Episode Details

Introduction

LIVE from your ESG sad sack, it’s a Business Pants Friday Show here at November 15th Studios, featuring AnalystHole Matt Moscardi. On today’s weekly wrap up: The government is getting its own Facebook Oversight Board; Meritocracy is not the name of a new WWF character; and food with a 36-month shelf life is still bad for you

Our show today is being sponsored by Free Float Analytics, the only platform measuring board power, connections, and performance for FREE.

Story of the Week (DR):

Trump taps Musk, Ramaswamy to oversee ‘drastic’ changes to U.S. government

Department of Government Efficiency–nicknamed DOGE after the cryptocurrency preferred by the Tesla CEO–its stated purpose is to radically shrink the size of the federal government by streamlining bureaucracy, eliminating jobs and shaving up to a third off of the $6.75 trillion fiscal budget.

Conservatives have advocated starving the bureaucracy of resources ever since Ronald Reagan transformed the party with his famous 1986 slogan “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’.”

How DOGE will exactly operate remains at present unclear. Nor has there been an official explanation as yet regarding oversight, as Trump has confirmed it will operate outside of the executive branch but under his authority. This means it could be little more than a glorified advisory body or it could wield considerable influence, depending on how much favor it carries with the President-elect. 

Even Exxon Mobil Is Horrified by Trump's Climate Plan

As the New York Times reports, Exxon CEO Darren Woods warned that withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement would greatly weaken our global efforts to curb carbon emissions — a grim irony, given the fact that he represents one of the biggest contributors to global warming in the world.

"We need a global system for managing global emissions. Trump and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space."

Twitter Is Getting Absolutely Destroyed as Users Flee to Rivals Run by People Who Haven't Lost Their Minds

Bluessky saw a major influx of well over a million new users in the week following the presidential election, growing from just 9 million users in September to 15 million.

Bluesky even became the number one free app on Apple's App Store this week, beating out Meta's Threads — which is also spiking in apparent user count, though in a slightly more dubious fashion.

Meanwhile, X-formerly-Twitter was in the news this week after British newspaper The Guardian announced it would be leaving the Elon Musk-owned platform, which has quickly devolved into a cesspool of hate speech and disinformation since his acquisition.

Jamie Dimon on not getting a job under Trump: 'I haven't had a boss in 25 years and I'm not about ready to start' MM

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: The Onion Buys Alex Jones’s Infowars Out of Bankruptcy

The Onion said its bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

MM:

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