“See, all our people are businessmen. Their loyalty’s based on that.”*…
In his nifty newsletter, Benedict Evans observes…
In ‘Godfather II,’ the Cuban representative of ITT gave President Batista a solid gold telephone. In 2025, Apple’s Tim Cook gave President Trump a piece of Corning Glass on a gold plinth…
See this University of Florida piece for more background on the 1959 “gift” to Bautita and the corruption it came to symbolize. (But note that the U of F note incorretly attributes the gesture to AT&T; it was in fact from ITT.) And see Tim Cook pay Apple’s “tribute” here.
Apposite: “A UFC fight at the White House.”
Oh, and (from The Onion): “Frito-Lay CEO Gifts Trump Gold Funyun.”
* “Michael Corleone” (Al Pacino), The Godfather Part II
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As we ponder payola, we might remind ourselves that things have been– and can again be– different: on this date in 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, part of his New Deal program that created a government pension system for the retired.
By 1930, the United States was, along with Switzerland, the only modern industrial country without any national social security system. Amid the Great Depression, the physician Francis Townsend galvanized support behind a proposal to issue direct payments to older people. Responding to that movement, Roosevelt organized a committee led by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to develop a major social welfare program proposal. Roosevelt presented the plan in early 1935 and signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. The Supreme Court upheld the act in two major cases decided in 1937.
The law established the Social Security program. The old-age program is funded by payroll taxes, and over the ensuing decades, it contributed to a dramatic decline in poverty among older people, and spending on Social Security became a significant part of the federal budget. The Social Security Act also established an unemployment insurance program [only a few states had poorly-funded programs at the time] administered by the states and the Aid to Dependent Children program, which provided aid to families headed by single mothers. The law was later amended by acts such as the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which established two major healthcare programs: Medicare and Medicaid.
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