mark stoltzfus

The moral failure is defining morality as being willing to crush other people and take their money to use in your pet projects. Morality is giving your own money to good causes. Tyranny is taking other people’s money for “the greater good”. It has never ended well to crush the wealthy for this purpose. Never. The end result is worse for the poor.

It is a moral failure of our country that we changed the rules to create a trillionaire while doing nothing about the 771,000 homeless and over 18 million who do not have enough to eat.

@Dre_214 @tariqnasheed Karmelo’s own star witnesses completely disagree with you on the facts. They ended up being the slam dunk that the prosecution needed.

@tariqnasheed Agreed. Austin broke the Law by assaulting Karmello first. Mello was sitting down and Austin went up 4-5 rows to attacked Mello. Mello did Not commit any crime, he fearfully defended himself.

Remember.. Karmelo had a LEGAL right to be under that tent. His utility blade was LEGAL. And he had a LEGAL right to defend himself from assault. The only person who broke the law that day was Austin Metcalf who had NO LEGAL RIGHT to assault Karmelo

Weird that you are willing to extend self defense to Karmelo who was merely asked to leave. But not Zimmerman who had his head repeatedly bashed against the sidewalk or Rittenhouse who was chased with a Molotov cocktail, bashed with a skateboard and then one attempted to shoot him with a handgun.

@itzRex Love this, but you got idiots in these comments like he murdered someone like you white motherfuckers get away with shit all the time throw rocks and hide your hands, why Zimmerman, Kyle Ridderson whatever the fuck his name is why ain't they in jail oh! We know WHITE

🚨 THIS IS THE REAL KARMELO - He’s a good kid, comes from a two parent home, A+ Student, 2 jobs, and carried himself like a gentleman. White people will NEVER show this on their page !

@itzRex The defense star witnesses didn’t even support your version of what happened with Karmelo. He was cooked the second the stories matched across the board and that Karmelo instigated everything.

Same state. Different justice. 2023: Alec Adamson (Prosper, TX) shoots & kills a Black student, leads police on car chase + foot pursuit. Sentence: 4 years. Served: 2. 2025: Karmelo (Frisco, TX) gets jumped by white students, defends himself with a knife. Sentence: 35 years. Tell me this isn’t two-tiered justice.

A 911 dispatcher is not a person in authority and has zero power to demand anything. Zimmerman did not make first contact and had extensive injuries to his face and head which supported his claim that he was jumped and beaten into the concrete. Considering the evidence it would have been very difficult to convict Zimmerman on anything.

Yeah, but the problem here brother Logan is number one with the Trayvon Martin case Zimmerman was told to leave the child alone by the dispatch or whoever was in authority that he was talking to, and he went on anyway and proceeded to do too much meddling sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and had written a check his ass couldn’t cash and got beat up so he says, but we don’t even really know cause we weren’t there to know if he’s telling the truth or not. And it would appear just on the strength that he was told to disregard Trayvon Martin and go on about his way and let the police handle it, and he took the law into his own hands like a vigilante in our opinion not fact or law, but our opinion, his ass should be behind bars.

The Karmelo Anthony verdict of guilty in his murder case was a gross miscarriage of justice. Even if you don't agree with what Karmelo did, it does not reach to the level of murder under the law.

Some may do that, but I can tell you as a business owner, my wealthier clients are less demanding and more forgiving. My nightmare clients were mostly lower class, greedy beyond belief and willing to rip me off at every opportunity. Some wealthier ones are like that too, and it can hurt more since they can bring more weight and their jobs are higher dollar. But its not close, the vast majority of the people I have come across with an irrational love of money and willingness to rip you off were those lower class, poorer ones.

@OrevaZSN Becoming a billionaire means stepping on others necks to get there. Believe me when I say poverty of others and the future wellbeing of humanity is NOT part of their mental model of what “matters”. I always said: if I had Jeff bezos money, I wouldn’t have Jeff bezos money.

This might sound cynical, but I’ve always wondered why no billionaire has single-handedly used their wealth to fund the eradication of poverty, or reverse climate change just for the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to say they saved humanity.

Thats just not true. Plus its impossible to even implement or maintain. Too much class mobility into the billionaire class and competition within it. If billionaire A can undercut billionaire B by flooding the market with a cheaper option since billionaire A is deliberately keeping that product scarce, he will. Somehow you believe both that billionaires are evil, greedy and will sell their humanity for another dollar, and they would simultaneously never do that to another wealthy person. It makes no sense.

@OrevaZSN Eradicating poverty is against the interests of the entire billionaire class, who require engineered artificial scarcity to empower their class and maintain their subservient professional-managerial class

I would disagree slightly here because you didn’t make any mention of the individual choices that create the “structures”. The indicators that predict poverty are primarily personal choices and correlate extremely strongly. Even if you are born into poverty, you have under a 10% chance of ending up in poverty if you get a GED, no kids before marriage, and get at least a part time, minimum wage job in high school or right after.

The instinct makes sense but the math doesn't really hold up. Poverty and climate change aren't problems that exist because nobody wrote a big enough check. They're structural, political, and deeply embedded in systems that one person's wealth cannot simply override no matter how large that wealth is.

Because its not possible. Dollar amounts are 1 step removed from the actual thing our economy runs on, productivity. You can throw all the money in the world at “poverty” and it will be largely pointless. Billionaires are billionaires because they have proven to maximize value out of capital. Those in poverty in first world countries have proven they minimize value out of capital. All that happens if you would “fix” poverty is you redistribute capital from those good at increasing productivity, to those terrible at it. In the end the majority of that capital would just disappear, and those that were in poverty would be there again. It also completely rewrites the reward structures that drive innovation and increases to productivity. So you would also have a massive decrease in economic output (productivity).

@World4Truth @TrpstrLeonOG Gas does not take up a significant part of disposable income. $200 per month for the average household. $100 per month in coffees. $150 for phones. $100 for electronics. $90-$200 for subscriptions. The luxuries are what really get the average American, not gas.

@TrpstrLeonOG These boomers think 100 dollars will last a week in this economy when it cost like 100 to drive to the store they can’t grasp prices have tripled before gas was 4$

BOOMER UNCLE: "Nobody wants to work anymore." ME: "The warehouse near me starts at $16 an hour." BOOMER UNCLE: "Sounds fair." ME: "Average rent here is $1,900." BOOMER UNCLE: "People need roommates." Funny how every solution involves workers sacrificing more. Never employers paying more.

@esjesjesj Seriously? This is such a stupid point. Because if you apply your logic to the BLM movement its 100x worse. You really dont think very far, do you?

Once again, no one is happier this kid was murdered than the right. They love using his corpse to push a racist narrative. It’s a huge gift for them

@ItsForCom5 @FoxtrotOps @ZacksJerryRig @elonmusk Which I personally really like. But you have to admit its getting concerning how much he posts Elon hate. He made excellent YouTube videos and started a cool company making wheelchairs, why then have to go and be a completely irrational, foaming at the mouth idiot on X?

@FoxtrotOps @ZacksJerryRig @elonmusk He literally started a company to make cheaper high-quality wheelchairs. What have *you* accomplished than roleplaying on Twitter (and possibly not even be from this country)?

CONGRATS @elonmusk ! Your work at DOGE was amazing. You decreased the national debt by a positive 2.8 trillion dollars, and parasites the USA hasn't seen in 60 years are BACK. Nice work dude. Nobody could have predicted this.

TIL that 10 million customers equals “niche”. AT&T is the largest fiber optic provider with 30 million customers. The thing is starlink will get cheaper, its crazy to claim otherwise when every metric is going that direction. Customers are increasing and costs are going down. The biggest beneficiaries are underdeveloped countries, rural areas, airlines, cross country travelers and any ocean traveling vessels. Starlink is literally the only reasonable option for all of them. On top of that, there are some really obnoxiously priced internet providers with monopolies in certain cities. Also starlink was not fully available since 2021, their constellation only covered the southern parts of the US. I don’t know about 1 billion customers, but I could see 100 million within 3 years. They added 5 million in 2025 alone, 2 million of which were in the last 2 months of the year. They just eliminated the waitlist and opened up to most of the world. They only actively started finding customers in the last 6 months. So yes the valuation seems to high, but I think you have been slightly misled about their potential and existing customer base.

It is niche. It's not like Starlink is launched just last month. It is available in Europe and in the US since 2021. It is available in more than 50 countries for at least 3-4 years now. But still they managed to get only 10 million customers so far. What makes you think that this number will increase to 1 billion? There is no waiting if you want to get one. And don't forget that cost to provide this Internet will always stays high. It is amazing what they have done. But it isn't 1.8 trillion for sure.

SpaceX is losing money hand over fist, nearly $5bn last year. @SpaceX’s only profitable business is Starlink, but its new satellites can only be launched by Starship, which the FAA has grounded, again. Who in their right mind thinks this meme stock of a company is worth $2tn?

Lopsided is irrelevant. Never make the mistake of looking only at the gap. What you should look at is how in the last 40 years famine and hunger has been completely wiped out (except for in areas with political issues, primarily war). The poorest of America are living better than the middle class of the 1980’s. (Access to unheard of tech and comfort) And that the introduction of the internet created a massive amount of class mobility. Our poorest people’s biggest problem and killer is that they eat too much food, too many calories. It takes an insane amount of wealth for us to hit such a problem. All of these and more were created by the reward structure that capitalism provided. Its very easy to see the problems of capitalism, and yes there are severe problems with it. However the pros are tougher to see because we assume they would exist no matter what, we assume they exist in a vacuum, we take them for granted. There is a reason all the innovations and adaptations of innovations into the every day life happened first in free market capitalist countries, and then when proven, moved into the more restrictive countries. That lopsidedness you dislike is the reason it happens. The reward structure incentivizes risk and innovation. Furthermore it also incentivizes a higher productivity per capita. The reason I work 60-80 hours a week and try to become more efficient and productive is the rewards I gain. You meddle with this reward structure too much and productivity will plummet, innovation will plummet and living standards decrease. Less productivity = less goods and services to go around = less wealth = shrinking of the GDP = less of a wealth gap. But the poorest will feel the hit more than anyone. A 25% decrease in productivity across the board would result in a 50% decrease in the wealth of the richest, and maybe a 15% decrease for the poorest. Who do you think would suffer the most in that scenario?

@marka9619 Really? You think we need unregulated capitalism? The economy is so lopsided after the last 40-years it’s verging on lethal to 99% of Americans.

Billionaires are the scourge of the earth and AI needs to be globalized and public. Thiel can go hide in Argentina. Musk can build his own location on the Transvaal. Zuckerberg can join his dad’s dental practice. And we get humanity back.

@Chandre86817434 @RealDanODowd @SpaceX Are you seriously claiming that the technology that enables 24/7 internet coverage on the entire planet, including on flights, is too niche and “not growing”? You have obviously lived in or near a first world city your entire life, good grief.

The problem with starlink is new satellites are required to be launched continuously. The market is very niche and it isn't growing much. The price is simply too high to compete against land based Internet. Reliability is too low to annoy people. No wonder no one is interested in this shit.

@esjesjesj Uhhh no? It’s admitting that the solution to save western civilization will be called racist. That does not inherently mean it is racism. After all, I can pull up articles that claimed milk drinking is racism because of the prevalence of lactose intolerance in black people.

This is just admitting you ARE a racist

Where’s the line? I get it can have some ridiculous results but gas station employees are not necessarily known for their good judgment. When I was underaged, every friend group usually had at least one designated “alcohol buyer” who looked much older to buy in the places that allowed the employees to use their judgment. I lived it, took advantage of it and because of that if I were the owner, I would institute a no exemptions policy.

Making it a "no exceptions' instead of something like "ID anyone that looks under 30, or even make it 40 if you want to be super safe. IDing some guy that looks like he is 60 years old is crazy. This is also one of the problems with the drinking age being 21. A 20 year old and a 30 year old can look a similar age depending on their genetics and health. But in countries where it's 18, you can make a "ID everyone that looks under 25," and be fine, because a 17 year old looking over 25 is incredibly rare.

So there are stings setup to check stores suspected of serving to minors. Or sometimes random checks. I know of a few gas stations etc that got busted like that. They send in an older looking 20 year old to buy and just like that the store can be in quite a bit of trouble. To counteract that, a lot of stores just have a “no exceptions” ID policy. Its not even on the workers, they are literally required by corporate or the owners to check every ID.

@ClownWorld because its bullshit. who is holding them to that standard of checking some old guys ID. NO ONE

@DefiantLs As a politician, Im not sure about Pence, but he is right here. Trump will fade, and hopefully a lot of his ideals will remain. I don’t think the rank and file of Republican party really have thought what it looks like without Trump and its time we do.

Q: "Are you saying it's time for Republicans to move beyond Donald Trump?" Pence: "As I wrote in the book, leaders fade into history, but principles endure."