
2680

No it’s worse for us natives as we are propagandized into loving a State whose raison d’etre is liberty and natural rights for all just to realize it’s all a scam to keep us wedded to the tax paying plantation. And when some of us raise the point we are told by some on our own side to shut up that we are not realistic and that we are as utopian as the demonic left. So yes, I now understand and agree with “God damn America.”

6 Likes