by Brent Lambi | May 10, 2026 | Political
On Saturday, May 2, I sat with thousands
of shareholders inside the CHI Health Center
for the first Berkshire Hathaway annual
meeting of the post-Buffett era. Greg Abel
ran the show. Warren Buffett, ninety-five,
watched from the front row as a jersey bearing
the number 60 — his years as CEO — was
raised to the rafters. What we got, beneath
the folksy banter and Cherry Coke jokes,
was a warning shot fired across the bow of
the global economy.
Six minutes in, a video of Warren Buffett
opened the Q&A. “Hi. My name is Warren
from Omaha,” he began, then joked about
his recent change in role before asking Abel
why shareholders should hold long. Abel answered
with the usual confidence — strong
operating businesses, a record $397 billion
cash hoard. Then Abel pulled the rug out.
That wasn’t Warren. That was a deepfake,
scraped from publicly available footage
with, by Abel’s account, zero input from
Buffett!!!
Even with the disclosure, I still walked
out half-convinced I had heard Buffett
himself! If a deepfake fools me in the room
where the fakery is announced, what
chance does an unwitting person have
to detect AI is being used to fool them?
The bright side of AI also got its airtime —
productivity, automated claims, lower labor
costs. Ajit Jain, Berkshire’s insurance chief,
called AI a potential “game-changer.” Then
he said something that belongs on the front
page of every newspaper in America: Berkshire
is sitting on the cyber insurance sidelines.
They are not ducking competition.
They are ducking the math. On AI-enabled
cyber, Jain is not sure how bad, bad can be.
TOO BIG, TOO DANGEROUS, TOO
UNQUANTIFIABLE TO INSURE AT ANY
PRICE WE WOULD WILLINGLY TAKE.
Read that again. The largest, best-capitalized
property and casualty operation on
earth — the firm that quotes pandemic policies
and Strait of Hormuz war risk before
lunch — looked at AI-driven cyber exposure
and effectively said: too dangerous, too unquantifiable
to insure at any price we would
willingly take.
Now stack the deepfake on top of the uninsurable.
The next Bernie Madoff is not
lurking in Manhattan; he is renting GPUs,
cloning voices, and forging wire authorizations
faster than any regulator can match.
If Berkshire tells you the losses cannot be
priced, ask who is left to absorb them. The
answer is you.
Now consider who Washington proposes
to govern all of this. On February 27, the
President ordered federal agencies to cease
all use of products from Anthropic, a leading
American AI developer, and the Defense
Secretary — now styled “Secretary of War”
— designated the firm a national security
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
supply chain risk, a label by statute reserved
for foreign firms like Huawei. Anthropic’s
offense? Refusing to let the Pentagon use its
models for mass surveillance of Americans
or lethal autonomous weapons.
Read the federal court ruling. On March
26, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin called the
Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic “Orwellian”
and found it amounted to retaliation
that likely violated the First Amendment.
The government’s own files showed
the designation was triggered not by any
security review but by an internal Pentagon
complaint about the company’s conduct
in the press. The security assessment was
completed only after the punishment had
already been decided.
Translate that out of legalese. A private
American company said: not warrantless
mass surveillance, not autonomous kill decisions.
The federal response was to brand
the company a national security threat —
punishing it for the very limits the Fourth
Amendment and the laws of war already exist
to enforce.
On the home front, the same posture appears.
Last August, the President fired the
Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
hours after a weak jobs report, calling
the numbers “rigged” without evidence.
The institution that produces our benchmark
unemployment and inflation data is
being told: deliver favorable numbers or
pack your desk.
“Branding an AI company a national
security threat for refusing warrantless
surveillance is not oversight.”
Combine the trajectories. A government
that wants AI for surveillance and lethal
force but no AI it cannot bend. An insurance
industry that cannot price the resulting losses.
That is the kind of economy capital flees.
Berkshire, once again, is the canary in
the coal mine. When CNBC’s Becky Quick
asked Buffett about the morning’s deepfake,
the man who has watched seventy
years of American capitalism answered in
two words: “It’s scary.” When the people
who price risk for a living tell you they cannot,
you should listen. When the federal government
moves to silence the company that
drew the red line, you should listen harder.
Do we have the ethical team in Washington
today to set the rules for technology this
powerful? In my judgment — and this is
opinion — we do not. An administration that
withdrew more than fifty of its own nominations
in a single year and has cycled Cabinet
and agency heads from Justice to the CDC
has not earned the credibility to govern how
the most powerful technology ever built is
used against Americans. Branding a domestic
AI company a national security threat
for declining warrantless surveillance is not
oversight. It is the removal of guardrails by
the hands that should be installing them.
The Oracle has left the building. The version
on the screen isn’t real. And the people
in the current government are not, in my
opinion, the ones who should regulate this
new threat. That is the warning Berkshire
just delivered. We had better hear it.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet inconvenient
ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Omaha,
Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am experiencing
is what I believe to be a targeted,
methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be silenced.
In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learning
to do it with audits, paperwork, and financial
ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, government-
sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most respected
real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, damage
my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruction
of a private citizen’s livelihood by government
machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenestration.
No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watching.
The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your reputation.
Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
The opinions expressed above are solely those
of the author.
by Brent Lambi | May 8, 2026 | Political
On Saturday, May 2, I sat with thousands
of shareholders inside the CHI Health Center
for the first Berkshire Hathaway annual
meeting of the post-Buffett era. Greg Abel
ran the show. Warren Buffett, ninety-five,
watched from the front row as a jersey bearing
the number 60 — his years as CEO — was
raised to the rafters. What we got, beneath
the folksy banter and Cherry Coke jokes,
was a warning shot fired across the bow of
the global economy.
Six minutes in, a video of Warren Buffett
opened the Q&A. “Hi. My name is Warren
from Omaha,” he began, then joked about
his recent change in role before asking Abel
why shareholders should hold long. Abel answered
with the usual confidence — strong
operating businesses, a record $397 billion
cash hoard. Then Abel pulled the rug out.
That wasn’t Warren. That was a deepfake,
scraped from publicly available footage
with, by Abel’s account, zero input from
Buffett!!!
Even with the disclosure, I still walked
out half-convinced I had heard Buffett
himself! If a deepfake fools me in the room
where the fakery is announced, what
chance does an unwitting person have
to detect AI is being used to fool them?
The bright side of AI also got its airtime —
productivity, automated claims, lower labor
costs. Ajit Jain, Berkshire’s insurance chief,
called AI a potential “game-changer.” Then
he said something that belongs on the front
page of every newspaper in America: Berkshire
is sitting on the cyber insurance sidelines.
They are not ducking competition.
They are ducking the math. On AI-enabled
cyber, Jain is not sure how bad, bad can be.
TOO BIG, TOO DANGEROUS, TOO
UNQUANTIFIABLE TO INSURE AT ANY
PRICE WE WOULD WILLINGLY TAKE.
Read that again. The largest, best-capitalized
property and casualty operation on
earth — the firm that quotes pandemic policies
and Strait of Hormuz war risk before
lunch — looked at AI-driven cyber exposure
and effectively said: too dangerous, too unquantifiable
to insure at any price we would
willingly take.
Now stack the deepfake on top of the uninsurable.
The next Bernie Madoff is not
lurking in Manhattan; he is renting GPUs,
cloning voices, and forging wire authorizations
faster than any regulator can match.
If Berkshire tells you the losses cannot be
priced, ask who is left to absorb them. The
answer is you.
Now consider who Washington proposes
to govern all of this. On February 27, the
President ordered federal agencies to cease
all use of products from Anthropic, a leading
American AI developer, and the Defense
Secretary — now styled “Secretary of War”
— designated the firm a national security
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
supply chain risk, a label by statute reserved
for foreign firms like Huawei. Anthropic’s
offense? Refusing to let the Pentagon use its
models for mass surveillance of Americans
or lethal autonomous weapons.
Read the federal court ruling. On March
26, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin called the
Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic “Orwellian”
and found it amounted to retaliation
that likely violated the First Amendment.
The government’s own files showed
the designation was triggered not by any
security review but by an internal Pentagon
complaint about the company’s conduct
in the press. The security assessment was
completed only after the punishment had
already been decided.
Translate that out of legalese. A private
American company said: not warrantless
mass surveillance, not autonomous kill decisions.
The federal response was to brand
the company a national security threat —
punishing it for the very limits the Fourth
Amendment and the laws of war already exist
to enforce.
On the home front, the same posture appears.
Last August, the President fired the
Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
hours after a weak jobs report, calling
the numbers “rigged” without evidence.
The institution that produces our benchmark
unemployment and inflation data is
being told: deliver favorable numbers or
pack your desk.
“Branding an AI company a national
security threat for refusing warrantless
surveillance is not oversight.”
Combine the trajectories. A government
that wants AI for surveillance and lethal
force but no AI it cannot bend. An insurance
industry that cannot price the resulting losses.
That is the kind of economy capital flees.
Berkshire, once again, is the canary in
the coal mine. When CNBC’s Becky Quick
asked Buffett about the morning’s deepfake,
the man who has watched seventy
years of American capitalism answered in
two words: “It’s scary.” When the people
who price risk for a living tell you they cannot,
you should listen. When the federal government
moves to silence the company that
drew the red line, you should listen harder.
Do we have the ethical team in Washington
today to set the rules for technology this
powerful? In my judgment — and this is
opinion — we do not. An administration that
withdrew more than fifty of its own nominations
in a single year and has cycled Cabinet
and agency heads from Justice to the CDC
has not earned the credibility to govern how
the most powerful technology ever built is
used against Americans. Branding a domestic
AI company a national security threat
for declining warrantless surveillance is not
oversight. It is the removal of guardrails by
the hands that should be installing them.
The Oracle has left the building. The version
on the screen isn’t real. And the people
in the current government are not, in my
opinion, the ones who should regulate this
new threat. That is the warning Berkshire
just delivered. We had better hear it.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet inconvenient
ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Omaha,
Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am experiencing
is what I believe to be a targeted,
methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be silenced.
In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learning
to do it with audits, paperwork, and financial
ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, government-
sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most respected
real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, damage
my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruction
of a private citizen’s livelihood by government
machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenestration.
No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watching.
The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your reputation.
Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
The opinions expressed above are solely those
of the author.
by Brent Lambi | May 6, 2026 | Political
We Were Warned in 1973. Fifty Years and Trillions of Dollars Later, Middle
East Oil Is Still Destroying Our Finances,Our Health, and Our Children.
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI | WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
New Website Launch: www.honest-politics.com
I’m excited to announce the launch of my new website. Simply scan the QR code to visit.
The site features a dedicated space for readers to share feedback and ideas. I welcome your thoughts and
suggestions for future topics — your input helps shape this ongoing effort. The new site will also feature
podcasts discussing my work.
As always, I’m deeply grateful to those who have supported this campaign through contributions. If you’d
like to get involved, please visit www.honest-politics.com to learn how you can help.
In October 1973, OPEC turned off the
spigot. Gasoline lines stretched around city
blocks, the economy convulsed, and every
serious person in America understood that
Middle Eastern oil was an existential threat
to the Republic. That was fifty-three years
ago. What followed was not energy independence.
Not a national ethanol program.
Not a wind buildout. Not a serious solar
mandate. What followed was five decades
of choosing the oil lobby’s quarterly earnings
over the national interest. Every consequence
America now faces—every war,
every soldier dead, every trillion borrowed,
every child breathing carcinogenic exhaust
— was foreseeable in 1973. The warning was
given. It was ignored. That is not a policy
failure. It is amoral one.
The Strait of Hormuz—twenty-one miles
wide between Iran and Oman — carries
twenty percent of the world’s oil supply
daily. Britain, France, and Germany are
not on board with American military escalation
toward Iran. They carry war memory
that Washington’s political class apparently
does not—and they understand that a Hormuz
closure collapses the global economy,
triggers cascading recessions on every continent,
and creates the precise conditions
under which world wars ignite. Any leader
confronting Iran while blocking wind, solar,
and ethanol is either serving interests that
are not America’s, or has learned nothing
from a half century of catastrophic, entirely
preventable evidence.
“The 1973 embargo was the warning.
$8 trillion borrowed, 7,000 Americans
dead, 50,000 wounded, and poisoned air
in every city was the price of ignoring it.”
THE ETHANOL SOLUTION: CLEANER,
DOMESTIC, READY NOW
The antidote is growing in Iowa,Nebraska,
Kansas, and Indiana right now. Brazil
stopped being strangled by oil markets decades
ago—its fleet runs on E27 or higher as
a national standard. Ford,GM, and Chrysler
once built E85 flex-fuel vehicles at scale.
Millions remain on American roads today.
A pump modification costs a few thousand
dollars. Washington let that infrastructure
atrophy and chose Big Oil’s margin over national
leverage. Mandate E20 immediately.
Bind E30 into law within 36months. Restore
E85 nationwide. The infrastructure exists.
The farmers are ready. The only thing missing
is the will. And ethanol is not merely a
strategic substitute for oil—it is a cleaner
one by every measurable standard.
Corn ethanol reduces lifecycle greenhouse
gas emissions 40 to 50 percent versus
gasoline. Cellulosic ethanol cuts them by up
to 90 percent. At the tailpipe, carbon monoxide
drops 30 percent. Particulate matter—
the microscopic soot that penetrates
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
lung tissue and drives asthma, cardiovascular
disease, and early death —falls sharply.
Most critically, ethanol eliminates the BTEX
compounds entirely: benzene, toluene, ethyl
benzene, and xylene, the carcinogenic
fingerprint of petroleum combustion. Benzene
is an EPA and WHO Group 1 human
carcinogen — no safe exposure threshold, a
direct cause of leukemia—released by every
gallon of straight gasoline burned near every
school, playground, and hospital in this
country. Ethanol contains none of them.
Moving from E10 to E30 is not just energy
policy. It is the largest preventable public
health intervention available to this government.
Period. Full stop. No asterisk.
THE COST OF FIFTY YEARS OF
WRONG DECISIONS
Every wind turbine built and every ethanol
blend point gained is a direct, permanent
reduction in the leverage Iran, Russia, and
OPEC hold over American decisions. No
foreign regime can embargo Nebraska wind
No cartel can price Iowa corn. No tanker
through Hormuz carries American sunlight
These are not green talking points. They
are geopolitical facts—and the American
people have been paying in blood and borrowed
money for the refusal to act on them
since 1973.TheUnited States has spent a
conservatively estimated $8 trillion on Middle
East military operations since 1990. The
Gulf War. Afghanistan. Iraq. Carrier strike
groups permanently stationed in the Persian
Gulf at $10 billion per group per year.
More than 7,000 American service members
killed in post-9/11 wars. More than 50,000
wounded— limbs gone, traumatic brain injuries,
PTSD that never fully heals. Every one
of those dollars was borrowed. Every one of
those deaths was preventable. The corn that
could have powered American cars sat at
below-break even prices in Midwest bins.
The wind that could have lit American cities
blew unharnessed across the Great Plains.
Good decisions in 1973—an E30 standard,
a wind buildout, a serious solar program—
would have made most of those deployments
unnecessary. The failure was not ignorance.
It was a choice, made repeatedly,
by politicians collecting oil money in the
morning and sending young Americans to
the Middle East in the evening.
“Middle East oil is America’s financial
demise and physical health demise.
Both were entirely preventable. Both
were chosen. It is time to collect the
accounting that was never given.”
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet inconvenient
ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Omaha,
Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am experiencing
is what I believe to be a targeted,
methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be silenced.
In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learning
to do it with audits, paperwork, and financial
ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, government-
sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most respected
real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, damage
my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruction
of a private citizen’s livelihood by government
machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenestration.
No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watching.
The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your reputation.
Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
The opinions expressed above are solely those
of the author
by Brent Lambi | May 3, 2026 | Political
and broken promises, there lives aman in
Omaha, Nebraska who still eats breakfast
atMcDonald’s and drives himself to work.
His name isWarren Buffett. His company,
BerkshireHathaway, is one of themost admired
institutions in the history of American
capitalism — built on honesty, frugality,
and a bone-deep contempt for the
appearance of impropriety.These are values
our nation’s leaders have not merely
forgotten. They have made a spectacle of
abandoning them.
HONESTY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE
When Salomon Brothers was caught
in a Treasury bond scandal in 1991, Buffett
did not spin or delay. He walked into
the Senate chamber and told regulators:
report to me anything that smells wrong.
Then he cleaned house — publicly and
decisively — because he understood that
the cover-up is always worse than the
crime. Berkshire employees receive no
thick compliance manual. They receive
a one-page letter from Buffett that says,
in plain English: do nothing you would
be ashamed to see on the front page of a
newspaper. Avoid even the appearance of
impropriety.
“Neverwrestlewith pigs.
You both get dirty and the pig
likes it.”—CharlieMunger.
Washington has not
merelywrestledwith the
pig.Washington has
become the pig.
Washington operates on the opposite
principle. Lawmakers trade stocks in industries
they regulate. Committee assignments
follow donormoney. And “I wasn’t
aware of that” has become the universal
absolution of the powerful. Berkshire does
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
not permit the appearance of impropriety.
Washington runs on it.
UNDER-PROMISE. OVER-DELIVER.
Buffett’s annual shareholder letters are
famous for their candor — he names his
mistakes, declines to forecast what he
cannot see, and has built one of the great
fortunes in history by making investors
feel safe through the radical act of telling
the truth. Washington does the opposite.
Our leaders promise wars that will end by
Christmas, foreign interventions that will
spread democracy in ninety days, and fiscal
programs that will pay for themselves.
They rarely keep their word on any of it—
and the American people, and too often
American soldiers, pay the price.
TRANSPARENCY AND THE
COWARDICE OF CONCEALMENT
Warren Buffett has not only made his
taxes public—he has argued publicly that
he pays too little, using his own return to
illustrate the absurdity of a system that
taxes capital gains at a lower rate than the
wages of a schoolteacher. He did this voluntarily,
without a court order, without
an army of lawyers. Donald Trump sued
the United States government to keep his
returns private, fighting all the way to the
Supreme Court. Whatever those returns
contain, the years-long war to conceal
them told us everything about the man’s
relationship with accountability. A public
servantwho cannot bear public scrutiny is
not a servant. He is a master who has forgotten
his place.
FIDUCIARY DUTY
AND THE PUBLIC TRUST
Berkshire’s principle is simple: when
you hold power over the interests of others,
those interests come first. Not yours.
Theirs. Buffett draws a nominal salary,
lives in the same house he bought in
1958 for $31,500, and does not self-deal.
His returns for ordinary shareholders —
teachers, retirees, small investors — are
the envy of Wall Street. Now consider the
modern political class: senators who enter
office on a government salary and exit
as multi-millionaires, defense contractors
whose boards are stocked with former
Secretaries of Defense, and lobbyists who
help write the very laws they profit from.
This is not fiduciary duty. It is fiduciary betrayal
on a generational scale.
LEGACY WITHOUT
THE NAMEPLATE
WarrenBuffett has given awaymore than
$50 billion — quietly, without naming a
hospital wing or summoning cameras to
record the moment. He calls his fortune
the product of the “ovarian lottery” — the
accident of being born with certain gifts in
a certain country at a certain time — and
believes that luck carries an obligation.
Meanwhile,Washingtonmistakes self-promotion
for leadership and branding for
governance, and we have leaders who
plaster their names on buildings they did
not fund and victories they did not earn.
Themeasure of a
leader is not the size
of hismonument—it is
the size of the trust
he leaves behind.
WHAT AMERICA COULD BE
Imagine a government run on Berkshire
Hathaway principles: honest budgets with
candid price tags; military force reserved
for genuine threats, clearly defined and
disciplined; public servants whose compensation
aligned with the outcomes
of those they served. Leaders who under-
promised and over-delivered. Who
corrected their mistakes in public. Who
gave generously and anonymously, understanding
that the gift is diminished the
moment it becomes a performance.
This is not a fantasy. It is a businessmodel.
It hasworked for sixty years, through recessions,
panics, andcrisesof every kind. It
works because it is grounded in something
that cannot be faked indefinitely: character.
Warren Buffett will not be president.
But his life’s work is a standing indictment
of the ethical poverty that passes for leadership
in Washington — and in capitals
around the world. America deserves Berkshire
Hathaway values. The gap between
those values and what it keeps electing is
the precisemeasure of our national crisis
THE PATTERN NO ONE WILL NAME
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop hedging.
Let’s callwhat is happening to the American
economy exactly what it is: the systematic
construction of an oligarchic power structure
that would make Vladimir Putin nod
with recognition — and perhaps envy. This
is not a foreign threat. This is an inside job.
This is not hyperbole. This is not partisan
panic. This is a pattern so deliberate,
so consistent, and so accelerating that even
the titans of Wall Street — men who built
their fortunes on the premise of American
free-market capitalism — are afraid to say
it out loud. And that silence? That silence is
the story.Compliance has replaced courage.
Calculation has replaced conscience.
WALL STREET’S OWN
ARE RAISING THE ALARM
Financial journalist andCNBCanchorAndrew
Ross Sorkin — hardly a bomb-throwing
radical — has publicly drawn chilling
comparisons between the current concentration
of economic and political power in
America and the conditions that preceded
catastrophicmarket collapse, raising alarms
in his recent work that echo the pre-crash
vulnerabilities of 1929. When voices from
the very center of establishment finance begin
sounding those alarms, the rest of us had
better listen. Urgently.
But most CEOs won’t say a word publicly.
They walk on eggshells. They attend state
dinners, smile in photographs, and write
checks. They have watched what happens
to those who don’t fall in line, and they have
made their calculations accordingly.
CONTROLLING THE PRESS: CBS, CNN,
AND THE COLBERT SHAKEDOWN
Consider the architecture of media control
now being assembled. The Skydance
merger, which in my opinion, has been engineered
to bring CBS and the crown jewel
of American journalism, 60 Minutes, into a
more pliable configuration — was only the
opening move. When Larry Ellison visited
the White House and subsequently found
himself in what I believe to be favorable
regulatory consideration, eyebrows should
have arched across every newsroom in the
country. Now CNN faces its own existential
pressure. When the administration moved
to extract a financial settlement from CBS
while targeting StephenColbert for the sinof
political satire, I think the message to every
media executivewas unmistakable: comply,
or pay.
National Public Radio and the Public
Broadcasting Service — funded by taxpayers
to serve the public interest, not the president’s
— are on the chopping block. In my
opinion, this is not because they are failing
theirmission but precisely because they are
fulfilling it.
SEIZING CONTROL OF
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The most chilling frontier of all is artificial
intelligence. The push to gain “supply chain
oversight” and “national security access” to
AI platforms—includingAnthropic—is not
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
about chips or servers. I believe it is about
controlling the infrastructure of thought itself.
Unfettered access to the most powerful
reasoning tools ever built is not a procurement
strategy. It is the opening clause of an
authoritarian manifesto. Every strongman
in history understood that controlling communication
was the precondition for controlling
everything else.
TARIFFS, PATRONAGE,
AND THE PUTIN PARALLEL
Meanwhile, the tariff regime functions as
a patronage system of baroque complexity.
Carve-outs flow not from economic logic
but from donor loyalty. Amazon. Microsoft.
Union Pacific. The acquisition plays surrounding
US Steel and Intel follow the same
logic Putin used when he brought Russia’s
energy sector toheel: youdonotneedtoown
everything outright. You need to only make
clear that your favor is required to survive.
In Russia, such men are called “oligarchs.”
In America, we call them“job creators” and
seat themat the inauguration.
What distinguished America was the
proposition that no man — regardless of
wealth or power—sat above themarket, the
law, or the press. That proposition is being
repealed, quietly and then suddenly, in the
manner Hemingway described bankruptcy:
gradually, and then all at once.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling fromhospitalwindows.Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truthsmeet inconvenient
ends on staircases and balconies
acrossMoscow. I amwriting this fromOmaha,
Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am experiencing
is what I believe to be a targeted,
methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be silenced.
In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learning
to do it with audits, paperwork, and financial
ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, government-
sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most respected
real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity—were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, damage
my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the freemarket. This is not
the rule of law.This is thedeliberatedestruction
of a private citizen’s livelihood by governmentmachinery
set inmotion to punish
dissent. I believe that BerkshireHathaway is
asmuch of a victimin this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenestration.
No broken glass. No headlines. Just
aman—his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community—meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watching.
The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your reputation.
Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
by Brent Lambi | May 2, 2026 | Political
by Brent Lambi | May 1, 2026 | Political
The Ticker Tape and
the Soul of a Nation
On Capitalism, Human Capital, and the Catastrophic
Misallocation of a Nation’s Resources
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
OPINION | May 1, 2026
As tens of thousands of shareholders
will gather in Omaha for the Berkshire
Hathaway annual meeting—the “Wood-
stock of Capitalism”—we must ask: What
is the intrinsic value of a nation that
allocates its capital toward its own de-
struction?
Capitalism is the most powerful engine
of prosperity ever devised. But it requires
the free flow of trade, goods, and informa-
tion. It requires a free press to hold power
accountable. It requires stable democracy
with long-term policy clarity—on climate,
public health, and international rela-
tions—so entrepreneurs can compound
value over decades, not merely survive
the next tariff announcement. Remove
these pillars and the system collapses.
Some allocations of capital are not
merely inefficient—they are ruinous.
Bombs are not assets. Wars are not invest-
ments. Tobacco kills half a million Amer-
icans yearly and does not compound.
Liquor destroys intrinsic value one family
at a time. Pouring capital into industries
accelerating global warming is a lever-
aged bet against the survival of the planet.
Buffett taught us to calculate intrinsic
value with cold-eyed honesty. By that
measure, every dollar spent on human
destruction earns a negative return no
discount rate can justify.
Smart diplomacy—phone calls, fair
trade agreements, genuine alliances—has
always yielded higher returns than tanks
and temper tariffs. The Marshall Plan re-
built Europe for a fraction of what the war
cost. NATO kept peace for seventy-five
years. Yet U.S. defense spending stands
at $839 billion,with proposals pushing
$1.5 trillion for FY2027. America accounts
for 62%of NATO expenditures—nearly
$980 billion. Every billion on missiles is
a billion not invested in schools, infra-
structure, or the human capital that drives
growth. Phone calls are cheaper than air-
craft carriers. Trade agreements generate
revenue; tariff wars destroy it.
That is the fundamental truth: Human
capital is the engine. Not oil, not gold, not
algorithms. People. The biggest econom-
ic driver of this nation has always been
those who came herewith nothing and
pursued the American Dream.
Before Ellis Island opened in 1892—be-
fore visas, green cards, or quotas—im-
migrants built the companies that define
American capitalism. Levi Strauss arrived
from Bavaria and created the blue jean.
Du Pont emigrated from France and
founded a chemical empire. Andrew Car-
negie came from Scotland penniless and
forged U.S. Steel. Alexander Graham Bell
gave us the telephone and AT&T.; Marcus
Goldman founded Goldman Sachs. John
Jacob Astor became America’s first multi-
millionaire. Nothing was required to enter
this country—just the courage to show up.
That tradition continues. Today, 46%of
Fortune 500 companies—231 of 500—
were founded by immigrants or their chil-
dren: Apple, Google, Amazon, NVIDIA,
Tesla, Costco. These firms generated $8.6
trillion in revenue in 2024 and employed
15.4 million people worldwide—collec-
tively the third-largest economy on Earth.
Immigrants represent 23.6%of all U.S.
entrepreneurs despite being 14%of the
population. This is not a footnote in the
American story. It is the American story.
Yet we are spending unprecedented
sums to remove these people. ICE’s bud-
get exploded from$6 billion a decade ago
to roughly $30 billion for FY2026, fueled
by $75 billion in supplemental funding.
ICE now commands $85 billion over
four years—exceeding the FBI, Bureau of
Prisons, Marshals, DEA, and ATF com-
bined. Total immigration enforcement
approaches $170 billion—more than the
combined police budgets of all fifty states.
The return is catastrophic. The CBO esti-
mated recent immigration would boost
GDP by $9 trillion and reduce deficits by
$900 billion over a decade. The Dallas Fed
finds restrictions cut GDP growth by up to
a full percentage point. Without immigra-
tion, America’s working-age population
would have begun shrinking in 2012. By
2033, deaths exceed births—without im-
migrants, the population declines. Social
Security’s actuary confirms immigration
improves trust fund solvency; deporta-
tion accelerates insolvency. Immigrants
paid $383 billion in federal taxes in 2022.
We are spending hundreds of billions to
remove the people who sustain GDP, fund
Social Security, and start businesses—
while inflating the deficit everyone claims
to care about.
History is unambiguous. Every great
empire that turned from commerce to
conquest has fallen. Rome collapsed from
over reach and corruption, not open bor-
ders. France’s revolution erupted when
rulers bankrupted the nation on wars.
Spain’s golden age ended when it ex-
pelled the populations whose enterprise
built its wealth. The Ottoman Empire de-
clined when it turned from trade inward.
Empires fall because governments pursue
the foolish misallocation of capital toward
war—the worst investment strategy in
human history.
Finally, the unspeakable. Nuclear ar-
senals are expanding for the first time in
forty years. Nuclear war would not be a
recession or depression. It would be game
over—for the world, the markets, and the
human race. Every stock, bond, and pen-
sion rendered meaningless. There is no
intrinsic value calculation for extinction.
No margin of safety against annihilation.
The most rational investment is prevent-
ing it; the most irrational is pursuing
policies that make it more likely.
The Oracle of Omaha
always said to be greedy
when others are fearful.
Perhaps the greatest act of
courage left to this nation is to
invest in its own people—all
of them—and choose the hard,
patient, compounding work
of diplomacy and democracy
over the catastrophic short-
selling of the human race.
Before the ticker tape falls
silent for good.
WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
DISCLOSURE — Honest Reporting by Brent Lambi:
The author, Brent Lambi of Honesty Reporting, currently has
a personal lawsuit pending against Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.
over what Mr. Lambi believes is misconduct directly related to
government misconduct.
Mr. Lambi considers Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices to have
been wrongfully misled, and further considers the interests of
those parties to be more aligned with his own than opposed. This
editorial is in noway intended to pressure or gain any favor —
directly or indirectly — from that litigation.
While Mr. Lambi is not in a position to provide legal counsel to
Berkshire Hathaway, he strongly urges that they seek compensation
from the parties whose actions caused this defamation matter to
arise in the first place.
He is confident that the honest culture of Berkshire Hathaway
— celebrated throughout this editorial — will once again prove
to be the right long-term strategy for all parties. Mr. Lambi also
holds a very small personal interest in Berkshire Hathaway stock,
and therefore has no enthusiasm for an outcome that harms the
company or its shareholders.
by Brent Lambi | May 1, 2026 | Political
America’s Oligarchy Is Here
How the United States is Following Putin’s Playbook
OPINION | May 1, 2026
THE PATTERN NO ONE WILL NAME
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop hedging.
Let’s call what is happening to the American
economy exactly what it is: the systematic
construction of an oligarchic power struc-
ture that would make Vladimir Putin nod
with recognition — and perhaps envy. This
is not a foreign threat. This is an inside job.
This is not hyperbole. This is not parti-
san panic. This is a pattern so deliberate,
so consistent, and so accelerating that even
the titans of Wall Street — men who built
their fortunes on the premise of American
free-market capitalism — are afraid to say
it out loud. And that silence? That silence is
the story. Compliance has replaced courage.
Calculation has replaced conscience.
WALL STREET’S OWN
ARE RAISING THE ALARM
Financial journalist and CNBC anchor An-
drew Ross Sorkin — hardly a bomb-throw-
ing radical — has publicly drawn chilling
comparisons between the current concen-
tration of economic and political power in
America and the conditions that preceded
catastrophic market collapse, raising alarms
in his recent work that echo the pre-crash
vulnerabilities of 1929. When voices from
the very center of establishment finance be-
gin sounding those alarms, the rest of us had
better listen. Urgently.
But most CEOs won’t say a word publicly.
They walk on eggshells. They attend state
dinners, smile in photographs, and write
checks. They have watched what happens
to those who don’t fall in line, and they have
made their calculations accordingly.
CONTROLLING THE PRESS: CBS, CNN,
AND THE COLBERT SHAKEDOWN
Consider the architecture of media con-
trol now being assembled. The Skydance
merger, which in my opinion, has been en-
gineered to bring CBS and the crown jewel
of American journalism, 60 Minutes, into a
more pliable configuration — was only the
opening move. When Larry Ellison visited
the White House and subsequently found
himself in what I believe to be favorable
regulatory consideration, eyebrows should
have arched across every newsroom in the
country. Now CNN faces its own existential
pressure. When the administration moved
to extract a financial settlement from CBS
while targeting Stephen Colbert for the sin of
political satire, I think the message to every
media executive was unmistakable: comply,
or pay.
National Public Radio and the Public
Broadcasting Service — funded by taxpay-
ers to serve the public interest, not the pres-
ident’s — are on the chopping block. In my
opinion, this is not because they are failing
their mission but precisely because they are
fulfilling it.
SEIZING CONTROL OF
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The most chilling frontier of all is artificial
intelligence. The push to gain “supply chain
oversight” and “national security access” to
AI platforms — including Anthropic — is not
Honest
Politics
By Brent Lambi
about chips or servers. I believe it is about
controlling the infrastructure of thought it-
self. Unfettered access to the most powerful
reasoning tools ever built is not a procure-
ment strategy. It is the opening clause of an
authoritarian manifesto. Every strongman
in history understood that controlling com-
munication was the precondition for con-
trolling everything else.
TARIFFS, PATRONAGE,
AND THE PUTIN PARALLEL
Meanwhile, the tariff regime functions as
a patronage system of baroque complexity.
Carve-outs flow not from economic logic
but from donor loyalty. Amazon. Microsoft.
Union Pacific. The acquisition plays sur-
rounding US Steel and Intel follow the same
logic Putin used when he brought Russia’s
energy sector to heel: you do not need to own
everything outright. You need to only make
clear that your favor is required to survive.
In Russia, such men are called “oligarchs.”
In America, we call them “job creators” and
seat them at the inauguration.
What distinguished America was the
proposition that no man — regardless of
wealth or power — sat above the market, the
law, or the press. That proposition is being
repealed, quietly and then suddenly, in the
manner Hemingway described bankruptcy:
gradually, and then all at once.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM THE AUTHOR
THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ME FROM A
WINDOW — BUT THEY ARE TRYING
In Putin’s Russia, dissidents have a way of
falling from hospital windows. Businessmen
who speak inconvenient truths meet incon-
venient ends on staircases and balconies
across Moscow. I am writing this from Oma-
ha, Nebraska. I have not been thrown from
a window.
THE IRS AS A WEAPON OF SILENCE
But I am being thrown out of something
just as vital: my life savings. What I am ex-
periencing is what I believe to be a target-
ed, methodical IRS assault — not random,
not routine, not coincidental. It follows my
speaking out. It follows my refusal to be si-
lenced. In Russia, they silence critics with
gravity. In America, I think they are learn-
ing to do it with audits, paperwork, and fi-
nancial ruin — stripping away everything a
person has built until the cost of their voice
becomes too steep to bear.
See Lambi V. United States of America, et al
Case # 8:2026cv00101
U.S. District Court for the District
of Nebraska
SLANDER THROUGH TRUSTED
INSTITUTIONS: THE BERKSHIRE
HATHAWAY CAMPAIGN
And the IRS is not the only instrument
being wielded against me. I believe I have
also been the victim of deliberate, govern-
ment-sourced slander — lies spread to
professional contacts who had no reason
to doubt what they were told. I believe that
honest, hardworking realtors employed by
Berkshire Hathaway — one of the most re-
spected real estate companies in America,
built on a foundation of integrity — were fed
false information about me by government
actors. These were decent professionals
simply doing their jobs, used as unwitting
vectors of what I think is a smear campaign
designed to isolate me professionally, dam-
age my reputation, and ensure that doors
would close before I could even knock on
them. This is not the free market. This is not
the rule of law. This is the deliberate destruc-
tion of a private citizen’s livelihood by gov-
ernment machinery set in motion to punish
dissent. I believe that Berkshire Hathaway is
as much of a victim in this as I am.
See Brent Lambi, Pro Se V. Berkshire
Hathaway Home Services, et al
Case # D01CI260001752
Nebraska District Court, Douglas County
I AM STILL STANDING
This is the American version of defenes-
tration. No broken glass. No headlines. Just
a man — his savings under assault, his name
poisoned in his own community — meant to
serve as a quiet warning to everyone watch-
ing. The message is clear: speak up, and we
will take everything. Your money. Your rep-
utation. Your future.
I am still watching. I am still writing. I am
still standing. And I intend to be heard.
The opinions expressed above are solely those
of the author.
PAID FOR BY BRENT LAMBI | WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Brent Lambi is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and the Creighton University School of Law.
