Aaron Ross Powell ☸️

Political ethicist. Podcast host of ReImagining Liberty and The UnPopulist’s Zooming In. Prior: Think tank scholar. Buddhist and radical liberal.

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npub1tsg0g8fpu4k97jn0emvphnxjdj7276atrv5z3p6r0azdm8peje0sm7uudc

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arossp_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-09-12 17:50:57

The best way to follow American politics is to read coverage of the election while listening to the Mr. Robot soundtrack.

2024-09-12 17:24:38

We like what we view as good about our own cultural ways, and are inclined to ignore what's bad or harmful. This means not only that "the kids today are worse than when *I* was a kid" tends to mistake "different" for "worse," but it also fails to see all the ways the kids are *better* than we were.

2024-09-11 23:34:30

Between the Aaron Rogers's performance on Monday, and Trump's performance yesterday, this has been a bad week for conspiracy-addled, brainwormed wealthy New Yorkers.

2024-09-11 21:21:32

Having played with it, with a number of different topics and styles of documents, the new "Audio Overview" tool in Google's NotebookLM, which generates a natural sounding, two "host" podcast conversation, might be the most impressive use of AI technology I've seen yet. It's mind blowing.

2024-09-10 00:15:17

Someone should start a rumor in the right wing media about how the patriotic American coastal town of Innsmouth is being overrun by odd looking newcomers with weird mannerisms who come from beyond the sea and see if JD Vance will warn the MAGA faithful about it.

2024-09-09 19:15:01

Link taxes are rent-seeking, rent-seeking is bad and should be discouraged, and link taxes are a particularly stupid way to try to funnel more money to media outlets. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/09/googles-california-hush-money-wont-fix-journalisms-woes/

2024-09-08 18:27:03

So which quarterback do the Carolina Panthers choose with the first pick in the draft?

2024-08-23 22:59:20

On phenomenon of men who convince themselves they are the only true meritocrats because women somehow don‘t understand or don‘t appreciate the idea of merit. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/the-misuse-of-meritocracy/

2024-08-13 19:52:29

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@npub1e0y…65d4 Everything's shifted forward in Colorado from what I grew up with. School starts middle of August and ends in May.

2024-08-13 14:53:01

The kids went back to school today. It's so quiet. I'm marking the occasion by putting away my trusty sign until next summer.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/955/279/270/227/180/original/80c2f1fab4740097.jpeg

2024-08-13 12:59:21

I moved my newsletter to #Ghost yesterday. (Which is awesome.) So just seeing who else among my friends is hosting there as well, so I can add you to my Ghost network recommendations.

2024-08-05 22:53:08

I feel like we should go back to calling it the Information Superhighway.

2024-08-04 20:58:57

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@npub19cv…wg2a How'd it go? I haven't run that one.

2024-08-04 20:56:29

Well that's it, guys. Pack it in. The whole AI thing is over.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/905/747/779/490/533/original/915c2ceb4c81b1e4.png

2024-08-04 19:21:58

iA Writer Quattro is the best font for writing and nothing else really comes close.

2024-07-31 21:53:51

I am disappointed that the band responsible for the best song ever written about something as trendy among the youth as Ohio has only twelve thousand monthly Spotify listeners.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/883/324/064/248/902/original/3146c91b64f1987b.png

2024-07-31 18:49:48

I love my children, I really do, but 12 days out from the start of the school year, and with a work-from-home job, I confess I'm longingly imagining being one of those childless cat ladies JD's always talking about.

2024-07-31 00:52:51

This is the saddest email I've received since moving from DC to Denver. The DC Pen Show is amazing.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/878/365/609/982/658/original/42000beec833226c.png

2024-07-31 00:36:59

My son started playing Cyberpunk 2077 today and excitedly told me how much he loves Jackie ("He's the *best* character!") and then asked, "Do you get to hang out with him for the *whole game*?!"

2024-07-30 18:09:29

I have a new essay about the Democrats' rhetorical pivot to calling the right "weird" and why it seems to be working. Read it here: https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/works-call-weird
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/876/779/530/173/312/original/103ef775b5e39ab7.png

2024-07-30 14:11:05

The article I very much wish everyone with strong opinions about whether AI art is "art" would read before expressing more strong opinions just got a substantive update. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/

2024-07-27 16:43:48

It's not often that a major party VP inadvertently becomes a viral marketing campaign for your indie video game, but the developers at Sassy Chap Games probably aren't complaining.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/859/455/668/348/099/original/c64b6d7664f23ab8.jpeg

2024-07-27 16:03:06

Given the direction of the polls, it's not unlikely that the betting markets with put Harris as the favorite some time next week.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/859/295/665/185/899/original/b2537d2e1f8ca41b.png

2024-07-26 22:16:08

You guys think JD Vance is creepy and weird? Check out videos from the National Conservatism conferences to see his brand of creepy weirdness stutteringly elevated into profoundly bizarre, and totally un-self-aware, intellectual movement.

2024-07-26 21:01:30

A project from JD Vance's VC days?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/854/806/666/212/873/original/9c42596beec179a4.png

2024-07-26 19:15:29

Every Marvel movie is just a trailer for the next Marvel movie.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/854/389/815/866/959/original/9cb15f8896096c54.png

2024-07-26 19:04:18

Dan Brown needs to give us a Robert Langdon versus Project 2025 novel. (And Ron Howard can come back to direct the movie as penance for Hillbilly Elegy.)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/854/345/880/371/238/original/62815e34c1d37575.png

2024-07-26 12:25:24

The GOP should've quit with the weird furniture thing after Clint Eastwood berated a chair, but they didn't, and look where it got them.

2024-07-25 18:03:52

I'm running an #UnknownArmies #TTRPG campaign, and was looking at my #DeltaGreen books as I was thinking about what I'd run next. And I was struck by how uninterested I've become in the existential hopelessness of the latter's setting. Unknown Armies is dark and grimy and has plenty of bad people doing bad things, but its core is quite human and hopeful. There was a time I loved the cosmic nihilism of Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green, but, for a lot of reasons, I now very much bounce off of it.

2024-07-25 17:35:42

Facebook reminded me of one of the best emails I ever recieved when I was running the Cato Institute's http://Libertarianism.org.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/848/335/174/706/719/original/8da2365a0d546813.jpeg

2024-07-25 17:01:33

One effect of how much the far-right has put itself in a discourse bubble (and the drift of Twitter has only made this worse) is that they've convinced themselves of an America that quite literally doesn't exist, with villainous plots that are entirely pretend, and then build their messaging around the assumption that everyone else suffers from the same warped epistemology. It's like arguing politics with someone who is throughly convinced they live in Middle Earth.

2024-07-25 02:07:05

Write a couple thousand words of fiction today. Which was awfully fun. Fiction writing is a good deal more pleasant than essays.

2024-07-24 22:34:33

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/843/847/960/894/246/original/157e645ddfbcdf20.png

2024-07-24 17:10:10

It's a nice story, and definitely within the preferred narrative, that Elon Musk blocked people from following Kamala Harris on Twitter. It's just probably not true. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/07/24/no-elon-isnt-blocking-kamala-from-getting-followers-and-congress-shouldnt-investigate/

2024-07-24 16:07:11

Quite a shift in the betting markets.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/842/324/786/901/056/original/062a7bf041bfc7b9.png

2024-07-24 00:30:12

Curtis Yarvin is dreary reactionary philosophy for people who mistakenly imagine themselves smarter and more rational than everyone else and who are quite bad at thinking philosophically. It's good to see his influence on the contemporary far-right getting attention, because it underscores just how intellectually empty the movement is.

2024-07-23 21:56:42

Biden should drop an album with a back cover photo of him with his back to the camera.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/838/036/834/108/699/original/876444da7d97022f.jpeg

2024-07-23 17:43:19

Bad political analysis from online pundits makes a more sense when you notice that they're the ones still primarily using Twitter, and so they take Twitter as Real Life, and don't realize how much it's drifted from being representative of the discourse to being a weird and distorted corner of it.

2024-07-23 15:01:40

Our idiot kitten has figured out how to leap up and pull the foam windscreen off my podcasting microphone and then use his tiny claws to shred it. He might have to look for another place to live.

2024-07-22 21:19:30

The toughest and most rewarding job in DC was to be staff writer for Cato executive vice president David Boaz. David died in June and I brought together five of us for a conversation about this great man. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/remembering-david-boaz-conversation-closest-colleagues

2024-07-22 19:31:50

There were a lot of people who took James Lindsay seriously when "Cynical Theories" came out, because he was telling them what they wanted to believe about leftist philosophy, and they didn't have enough academic knowledge of the topic to recognize that what he was telling them was mostly nonsense. I wonder if those people have ever gone back and revised their views of critical theory as Lindsay has gone on to expose himself as a total crackpot.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/831/804/871/435/184/original/d9ba15da9ce1d62a.jpeg

2024-07-19 18:01:03

If doom scrolling is making you feel anxious, sign up for a free feed reader (I like Inoreader, personally), and then drop in the URLs of your favorite websites. Most will have an RSS feed, and then you can just read them all in one place, not miss anything, and stay away from the doom scroll.

2024-07-19 17:58:00

Now I want a TV miniseries about an elite Ewok unit hunting down the last bits of Imperial forces that scattered through the forests of Endor.
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/57392/the-ewoks-are-back-new-miniseries-set-after-return-jedi

2024-07-18 15:18:30

I wrote this before the outbreak of "Mass Deportation Now!" signs, but it applies even more now. Mass deportations are unspeakably evil, and the urge to bothsides things should be stridently resisted and called out.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/808/159/460/598/950/original/55cdcda3fb38b5e1.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/808/159/446/769/670/original/63cf65a90413f5b3.png

2024-07-18 13:49:08

"Mass Deportation Now!" is a slogan of absolute evil. The ugliest, most vile thing I've ever seen as a political convention.

2024-07-17 16:12:09

Some thoughts about why the right is so committed to a false narrative that American cities are unlivable hellscapes—and what it tells us about the flaws and fragility of right-wing narratives about human flourishing. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/right-lies-cities

2024-07-16 19:23:40

I can't believe they killed Not Hotdog. https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/16/24199731/ai-app-calmara-hehealth-detect-sti-ftc-shut-down

2024-07-15 19:16:23

The JD Vance selection is a gift to Democrats. He's the apotheosis of the kind of far-right reactionary social conservatism they've been warning Trumpism will seek to coercively force upon the country, and the kind of that is most repulsive to moderates and independents.

2024-07-15 14:52:38

It's always mattered, but in times like this, it's particularly important to focus on the quality of your character, and the quality of the character of those you associate with. Practice kindness and harmlessness, and don't make excuses for people who consistently practice their opposites.

2024-07-15 13:48:36

If you want to understand the rise of the authoritarian, (proto-)fascist Trumpist right, Karen Stenner's work on the authoritarian personality type is critical. Her Wikipedia page provides a good summary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Stenner

2024-07-14 20:38:23

This guy, the co-founder of Substack, has given puff interviews and prime promotional space to people who spend most of their Substack writing time dehumanizing others. So I agree that we should instead see each other's humanity, but doing that begins with not profiting from making the problem worse.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/786/763/056/508/173/original/bbd0e1995c34d261.png

2024-07-14 19:45:31

The closed recommendations network is one of the ways Substack tries to lock writers into its platform. Ghost's approach is much cooler—and more ethical. https://ghost.org/changelog/recommendations/

2024-07-13 15:21:51

Celebrity spotting at the DC airport is so much more disappointing than, say, LA. For example, right now I'm waiting at the same gate as Greta Van Susteren.

2024-07-13 15:07:32

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@npub1pru…wkdp Thank you!

2024-07-13 14:57:18

Is there a way to see a full list of who an account follows on #Mastodon? Most of the time if you click through to someone's following list, it's much shorter than the listed number, or entirely blank. This is terrible for finding good accounts to follow here, because one of the best tools to do that is to look through who interesting people are following.

2024-07-13 14:48:48

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This turn against liberal institutions and free markets by conservatives was inevitable, too, because the principle result of political liberalism and a market economy is to enable social and economic dynamism. You simply can't have them while also demanding social structures and status rankings remain static.

2024-07-13 14:45:07

For many conservatives, their professed commitment, before the rise of Trump, to preserving institutions and supporting free markets hinged on believing those institutions and markets (re)enforced social conservatism's preferred cultural hierarchies and power structures, while creating wealth along the way. But the moment they came to view existing instructions and free markets as undermining those hierarchies and power structures, they turned against both.

2024-07-12 20:41:50

They're correct to be mad about Project 2025, but the kids on TikTok are clearly not knowledgeable lawyers, because their claim here is nonsense. http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2024/07/project-2025-reported-to-irs.html
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/775/456/998/802/029/original/f1af6d99339ba258.png

2024-07-10 18:32:47

This is the tactical problem of culturally right-wing authoritarian urges like national conservatism: "The problem is America lacks a monoculture. To fix that and achieve cultural unity, we need the state to forcibly impose one. And it should be *my* favored culture."
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/763/624/910/275/146/original/9499d3bd7ccab687.png

2024-07-10 15:52:40

One of social media's canonical and most tedious exchanges:
Your post: "I object to A."
The inevitable reply: "I notice you didn't object to B. Therefore I assume you don't object to B. Only bad people don't object to B, so you are a bad person."

2024-07-09 16:29:54

This paragraph is a good explanation of why the opinion section of the New York Times is the way it is.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/757/479/376/769/143/original/4337acba318ce11a.jpeg

2024-07-09 14:00:17

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@npub14nr…7rlr I have Mona, and have used it a fair amount, but Ivory's UI is just a lot cleaner and prettier.

2024-07-09 13:15:41

I very much wish #Ivory for the Mac had an option to combine the "Mentions" and “Notifications" menu items. Your mentions show up in both, which means that if someone replies to you, you have to scroll past that reply in both menu areas to clear your notifications dots on them.

2024-07-08 19:04:39

The end of Google Reader and the rise of social media combined to kill off blogging as a thriving social community. Then newsletters arose to replace blogging as a personal, longer form platform. But email is a bad replacement for RSS-based readers because it's cluttered and email fatigue discourages frequent writing. I'm hopeful the #fediverse can bring back blogging, reduce reliance on short post social media, and give us the old RSS ecosystem, but with social engagement and discovery.

2024-07-08 16:45:12

We should of course be wary of overselling the merits of old ways of doing things, but it really would be better if we shifted away from social media and back to blogging.

2024-07-08 16:21:54

A thought experiment to help clarify some of the issues regarding whether training and using AI tools amounts to theft of artists' and writers' work. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/ai-theft-thought-experiment

2024-07-06 01:56:42

I checked out the Amazon AI summary of the reviews of the novel I wrote during law school, and it's pretty fair.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/737/058/897/356/010/original/44c6132d07fc686a.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/737/058/902/523/460/original/2dab0d01e7099cf7.png

2024-07-05 21:32:59

You think you've raised your kid right—instilled not just good values, but discernment, too—and then you catch them listening to Coldplay.

2024-07-05 19:53:56

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@npub1dzv…5v2p I don't know, I remember it looking pretty cool.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/735/632/003/334/839/original/8bbd11b2e743e2d0.png

2024-07-05 17:22:29

I think often about something David Boaz told me a few years into Trump's administration: That he was constantly saddened to discover how many libertarians turned out to hate the left (and here he meant the cultural left as much as the economic left) more than they loved liberty, and were enthusiastically willing to sacrifice the latter if it meant getting to hurt the former.

2024-07-05 13:47:44

Politics needs more emotion, not less. Today's show is a conversation about how thinking more emotionally can make politics more humane, and why trying to abandon emotion in the name of reason is a mistake. Listen here: https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/need-emotion-politics-a5a4
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/734/192/478/012/099/original/163518d45f2bbeef.jpeg

2024-07-04 23:55:13

One thing I liked about this season of Doctor Who is that there were no Cybermen or Daleks.

2024-07-04 20:18:16

Is the new season of Doctor Who at a higher than typical frame rate? There's something off about the picture, but I can quite figure out what it is.

2024-07-04 19:27:12

Politics is applied ethics. And so on this day when we're celebrating the leaving behind of one set of political institutions in order to build another, I wrote a quick essay on just what ethics is in the first place. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/ethics

2024-07-04 17:25:32

The thing about the media is that Trump is obviously much further along in cognitive decline than Biden (and far worse than four years ago), and he's also an authoritarian who has promised to overthrow the institutions of American liberty so he can bend the state to punishing his enemies and hurting the people his reactionary base doesn't like, but very reasonable journalists at mainstream outlets think the bigger story is that Biden is old and had a cold during the debate, so he sounded older.

2024-07-04 14:18:14

Moral progress is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.

2024-07-04 13:44:34

July 4th is when we celebrate independence. But the proper day to celebrate American freedom is Juneteenth.

2024-07-03 23:47:44

Showed my daughter the 2018 film "Searching," and, man, does it hold up. Just a master class in embracing constraints to tell a terrific, nail-biting, and authentically emotional story.

2024-07-03 16:45:02

It's shocking just how unequipped, culturally and intellectually, the mainstream of American journalism turned out to be in responding to the rise of a genuine authoritarian to the heights of American politics and the pivot of many elite institutions to wholesale support of him.

2024-07-03 14:55:09

Self-inflicted unhappiness results from the interaction of aversion, clinging, and ignorance. The rise of the authoritarian right in America shows us how damaging these traits are when turned outward to influence politics, demanding that government weaponize that aversion, clinging, and ignorance against society as a whole. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/politics-broken-values-warped-perspectives

2024-07-02 23:41:30

One of the reasons our contemporary political culture feels so broken, and why so many willingly embrace authoritarianism, is because of the rise of a mutually reinforcing perspective and a set of values grounded in the poisons of aversion and clinging. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/politics-broken-values-warped-perspectives

2024-07-01 17:16:37

I wrote what I hope is a helpful thought experiment to tease out and clarify some of the arguments and unacknowledged assuptions about the ethical and legal questions regarding the training and use of AI. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/ai-theft-thought-experiment

2024-06-30 22:36:35

There are plenty of novels staring Sherlock's brother, Mycroft Holmes. But they all seem to cast him as basically another Sherlock, solving murders and other mysteries. This is such a missed opportunity. Mycroft should instead be a George Smiley type spy master doing dreary espionage things.

2024-06-29 18:19:04

Good. If you're pining for Sherlock's return, go back and watch the final few seasons, and be glad it ended. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/sherlock-season-5-benedict-cumberbatch-martin-freeman-b2570574.html

2024-06-29 17:08:46

"This new form of automation will cost people their livelihoods" is an important issue to wrestle with in the context of automation. But if you're a happy and unperturbed user of lots of livelihood-reducing automation, while getting mad about new automation only when it would harm *your* livelihood, you need to clearly make the case for why it's okay for you to benefit from technology that takes other people's jobs, but it not okay for others to benefit from technology taking yours.

2024-06-29 14:45:07

Much of the contemporary right has come to be dominated by the idea that dislike and distrust of diversity and dynamism is a valid motivating philosophy for political action, when instead it is simply a failure of personal character.

2024-06-29 01:34:45

At ska in the park with the kids—headliner: Fishbone—and I'm encouraged by how many dads are here with their families, making sure their children get exposed to the bedrock principle of "pick it up pick it up pick it up."

2024-06-28 22:05:56

I still think it's a pretty clear conceptual mistake to view using a piece of content in training an AI model as "stealing" it or "copying it without permission." And the insistence by many on doubling down on that conceptual mistake makes conversations about the ethics of AI less fruitful.

2024-06-28 14:54:42

Even in the easiest of times, you should work to ensure you surround yourself with people whose values are positive and admirable, and distance from the unadmirable. In times of moral uncertainty and decline, this is even more critical for your own wellbeing. https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/p/surround-yourself-with-those-who

2024-06-28 12:43:01

Ethical politics demands a conscious cultivation of virtuous values and perspective. If your approach to political questions is instead grounded only in deontological rules or utilitarian consequences, both inevitably ambiguous in application, you'll lack the ethical foundation to address those ambiguities wisely, or to avoid talking yourself into monstrous positions.

2024-06-27 21:57:10

What's exciting about the way Ghost is approaching ActivityPub is that it can bring back blogging and make it viable as an alternative to typical social media, while solving not just the distribution problem (which RSS was good at), but also engagement and community building. https://activitypub.ghost.org/

2024-06-27 18:41:27

Sure, I'm old and set in my ways. But also I have to say, quite a lot of the stuff on Spotify's running "All New Punk" playlist is pretty dire.

2024-06-27 15:40:02

A great deal of bad and unhelpful policy and legal analysis and argument is people seeing a particular government power being helpful right now to their side, or harmful to the other side, and so supporting it, without asking what that power means if the side wielding it were to switch.

2024-06-27 14:29:54

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@npub13a9…n46n I've long been of the opinion that every ska band should have a cover of the Ducktales theme in their back pocket.

2024-06-27 13:12:56

I know it's trendy to blame rising rates of youth mental health issues on social media, but have we considered that kids got more anxious and depressed as we saw a decline in the popularity of third wave ska?

2024-06-26 18:48:23

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@npub1klq…c7yj You're aware that the law Citizens United struck down also applied to labor unions, non-profits, and other associations engaging in political speech? It wasn't just about corporations.

2024-06-26 16:29:53

Because I'm seeing it coming up in the context of today's Murthy v. Missouri decision, here's your regular reminder that Citizens United, a case about whether the government could ban a film containing political speech, was correctly decided.

2024-06-25 18:36:17

The fact that Meta keeps moving forward with ActivityPub federation is one of those big deals most people won't realize were big deals until it pretty much changes everything about the social web. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/25/24185226/meta-threads-fediverse-likes-replies

2024-06-25 13:03:40

Hasn't it demanded enough already?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/677/396/123/562/940/original/ddf2e7d705d421a5.png

2024-06-25 12:46:24

Of course he approves. He's a rich guy who grifted politicians into stealing money from ordinary people so Tepper doesn't have to pay for his fancy building himself. https://www.yahoo.com/sports/panthers-owner-david-tepper-issues-021016625.html