Twitter home page. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Twitter’s Board of Toddlers Would Rather Collapse Company than Sell to Elon Musk
‘Company boards have a fiduciary duty to do what is best for shareholders’
By Katy Grimes, April 21, 2022 10:34 am
“Twitter’s board of directors gathered this week to sign what sounds like a suicide pact,” attorney Jonathan Turley wrote at the Hill in an article appropriately titled “Twitter faces the ‘nightmare’ of being forced into free speech. “It unanimously voted to swallow a ‘poison pill’ to tank the value of the social media giant’s shares, rather than allow billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company…”
The board would rather collapse Twitter than let Elon Musk purchase it. This behavior exemplifies a toddler who would rather break a toy than to let a sibling have it.
This is also evidence that the Twitter board is not made up of capitalists as they are not operating as a traditional “for profit” business, but rather as a mean-to-an-end platform.
Turley explained: “Company boards have a fiduciary duty to do what is best for shareholders, which usually is measured in share values. Twitter has long done the opposite. It has virtually written off many conservatives — and a large portion of its prospective market — with years of arbitrary censorship of dissenting views on everything from gender identity to global warming, election fraud and the pandemic.”
Now the Wall Street Journal reports:
“Tesla Inc. TSLA 8.87% ▲ Chief Executive Elon Musk disclosed Thursday that he has received commitment letters for $46.5 billion in funding to finance his offer to buy Twitter Inc. TWTR 1.09% ▲ Inc.”
“In a securities filing, Mr. Musk also said that given the lack of a response from Twitter’s board, he is now exploring a tender offer to acquire shares of Twitter directly from shareholders, though he said he hasn’t decided whether to do so.”
“Mr. Musk made a non-binding $43 billion bid for Twitter on April 14.”
Musk owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, which represents a 9.2% passive stake in the company, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission 13G filing released Monday. Twitter shares closed up 27% after Elon Musk takes 9% stake in social media company, CNBC reported.
Musk has challenged Twitter’s censorship of certain political thought and free speech of mostly conservatives. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?” Musk Tweeted in March when he was clearly contemplating his next move:
Buy it and fire the communists who run it right now. You can save free speech. In Congress we must make platform access a right so no one can ever be removed from the public square over unpopular speech!
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) March 27, 2022
Congressional candidate Robby Starbuck’s reply countered what Twitter has become: “Buy it and fire the communists who run it right now. You can save free speech. In Congress we must make platform access a right so no one can ever be removed from the public square over unpopular speech!”
As Turley accurately notes, “selling censorship is not a big hit with most consumers, particularly from a communications or social media company.”
“Musk is right that the company’s potential has been constrained by its woke management,” Turley continued. “For social media companies, free speech is not only ethically but economically beneficial — because the censorship model only works if you have an effective monopoly in which customers have no other choice.”
China anyone?
Censorship is not enhancing Twitter’s value, and instead has become a sizable platform for its executive’s virtue signaling. Turley calls this “self-defeating values.”
Most investors make decisions to grow their money, get a return on their investment on something they believe will be successful first and foremost.
Underestimating Elon Musk is a fools errand.
In May 2019 the Tesla CEO threatened to move both the company headquarters and production facilities to Texas or Nevada if they were not allowed to reopen despite COVID lockdown orders, the Globe reported.
Then Musk took to Twitter and announced he would sue Alameda County: “The unelected & ignorant ‘Interim Health Officer’ of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!” Musk Tweeted.
Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2020
The billionaire CEO, who employs 10,000 at his Alameda plant, said Tesla would relocate its headquarters and future programs out-of-state.
California’s potty mouth Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez showed her love for Musk and his announcement on Twitter:
The Tweet is no longer accessible on Gonzalez’s Twitter account.
“Tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in California. SpaceX is the last aerospace company still doing significant manufacturing in California,” Musk said, acknowledging he still has manufacturing in California.
But, in Dec. 2020, Musk confirmed he personally moved to Texas – a state doesn’t collect state income or capital-gains tax for individuals – and started building a new Tesla factory. “He lamented that California, in his view, had become complacent with its innovators,” the WSJ reported.
It appears Musk is just getting started on Twitter… maybe he’ll move Twitter HQ from San Francisco to Texas.
“Former Intel Officials Want Efforts to Break Up Big Tech Stopped – Data Control and Retention of Social Media Partnership is a National Security Imperative” (theconservativetreehouse.com) The takeover of Twitter may have exposed a deeper Truth, that the databases and networks of Social Media are seated in the 4th branch of govt, Intelligence agencies (The Last Refuge). Control the narrative, oppress opposition, collect data. Getting interesting.
“Twitter’s Board of Toddlers Would Rather Collapse Co. than Sell to Elon Musk” —— no kidding!
That says it all. But shooting yourself in the foot is ALWAYS the M.O. of people who do what Twitter principals have been doing, isn’t it? The now-supermarket-advertiser-sized L.A. Times comes to mind. Screw subscribers, who needs ’em? These people vibrate with a hatred so intense they can’t see straight. Soon “Musk Derangement Syndrome” will be a thing if this keeps up. I have a mental image of Lorena Gonzalez with her jaw still on the floor from Musk’s response to her brainless foul-mouthed Tweet. Wait, don’t go, I didn’t mean it! Seems like the Twitter toddler tantrum situation can only be favorable for Musk.
It will be just like that twit aol (you can pick which vowel to use) threatening Amazon with their New York aquisition, and them saying, see ya, don’t need ya !
Good riddance to the commies.
Either way works for me. Then on to Facebook and a few others.
It’s laughable isn’t it that Liberals used to claim they were the stalwart of free speech. Wow, what changes in a generation evidenced by the snot nosed brats at the colleges and certainly at Twitter. Ronald Reagan:”Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
The other problem the board has is that many pension funds own Twitter stock and because the board is not acting as a fiduciary they may be duly sued. The actions by the board are diametrically opposed to the desires of the lion’s share of most stock holders.
Consequences are never factored into the ideals of the left and opposition cannot be tolerated.
If the bots at twitter are stopped, then next would be Zuck’s censors. The Dems can’t have this! Zuck is protected as much as Hunter and why is Barrack all of a sudden selling censorship of free speech on the internet? Another Marxist ruse by team Obama.
The Dems must control the message because the truth will defeat them.
It is a simple game; have the message create the fear then the Marxists’ can defeat the fear FOR YOU.
Eliminate ballot harvesting, and all of this will go away.
Democrap communists have always been totalitarian and stupid about economics. That’s why they were the slave owners in the south, the revolutionaries in Russia, China, N. Korea and Cuba that slaughtered millions thru the 20th and 21th centuries and the idiots running Venezuela into the ground now. It’s always about power and control to them. These freaks only want to steal what others build for their benefit and contribute nothing in return and gullible cultist lazy imbeciles believe libtards are helping them. When they don’t get their way, like toddlers, they throw a tantrum, but unlike toddlers, commie libtards destroy people lives, monetarily and literally.
I would say to the Toddlers that your terms are acceptable. No one needs the hate fest known as TWIT-ter.