Gavin Newsom Is Reportedly Sending Burner Phones To Tech CEOs (politico.com) 154
According to Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom has distributed prepaid burner phones to around 100 California business leaders, giving them direct access to him and reinforcing his pro-business stance. "If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away," read one of the notes. From the report: It was Newsom's idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some "valuable interactions." That arrangement surprised some people POLITICO spoke with, largely because Newsom is already known as an inveterate texter whose digits live in many business titans' contacts. He's also long been seen as more aligned with business interests than the Legislature, the proverbial adult in the room when private pillars like Silicon Valley need a sympathetic ear or a veto. But Newsom wanted to convey that he's intent on maintaining California's competitive edge. Phones are still going out.
The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad -- or, evidently, burner phones -- so taxpayers aren't on the hook. It also drew leftover funds from Newsom's inauguration account, which itself drew business, so in a roundabout way California's private sector helped fund phones nurturing ties with the private sector.
The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad -- or, evidently, burner phones -- so taxpayers aren't on the hook. It also drew leftover funds from Newsom's inauguration account, which itself drew business, so in a roundabout way California's private sector helped fund phones nurturing ties with the private sector.
Are they all going to suddenly explode? (Score:5, Funny)
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And if not, why not!
(luigi/mario 2028)
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Really? That was the only joke on this rich target? And such dark humor, too...
"taxpayers aren't on the hook" (Score:2, Insightful)
... so where does Newson print money in California? Or does he get free cash from Federal gov't/other states, to claim his taxpayers are not on the hook for disposable phones to some of the richest people in this country? Last I recall, no government made a dime: absolutely everything they earn is from the taxpayer.
Re:"taxpayers aren't on the hook" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fascinating - the sitting Gov of California is providing major donors with private means of contacting him, and the folks on Slashdot are curious about the source of the funds for the phones (which was disclosed in TFS, by the way)? Really?
Oh wait, do you think major tech CEOs in Silicon Valley DON'T donate to the sitting Gov? Really?
Re:"taxpayers aren't on the hook" (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're used as intended, anything done on them, from either end, would be subject to the Brown Act, and other open records acts. Illegal to delete, and subject to FOIA requests.
When they say "burner phones," they mean it in the "cop show" sense of a phone that can't be traced, to avoid criminal prosecution for violating those laws. You can bet the the phones Nuisance uses are burner phones in that sense, as well.
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If they're used as intended, anything done on them, from either end, would be subject to the Brown Act, and other open records acts. Illegal to delete, and subject to FOIA requests.
When they say "burner phones," they mean it in the "cop show" sense of a phone that can't be traced, to avoid criminal prosecution for violating those laws. You can bet the the phones Nuisance uses are burner phones in that sense, as well.
Obviously the texts sent to Newsome can't be deleted, but the CEOs are private citizens and those phones are their personal devices. I don't know why they would be subject to record laws.
As for the "burner phones" that's Politico's spin on pre-paid cells. This is really just a stunt by Newsome to make sure the tech CEOs feel comfortable contacting him out of the blue.
That in itself is troubling, a tech CEO shouldn't have a direct line to the governor and feel entitled to simply call, but I'm not sure it's i
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It's precious that you think they didn't already have a direct line by having an assistant call the governor's office and saying "This is a call from the office of ${KNOWN_TECH_CEO} for the governor" and being put right through?
Literally every governor out there takes calls from "captains of industry" because those governors are interested in keeping those captains of industry in-state.
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It's precious that you think they didn't already have a direct line by having an assistant call the governor's office and saying "This is a call from the office of ${KNOWN_TECH_CEO} for the governor" and being put right through?
Literally every governor out there takes calls from "captains of industry" because those governors are interested in keeping those captains of industry in-state.
It's precious that you thought I didn't know that.
There's a difference between knowing you can call and the governor signalling that he actively wants you to call. The article literally says it already resulted in multiple CEOs calling Newsome.
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More than that - do these folks think that any captain of industry in any state doesn't have the ability to get the governor of that state on the phone when needed?
Can you imagine the Governor's office in, say, West Virginia not taking a call from Charles Koch? Or the Governor of Ohio not taking a call from the head of GE Aviation? Or the Governor of Oregon not taking a call from Intel's CEO?
Get serious.
The cost is not financial (Score:2)
How much can 100 flip phones cost?
In terms of direct financial cost not much at all. However, in terms of giving a small group of extremely wealthy people direct and untraceable access to a political leader...the price there looks extremely steep because if they wanted to conduct legitimate business they don't need a burner phone, they could just call from a regular phone.
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The summary says it used his inauguration fund, which would be donations, and the California Protocol Foundation, which the summary says is not funded with taxes.
I see that, if you did read the summary, you have chosen to disregard it. Presumably you have better sources, which you have withheld from us. Asshole.
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See, kids, this is what happens when you jump into a sentence halfway through.
"Begin at the beginning. Then go through the middle until you get to the end. Then stop"
Re: "taxpayers aren't on the hook" (Score:4, Insightful)
You do not even have to RTFA, its in the summary - taxpayers are not in the hook because this is paid by the California State Protocol Foundation which is an independently funded 501(c)3 nonprofit which has been around for *decades* and used by both republican and democrat administrations
That is not necessarily a good thing, if the business donations rather than taxpayers are paying for easier access to the executive is that business contributing their share to the cost of representative democracy based on the priorities of elected officials or businesses buying privileged access to lobby the executive via indirect donations?
Not Californian and I have no clue whether I should exit 405 for Mulholland, but printing money is not the problem here: if I was a business I'd want to know why exactly I didn't get a phone, and if I was in a union I'd want to know who in the union has a similar burner phone.
Who is the chicken and who is the egg and who is paying for brunch?
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... so where does Newson print money in California? Or does he get free cash from Federal gov't/other states, to claim his taxpayers are not on the hook for disposable phones to some of the richest people in this country? Last I recall, no government made a dime: absolutely everything they earn is from the taxpayer.
He's running for President. This will all likely be covered under campaign expenses. This is also part of his "run to the middle", at least in terms of public perception. Expect a lot more of this in the coming years. By 2028, he'll have positions that would astonish you today, and and give the standard "My thinking has evolved" speeches everywhere he goes.
"I'm a politician. That means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options
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Maybe read the whole summary? Or is it comprehension that is the issue?
The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses
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SMH. You didn't even read TFS. At least not all of it. It's his money.
Trump does this all the time with campaign donations.
So I'm smart enough to know (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not to say he's a great guy. He could be a hell of a lot worse and he has done some useful things and I'm also smart enough to understand that you aren't going to get ahead in American politics by being friendly with the left wing because as a left-winger I can speak from experience we are worse than useless. This is mostly a dumb hobby for us so we never really focus on what it takes to win elections. And when you point that out to a left winger They get angry and say they're going to do violence. Which they're not because they suck at it.
All that's to say it's impressive that the right wing is already doing the same thing to newsom that they did to Hillary. I don't even think they bothered with Kamala but she was ignoring voter suppression so she was always going to lose.
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Unfortunately, they keep giving ammunition to the right wing media. Maybe they should try not selling out.
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Unfortunately (for them), they're not capable of admitting, even to themselves, that they are not God's gift to humanity, destined to govern all use lesser beings, and that we know they view themselves that way. They lost their shit in November, and are hallucinating that they didn't.
Re:So I'm smart enough to know (Score:4, Informative)
I seem to remember a bunch of people on a past Jan 6th *actually* completely loosing their minds but they weren't Democrats. What you're talking about pales in comparison.
This also explains a notable part of current Democratic worries
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Typo: "...by a major political figure's followers..." = "by a major political figure and his followers..."
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Also: hello from Portland.
What was seen in national media was a massively amplified and contextless version of what actually was happening. And the vast majority of what was happening was legitimate protest until a small subset of dumb motherfuckers started with the vandalism, and Portland Police then started carpet bombing the park blocks between City Hall, the Federal Building, the Multnomah County Justice Center, and the United States Courthouse with tear gas.
Next, we had unmarked Homeland Security type
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Can we stop blaming "the left" for the actions of a very tiny subset of dumb motherfuckers?
Let's also not forget to mention that that the most violent participant was a Proud Boy [wweek.com].
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Sure. Random comment though since that's not what I'm doing with my post.
I clearly stated vandalism was bad. The thing is, trying to halt our nation's democratic transfer of power is FAR worse. Vandalism is still bad though.
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Unfortunately, the left insists on "purity testing" all its candidates. Maybe they should pull their heads out of their collective nethers and learn about how politics work.
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Targeted behavior modification is advanced enough now that the revolution is impossible. You'd have to turn off the internet.
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As a Presidential Candidate, Former Mayor, Current Gov Newsome has a lot of baggage.
The history of the opposition party picking the Presidential Candidate of their opponent has a spotty record, at best (Just ask Hillary), I don't think Republicans want Newsome as the Dem candidate in 2028, i suspect they'd prefer Waltz or Butteigeg(?) or, dare I say it, Harris in 2028...
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In 2028, Harris will be governor of California, and likely kept there by her handlers. Not sure who will be the Dem candidate at this point (this is a strong sign they've given up on Nuisance), but it won't be her.
Harris / Walz are DOA (Score:2, Interesting)
Americans aren't going to elect a gay man president, any more than they're gonna elect a woman. That baggage can easily peel off 2-3% of voters before the voter suppression kicks in.
And really there's the rub, unless the Dems do something about voter suppression this is all just pissing in the wind.
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Re:Harris / Walz are DOA (Score:4, Informative)
There are two main sets of tactics. The first is just making it hard to vote by sending broken or two few voting machines to districts you know Democrats are going to be voting in. That creates multi-hour lines. The second is mass coordinated challenges to signatures and voter registrations. That's backed up by laws that require any challenge to be answered in person in court. With the idea that the vast majority of Democrat voters aren't going to have the kinds of jobs where they can take an afternoon off and drive downtown to fight a court challenge, never mind that some of them might have outstanding warrants for minor drug or traffic infractions.
Those drug and traffic infractions are not an accident by the way. The Nixon administration among others specifically use them to target voters they disagree with. We have the people who created them on records saying that because they felt guilty years later.
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All that's to say it's impressive that the right wing is already doing the same thing to newsom that they did to Hillary.
And what, exactly, was that?
Point out mistakes and mis-steps of each?
Newsom decided to go the The French Laundry during COVID lockdowns all by himself. Gavin mis-managed the homeless crisis in CA without any help from the GOP. When LA county went up in flames, no Republican told him to deny there was a water issue. No Republican made him push for the "California High Speed Rail Project" from nowhere to nowhere for countless billions of dollars... and so on, but sure, pretend it's just the Republicans trying
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I made the pre-emptive decision not to vote for him already before the latest news cycle. Of the latest "selling out" he's done, I'm actually in favor of half of it. What I'm done with is halfway candidates.
I pulled the lever for Hillary. Then for Genocide Joe. Then again for diversity-hire Kamala. Didn't particularly like any of them - I was voting against fascism. In evidence now is the fact that these votes didn't work.
Assuming that elected government can still be salvaged, the Democratic Party as it is
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Of the latest "selling out" he's done, I'm actually in favor of half of it. What I'm done with is halfway candidates.
I pulled the lever for Hillary. Then for Genocide Joe. Then again for diversity-hire Kamala. Didn't particularly like any of them - I was voting against fascism.
Yup, same here.
The Democrats - or better noted, their DNC and policy makers, are lost souls, worrying about some minor constituents while ignoring most of us.
I've done some research into how the party could fsck up so badly. The standard internet research plus interviews with people who voted Trump, and weighting against the standard media sources. And considering how much pushback I've gotten from some groups, I'm certain I'm onto something.
The facts:
Clinton beat trump, Biden beat trump, Harris lost
Re: So I'm smart enough to know (Score:2)
don't even think they bothered with Kamala but she was ignoring voter suppression so she was always going to lose
Ah. The extra votes for Biden during Trump's time in office that she didn't get during Biden's time in office are "voter suppression" that she didn't pay attention to.
Gotcha, boss.
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> That the reason we're getting all this coverage of Newsom's selling out is because it's being pushed by right wing media so that the left-wing base of the Democrat party has a predisposition against him.
Not everything's a conspiracy. Newsom has been suspect for a while, and frankly, this is typical behavior of a wing of the Democratic establishment: ignore the base, support whoever's pulling the strings of power. Trump's rise has been in part because he had the overwhelming support of Big Tech, so News
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If there's one thing that will beat Elon in 2028, it's other tech companies. Just so long as we don't end up awarding Oracle the contract to revamp the IRS. Or end up with Clippy running the VA.
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As soon as he put Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast, I moved him from the Normal category to the Brain-Dead category. He's now just another Maggot.
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That the reason we're getting all this coverage of Newsom's selling out is because it's being pushed by right wing media so that the left-wing base of the Democrat party has a predisposition against him.
Are you seriously suggesting that this is *not* a newsworthy story, and that it shouldn't be reported?
It does appear to be the case (based on a cursory internet search) that this story is largely being pushed by right-leaning media, and largely ignored by left-leaning media. For example, CNN doesn't seem to have covered the story at all. But the question we should ask here is not "why is the right wing media pushing this story", but rather "why is the left wing media choosing to bury the story".
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They see him coming in 2028, and are laying groundwork for a narrative of being too cozy with tech CEOs - as if the current guy isn't in an orgy with them.
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Umm... what?
Did you see a different inauguration than I did? Because from where I was sitting, it was apparent and clear that all the big-name tech CEOs had capitulated, bent the knee, and embraced their future as MAGAts.
They'd go to the Newsom inauguration too ... (Score:2)
Umm... what? Did you see a different inauguration than I did?
No. They are highly intelligent and practical dedicated liberals, smart enough not to start a fight with the folks that can will be make laws for the next 2 or 4 years, and regulations for the next 4 years.
Because from where I was sitting, it was apparent and clear that all the big-name tech CEOs had capitulated, bent the knee, and embraced their future as MAGAts.
You watched theatre. They will all be there if Newsom wins too, but personally be happier to do so.
Newsom is Pro-business? (Score:2)
Guess we will see (Score:2)
What comes out of all this weird crap he is doing. Losing Silicon Valley to Trump could be a real loss, where a future left wing society should be a designed system to produce abundance, and these folks design systems. Shutting down discourse, including right wing, could also be a loss, so thus the right wing influencers on his podcast. But it is a realpolitik3 strategy, I would put anyone you can get from China way over Michael Savage.
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So you fight corruption with more corruption? This isn't left/right wing, this is government for sale, the quid pro quo, corruption, influence buying in a burner phone. It reeks, no matter who published it.
Re:Guess we will see (Score:5, Informative)
So you fight corruption with more corruption? This isn't left/right wing, this is government for sale, the quid pro quo, corruption, influence buying in a burner phone. It reeks, no matter who published it.
Thhis reminds me of (former) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's appointment book, where Clinton Initiative donors got special marks next to their names so HRC would know they were donors when they met with Madam Secretary. [cbsnews.com]
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Wake the fuck up. **Everything** is a left/right issue now, from the food you eat, to the car you drive, to where you live and send your kids to school, what your clothes look like, if you have a short or long beard, to the brand of bottled water you drink. You might not *like* the fact this is so, but that doesn't change the facts that everything is political now.
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Observing the facts and calling them out is important. You change things climbing one mountain at a time. It's not right, until it's ALL right. Each issue you face may be a battle, but there is a solution, which is not to cave, to fight for what's equitable.
Newsom's phones aren't equality, but exactly the reverse.
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The quid pro quo diminishes every Californian. Equal access, and the very right to redress government changes when a sitting governor gives a class of people smartphones with a direct line.
This is one very visible type of corruption, incarnate.
Yes, every government needs to be sensitive to its business climate.
No, you don't select a class of billionaires and wannabes for direct access to your ear, above all other constituents.
Beyond the optics, we voted out monarchy early in the US history. This is an equiv
He does realize... (Score:4, Insightful)
He does realize that if he does ever become President, he'll have to stop this program because of Presidential Records issues, right?
Giving tech leaders/CEOs/Donors a private means of talking to the Gov. would be a horrible idea if a Republican Gov did it, but here we are praising a Democrat Gov for giving major donors special access/treatment.
Yay.
Re:He does realize... (Score:4, Insightful)
All he has to do is keep the paperwork at his private country club. Absolutely no repercussions.
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He does realize that if he does ever become President, he'll have to stop this program because of Presidential Records issues, right?
Giving tech leaders/CEOs/Donors a private means of talking to the Gov. would be a horrible idea if a Republican Gov did it, but here we are praising a Democrat Gov for giving major donors special access/treatment.
Yay.
Communications on these phones, verbal or written, would not be subject to any laws that normally apply to a governor and executives within a company. A court order would be required to obtain access to the phones, which are owned by a third-party who has no knowledge of the phones once they are distributed. Something got deleted/destroyed while a court order was attempting to be served? Oopsies! However did we know that was going to happen given we have no knowledge of the phones after they are distrib
Re: He does realize... (Score:2)
This isn't a new play from the playbook. Plenty of illegal or suspicious activities have done this for years. Why is the governor of California suddenly interested
Why are you suddenly interested in politicians doing illegal things?
Re: He does realize... (Score:2)
He does realize that if he does ever become President, he'll have to stop this program because of Presidential Records issues, right?
Giving tech leaders/CEOs/Donors a private means of talking to the Gov. would be a horrible idea if a Republican Gov did it, but here we are praising a Democrat Gov for giving major donors special access/treatment.
Yay.
Why, and who said anything about private, phones aren't issued in pairs, so why would that affect compliance? What would you do about non-compliance anyway, the president can do whatever he wants. That's what you voted for.
What would be a horrible idea for a Republican, lunches at mar a Lago? Playing golf with donors? Are you fucking serious?
I don't know why republicans refuse to own what they created. This is the new normal you asked for. Cold feet all of a sudden? Itching for the next president to complai
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He is probably assuming that when Trump is finished such rules will be largely meaningless, and he can simply ignore them.
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He does realize that if he does ever become President, he'll have to stop this program because of Presidential Records issues, right?
You think this is going to be a thing going forward? We're in a world where the president is openly calling for impeachment of judges for disagreeing with him politically, the executive attacking the judicial, where the executive is issuing orders that are constitutionally the responsibility of the legislative branch, where the president is evoking ancient obscure rules in an attempt to bypass due process for detainment and deportation of American permanent residents.
The only safe assumption to make is to a
Re:He does realize... (Score:5, Insightful)
He does realize that if he does ever become President, he'll have to stop this program because of Presidential Records issues, right?
If the goal were secrecy, he wouldn't have issued a press release about it. The purpose of this program is to make a public splash, and nothing in the Presidential Records Act would preclude that. Yes, the communications would become part of the presidential record. If Newsom wanted to have secret communications, he'd use devices that he didn't tell the world about.
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You think they didn't have special access before, by having an assistant place a call to the governor's office from any phone they might have laying around, and being let right through?
This is just getting the assistants and secretaries out of the way. And no, this isn't me diminishing the concern - I'm just stating the reality of what happens in literally every governors' office already.
Do you really think Phil Knight, billionaire founder and CEO of Nike, can't get the governor of Oregon (where Nike is he
Why not... (Score:2)
According to Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom has distributed prepaid burner phones to around 100 California business leaders, giving them direct access to him and reinforcing his pro-business stance. "If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away," read one of the notes.
Why not just share your phone number with them? Why do they need "burner" phones whose sole purpose is to be untraceable?
Does he think they don't know how to add his "digits" to their cellphones?
Does he think they want to carry around a flipphone next to their iPhone 16 Pro Plus?
Is he trying to protect the Tech CEOs or himself? People with burner phones usually have something to hide - they are commonly used by drug dealers, gangbangers, mobsters, sex workers and their customers, not Governors looking to h
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Were they props? - Yes
Were they jokes? - No
Really? - Yes
Is this your first publicity stunt?
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This, plus incredibly wasteful.
Why not have one burner phone for himself, and give that number to the tech bros or whoever?
Good grief, no wonder the US is so fucked.
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Running for President (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, I thought Repubs.... (Score:2)
I thought Republicans were the party of big business. It seems Newsom has proven otherwise. What's the little guy gonna be able to do to elect people on HIS side not business's side?
{^_^}
We owe Guilfoyle an apology (Score:3)
is there nothing prohibiting this? (Score:2)
It's says quite a bit when officials in high governmental offices are so brazen with their unethical and likely illegal activities.
I am not informed on the nuance of holding a government position, but i do know there are hard rules - my uninformed thoughts were that there needs to be a record of all activities, minutes of meetings, transparency and again, records of all activities of all official activities, and only using government provided tools for governmental activities.
i know, i am naive...
Governor's Newsom's office hung up on me 4 times (Score:2)
Newsom's last year in office (Score:2)
I predict several of his vetoes will be overridden by the California Legislature. The Democrats in the California Legislature typically won't do this, but Newsom is departing from their caucus.
For example:
1. Newsom is in the pocket of the power companies on residential solar. He wants to cancel NEM 2 contracts for people who installed Solar before April of 2023 and not pay them anything for the power they export to the grid.
2. Newsom has departed from the caucus on transgender issues.
Ok then.. (Score:2)
Why is this news that matters? (Score:2)
Why does it matter what the Governor of California does with his own money? And why are we calling them "burner phones" like it's a drug deal? They're just prepaid phones, like he's gonna pay activation fees and monthly subscriptions. It's a novel backchannel, not an illicit action.
This whole thing sounds like a hit job, and others have already mentioned that above.
Not the Hezbollah kind, I trust (Score:2)
Burner phones?? (Score:5, Insightful)
That does not sound good.
Re:Burner phones?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to California. It pretends to be ultra-liberal, but it's not. It's a oligarchy, for by and for - and exclusively for - the wealthy elite. Sure, many of them have left leaning views, but they will never let that interfere with fleecing the proles for every penny they can get to funnel to their union backers (you do not get elected to a statewide office in California without the backing of either the teacher's union or the prison guard's union, or both).
They don't even pretend otherwise any more. I'm more and more convinced that are regular conversations in smoke filled rooms with expensive wallpaper between nameless, faceless party officials (to whom all elected official answer) about how to finish destroying the middle class, or driving them out, to reserve California exclusively for the obscenely wealthy - themselves - and their indentured servants.
Re:Burner phones?? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's just like the rest of America then.
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Only more practiced at it.
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There's plenty of stuff that bad in California, too. Go read up on the corruption of LAPD, including racist gangs among the officers.
It isn't how bad the crimes are, though, it's the blatant way they literally brag about the corruption (like what's being discussed here). California's political corruption is on a par with Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, and the Daly Machine in Chicago, only on a much larger scale. They brag about it because they know they can, and are proud of it.
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He seems to have issued it after it started to get some use. That doesn't look good.
Newsom desperately wants to be something bigger, but he wants it far too much for him to get it.
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He seems to have issued it after it started to get some use. That doesn't look good.
Doesn't matter. This still isn't the way you'd go about it if you wanted untraceable communications. Sending physical devices with notes attached leaves an enormous evidentiary trail, and it's also pretty useless. The right way to do this for untraceability would have been for Newsom to get himself a burner phone (or a hundred of them) and quietly give the numbers to CEOs.
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The ring will devour him?
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So, apparently the purpose here was for the governor to provide phones that would allow millionaires to call and text him untraceably.
That does not sound good.
Hmm, then Newsome is incompetent. He really needed buy just one burner phone and give it to himself.
Want coordination off gov and corp resources (Score:4, Insightful)
So, apparently the purpose here was for the governor to provide phones that would allow millionaires to call and text him untraceably.
That does not sound good.
Hmm, then Newsome is incompetent. He really needed buy just one burner phone and give it to himself.
Nope. You want burners on both ends so the coordination is off both government and corporate networks and resources.
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The good-faith goal doesn't seem to be to make them untraceable, but seems to be to have them have numbers which can directly reach him by being on a pre-set list.
The purported reason is to for them to have the numbers that can directly reach him by being on a pre-set list.
That does not actually make a lick of sense, of course, since he could just have them give him their cell phone numbers, he doesn't need them to have a burner phone. There is no "good faith" in this purported "good-faith goal"
But I agree that this looks close enough to being deliberately untraceable that this is a bad thing. I have a friend on a local planning board who has to report if anyone calls him to discuss any of his work, and document the call. This does very much look like one rule for the governor, and another rule for everyone else. Whether or not that was the intent, even the appearance of corruption should be a problem. We also live in an era where the US President engages in far more blatant corruption, so the standards have just fallen for everyone. 50 years ago, it was a big deal that Jimmy Carter owned a peanut farm, and he had to sell it as President to avoid conflicts of interest.
It's also disturbing that the stated implication is that rich people can reach the governor instantly with a phone call, while ordinary people have no way to reach him at al
Re:Burner phones?? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, apparently the purpose here was for the governor to provide phones that would allow millionaires to call and text him untraceably.
That doesn't make sense. If he wants them to be able to contact him untraceably, the solution is to get a burner phone for himself and distribute the phone number to them. Or even better, to get 100 burner phones for himself and give one number to each CEO, so there isn't a single record of all of the conversations.
And, in any case, if the goal were secrecy, he wouldn't, you know, issue a press release about it.
Untraceability is clearly not the goal here.
So what is it? Why not just hand out his personal number to the CEOs? My guess is that Newsom believes that sending out physical phones will have a bigger political impact, both on CEOs who will see the physical phone in a drawer and be reminded that they can call Newsom whereas an entry in their address book might go unnoticed, and on the public, because a story about Newsom distributing his phone number won't get as much press coverage.
It's possible that there's another angle here, which is that this method may make it easier for Newsom to stop taking calls from an annoying CEO if he wants to, and to prevent the CEOs from redistributing Newsom's number. This is all based on the supposition that it's possible to pre-program these phones with Newsom's number in a way that does not allow the number to be easily extracted from the phones. This is clearly technically possible. I'm not sure if there are any phones on the market that offer this feature.
But the situation as described is clearly inconsistent with any attempt at secrecy. The press release about it proves that. Unless maybe Newsom found out that someone was going to leak it and decided to issue a press release to get ahead of it? Nah. If he wanted to keep it secret, distributing physical phones with attached personal notes would be idiotic. Much better to get burner phones for himself and quietly distribute the numbers, ideally by face to face meetings.
Re: (Score:2)
Moreover, if you think that any "titan of industry" in literally any state doesn't have the ability to get the governor on the phone whenever they need, you're absolutely deluded.
This is just sensationalized because "burner phone."
Re: Burner phones?? (Score:2)
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Isn't "burner phone" just slang for a cheap phone with a pre-paid SIM card? I have seen it used like that on travel related subreddits.
The anonymity is then not necessarily an important feature, but a side effect of it being cheap so it's not worth the hassle of registering it.
For some people the anonymity is of course an important feature, but not for everyone.
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Ana Kasparian will lose her mind when she hears about this.
She passionately despises Newsom
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The federal government does, in fact, pay the interest on the national debt, at least for now.
And the federal reserve can't call in debt that's not owed to them, and they only hold 13% of the total. The biggest share is held by foreign investors.
Nice try, troll-boy, but you really need to get closer to actual facts to make it work.
Re: (Score:2)
the US government is almost 40 trillion in debt and i doubt they can pay the intrest on that
Except they've never missed repaying a bond. Not even once in 200+ years. So please go on about your doubts of easily verifiable information.
and if the federal Reserve called in that debt the gov would collapse,
That's not how Treasury bills work.
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He could've had an AIPAC burner phone.
Pager.
Re:Union access (Score:5, Insightful)
No need. The union bosses have had direct access for decades. He would never have been elected without backing by at least the teacher's union (the biggest, richest and more powerful in the state) or the prison guard's union (#2 in all respects). That's how it's been for decades, and will remain for the foreseeable future.