💻 Software Developer - American Veteran 🇺🇸
Joined April 2023
- Tweets495
- Following171
- Followers71
- Likes441
Was that capitulation in the market today? Are people scared of Democrats being in charge the same way they are scared of COVID? We just had a 2020 type crash. Calm down people.
David Hastings retweeted
Every GOP strategist, consultant, and candidate should be forced to participate in a role-playing exercise this morning.
Your name is Bob. You’re a 49-year-old blue-collar worker in Ohio. You’ve always struggled to make ends meet. The good jobs were all shipped to China and the few remaining pay a pittance wage, undercut by endless illegal labor.
You’re a 3x Trump voter because you believed he would finally make America great again.
You put your son through Ohio State. He graduated cum laude in computer science. You couldn’t have been prouder. After months searching, he landed an entry-level job at Microsoft. Beneath his qualifications, but a good start for a smart kid.
Then he got laid off. That same month, Microsoft applied for 150,000 more H-1B visas because it can’t find qualified Americans.
Your son has spent six months back in his childhood bedroom, sending hundreds of applications without landing an interview.
On TV, Trump boasts about the greatest economy in history and how many women and minorities are finding jobs.
You decide a father-son steak night might cheer him up.
Gas is $4.50 a gallon. Filling your truck costs over $100. At Kroger, ribeyes are $30/lb. You settle for hamburger, even though 70/30 ground beef still costs $10+.
At checkout, a fat black woman is screaming at the cashier because her EBT will only cover most of the filet mignon and lobster in her cart.
You think to yourself how the Iran war has made everything expensive, but at least we’re stopping their nuclear bomb. You weren’t even sure where Iran was before you googled it after we first bombed them in March.
After dinner, you take your son to the county fair. Half the people aren’t speaking English. Virtually none of the crowd looks like you. You’re forced to leave early after a “teen takeover” turns violent. A foreign born judge pledges none of them will go to jail.
Back home, you turn on the TV. Vivek Ramaswamy is lecturing the crowd about American mediocrity and why Ohio needs more foreign talent.
Your son grows upset. You change the channel.
Now a Republican surrogate, the daughter of a governor or wife of an elderly billionaire, explains that young White men are the REAL welfare queens. They’d rather play videogames in their parents’ basements than work.
Your son says nothing. He just goes back to his childhood bedroom. You turn off the TV.
Then your neighbor starts blasting reggaeton and cracking open Modelos. He brought his cousin’s family from Mexico to help with all the minority-business contracts his construction firm keeps winning. Tonight they’re celebrating his nephew’s birth, the family’s first birthright American citizen.
You sit alone in your living room.
You worked hard, paid taxes, obeyed the law, and raised your son to do everything right. You voted Republican again and again because you believed somebody in Washington would finally fight for you.
Instead, your wages are stagnant. Groceries are unaffordable. Your community is unrecognizable. Your country is fighting another foreign war.
And upstairs, the son you sacrificed everything for is lying awake in the bedroom he slept in at twelve, wondering what the heck he’s even supposed to do with his life now.
Every time you turn on the TV, the Republicans you elected are either congratulating themselves or explaining why you and your son are the problem.
For ten years, they told you America’s future depended on your vote. Now you aren’t even sure America has a future worth defending.
The Republican Party needs to answer one simple question this morning:
You’ve spent a decade demanding Bob’s loyalty. You’ve given him stagnant wages, unaffordable groceries, another foreign war, and a son who did everything right but can’t find work.
And when they complain, you call them lazy, entitled, and racist.
What possible reason have you given Bob and his son to vote Republican? Do you honestly think you deserve their vote?
David Hastings retweeted
US boomers support tax hikes on young workers to keep current Social Security checks, per YF
David Hastings retweeted
When the market looks at $ONDS it sees a pile of acquisitions being built off of shareholder dilution. I see a defense company being assembled in real time without tapping the debt market.
Ondas has a $757 million pro forma backlog with a revenue target of $525 to $550 million for the 2026 fiscal year. I started a position at the end of last week and finished writing a bullish deep dive which will be out tomorrow.
I believe that the acquisitions, customer relationships and $PLTR partnership are beginning to fit together. This combination could become dramatically more valuable over the next five years. Here is the underlying business Ondas is building at a time when autonomous warfare is still in it’s infancy:
· Sentrycs provides cyber-based counter-drone capabilities
· Iron Drone adds physical interception
· DZYNE brings Dronebuster, the ULTRA reconnaissance aircraft and IonStrike.
· World View adds persistent sensing from the stratosphere
· Roboteam adds ground robotics
I see a company positioning itself to detect threats, collect intelligence and deliver responses across multiple domains. Integrating those capabilities could make Ondas more valuable to a customer than any individual product.
Then there is Mistral which was a brilliant acquisition. That acquisition gives Ondas direct prime contractor access to U.S. Army and Special Operations contract vehicles, alongside domestic manufacturing and integration capabilities. Owning that customer relationship matters when you are trying to turn a growing technology portfolio into larger defense programs.
The financial progress is getting harder to ignore:
• Q2 revenue: $83.8 million, up 67% sequentially
• Pro forma organic revenue growth: 85% year over year
• Reported June backlog: $613 million
• Pro forma backlog including DZYNE and Cyberhawk: $757 million
• Full-year 2026 revenue target: $525–$550 million
I will be focusing on the organic growth Ondas can produce because acquisitions alone cannot carry this thesis indefinitely. I want to see the underlying businesses growing while orders convert into deliveries with more cash hitting the cash flow statement.
Palantir is where the longer-term opportunity gets especially interesting. The $PLTR partnership covers manufacturing, mission planning and intelligence processing aboard autonomous platforms. SkyWeaver is being developed to process information closer to the mission and support operations when connectivity is degraded.
My view is that coordinating drones, sensors and ground systems could become one of the most valuable parts of this market. Ondas has an opportunity to participate in that software layer alongside its hardware. A recurring software business would strengthen the economics considerably.
The balance sheet also matters as Ondas ended June with approximately $1.38 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, against roughly $6.4 million of debt. Subsequent acquisitions have consumed substantial cash but that starting position gives management room to build.
Equity financing has a real cost as every new share reduces my ownership unless the value created exceeds dilution. I am judging management on whether this acquisition strategy ultimately produces greater earning power per share. You will need to read my article which is forthcoming to see my bull case and price targets.
I will be watching organic growth, backlog conversion, cash consumption and the share count together. My bet is that Ondas can turn this collection of capabilities into a profitable defense platform whose earning power grows faster than its share count.
My question for the Ondas community is which development do you think would provide the strongest evidence that this strategy is working?
David Hastings retweeted
Buy American.
In 2005, Oneida shut the flatware factory in Sherrill, New York.
A town that had made silverware for MORE THAN 100 YEARS was supposed to be finished.
Two men refused to let that happen.
Their names are Matt Roberts and Greg Owens.
Roberts had managed that factory. Owens was another former Oneida manufacturing manager. When the company ended U.S. production, they bought the plant and the equipment and reopened it the NEXT DAY as Sherrill Manufacturing.
They did not have a giant rescue fund.
They did not have a Hollywood ending waiting.
They had a building, some machines, and a workforce that knew how to make forks, knives, and spoons.
At first they kept making product for Oneida.
Then Oneida pulled the remaining American work and sent it overseas.
That should have been the end.
It wasn’t.
They took government flatware contracts to keep the lights on. In 2010 they filed Chapter 11. They sold unused equipment. They sold space they could no longer fill. They leased back only the part of the factory they could still run.
They came out of bankruptcy in 2013.
Then they did the thing that saved the company.
They built their own brand: Liberty Tabletop.
They sold 18/10 stainless flatware straight to customers who wanted tableware MADE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Not through a department store that could drop them overnight.
Direct.
Today Liberty Tabletop is the only company still manufacturing stainless steel flatware in America.
Same town.
Same trade.
U.S. steel.
About 70 jobs.
They did not bring back 2,000 workers. Nobody did.
What they saved was the last line.
If you want American-made forks and spoons, this is the factory that still makes them.
Support Liberty Tabletop.
THIS is what keeping manufacturing in America actually looks like. 🇺🇸
Theo Von is onto something here. Socialism is gaining ground because our government does not protect us from large corporations and their lobbyists. Small businesses are blocked by red tape lobbied by big business. We subsidize so much. We have to bag our own groceries. We have to tip employees for doing their job. We have to pay welfare for a large amount of Walmart employees. Why are we getting squeezed so much?
David Hastings retweeted
Another successful launch of an @OndasHoldings Stratollite from Spaceport Tucson!
David Hastings retweeted
Steak and Shake: "The root of the rot is index funds."
Most people aren't ready for this conversation, but investing in index funds means handing absurd amounts of influence to the executives of BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. The "Big Three" have ingeniously harnessed the power of YOUR MONEY, steering corporate policy by voting on your behalf at shareholder meetings.
To pick companies at random, the Big Three manage 22% of Moderna shares, 19% of Coca-Cola shares, and 25% of Target shares (as of last year).
This gives them the muscle to push their ESG program: environment, social, governance. Thus you get people like Larry Fink saying ominous things like “At BlackRock we are forcing behaviors … You have to force behaviors."
He can say that only because we turn our money over to him.
America’s corporate governance system is broken, and it’s killing public companies. Look no further than Cracker Barrel: Decades of brutal mismanagement have seen one incompetent CEO after another walk away with a massive paycheck while customers and actual shareholders take a beating.
Why does this keep happening? Because proxy advisory firms like ISS are corrupt. They blindly rubber-stamp failing boards year after year, protecting the corporate elite while burning shareholder value to the ground.
The root of the rot is index funds. There's no question that indexing one's money is a smart financial move for most people. But just because you passively index your investments doesn't mean your corporate votes should be handed over to the managers of your fund so they can play politics. Right now, passive funds hold massive, unchecked voting blocks while having zero skin in the game themselves.
It is time for a simple rewrite of the rules: We need to index the votes of index fund investors.
Passive index funds should be forced to automatically split their votes to proportionately mirror those of retail and active institutional shareholders — the people actually doing the research, risking their capital, and fighting for performance in the companies they hold shares in. No more rubber-stamping. A change like this will immediately strip corrupt gatekeepers like ISS of their toxic influence.
True accountability happens when lazy, overpaid boards actually answer to the stakeholders they represent, rather than screwing them over.
Actual, logic-driven governance when your money is passive happens when your vote passively follows the voting decisions of the actual market.
We need to stop letting passive capital protect active incompetence. By stripping index funds of their arbitrary voting power and empowering engaged investors, we will finally torch corporate cronyism and usher American capital markets into a golden age of capitalism.
David Hastings retweeted
America’s corporate governance system is broken, and it’s killing public companies. Look no further than Cracker Barrel: Decades of brutal mismanagement have seen one incompetent CEO after another walk away with a massive paycheck while customers and actual shareholders take a beating.
Why does this keep happening? Because proxy advisory firms like ISS are corrupt. They blindly rubber-stamp failing boards year after year, protecting the corporate elite while burning shareholder value to the ground.
The root of the rot is index funds. There's no question that indexing one's money is a smart financial move for most people. But just because you passively index your investments doesn't mean your corporate votes should be handed over to the managers of your fund so they can play politics. Right now, passive funds hold massive, unchecked voting blocks while having zero skin in the game themselves.
It is time for a simple rewrite of the rules: We need to index the votes of index fund investors.
Passive index funds should be forced to automatically split their votes to proportionately mirror those of retail and active institutional shareholders — the people actually doing the research, risking their capital, and fighting for performance in the companies they hold shares in. No more rubber-stamping. A change like this will immediately strip corrupt gatekeepers like ISS of their toxic influence.
True accountability happens when lazy, overpaid boards actually answer to the stakeholders they represent, rather than screwing them over.
Actual, logic-driven governance when your money is passive happens when your vote passively follows the voting decisions of the actual market.
We need to stop letting passive capital protect active incompetence. By stripping index funds of their arbitrary voting power and empowering engaged investors, we will finally torch corporate cronyism and usher American capital markets into a golden age of capitalism.
We talk about “first-time buyers” and then refuse to create first-time inventory.
Fix: cities and counties sell unused public land in small lots for houses people can actually raise kids in. Capped resale for a decade so it does not become a flip.
Then go larger: pair it with trained trades — electricians, plumbers, framers — so the house does not cost a luxury because the labor pipeline was treated as optional.
A father of two does not need another credit that bids up the same 40-year-old ranch. He needs more ranches.
Write supply into the law.
David Hastings retweeted
How long do We The People keep paying taxes?
Seven properties, a Mercedes G-Wagon, sneakers worn by Kobe Bryant and a Mickey Mantle rookie card worth $1.5 million. All of these things were bought with taxpayer money.
Paul Randall pleaded guilty in one of the largest Medicaid fraud schemes in the California history – diverting more than $270 million in tax dollars.
David Hastings retweeted
The University of Chicago (@UChicago) has just filed a notice of intent to hire an H-1B Assistant Director of Academic Services and Administration
Salary: $72,000
No American citizen was qualified for this job.
This is exactly what I was thinking. The Fed raising rates right now seems reactive to pressure not logic.
The Fed rate decision is today. It doesn’t make sense to me to raise rates. I am betting $10 that we keep rates the same. I bet a lot of foreign actors are betting on a rate hike. Almost as if Citadel scare was a test run or an indicator for bad actors.
David Hastings retweeted
My favorite part about election season is all the candidates and parties promising to fix the things they've already had plenty of time to fix. My second favorite part is all the people who keep believing it.
A country that says it cares about families still writes the tax code as if the parent at home produced nothing.
You can already fund a Roth for a spouse who stays home with the kids. Fine. You get no break for doing it. So the household that most needs her to have a future of her own is the household least able to buy that future after rent and groceries.
Here is a real fix. If one parent is home raising children, the working parent should get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for filling the caregiver’s Roth — up to the annual limit, in her name, not a joint slush fund. The credit is for years with kids at home. It is not a trophy for high earners.
I am a husband and a father of two. This is not about my house looking good. It is about refusing the quiet rule that the parent who keeps the children gets no compounding and no record.
Do the hard things no matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
The Republicans hold the Presidency, The House, and The Senate and cannot get the Save Act passed, or any campaign promise they made. However, they will give us $5000 to vote for them? As Joe Biden would say, Come on Man!
Who are those people? @peterrhague
People thought I was being a bit histrionic writing this, but there are genuinely people attempting to steer us directly towards this particular existential risk planetocracy.org/p/the-new-b…
