RIGHT TO REPAIR: Paralyzed Man Who Walks With an Exoskeleton Had To Fight Manufacturer Who Didn’t Want To Service It Because ‘It’s Too Old’
September 29, 2024
The fact that we like and endorse capitalism does not mean that we condone absurd manifestations of sheer corporate greed.
It stands to reason that once you purchase a product – specially an expensive one – you have the right to have it repaired if it breaks or otherwise ceases to function, be it by the manufacturer or by someone else.
But unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Case in point: a former jockey was left paralyzed from the waist down after a horse riding accident.
He was thankfully able to walk again with a cutting-edge piece of robotic tech: a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton.
So far, so good: but when one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working.
That’s when trouble started: to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs.
But shockingly, the company turned him away, claiming ‘his exoskeleton was too old’.
“‘After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy’, Michael Straight posted on Facebook earlier this month. ‘The reasons why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money’.
According to Straight, the issue was caused by a piece of wiring that had come loose from the battery that powered a wristwatch used to control the exoskeleton. This would cost peanuts for Lifeward to fix up, but it refused to service anything more than five years old, Straight said.
‘I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can’t walk anymore?’ he wrote on Facebook.”
Insane, right? This shows how advanced medical devices, that can change the lives of people living with severe disabilities, also make their owners dependent on the whims of the devices’ manufacturers, ‘who often operate in ruthless self-interest’.
Nefarious practices imposed by many of them can make their devices difficult or even impossible to fix without their help.
There are regulations called ‘right to repair laws’, without which manufacturers end up not being obligated to share the specialized parts, tools, and guides that make third party repairs possible.
“‘This is the dystopian nightmare that we’ve kind of entered in, where the manufacturer perspective on products is that their responsibility completely ends when it hands it over to a customer’, Nathan Proctor, head of the right to repair project at the US Public Interest Research Group, told 404. ‘That’s not good enough for a device like this, but it’s also the same thing we see up and down with every single product’.
‘People need to be able to fix things, there needs to be a plan in place’, he added. ‘A $100,000 product you can only use as long as the battery lasts, that’s enraging’.”
So Michael Straight had to go to war with Lifeward, who eventually did the right thing, and he was able to get his exoskeleton repaired — but only after an intense campaign in which he went on local TV, got highlighted in a horse industry publication, and gained steam on social media.
President Trump Rips Kamala Harris at Erie, PA Rally on the Border Crisis — “Why Didn’t She Do It Almost 4 Years Ago? Why Didn’t She Do It? Because She Can’t Do It” (VIDEO)
September 29, 2024
President Trump at Erie, PA rally on September 29th, 2024
President Trump held a rally in Erie, PA on Sunday to a very enthusiastic crowd.
He focused on the importance of protecting the border and talked about Kamala’s unwillingness to protect it.
“She gets up she goes, I didn’t really get involved too much with the border but, I’m going to now get involved. Why didn’t she do it almost 4 years ago? Why didn’t she do it? Because she can’t do it, she can’t do it. Number one she doesn’t have the capability, number two, her base will not let her do it,” Trump said.
Watch:
President Trump rips on Kamala Harris for not visiting the border. “Why didn’t she do it almost four years ago?!.” pic.twitter.com/gAurTuVIZU
President Trump also talked about how bad the criminals are that were let in by Biden and Kamala. Illegal aliens that committed terrible crimes including murder.
“These are the official numbers. These are certified numbers. Can you believe it?” Trump said.
“In total, during her term. It’s not even believable. She let in 13,099 convicted murderers. Some of them had murdered 10 people, some murdered seven, one murdered six. I’m looking at these. These are stone cold killers,” Trump said.
Watch:
“They let in people that are worse than any criminals we have.” – President Donald Trump holds a rally in Erie, PA pic.twitter.com/w4cxp2VZ2c
President Trump said that Kamala has handled the border so badly, that she should resign as Vice President. He also said that it is criminal what she has done with illegal immigration.
“She should resign the Vice Presidency and go home to California,” Trump said.
“She should go home in disgrace. What Kamala has done with illegal migrants is the biggest crime story of our time,” Trump continued.
Watch:
“She should resign the Vice Presidency and go home to California.” – President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/Q5dfz814KR
President Trump Holds Rally in Erie, Pennsylvania — “I Think November 5th Will Be the Most Important Day Potentially in the History of our Country” (VIDEO)
September 29, 2024
President Trump holds a rally in Erie, PA on September 29th, 2024
President Trump held a rally in Erie, PA to a very enthusiastic crowd who waited hours to see the 45th President of the United States.
There was a massive line outside the rally where patriots waited patiently for President Trump. You don’t see anything close to this when it involves Kamala Harris.
Watch:
Major crowds are lined up for President Trump here in Erie, Pennsylvania
He also took the time to talk about the victims of the hurricane and wished them well with thoughts and prayers.
“I’d like to send my love and prayers to the families of those who died, a lot of death and all of those who are displaced and suffering in the wake of the hurricane’s destruction and the south especially, in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and in particular western, North Carolina took a tremendous hit,” Trump said
Watch:
President Trump took a moment to wish all those affected by the floods and the hurricane well. He said his thoughts and prayers are with them. pic.twitter.com/2LDbbK5WhB
President Trump also emphasized how important it is to go out and actually vote, including early voting.
“We need each and every one of you to make a plan to vote early and vote absentee. Do whatever you want. The main thing is you gotta get out and you gotta vote,” Trump said.
“I think November 5th will be the most important day potentially in the history of our country,” Trump continued.
Watch:
GRAB A FRIEND AND GET OUT AND VOTE! President Trump drives home the crucial importance of this upcoming election. pic.twitter.com/ZoGnF40K2m
Investors and CEOs at War with Regulators Over “Counterfeit Shares”
September 29, 2024
Image: Courtesy of @ArtBurnDesigns
The Gateway Pundit spoke to Julianne Jay, a fair market activist and $MMTLP shareholder, who said tens of thousands of investors have been defrauded, their assets frozen, while regulators like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) have remained mostly silent and continue to refuse transparency. According to Jay, her account “reflects just how deeply compromised our self-regulatory systems have become, threatening the futures of all Americans.”
She argued that “if the regulators cannot provide transparency for the victims harmed by their actions, their silence and deflections raise serious concerns about the integrity of our markets and the broader financial system.”
Recently, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), Jr., called attention to what Congress labeled “The MMTLP Fiasco” by reposting “Thirteen good questions that @FINRA should be answering.”
“Kennedy’s repost brings renewed attention to this financial scandal, which many claim is bigger than Madoff and FTX combined,” Jay continued. To give context to the repost, she summed up RFK’s reference to the fiasco. “There is a criminal enterprise destroying the integrity of our capital markets and defrauding investors of their investments, savings, retirements, and financial independence,” she explained. What’s more, she said, “Sitting atop that enterprise is a group of regulators tasked with protecting investors and the integrity of the markets, [and] sadly, those regulators make-up the very enterprise that is destroying it.”
In June 2021, Torchlight Energy Resources, Inc., executed a reverse merger with Meta Materials Inc. As part of the deal, a special dividend—Series A Preferred Share ($MMAT1)—was distributed to investors. These dividend shares represented Torchlight’s oil and gas assets. According to the company’s SEC filings and public statements, these dividend shares were never intended to trade. Instead, the oil and gas would be sold or spun-out into another company at a later date. “To the shock of the company and their investors,” Jay said that “in October 2021, FINRA assigned $MMAT1 a new ticker ($MMTLP), and trading began on the Over-The-Counter Market (OTC).”
“Why would regulators allow a stock to trade without the company’s knowledge or permission?” Jay wondered. She explained, “Short selling is a strategy where you borrow a share at one price, sell it into the market, buy a share at a lower price to return to the lender, and pocket the difference.” According to her, “Short sellers did not close their positions in $TRCH. It appears, they broke the rules by trading $MMTLP to allow short sellers—who were on the hook for significant liabilities—the opportunity to escape a financial reckoning at the expense of everyday investors.”
Jay pointed out, “Things did not go as planned, [as] Short sellers thought we would panic and sell. They underestimated investor sentiment, and given the opportunity, we bought more—a lot more.” What exactly were investors buying? The 165.5 million dividend shares had already been distributed, most investors refused to sell, and according to her, they bought more. “Many investors believe brokers were selling counterfeit shares,” she claimed. “There were signs,” she added. “$MMTLP appeared on the Threshold Securities List for forty plus consecutive days…twice.”
Jay noted, the Threshold Securities List is compiled by regulators and tracks failed transactions over a period of consecutive days. Failed transactions, also known as Failure-To-Delivers (FTDs), occur when buy or sell orders fail to complete. When it comes to short selling, FTDs can occur when the short seller fails to provide locates for the shares they borrowed, she explained.
And according to her, “The regulators knew. The large amount of FTDs, over an extended period, is a strong indicator of illegal short selling,” she argued. “This criminal behavior, and the unwillingness of the regulators to enforce the rules, have polluted our capital markets with counterfeit shares.”
“The value of a company’s stock trades on principles of supply and demand,” Jay shared. More supply and less demand, price goes down. Less supply and higher demand, the price goes up. “When you have endless supply,” she said, “those principles are destroyed, [and] short sellers can drive the price of securities anywhere they want for their profits.” But according to her, “That is not what investors signed-up for. There is nothing free or fair about that.”
Even as whistleblowers continued to contact regulators, Jay said, $MMTLP traded for over a year. In June 2022, the oil and gas assets of Torchlight were set to spin-off into Next Bridge Hydrocarbons (NBH), whose shares would not trade. After a thorough four-month review of the planned spin-out by the SEC, FINRA issued instructions to the investing public on December 6, 2022. FINRA’s corporate action explained who qualified for the shares of NBH, and announced when the last day to sell shares of $MMTLP would be if investors did not want to transition their investment into a non-trading company.
“FINRA told investors that we could sell our shares on December 9th and 12th., [and] so did our brokers,” Jay pointed out. “For many of us, that was the plan. I didn’t want to be a long-term investor in an oil and gas exploration company, but I saw the opportunity to take advantage of the price escalation as shorts closed their positions, so after FINRA released the corporate action, I bought,” she said.
“Unfortunately, for investors, that was not how this saga unfolded,” Jay asserted. On December 9, 2022, FINRA issued a halt of $MMTLP which terminated trading two-days before the corporate action had stated. According to FINRA’s press release hours later, “an extraordinary event has occurred or is ongoing that has caused or has the potential to cause significant uncertainty in the settlement and clearance process…”
“In addition to issuing halts,” Jay said, “FINRA’s UPC (Uniform Practice Code) Committee has the responsibility to review corporate actions. “If the committee has concerns about investor confusion or uncertainty, or if they suspect fraud, they have an obligation under their own Rule 6490, to determine a corporate action ‘deficient’ and return it to the issuer for resolution,” according to Jay and FINRA’s website. But that did not happen, nor did FINRA resolve their concerns.
Jay pointed out that emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request “show that both FINRA and the SEC had concerns of potential fraud early on, yet they failed to act to protect investors.” She noted, “FINRA had three different investigative groups and their SEC counterparts communicating about $MMTLP, [adding that] their concerns were enough that they blue-sheeted on December 5, just one day before issuing the first corporate action telling us we could trade.”
According to FINRA’s website, Electronic Blue Sheet (EBS) provide regulatory agencies with the ability to analyze a firm’s trading activity to detect fraud. What did the EBS reveal? Jay said, “We have yet to find out as the regulators refuse to provide the information to the companies, investors and even Congress.”
“They knew something was wrong,” she declared. “They pulled the blue-sheets, saw the numbers of outstanding short positions, but instead of allowing the ‘free’ market to resolve it, no matter how infinite the risk to short sellers, they moved forward with the spin-out and trapped investors in a non-trading company,” she revealed. She concluded, “Either FINRA is incompetent in allowing the fraud to continue, or they conspired to protect short sellers. Either way, they are an unworthy regulator, especially one with immunity.”
In the meantime, $MMTLP has been deleted, and according to Jay, “investors have been forced into a non-trading company. Our shares have been replaced with IOUs, and our funds frozen with values set to $0.”
“Many investors’ requests to secure their shares and rights to the oil and gas assets by transferring them to NBH’s transfer agent continue to be denied,” Jay said, lamenting, “They are interfering in our property rights.”
In response to growing outrage, 74 congressional lawmakers sent SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and FINRA CEO Robert W. Cook an open letter asking for a certified count of all $MMTLP shares. On February 6, 2024, Representative Ralph Norman posted on X, “Just received this empty response from the SEC regarding #MMTLP. 6 days late and worthless. COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!!!” Despite this pressure, Jay said, Congress and investors have yet to receive a clear response, prompting further questions about the integrity and weaponization of these regulators against investors.
It has been over 650 days since FINRA halted and deleted $MMTLP and there still seems to be a settlement issue, Jay argued. Despite the attacks and threats that investor advocates like Jay have endured, the fight continues. “What are they hiding?” she asked. “Either investors were defrauded with counterfeit shares, or they were not. It really is that simple. What is the share count? Let’s start there.”
In a final declaration, Jay said, “We are not going away.”
Crowd Roars as Trump Ends Kamala Harris’s Career with an Epic One-Liner (VIDEO)
September 29, 2024
President Trump delivers remarks in Wisconsin
President Trump on Saturday night delivered remarks on the increase in violent crime as a result of Kamala Harris’ failed border policies in Prarie du Chien, Wisconsin.
More than 15 million illegal aliens – mainly military-age men – have invaded the US under Kamala Harris’s watch.
ICE revealed last week that there are currently 13,000+ illegal aliens convicted of homicide AND 15,000+ illegals convicted of sexual assault who are roaming the US thanks to ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris.
BREAKING: In a stunning letter sent to @RepTonyGonzales by ICE, the agency reveals there are currently 13,000+ noncitizens convicted of homicide & 15,000+ noncitizens convicted of sexual assault who are roaming the US as part of ICE’s non-detained docket.https://t.co/KgS5DAWzV9
We use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. We do this to improve browsing experience and to show (non-) personalized ads. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
