/\ Time Lines /\
Corporate Domination 2022 - 2021
12/2/22
Common Dreams: Betrayal of Railway Workers Ignites Working-Class Fury Towards Biden and Democrats
11/29/22
Guardian: Joe Biden on Collision Course With Unions
11/28/22
Common Dreams: Biden Sells Out Union Workers by Urging Congress to Prevent Strike - Watch only what they do. Biden keeps chipping away at his base. The results should be easy to predict. Hello President DeSantis.
11/25/22
Guardian: Amazon Warehouse Workers Stage Black Friday Strikes and Protests Around the World
11/14/22
Guardian: Global Corporations 'Cheating Public Out of Billions in Taxes' Say Campaigners
9/27/22
7/29/22
Guardian: Oil Company Profits Quadruple as Americans Reel From High Fuel Prices
7/22/22
Guardian: Panama Papers Whistleblower: 'Politicians Must Act - Now"
7/20/22
Guardian: Facebook Zuckerberg Faces Deposition Over Manipulation of User Data - Again? This is Zuckerbergs 2022 version of the annual apology tour. It's been going on every year for the last 18. It's always some variation on: 'We had no idea or intention for the data to be used against our users, so we're going to work real real hard to make sure this never happens again.' Congress will do nothing and we'll be right back here again next year.
Surveillance and data harvesting is the Facebook business model. It can’t be trusted to regulate itself, and Here. It uses a social-validation feedback loop, and subliminal stimuli and advertising to keep its users hooked. It is not your friend.
4/28/22
Guardian: Why Are Gas Prices So High? These Obsure Traders Are Partly to Blame
4/10/22
Guardian: 'A Marathon, Not a Sprint': How Chris Smalls Defied Amazon to Start a Union
4/2/22
New Yorker: Joe Manchin Can't Shoot Down the Logic of a Wealth Tax - "Last fall, during the abortive Build Back Better negotiations, Senator Ron Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, revived the idea of taxing the unrealized capital gains of billionaires. The White House expressed interest in Wyden’s proposal but dropped it after it ran into internal Party opposition, including from Manchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Washington Post reported."
3/8/22
Guardian: Fears for Bees as US Set to Extend Use of Toxic Pesticides - Chemicals that are banned in Europe will continue to plague pollinators in the US for at least 15 more years.
Although this is an EPA decision, it is bound to have been reviewed by the Dept. of Agriculture which is headed by a purely political appointment
Tom Vilsack is the current Sec. of Agriculture. He was appointed by Obama and then again by Biden. He is a total industry insider.
Biden appointed former Biotech Governor of the Year Tom Vilsack: Sec. of AgriculturMonsanto provided the jet that Vilsack used to travel the state of Iowa during his gubernatorial campaign.
2/20/22
Guardian: Credit Suisse Leak Unmasks Criminals, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians
11/11/21
Washington Post: Democrat's Lofty Tax Agenda Imperiled From Within - Like from Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.
10/23/21
Nation of Change: US Billionaires Are $2.1 Trillion Richer Than Before the Pandemic
10/4/21
Guardian: Pandora Papers: What Has Been Revealed So Far
Guardian: Facebook Putting Profit Before Public Good, Says Whistleblower - "Last week, lawmakers grilled Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, and accused the company of “routinely” putting growth above children’s safety."
10/3/21
BBC: Pandora Papers: Secret Wealth and Dealings of World Leaders Exposed
9/22/21
9/21/21
NYTimes: Shrink Facebook - "Facebook has been used as a tool for violence and abuse in country after country."
NYTimes: No More Apologies: Inside Facebook's Push to Defend Its Image
9/13/21
NYTimes: Apple Issues Emergency Security Updates to Close a Spyware Flaw - For the first time ever, Apple admits that it could be and has been hacked.
9/7/21
US Treasury: The Case for a Robust Attack on the Tax Gap - "estimates from academic researchers suggest that more than $160 billion lost annually is from taxes that top 1 percent choose not to pay."
8/19/21
NYTimes: US Revives Facebook Suit, Adding Details to Back Claim of a Monopoly
7/14/21
Common Dreams: How to Pay for Infrastructure? Tax Billionaires' $1.8 Trillion Tax-Free Covid Windfall -The study found that they could afford the entire infrastructure costs plus tuition for 5.5 million community college students and could feed 29 million low-income public school kids over the summer. Why not? Capitalism
7/6/21
Intercept: Meet the Corporate Consulting Firm Staffing the Biden Administration - Previously they represented large defense contractors, the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical, big tech, cybersecurity, telecommunications, AT&T, Boeing, FedEx, etc. The Office of the President is now brought to you by WestExec. There will be no serious corporate anti-trust initiatives during the Biden administration.
6/15/21
6/12/21
NYTimes: Private Inequality: How a Powerful Industry Conquered the Tax System
6/10/21
Guardian: When America's Richest Men Pay $0 in Income Tax, This is Wealth Supremacy
6/8/21
ProPublica: How the Wealthiest Avoid Taxes - Their tax return data "demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most."
Between 2014 and 2018, the wealth of the 25 richest Americans increased by $401 Billion. They paid only 3.4% in tax. The typical American family pays about 24%. Imagine what 24% of $401 Billion ($96 Billion) could do for American poverty, health care, education, infrastructure.
5/18/21
Ellen Brown: How America Went From Mom-and-Pop Capitalism to Techno-Feudalism - 'Free' people can be kept enslaved by permanent debt, if they can be paid wages that are less then their cost of living.
Stages:
M-a-P Capitalism before WWII >
Industrial Capitalism: WWII - 1970 - M-a-P coexisted with large manufacturers designed to create real goods and services. Unions and corporations, roughly equal in economic power, quasi-collaborated (with the federal government acting as referee) to keep wages livable and profits adequate, very low inflation, GDP grew slowly Govt. intervention?>
Predatory Capitalism: constant propaganda from bought-out media outlets create a popular outlook that makes unions look like villans, causing them to loose membership and power. Lacking any effective checques and balances, a few of these corporations gradually rise to the top, then merge, concentrating power in the very few. Many of these corporations now produce no goods or services, but rather exist to exploit the rental value of their assets, spend a great portion of their earnings on buying back their own shares. Economy, inflation became more volatile, boom and bust, periods of fast growth for the few, then recession for all, repeated boom/bust >
Philanthro-capitalism: the multi-billionaires, in order to shield themselves from taxes and a predatory capitalist image create foundations or LLCs that are designated as having charitable purposes but remain under the ownership and control of the donors, who can invest the funds in ways that serve their corporate interests. The responsibility for public goods and services is gradually transferred from democratic institutions to the wealthy, who are looking after no one but themselves. >
Techno-Feudalism: All assets are owned by the very few. New-day serfs are 'happy and own nothing'. Any that get out of line can easily be tracked and dealt with by the completely invasive mass surveillance tools now available to the techno-feudal lords who control all of the assets.
Solutions:
wealth tax,
income tax,
corporate model overhaul (bring democracy to the market place and the job - one employee, one vote),
land-value tax: a tax on the rental income – the “unearned income” – of land, natural resources and monopoly takings - returning a portion of the land to the commons;
banking system reform: banks operated as a public utility could allocate credit for productive purposes serving the public interest;
Anti-monopoly legislation;
patent law reform
5/13/21
WaPo: Studies Show Unemployment Benefits Don't Stop People From Returning to Work - "...despite the highly meme-able frivolity associated with stimulus payments on social media, a study of how Americans spent the first stimulus by the Federal Reserve of New York revealed that only 29 percent of payments went toward consumption while the rest either went directly into debt repayment or savings."
4/12/21
Guardian: The Facebook Loophole That Lets World Leaders Deceive and Harass Their Citizens
2/25/21
Guardian: Bernie Sanders: US Sick of Subsidizing Starvation Wages at Walmart and McDonalds
2/23/21
Intercept: Corporate Lawyers Line Up For Justice Dept. Top Slots - An amazing list of corporate blue bloods whose whole lives have been spent defending the largest multi-national corporations against anti-trust and criminal prosecutions. There will be no meaningful anti-trust efforts on the part of the Biden Administration. See entry of 1/28.
2/18/21
Intercept: How Oracle Sells Repression in China - Oracle joins Google and Amazon in helping the Chinese government spy on its people's every move. Coming soon to the USA.
2/12/21
Guardian: Mars, Nestle to Face Child Slavery Lawsuit in US
2/11/21
Intercept: Former FBI Officials Tapped for Amazon's Growing Surveillance Network - Prime targets: labor organizers and journalists
2/8/21
Reuters: 'This is Not Justice.' Tenant Activists Upend US Eviction Courts
2/3/21
Democracy-NOW: Jeff Bezos Steps Down But Amazon's Predatory Business Model Won't Change - "On Tuesday, the company also reached a $61.7 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over charges it stole tips from its Amazon Flex drivers over two-and-a-half years. Amazon used the tips earned by the Flex drivers to pay the wages of these hourly workers, who don’t receive any benefits and make deliveries in their own vehicles." What kind of person does this?
Watch PBS The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos sometime.
1/28/21
Intercept: Merrick Garland Wants Former Facebook Lawyer to Top Antitrust Division - There will be no antitrust enforcement in the Biden Administration.
1/2o/21
Oxfam: Working for the Few and Common Dreams: Abolish Billionaires - "The worth of the 10 richest men has grown by half a $Trillion since the pandemic began."
1/14/21