Month: January 2025

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A German-American businessman who made billions as a military supplier enthusiastically took his $250 million superyacht to Hawaii, only to be stopped at the shore by locals who did not want him to set foot on their island

Money can buy some truly remarkable things, take superyachts, for instance. They are one of the most extravagant byproducts of billionaire status (in most cases). But there are certain treasures money cannot acquire. No, we won’t say love in this 21st-century world, but nature, pristine and unspoiled. While money can repair damages, often, it ends up being the root cause of destruction, as seen with these floating palaces, which leave a massive carbon footprint.

Perhaps it was with this concern that local Hawaiian protesters vehemently opposed the mooring of the $250 million superyacht Liva O off the island of Molokai earlier this month. So much so, that a group of Molokai residents banded together and blocked the group’s access to shore.

The 387-foot yacht, owned by German-American billionaire Stephen Orenstein, a commercial real estate magnate, was indulging in the pristine Hawaiian islands when it hit this unexpected roadblock. Sailing from Maui, the luxury vessel had moored off Coconut Island before arriving at Hawaiʻi’s fifth largest island, where its intentions were met with skepticism. Residents were primarily concerned about the purpose of the visit and its potential impact on their untouched Molokai environment.

(https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/liva-o-yacht-stopped-at-hawaii-27012025.php)

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TRUMP’S BILLIONAIRES WILL ACCELERATE AMERICAN DECLINE.

DR. RICHARD WOLFF EXPLAINS HOW.

“The road we are on [as] a declining empire, becoming more and more unequal… you don’t need rocket science to understand that’s not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up, and it’s not going to be pretty.” JANUARY 28, 2025

TOPSHOT – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during the inaugural parade inside Capitol One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

There’s an old scene that comes to my mind to explain this. It’s in the cowboy movies we all saw when we were younger. It’s when the sheriff can’t prevent the bad guys from riding into town and robbing the bank. And there he looks. The useless sheriff didn’t stop it. So he says, with great bravado, round up the usual suspects. He wants to look like he’s tough because that’s better than looking like the failure he was.

**Stephen Janis: **That’s a really good point.

**Dr. Richard Wolff: **[Crosstalk] Trump has been the president before. Let me assure you, during his time as president, inequality in the United States, by all its measures, got worse. Now I don’t want to be unfair — They got worse under Biden too, and they got worse under Obama too, so he is not outstanding. But did he stop it? Not at all.

The tax cut that he gave in December of 2017, the first year of his office, was the worst blow to equality we could have had — Made the government bankrupt because it didn’t have all the revenue that corporations and the rich no longer had to pay. So the government had to borrow, growing the deficit. And who did it borrow from? The corporations and the rich. The money they didn’t have to pay in taxes, they turned around and lent to the government instead, which means we the people are on the hook to repay all that money plus interest because our leader, Mr. Trump, gave them that tax cut. Instead of being shamed, he goes around celebrating it. And we live in a country — And this scares me, this is what’s scares me —
https://therealnews.com/trumps-billionaires-will-accelerate-american-decline