It was reported previously they were considering resuming advertising. Well now it is official.
Apple isn’t the only large cap company to return. Disney as well as IBM (amongst a host of others) have also resumed advertising on Twitter/X. That is all you need to know about the executives running these companies and what their priorities are. Forget the fiduciary bullshit as well (that is just pure unadulterated capitalistic GREED of corporate propaganda). Apple as a corporation has long tried to define itself as a company that tries to stand by certain principles. Well that facade is now gone with this decision; just convenient corporate PR while the executive “leadership” proves by their ACTIONS that those WORDS had actually little meaning.
AFAIK, Apple’s current executive team can go screw themselves. I don’t write that lightly (as a longtime shareholder and previous employee who has benefited greatly from all of that). I however have long believed in not surrending your principles for the sake of business (which is what this amounts to). The optics are already bad enough with advertising on the platform of someone (Elon Musk) who is dismantling the US government with this hostile take over, let alone making light of a Nazi salute while promoting disinformation and straight up lies on that platform.
This executive team from Cook on down has LOST their moral compass. Most everyone I knew left the company years ago but I heard so I don’t have actual first hand knowledge of how current employees feel except rumblings that many are also not pleased with this move by the “leadership”. Why should I continue supporting a company that gives lip service to what they claim they stand for? I’ve put my money where my mouth was in the past and intend to do so again.
As the US becomes a pariah, others need to do the same with US companies (hit them in the wallet which is the ONLY thing these greedy corporate executives understand). For most of the prior decade, my Apple purchases were fairly limited (documented on my old blog) after my 2010 Mac Pro. Only in 2024 did I resume with a bunch of purchases (iPad Pro, MacBook Pro M3 Pro, Mac mini M4 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro, Apple Watch Series 10) on top of a certified refurbished 2019 Mac Pro in 2023 along with recommending Apple hardware to many other people.
Giving up gains in the equity markets is a small sacrifice compared to what the generation that went to war had to give up. None of us also know if history will repeat itself there as well (domestic conflict in the US and another global kinetic war depending on this imperialistic expansion of territories that many are taking as just some sick joke by Felon47’s regime). But I digress…
That (being a willful customer) all ends again as does moving up my divestiture timeline (as a customer, my take is to vote with my wallet). With investments, I try to leave that initial kneejerk reaction with the emotion out of the decision making (because bottomline, all corporations have questionable practices; though you often times have to dig deep for verification). February 25th is Apple’s Shareholder meeting. I don’t know if I will send some of this in as a statement of disgust that day versus just emailing Tim Cook’s address (where an executive assistant can relay it to some PR drone). In this case, it’s not even hard to validate this news (while I could just ignore this, it’s just personally reprehensible for me to see the company doing business with Musk’s platform knowing what he represents). In more blunt terms, it pissed me off.
Disclosure: For the first 1000 shares of AAPL in a non-retirement brokerage account, I have limit sell orders in lots of 100 shares for every $5 increase starting from a share price of $250. If they pass that tax cut for those who make over $400,000, I plan to take advantage of that and simply unload larger blocks of shares to hit that minimum. My Roth retirement brokerage account doesn’t really have capital gains tax consequences (that’s the dirty “little secret” of how those who did not exceed the net income limits for establishing a Roth IRA [like myself], manage to avoid any capital gains taxes) because the taxes (for the principle) were paid upfront.
I’ll naturally have to quickly find a safe haven (precious metals like gold as one example) since these goons are looking to eliminate things like the FDIC (which insures deposits for the banking sector) and NCUA (for credit unions) where deposits may no longer have any protections. SIPC (for the non-security liquid assets in brokerage accounts) is likely going to be targeted last because of how heavily the ultra wealthy are invested in the stock market.
Tangent… I didn’t have a problem with having the tax laws changed (because it is insane how much loopholes there are in the system which allows many to still meet the income requirements; you know like how some execs take a $1 salary (while being compensated with ESOP’s and RSU’s and use instruments like a Roth IRA to grow investments free from capital gains taxes). The US would be a much better place IF capitalistic greed wasn’t such a huge driver in the whole “me, myself, and I” attitude that symbolizes the ultra wealthy (and have thus had the tax code written in such a way that it reduces/eliminates their tax burden).
Digressing, passively generated income from dividends act like compounding via DRIP (dividend reinvestment programs) where those dividends can purchase additional shares, by which you gain more dividend income that continues this cycle. Over time, share appreciation results in increased ROI along with (hopefully) higher dividend yields.
Or you can just take that dividend as passive income to live off of (while falling into a lower tax bracket as you allow the money you do not need, to continue working for you). Once I early retired, I used the dividend payouts as passive income which is where fiscal discipline (with big ticket items) comes into play (I can imagine the cash stockpile the ultra wealthy have along with the more clever loopholes they use). None of this is taught for a reason; the powers that be do not want the average person to empower themselves this way because these corporate oligarchs need a population that lives paycheck-to-paycheck in order to exert that power over them (to have people to take on these jobs in order to pay the bills).
The ultimate endgame goal by Musk (Sacks, and Thiel) <- aka the PayPal mafia is to replace fiat currency like the US dollar with cryptocurrency. Musk’s whole X Money thing is part of that plan (where eliminating any oversight, is a core part of the objective of dismantling the US government). Sad to say, most American’s have little idea exactly what is happening (because the useless mainstream media has normalized the BS including still not covering this regime as unlawful in their hostile takeover). And coming back to the title of this post, companies that are kissing the ring of this criminal enterprise, are complicit in this (should be called out/be patronized as little as possible and preferably, boycotted completely).
