Big Burner Bucks in the Biggest Little Tax Haven [Update]

 

luggage carousel reno

A miniature Burning Man statue and an American flag greet travelers arriving at Reno airport; their busiest time of year is during Burning Man

reno biggest little city

Tax is the big story in the Burning Man world right now. This is in line with this year’s Medici theme of patrons. It seems that Patrón is not just a tequila favored by rappers, it’s also a key word in the Nevada Live Entertainment tax legislation amendment called “The Burning Man tax” which BMOrg is insisting “doesn’t apply to them since they don’t provide live entertainment”. Presumably, since the law doesn’t specifically mention “ritual effigy burn in front of a crowd of 80,000 people” as one of the types of live entertainment, they think they have found a loophole to finagle.

Whatever the outcome, it’s holding up ticket sales, and plans, for the Burners who have to actually create Black Rock City and provide all the Live Entertainment (as per the tax code definitions) on our dime.

The Man burns in 219 days. 7 months

Meanwhile, over at the BJ they say What Fuelled the Renaissance? Could it Have Happened Without Cash?

As Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell said last year “The culture of Burning Man can really flourish with money…[for example] to bring great musicians to your camp“. So hopefully the gentrification of Burning Man 2.0 will actually lead to a Renaissance-style flourishing of culture, where the poor are lifted from their wretched conditions to share in the fruits that our modern technocratic civilization is bearing. More art, more gifting, more solar and hydrogen powered camps and installations, more live music, more hip-hop yes please!

churchill initiation druid4Loopholes to get out of paying tax are much favored by banksters, including the Florentine Medici, the Borgias of Naples, the Venetian Del Bancos (ancestors of the German Warburgs), and the rest of the Venetian (or was it Phoenician) Black Nobility. They created the modern banking industry, the Illuminati and Skull and Bones secret societies, and the British system of hereditary feudal oligarchy, with its Dukes, Earls, Barons, and so on. This is the world of Downton Abbey (which is actually a Rothschild castle); or Liz Hurley’s epic new show The Royals, which was filmed at Winston Churchill’s family house Blenheim Palace (he was the Duke of Marlborough, and also a Druid). These wealthy and secretive families financed the arts, railroads, shipping, immigration, architecture, and war – usually, both sides.

Image: Kevin Oliver, Flickr (Creative Commons)

Downton Abbey was filmed at Highclere Castle, one of the many Rothschild family homes.  Image: Kevin Oliver, Flickr (Creative Commons)

 

Blenheim Palace, ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough. Image: 1967jwm, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Blenheim Palace, ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough including Winston Churchill. Image: 1967jwm, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

In the middle of all these centuries of international finance intrigues were the Rothschilds. They’re at Burning Man, of course:

Screenshot 2016-01-28 10.10.53

https://twitter.com/DRexplore/status/338342049092866049

And not just David. Other members of the clan too.

From Inc magazine:

One Entrepreneur’s Productivity Secret: Burning Man

For Vitals founder Mitch Rothschild, the radical change in perspective that comes from a trip to the desert helps him get more done.
 

Whip cream holsters. Topless dancers. Airplane-size sculptures. It’s all part of the draw at the Burning Man festival in Black Rock, Nevada, which kicks off this week. But for one entrepreneur, all this reckless abandon has a very concrete pay-off: it’s a highly effective productivity booster

“You’re completely in the desert,” says Mitch Rothschild, a New York-based entrepreneur who admittedly went through 30 canisters of whip cream last year. “There’s just miles and miles of flat desert expanse and you’ve got 65,000 people there. There’s no money, no cell phones, no Internet. You get back as much as you put in.” (Rothschild’s distribution of whip cream was one way he gave back to attendees.)

…a change in perspective helped Rothschild pivot his business last year. Before he attended the festival, Vitals was strictly ad-based. There was growing demand for price and quality transparency, especially among insurers, but Vitals wasn’t making use of the data it had. After attending the festival, however, Rothschild saw the opportunity right in front of him. So what if it was a new business model? The money he could make would be worth it. Now a year later, Vitals has grown five times from where it was a year ago, thanks to this shift. 

Burning Man’s focus on self-reliance–among the festival’s principles, an emphasis on survival remains paramount–has also helped Rothschild’s approach to problem-solving at work, he says. “There is no plumbing, there is no water. There are dust storms and you have to not mind that.” 

Above all, Rothschild stresses the importance of simply unplugging. “You go on a vacation and don’t even realize the cobwebs you have in your brain until you’re thinking about things fresh,” he says. And the more different the experience, the better your perspective will be. “It’s almost like going to Mars, it’s so different from anything else,” he says of Burning Man. “But if you embrace the concept of change, not for its own sake but for adaptaing to change in your environment, well, that’s what an entrepreneur has to do.”

[Source: Inc magazine]

Great to hear that the Medici Rothschilds are making five times as much money from Burning Man.

Well, now it seems they’re setting up shop in Reno as well. And by shop I mean “international tax free corporations”.

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States

Moving money out of the usual offshore secrecy havens and into the U.S. is a brisk new business.

The U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world” —Andrew Penney, Rothschild & Co.

 bloomberg tax havenLast September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.

His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.

Some are calling it the new Switzerland.

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”

Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos, where used to go to gamble, but now a days people also play online so you can sign up to betfred and get £60 using this offer. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.

The firm says its Reno operation caters to international families attracted to the stability of the U.S. and that customers must prove they comply with their home countries’ tax laws. Its trusts, moreover, have “not been set up with a view to exploiting that the U.S. has not signed up” for international reporting standards, said Rothschild spokeswoman Emma Rees.

[Source: Bloomberg Business Week]

The whole story by Jesse Drucker at Bloomberg is a great read.

The Shadow Economy

How significant are tax havens to Silicon Valley? Well, tech companies have more cash than countries – yes, even the mighty United States.

more cash than countries 2013

…and most of it is offshore

2014 offshore money

[Source: 2014 data, Citizens for Tax Justice, via Softpedia ]

The Fortune 500 companies alone have $2.1 trillion in tax havens, a pile that is growing 8% a year. 72% of them operate offshore tax haven subsidiaries. The top 5 biggest tech companies had $471 billion offshore, as of 2014. Apple’s cash pile has grown to $216 billion, as of yesterday – $200 billion of that is offshore.

Apple’s tiny little office in Reno runs the largest tax-free cash hoard the world has ever seen.

[Source: Zacks.com via qz.com]

Braeburn Capital

Image via blogs.rgj.com

Named after the Granny Smith and Lady Hamilton apple hybrid, Braeburn Capital’s sole purpose – just like Apple Operations International – is to avoid paying taxes. Apple created the Reno, Nevada-based company in 2006 as an asset management company.

Apple’s headquarters may be located in Cupertino, Calif, but by placing an office in Reno – roughly 200 miles away from headquarters – to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains.

California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84%, compared to Nevada’s whopping 0%. Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year.

[Source: Zacks.com]

It’s no wonder that the US wants a cut of all these billions and trillions.

Reno is being used to get the money out of the country, but how does it get back in? This article from a Venture Capital blog offers an interesting clue:

Offshore-Fund-Structure

[Source: The Venture Alley]

So the offshore company invests in a pooled fund which invests in a management company in another country. This company then invests in whatever VC funds and startups it wants. For example the London office can invest in the Reno office. Which cycles the money through Ireland and the Netherlands Antilles in a Double Irish With A Dutch sandwich (no, really). Lord Sandwich was a member of the Hellfire Club; the Hawaiian islands were once known as the Sandwich Islands, in his honor. But I digress; back to Black Rock.

Black Rock.

Black Stone.

Black Water.

One of the first Silicon Valley venture capital firms was called Venrock – Rock as in Rockefeller. They are the money behind Apple, Intel, Fairchild, and many others – $2.5 billion in 442 companies over 41 years (to 2010), resulting in 125 IPOs and 128 M & A exits.

Yes, Rockefellers are Burners too. BMP Director Rae Richman used to run the Silicon Valley office of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

largest foundations

Another BMP Director, Jennifer Raiser, is also on the board of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, #18 (above). She gets paid to advise BMOrg on their annual report, and gets to make money on her book about Burning Man which they promote through their official channels.

You’ll notice that none of the various Rockefeller or Rothschild entities (now publicly combined) show up on these lists. The richer you get, the deeper in the shadows you can hide it. Controlling the propaganda channels helps.

rothschilds economist

The Rothschilds own the Economist with the Agnelli family (Fiat). The annual magazine cover contains cryptic messages and predictions

As big as the corporate Shadow Banking System is, it pales in comparison to private offshore wealth – which Forbes claim was $21 trillion in 2015.

Big Names on the Big Donor List

The 2014 Annual Report published a list of Major Donors to the Burning Man Project. These are the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. It reads like a who’s who of Big Banking families.

Screenshot 2016-01-28 10.22.48

[Source: burningman.org]

“Confirmed” means these people are definitely from the prominent families; “Unconfirmed” means that they may just share a name (and also be wealthy enough to be listed as a substantial donor to the Burning Man Project).

André Heinz is from the famous beans family, and John Kerry’s stepson.

Drew Schiff was married to Al Gore’s daughter.

Image: The Independent

Hedge-fund tycoon Pierre LaGrange (r) with new partner Roubi l’Roubi (l) Image: The Independent

Pierre LaGrange left his wife for the life. He’s now shaking up the bespoke tailoring world in London.

Burner artist Laura Kimpton’s father is from the hotel-chain family; her mother is a bird.

Karl Heinz Stockhausen is a pioneering electronic (classical) music composer. He is one of the Illuminati featured on the Sgt Peppers cover (back row, 5th from the left):

sgt peppers

Pioneer of electronic classical music Karlheinz Stockhausen. Invented the Electronic Music used in “60’s psychedelic Counter Culture.”

I’m not sure that Karlheinz and Miranda Stockhausen are both from the same “family of stick living”, but they both have castles in the same part of Germany.

Miranda von Stockhausen:

Image of Stockhausen Estate 3In 1787, Christian Ludwig von Stockhausen (1746-1820), became the honored recipient of the Ordre Pour le Merite (also known as the “Blue Max”)….the highest military decoration in the Prussian army until the end of the German Empire and monarchy in 1918…

Although our family had noble status before Christian, it was somehow lost. However, renewed admittance to the German nobility by Royal Decree occurred on July 6, 1798 by Prussian King Friederich Wilhelm III, by reasons of prior/old nobility coupled with Christian’s dedicated exemplary service as a courageous artillery captain of the Prussian army…

Image of the Stockhausen EstateAccording to an Imperial sealed declaration of October 3, in the year 997,the German Emperor Otto III gave the Stockhausen Estate, then a convent and part of the Meschede religious sovereignty, the predicate of nobility.

The Stockhausen estate is located in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany, in the Olpe district.

[Source]

 

The Federal Reserve and Burning Man?

In 1910, in a secret mission in private rail cars to the Jekyll Island Club in Georgia, the plan was hatched to create the Federal Reserve. A private company owned by the banksters that creates money out of thin air and lends it to their banks at ultra-low interest rates. They then invest this money back into markets they rig. It is above the law, according to its former director Alan Greenspan.

Cutting the long story of The Big Short short, the concept of fiat currency enshrined in this private bank and the modern perpetual war petrodollar economy has led to most of the horrors of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. The people are better off, because we have cars, planes, Internet, drugs, and Burning Man…right? Meanwhile the bankers are most certainly better off. And the hundreds of millions dead, wounded, tortured, imprisoned, or made homeless by endless, meaningless wars are definitely not better off.

first name club

Image copyright(c) Burners.Me 2016

President Woodrow Wilson was the banking cartel’s stooge, with the mysterious Colonel House his controller. We have him to thank for the Federal Reserve (the value of US$1 has dropped 98% in the century since its formation), the Income Tax and the IRS (a privately held Puerto Rico corporation), and America’s participation in World War I.

Wilson said, in his later years:

woodrow wilson“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

[Source]

As he was leaving office, Wilson realized he’d been hoodwinked by this crew of bankster robber barons – but by then, it was too late. The damage was done to all of us, and we still suffer today from economic bubbles and busts. The rich get richer, the poor get the picture, as Midnight Oil once said – before The Man got to them, too.

Back in Ye Olden Dayes, in 1911 John Moody and George Turner published an article Masters of Capital in America: The Seven Men. They named Seven Men – 6 family names – that controlled Wall Street and by extension, the entire U.S. economy.

masters of capital seven men

How interesting to see that every single one of those names is on the Burning Man major donor list – along with Goldman, Sachs, Russell, and many other titanic names in the financial world.

Sharp-eyed readers, or paid trolls waiting eagerly for us to slip up on a fact or a claim, might say “but Baker is not on the list”. Drew Schiff is the great-great-grandson of BOTH George Fisher Baker and Jacob Schiff (and, a Warburg). The Schiff, Rothschild, and Oppenheimer banking families have been closely intertwined since the founding of the Illuminati in 1776, and before (back when the Rothschilds were the Bauers, they worked for the Oppenheimers and lived in the same house as the Schiffs).

The 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1%

Recently, the world was shocked to learn that the number of people who have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50% of people on the planet had dropped from 388 in 2010 to 62 today

numberswealth

Image: Newsweek

Oxfam said, in their report to the World Economic Forum at Davos about a week ago:

The Oxfam report An Economy for the 1%, shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 38 percent. This has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period. Meanwhile, the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76tr. The report also shows how women are disproportionately affected by inequality – of the current ‘62’, 53 are men and just nine are women.

Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality, and in September agreed a global goal to reduce it, the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months. Oxfam’s prediction, made ahead of last year’s Davos, that the 1% would soon own more than the rest of us, actually came true in 2015 – a year earlier than expected.

[Source: Oxfam.org]

But this isn’t the 1%. More than half (53.4%) of Black Rock City earns US$50,000/yr or more, which puts them in the top 0.3% of the world’s wealth. We can probably say every Burner is in the 1%, globally.

This is not even the 1% of the 1% – or the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.

As I write this, the world population clock reads 7, 398,025,067. So 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of the world’s population is 74. Less people even than that, own half the world’s wealth.

oxfam rich people

Here’s the data that is based on, from the Forbes 2015 Billionaires List:

The big questions: how many Burners are on the list?

I have it on trusted authority that Bill Gates hasn’t been, but is thinking about it. He hasn’t tripped since the 70s, according to Playboy.

Larry Ellison and Stefan Persson were both named (outed?) as Billionaire Burners at Burning Man’s official web site, but that may just have been irony, or propaganda…or both.

My information, again from trusted sources, is that both of Larry Ellison’s kids,  Megan and David (aka Hollywood’s Richest Producers) have been to Burning Man.

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergei Brin, and Larry Page are all confirmed Burners.

Three other names come up in the Big Donors list that are also in the 62: Misty Roberts Thomson, Charles Ergen, Maggie Li. This could be coincidence; all three family fortunes are in the tech/media space. If anyone knows any other Burners from families in this list of 62, please let us know in the comments or a private message.

A simple solution to the world’s problems (for those who still believe that “Gifting” is “an economy”) might seem to be “those 62 people should give their wealth to the other 3.5 billion”. Unfortunately, that works out to a mere $507.89 per person – roughly the same as a Burning Man ticket after handling fees, vehicle pass, and taxes.

Giving the fish to people doesn’t solve the problem; teaching them to fish can solve it – provided corporations stop over-fishing and dumping toxic chemicals in our oceans, of course.

Who Was the Chicken, and Who the Egg?

According to Danger Ranger, it is because of Burning Man that Billionaire Burner Elon Musk located his Gigafactory in Reno.

Screenshot 2016-01-28 11.38.13

[Source: Twitter]

The Tesla factory happens to be in the 6th largest industrial park in the world (the biggest in the US), a designated Foreign Trade Zone. Reno is a natural logistics hub, the intersection of multiple cross-country railroads and highways. It is close to world renowned ski fields, and has its own luxury resorts and casinos. For 2 weeks a year it hosts Hot August Nights, the largest nostalgic car show in the world: also a thirty-year old event this year, one that brings more than 500,000 people and $250 million to the city. And, it is also the hottest new tax haven for the Shadow Economy.

How much of Reno’s success in luring billionaires and now trillionaires is due to all of that…and how much to Burning Man? Are they completely independent, totally inter-related, or somewhere in between?

tesla-reno-gigafactory-site-1-KTNV-Channel-13

rendering-of-tesla-battery-gigafactory-outside-reno-nevada-sep-2014_100479365_m

Image: Paul Horn, Flickr

Image: Paul Horn, Flickr

The Gigafactory under construction kind of looks like a giant Burning Man structure:

Tesla Gigafactory, Feb 2015. Image: Movilidaelectrica, Flickr

Tesla Gigafactory, Feb 2015. Image: Movilidaelectrica, Flickr

Burning Man definitely inspired the Morris Burner hotel and The Generator. Worthy and noble spaces, and we hope that more like these get inspired.

Image: Aaron Muszalski, Flickr (Creative Commons)

Image: Aaron Muszalski, Flickr (Creative Commons)

The Generator, Reno. Image: portaplaya, via the Burning Man Journal

Can BMOrg really claim credit for all the rest, though? $100 billion – just from one company locating one building near Reno? Let alone these Rothschild and Rockefeller ventures? What about the 1000 people working for Billionaire Burner Bezos’ Amazon in Fernley?

Did the Borg create the Medici…or did the Medici create them?

And what does all this influx of billionaire money mean for We The Burners? More art? More gifting? More culture spreading around the world and helping others? Or just, higher ticket prices, more wristband-only camps, and more Default world rules and politics?


[Update 1/30/16 1:54am]

I just watched this movie tonight. It came up during the research and it is really the perfect fire-roasted marshmallow with hot chocolate apértif to my story. Highly recommended.

34 comments on “Big Burner Bucks in the Biggest Little Tax Haven [Update]

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  11. As usual, this is a well-researched article on an important topic with a little conspiracy theory thrown in for fun.

    I think this year’s theme is appalling and Marian Goodell has gone off the rails. Luckily, I never pay attention to the theme, and I don’t have to hang out with Goodell. As for the tax, you mention the law does not include mention of “ritual effigy burn in front of a crowd of 80,000 people.” I know you were being a little facetious, but yeah, it doesn’t include mention of things like pyrotechnics and interactive art installations. It also doesn’t include boxing. Laws are words. The law goes to great lengths to define what constitutes “live entertainment” for the purpose of the tax. This law does not include words that would make Burning Man eligible for the live entertainment tax.

    I’d never heard of Reno as a tax haven, that’s interesting and troubling.

    • I think it’s encouraging: if Reno becomes the New Switzerland, the whole West Coast will benefit. And hopefully we get more spectacular art and gifting and culture creation.

      Thanks for your support. I was scratching my head trying to figure out which part of this post was the dreaded “conspiracy theory”…but then I remembered that John Robison’s original whistleblowing book on the Illuminati was called Proofs of a Conspiracy – so I’ll give you that!

      • Well you tie the Rothschilds with Churchill and Downton Abbey and Marion Goodell and the Illuminati and, you know, the usual suspects, ha. I’ve come to expect nothing less!

        As a rich person, are you one of those who are in favor of avoiding taxes at all costs? Sure, being a tax haven is a boon the locality, at the expense of the country.

        • I am in favor of a flat tax, 10-15% on consumption and 1% of each financial transaction. Scrap the income, capital gains, and death taxes.

          If Reno becomes a tax haven, it will create jobs in the community as HNWIs and their lawyers come to hang out.

          The money is already out of the economy, as I’ve discussed in this story. IMO it is a total scam. Apple and Google should pay tax, no question about it.

  12. Les Jeux Sont Faits!

    “Now, the ride of Paul Revere
    Set the nation on its ear,
    And the shot at Lexington heard ’round the world,
    When the British fired in the early dawn
    The War of Independence had begun,
    The die was cast, the rebel flag unfurled.”

    Welcome To The Schoolhouse, Black Rock

  13. Awesome research and post, burnersxxx.

    This explains the rationale for the numerous rich plug and play camps, and the BMOrg doing the big Outside Site Services program for RVs, hexayurts, catering, airplane travel, and other services for the plug and play camps. Might any Burner desire to view the gigapan picture of Burning Man 2015, posted within December, purposed to identify the numerous RV plug and play camps within Burning Man, and comment in these regards?

    • It is most appalling that Larry is making a big part of the 2016 theme licking the arses of his rich mates for cash to pay the costs of the art on the playa, in the worst manner of trickle down economics, in the place of Burning Man paying for the costs of the art. We will learn of the ticket prices within the next week, but paying solely 3% of the tickets, solely $13 of each $400 ticket, towards the costs of the artists is most appalling.

      In addendum, it is appalling the artists, and burner community do not have free speech in this manner. It is easy peasy, of the Borg, to click upon ‘not in good standing with the org’ within the burner profiles for theme camps, mutant vehicles, volunteers, and perchance, Burners, in the manner stated within their prior Concierge Services post. In addendum, Caveat Magister stated within his repenning of Larry Harveys statements upon the theme of 2016

      ‘In fact, of the voluminous journals that Leonardo left us, including his thoughts on art, engineering, science, nature, history, and even (up to a point) social customs — there is virtually nothing indicating his political views.

      “That was too dangerous,” Landrus said. “He didn’t want to risk offending a patron.” Leonardo was a celebrity, he was a legend in his own time, but he didn’t have a safety net. There was no plan B.’

      of which, I am of the belief it was a threat to the awesome artists not to request of the government of our Black Rock City for fair treatment in these regards.

    • Within the list of donors, this is solely speculation, but might Markus Lehman be not of Lehman, but be of Herbalife and poker, and might Daniel Sachs not be of Goldman Sachs, but be of Proventus AB Capital and the European Council on Foreign Relations? There was an article within Highbrow Magazine upon the Corporatization of Burning Man quoting a Daniel Sachs. In addendum, in regards of the Illuminati, the Godfather of Marian Goodell is Antonin Scalia.

      • Scalia is her sister’s Godfather. She and Roger Goodell (NFL) can trace their family tree back to the same ancestor, Isaac Goodale, who arrived in Salem, Mass in 1634 at the tender age of a half.

        The family trees of these banking families get quite big, they all seem to intermarry, first and second cousins. It could be that Lehman and that Sachs, and they are both connected to the banking families. Sounds likely, if the guy is in the CFR – with Grover Norquist, Denis Kucinich, and Wesley Clark – amongst other Burners, I’m sure.

  14. BTW, “Net Zero” is not an engineering term but a political term that came from Congress. It’s use is caused by Congressional funding and not by good energy design.

    If Tesla made the factory operate off the grid – THAT would be cool and something to brag about.

  15. Let me jump off on this little tangent since it is literally staring me in the face right now:

    “As Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell said last year ‘The culture of Burning Man can really flourish with money…'”

    Money is fungible; people are not. Right now we can see what happens when the fungibility of money shows that it ultimately means nothing. The penny-ante nature of the US government is shown by The Donald: Money literally has no importance to him. What does? Endorsements from PEOPLE! It’s people that make things happen. And the extent to which any person can be influenced by money is the extent that they, too, are fungible and less a real person.

    To use Marian’s example, I would rather join a burn drum circle than listen to Paul Simon for free because he was “sponsored” by a patron. …But I would be glad to listen to him if it was a gift from him, though only after I had tired of my drum circle.

    Not necessarily your point, but anything that can be driven by money is not progressive and is not the future. Just imagine where burner cuture can take us if we appreciate that it’s value is actualizing people, and quite specifically NOT MONEY.

    Merging money with motivating what people do is the essence of the default world. Sure, it was a founding element of modern commerce dating back to the Renaissance, but that foundation is how we got where we are now. Some of us are Roddenberry fans and are ready to explore how to do better.

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