This is Bob Iger, who once wrote about the importance of moral leadership in his memoir. He might as well write a new book: "The Joy of Capitulation: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boot."

Then there's Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, who once proudly declared he was gay and wanted to help others feel less alone. Tim Cook who championed privacy rights and claimed to stand for human dignity. Now he's letting his company resume advertising on X despite its owner's public embrace of Nazism while donating to Trump's inauguration faster than you can say "courage" -- his favorite word when removing headphone jacks, apparently less applicable when removing his backbone. [...]

This mass surrender is craven in every aspect. These aren't companies facing existential threats. They're not staring down bankruptcy. They're profitable giants choosing to fold because standing up might require effort or - God forbid - acknowledging that in a polarised world, their stock prices can never be entirely insulated from reality. They're abandoning commitments not because they must but because courage is less convenient than cowardice.

The most toxic element of this epidemic of spinelessness is its contagiousness. Each act of corporate surrender makes it harder for others to stand firm. Every time a Disney caves, a Meta crumbles, or a Target targets its own values for destruction, they're making it more difficult for any company to maintain principles under pressure. They're creating a race to the bottom where whoever abandons their values fastest wins.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Nixon was a piker:

Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily-guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country, according to two people familiar with the activities, sparking alarm within the tax agency.

Under pressure from the White House, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding that would give DOGE officials broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets. Among them is the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information. It also lets them enter and adjust transaction data and automatically generate notices, collection documents and other records.

IDRS access is extremely limited — taxpayers who have had their information wrongfully disclosed or even inspected are entitled by law to monetary damages — and the request for DOGE access has raised deep concern within the IRS, according to three people familiar with internal agency deliberations who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump got elected president because the mainstream press turned Hillary Clinton having two Blackberries into a Watergate-level scandal. True story!

Anyway, for Dem electeds of the “keep your powder dry for something really unpopular” school if you can’t raise hell over this it’s probably time to find a new line of work.

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