October 23rd 2025 – A Day of Hope, Oppulance and Reality
The news events of Thursday, Oct. 23 present in their vastness great hope, obscene decadence and bitter reality that is our society today, as shared on the newly reformatted CBS Evening News.
Paramount CBS was acquired by Skydance this Fall and is now Paramount a Skydance Company that trades under the ticker "PSKY" on Nasdaq.- Skydance’s historic revenue was $400 K- $800 K why as Paramount was a $30 billion Corporation yet, Skydance is the acquiring corporation! A trend not uncommon on Wall Street. Skydance’s CEO is David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, Co-founder of Oracle- now or soon to be owner of the U.S. component of TikTok. Note that the Trump administration valued the U.S. component of TikTok at $14 Billion, yet Elon Musk paid $44 Billion for Twitter! We live in a world of murky financial actions and agreements and undo concentration of power.
- On the morning of October 23, for the first time in 500 years, the Pope, Pope Leo XIV and a British Monarch, King Charles III, prayed together in public in the Sistine Chapel, “celebrating Catholic Anglican relations, greater Christian unity and the environment.” Originally scheduled prior to Pope Francis’ death, the meeting was to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment. The Encyclical is worthy of a Nobel prize in Economics and is one of the most beautiful and profound books I have ever read. Pope Francis can pack a punch.
- During the morning, Sophia Forchas the 12-year-old survivor of the August 2025 mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis went home from the hospital. She was shot in the head and underwent extensive surgery, including having part of her skull removed to relieve brain swelling. She was in critical condition for weeks but has since made a "miraculous recovery". A police escort escorted Sophia and her family from the hospital back to school where she was warmly welcomed. She was the last survivor of the shooting to go home.
Not widely promulgated but highly significant is the reality of “product placement” of AR-15 style rifles in violent video games by the gun’s manufacturer, Remington, allowing vulnerable and mesmerized young men to get acquainted with the look and feel of the weapon while gaming so that when they turn 18 they know exactly what gun they want to purchase. This is corporate evil in the name of “marketing” and it was finally brought to light by the Sandy Hook parents. Prison is too good an alternative for the predators that think, plan and act in this way.
- GM’s Cadillac division announced that it is soon to introduce an “autonomous driving” Escalade that will enable its “driver” to watch movies while the vehicle “drives” itself and the side mirror light will be lit blue so as to indicate to nearby drivers that the vehicle is “driving itself”. Will there by popcorn and diet coke served too?
Civilitiville USA is not a Mary Bara, GM’s CEO, nor a GM fan and in 2020 and 2021 in sharing our general writings with GM we discovered that they do not have a corporate address on their website and that unless you know the executives mail stop number, your mail to them will be returned. Usurping these hurdles in 2021 we received a cease and desist type letter from GM when sharing with them a copy of our Wall Street correspondence! Equally troubling, at about the same time period, when questioned about Tesla’s known to be gross overvaluation, Mary Bara commented that she thought other auto manufacturers, including GM were just grossly undervalued. A problematic loss of touch with reality on her part. To deny driving is a major responsibility not to be abdicated is rebellious and defies reality.
“Autonomous” vehicles put an undo and unaccounted for burden on society. Insurance for any vehicle that has such a feature should be 4-5 times the normal rate of insurance. Auto accidents are rare, so statements comparing safety rates fail to paint an accurate picture. The reality is that there are just too many unaccountable variables to ever make these vehicles a safe alternative at all times and in all conditions. The notion likely has its roots in NASA technology for vehicles for the Moon or Mars- uninhibited areas. “Autonomous Vehicles” have largely been pushed on the market by Tesla which has chosen to nest this feature within all its electric vehicles. It is not a “market driven” technology nor has it undergone sufficient scrutination by the U.S. DOT which has largely taken a pass, not said “no” and allowed the folly to continue and spread, inappropriately allowing for wiling cities to allow the technology to be tested on public roads.
- School lunch debt has risen to nearly $200 million in the U.S. and at one school in Utah, one third of the students have school lunch debt. The news presented two individuals that have chosen to help tackle the problem with two different strategies. One man went to the school office and donated $500 to cover a family’s debt and subsequently started a foundation to allow others to do likewise. In a vastly different approach, a teacher dances on TikTok and if you watch for over a certain period of time- likely long enough to see an ad, she is compensated for a “view” and she donates the money she has raised to pay off school lunch debt. She has raised over $37,000.
Civilitiville USA views monetized social media as a failed social experiment and deems it predatory. The TikTok information on its site regarding monetized compensation is circular and inconclusive in nature. According to Google A I “TikTok does not have a fixed pay-per-view rate, as earnings are calculated per 1,000 "qualified views" (RPM) and vary based on factors like viewer location, content niche, and engagement. The new Creator Rewards Program pays between \(\$0.20\) and \(\$1.00\) per 1,000 qualified views, though this can range from a few cents to a few dollars, replacing the older Creator Fund which paid a much lower \(\$0.02\) to \(\$0.04\) per 1,000 views. ”
The unregulated and unstandardized rate in remuneration yields immense power and discretion to TikTok. From a societal point of view, do we really want encourage a strategy of asking fellow citizens to “waste their time” in order to aid those whose families cannot afford to feed them, instead of attacking the problem head on- with more just wages for workers, allowing them to meet the basic needs of their family?
- Target Corporation, headquartered in Minneapolis announced it is laying off 1800 people from its corporate office. The workers will work from home the day the individual layoffs are announced. Target stock, sales and earnings have all suffered this year, some of which may be a reaction to its discontinuation of DEI programs. Retail isn’t what it used to be with many cheap Chinese imports- now subject to tariffs and many items sold by retailers are on consignment- vs the retailer taking possession/ownership of them, limiting the ability of unwell funded entrepreneurs to find a venue.
Note that Civilitiville USA is not a fan of tariffs as they hurt the poor the most and they reward the government, not American industry. We believe a strategy of rationing is much more egalitarian, and allows the poor to sell their excess ration coupons to those who can afford them. Rationing is also more targeted and more direct and it promotes solidarity. Note that Rolls Royces were exempt from tariffs!
- Finally, the East Wing of the White House was torn down today, making way for President Trump’s pet project, a $300 million dollar Ballroom financed by 37 proud Techie/Crypto Billionaires. We know that these close supporters can usurp reality in finance but can they even bust a move on the dance floor, and where would they be without music- which is struggling greatly and in need of a new just business model.
A cursory reading of the U.S. Constitution shows crypto to be unconstitutional. Just what does our Supreme Court do?
As it were, the week including Oct. 27 was the 50th anniversary of the week Bruce Springsteen was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek. According to Rolling Stone Magazine “there was no shortage of major global events for the weekly news magazines to cover in October 1975. The last smallpox patient on Earth was treated in Bangladesh; Francisco Franco’s dictatorship came to an end in Spain after nearly 40 years; Saturday Night Live hit the NBC airwaves for the first time; Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier at the famous “Thrilla in Manila” boxing match; the Cincinnati Reds vanquished the Boston Red Sox in a World Series that included one of the most thrilling extra-innings games in history; and President Gerald Ford told New York to “drop dead,” in the much-quoted words of the New York Daily News.
Springsteen pulled off this feat thanks to an aggressive marketing effort by CBS Records; writer Jon Landau’s “I saw rock and roll future” quote from Boston’s Real Paper and the relentless hustle of his manager, Mike Appel.”
1975 was a year of great American ingenuity and a time when there were consequences for actions, even for superstar athletes. We are now a society of government leaders that rewards concepts that may be fraudulent simply because they can’t understand them. This laissez faire practice to the extreme must come to a halt- and we at Civilitivlle USA aim to see that it does. Let us pray and work together for a more just economy and a united United States. Rock on!