Elon Musk dances with a robot after getting his trillion dollar payoff from Tesla.

By Bob Gaydos

If you’re a billionaire, why do you need to be a trillionaire?

This not-so-rhetorical question occurred to me the other day when I read that shareholders of Tesla had voted to give the company CEO Elon Musk a one trillion dollar bonus, salary, gift, whatever you wanna call it simply because he asked for it. In company shares.

This would make Musk, already the richest person on the planet, a million billion times richer I think. It’s hard to multiply all those zeros.

So I ask again, why? And, before I proceed any further, let me give due credit to singer Billie Eilish, all of 23 years old, who inspired this question when she had the presence of mind and maturity to ask a room full of very rich people, including some billionaires, “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire”?

Really. Why? Eilish, who already has a string of awards for such hits as “Bad Boy,” “Birds of a Feather” and others, with which I am also unfamiliar, asked the question as she accepted an award from WSJ Magazine.

But she didn’t just ask the question; she gave the reason behind it. As she addressed the celebrity-studded audience, she said: “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than, kind of, ever, especially in our country. I’d say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things, maybe give it to some people that need it.”

Umm, yeah. For the record, Ellish who has an estimated net worth of $50 million, also said she is donating $11.5 million of the proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to support organizations fighting for food equity, climate justice, reducing carbon pollution, and combatting the climate crisis.

So, great, now that I have sufficiently buried the lead, what about Elon Musk? Why does he need to be a trillionaire? Why does he even need to ask for $1 trillion? And why do people think he deserves it?

He wants to replace people with machines that will do all the work and thinking they used to do. He spent a couple of months in Donald Trump‘s Oval Office office trying to eliminate every possible job in the federal government, while collecting information on American citizens. He dismantled USAID, cutting off crucial food supplies to starving people. He seems intent on populating the world with as many mini-versions of himself by as many willing partners as possible. All white.

He seems utterly divorced from all the problems of his native Africa and he has been known to throw an occasional Nazi salute. Yet he has convinced millions that he is a genius and also a genius at making money for them. (Sound familiar?) This, even though cars are still not really driving themselves and he’s nowhere close to putting anyone on Mars, curing cancer or ending violence in the Middle East.

The big corporate stockholders in Tesla, perhaps feeling Musk already had too much power and money, voted against giving him the trillion dollar payday, but the retail shareholders felt otherwise.

They voted— 75 percent of them no less— to give Musk up to $1 trillion over 10 years if the company meets a list of benchmarks such as selling 1 million humanoid robots. Again, to do much of the work that those people who voted for the big payday for him now still do.

That presumably would include artificial intelligence writing columns like this informing humans what a wonderful life they have now that they have nothing to do. They won’t even have to worry about “those people“ taking their jobs from them. “Those people” will presumably just go about doing whatever “those people” do. And Musk, in addition to producing robots and mini-Musks, will do whatever trillionaires do. In that regard at least, he really can be a trailblazer.

Paradise will be delivered, overnight by Amazon, courtesy of greed and willing ignorance.

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(PS: We’re told that Mark Zuckerberg, who was in the audience, did not put a like on Ellish’s comments.)

By Bob Gaydos

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is watching for his children at his house when something strange is happening in the sky over the Bayonne Bridge. “War of the Worlds,” 2005.

 “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin. The aliens have returned to New Jersey. … and, apparently, everywhere else.“

   Eighty-six years after Orson Welles created widespread panic with his Halloween radio broadcast of HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds,“ with spacecraft, piloted by non-humans launching attacks all over New Jersey, strange spacecraft are now being seen again, all over the skies of New Jersey. 

    Well, actually, this time they are real, not the center of a well-done radio drama that played on the imagination of listeners. But this time, there are no attacks. That we know of.

     However, the government, which is to say all the agencies responsible for policing and protecting the skies above the United States of America, are acting like this is a radio drama.

    Hear no evil, see no evil. Your eyes aren’t seeing what they’re seeing. Forget those video tapes. These objects, supposedly drones, represent no known threat. There are no foreign actors involved. But we don’t know what they are. Or, if we do, we’re not telling you. Trust us.

     Yeah, folks, it’s the wrong time for that trust us approach. Especially with large drone-like objects that first manifested over New Jersey now showing up in the skies over New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and even on the West Coast.

     For a month now, reports of unusual drone activity have been filling TV news reports with the same basic information: Average citizens see the drones, some take pictures, some take videos, and all wonder what’s going on. They contact public officials, who wonder what’s going on. They contact federal agencies who are supposed to know what’s going on and they tell us don’t worry, there’s no evidence of a threat. Period. Oh, yeah, also don’t shoot at whatever they are because it could be dangerous. So it sounds like they know what’s going on, but don’t want to tell us, which is frustrating, if not scary, or they don’t know what’s going on and don’t want to tell us which is scarier.

     So naturally, conspiracy theories crop up about aliens (most people I talked with felt aliens would be too smart to bother with us). One other theory I found interesting was that it was a “psyops” operation by the government or some group to either divert our attention from some real news (governments around the world are collapsing, the incoming Cabinet nominees are a disaster), or to frighten us into giving the incoming administration more powers to deal with perceived threats. 

  The latter would be accomplished by the likes of Elon, Jeff, and all the other Trump-happy billionaires and their tech savvy minions with their AI, driverless cars, super chips, spaceships and Metasphere. What’s a few big drones?

    Now, as usual, it may turn out to be something more down to earth and troublesome. I heard one of those New Jersey mayors talking on TV about a briefing in which some federal officials said something about radioactive material going missing at Newark Airport. Coincidentally, about a month ago. Nobody knows where it is. Federal government likes to keep track of where this stuff is. If you’re searching, you would start in New Jersey and spread out to New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. After that, wherever the clues lead you. That would include closing down runways at Stewart International Airport in the Hudson Valley for an hour.

    What this would mean is that our government has such mega drones, ready for use for such reconnaissance and search operations. Good to know. Not good to know is that some potentially hazardous material managed to somehow disappear from one of our airports. Maybe that’s what the government really doesn’t want us to know. 

   If that’s the case, I think someone made a bad decision in trying to act as if what we were seeing wasn’t happening. If you tell us what’s going on just maybe someone will have seen or heard something that could help find the stuff you’re looking for. Isn’t that how the FBI works?

   Then all the TV reporters could go back to pretending they’re covering the news.

    Apropos of nothing really, the New Jersey connection with aliens and “War of the Worlds” was repeated in 2005 when Tom Cruise starred in the movie version of the HG Wells novel. It was set in Bayonne, N.J., featuring shots of the beautiful Bayonne Bridge.

     Also, Orson Welles apologized to the nation after he scared the bejezus out of people with his Halloween broadcast. Whatever happens with the radioactive material, if that’s what’s going on, President Biden should do the same. Tell us what you know, Joe. Heck, at this point, aliens would be a welcome relief.

By Bob Gaydos

What do Bobby Bonilla, Lebron James, Elon Musk and Tom Wolfe have in common? Aside from being well-accomplished in their chosen fields, that is. And being millionaires.

All right, it’s kind of a trick question. All four men’s names were on a list on my phone’s “Notes” section. The list was started on July 6 and it was titled “Non-Trump news.” Yeah, I was searching. I came across the list the other day and was reminded how quickly the daily news cycle gets overwhelmed by the White House Twitter storm, how other news — real news — gets lost and maybe never even noticed by a lot of people. I figured, if these names were on a list of newsmakers, I should at least tell people why. So, in case you missed it …:

• Bobby Bonilla: He’s undoubtedly the least-known person on the list, except to Mets fans. Bonilla
  

  Bobby Bonilla

  was a power-hitting outfielder who was first signed by the New York team in 1991 to a five-year contract for $29 million. After 3½ stormy and somewhat disappointing years, he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles. But in 1998, chasing a pennant, the Mets reacquired Bonilla, who spent more time on the disabled list, arguing with his manager and playing cards in the clubhouse than hitting home runs. When they decided to let him go, the notoriously frugal Wilpon brothers (who still own the team) didn’t want to pay Bonilla the $5.9 million they owed him for the coming season. Instead, they agreed to a deferred payment deal with 8 percent interest, which would pay Bonilla $1,193,248.20 every July 1 for 25 years … starting in 2011. This is why he was on my Notes list. It was payday. The deal totals $29.8 million for Bonilla, but the Wilpons at the time figured they would make considerably more than that with the 10 percent annual return they were getting on their investments with Bernie Madoff. Yes, that Bernie Madoff, the one in prison for running a Ponzi scheme. The Wilpons got taken and Mets fans and financial hotshots still debate whether Bonilla made out better by deferring his payout. The facts are that, at age 58 and not having played baseball since 2001, the one-time all-star, is guaranteed a $1.1 million check every July 1 until 2035 from a team he once sat down on and for a season he wasn’t even on their roster.

• Lebron James: The only-one-name-needed basketball superstar was originally on the list because he had decided to leave his beloved Cleveland (again) for Hollywood. Well, L.A. Lebron signed with
  

  Lebron James

  the Lakers, where all only-one-name-needed stars wind up. Magic. Kobe. Shaq, Kareem. It was inevitable, even if it doesn’t guarantee a championship for his new team. But Lebron has made much more significant, if you will, news since then with the announcement that his foundation is providing millions of dollars to support a public school for 245 at-risk children in Akron, Ohio, his hometown. Lebron is paying for programs and services that tax dollars can’t cover at the “I Promise School” and he has guaranteed to pay for college tuition for all the graduates. Naturally, the Orange Dotard, who fears accomplished African-Americans, went on Twitter to call James dumb. As if the world needed to be reminded there’s a racist sitting in the White House. And no, Akron taxpayers won’t have to pay added dollars for the school. Everything was already being covered by tax dollars, as required by law. James is merely paying for added resources that tax dollars can’t cover to help these at-risk children deliver on the promise to graduate and go to college. That’s as opposed to operating a sham university.

• Elon Musk. At this point, I almost forgot why Musk was on the list because he has had trouble for several months now just keeping quiet and trying to make money for his companies. But in July he
  

  Elon Musk

  was calling a   British cave diver who helped rescue a Thai youth soccer team from a flooded cave a pedophile, without citing any evidence. After being threatened with a lawsuit, Musk eventually apologized, but the incident only added to questions about his mental stability (at least in my mind). He sounded like a man with a huge ego whose feelings got hurt because a bunch of other men heroically saved 13 people without benefit of the genius of Musk and the individual submarine he had built for the job. The divers said it wouldn’t work. Their strategy did. Lately, he’s been talking about taking the publicly traded Tesla private, which got Wall Street worked up for a while because a lot of people aren’t sure he can do that either. Oh yeah, back in July he was also building electric cars in a tent because Tesla was behind on orders. Maybe he should focus on getting his car back from Mars.

• Tom Wolfe: He died, May 14, at age 88, without, in my opinion, sufficient notice. I, among others, am guilty. Reading of his death was one of those “Oh no” moments for me. Not another one. I felt a
  

  Tom Wolfe

  synchronicity with Wolfe, who started as a reporter at The New York Herald Tribune (my favorite paper) in 1962 when I was starting to get serious about journalism. Then he went and changed journalism and it was terrific. The New Journalism he helped create told stories about real life that were as appealing to readers as they were informative. In essence, he made it OK to write “that way” and still be a journalist. He gave us the terms “Radical Chic” and the “Me Decade” as he punctured every ego he ran into. The biggest criticism of him was usually his all-white, summer-dandy wardrobe, including hat and walking stick with which he strutted around Manhattan. He reportedly called it ”neo-pretentious.” He was in on the joke. And he was a terrific teller of tales, true or true enough if you knew your current events. The best thing about good writers when they die is that their words live on. If you are among those who still read, or know someone young who reads, find a copy of “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” “The Right Stuff,” “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “A Man in Full,” or “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.” Enjoy.

That’s it for now. I’m going to start on a new list.

rjgaydos@gmail.com