Tuesday, April 6, 2021

LYING PREDATOR LAWYER ANDREW CUOMO HANDS BILLIONS TO ILLEGALS - HE KNOWS AMERICAN CITIZENS WILL NOT VOTE FOR HIM, BUT MEXICO WILL

 

PERKS FOR PRICKS: Democratic Governors Embroiled in Monumental Vaccine Bribery Scandal, Journalism Reveals

Announced partnerships with CVS after pharmacy giant donated massive sums to Democrats

 • April 6, 2021 2:15 pm

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Some of the most prominent Democratic governors in the country have partnered with CVS Pharmacy to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to their constituents, raising questions about political corruption and bribery at the top levels of the Democratic Party.

Why did these governors—Gavin Newsom of California, Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Ralph Northam of Virginia—choose CVS?

Campaign finance reports skillfully obtained and extensively reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show that CVS donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party during the 2020 election cycle. CVS cofounder Stanley Goldstein, meanwhile, donated $3,000 to federal candidates—all Democrats—before retiring in 2006.

Why does it matter? According to CBS News: "Distributing vaccines is lucrative. Under federal guidelines, Publix, like any other private company, can charge Medicare $40 a shot to administer the vaccine."

A journalistic analysis of the finance reports conclusively demonstrated that CVS donated $31,000 to Newsom's campaign on Oct. 14, 2020, less than four months before the pharmacy announced a partnership with the California Department of Health. The pharmacy giant also donated $10,000 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most influential Democrats in Congress, who just happens to represent a district in California.

The analysis also determined that CVS donated $12,000 to Northam between 2017 and 2018, and contributed $20,000 to the Commonwealth Victory Fund on Dec. 17, 2020, just weeks before Northam announced the vaccine partnership with the pharmacy. A subsequent Google search revealed that the Commonwealth Victory Fund is the primary fundraising arm of the Virginia General Assembly's Democratic Caucus.

Additional analysis concluded that CVS donated a whopping $170,000 in 2020 to the Democratic Party in New York, the same state where Cuomo serves as governor. The corporation donated $10,000 to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, and gave an additional $10,000 to Schumer's political action committee.

The CVS influence campaign did not stop there. The company sought to curry favor at the national level by contributing $30,000 each to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Most disturbingly of all, CVS employees donated a staggering $450,595 to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, according to federal documents extracted and decoded by the Free Beacon.

CVS did not respond to our request for comment about its deplorable campaign to boost its profits by bribing Democrats.

Andrew Cuomo’s New York: Illegal Aliens to Get $1.1B More in Taxpayer-Funded Aid Than Small Businesses

Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo speaks during a press conference at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on May 26, 2020 at Wall Street in New York City. - The New York Stock Exchange, the symbolic heart of Wall Street, reopened its floor Tuesday after a two-month closure due …
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
3:16

Nearly 200,000 illegal aliens living in New York will soon receive $2.1 billion in taxpayer-funded stimulus checks and unemployment benefits thanks to a budget agreed upon by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

While more than a million jobs have been lost in New York and an estimated 80,000 New York businesses may not make it to the end of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, Cuomo and elected state Democrats agreed on a budget deal that provides billions to illegal aliens at the taxpayer’s expense.

Specifically, according to the New York Times, the state budget includes $2.1 billion in taxpayer-funded one-time payments in the form of stimulus checks and unemployment-style benefits for about 187,000 illegal aliens — about $1.1 billion more than small businesses are set to get in grants and tax credits after being forced to close by Cuomo’s economic lockdowns.

The budget also provides about $2.3 billion in federal funds for tenants who have been behind on rent as a result of Cuomo’s lockdowns, just $200,000,000 more than what illegal aliens will receive.

Previous estimates suggested illegal aliens could receive up to $28,600 a year thanks to the taxpayer-funded benefits approved by Cuomo. Weekly, illegal aliens could receive $500. For those unemployed since March 2020, illegal aliens could receive, on average, $12,600.

New York Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy called the New York state legislature “even more radical than the Biden-Harris administration” and said the budget deal “has replaced any last semblance of common sense with woke insanity.”

“Democrats are about to pass a budget that raises taxes on New Yorkers and businesses by $4 billion while enacting a $2 billion fund that will provide $25,000 payouts to illegal immigrants,” Langworthy said in the statement:

The few brave Democrats who have dared to speak out against this outrageous proposal are being called racists by their own party. While many will appreciate the irony in Democrats turning on each other, the terrifying truth is our state has been hijacked by extreme leftists where racism is cheapened and once again, those who break the law are given priority.

New York, and particularly New York City, has been ravaged by Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) economic lockdown measures that have now been in place for more than a year. Historic venues, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, and local neighborhood spots have had to close their doors for good as a result of the lockdowns.

Those forced to close include The Roosevelt hotel in Midtown East, which opened in 1924; the Copacabana nightclub, which opened in 1940; The Paris Cafe, which opened in 1873; and Empire Coffee & Tea, which opened in 1908 among hundreds of others.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

Washington, D.C. (April 5, 2021) – A new

report from the Center for Immigration

Studies highlights the added cost to Social

Security and Medicare that would result

from any bill passed by the U.S. Congress

providing legal status and a path to

citizenship to illegal immigrants. Under

current law, illegal immigrants are net

contributors to Social Security and Medicare

because they partially pay in to entitlement

programs but cannot legally receive

benefits. By granting eligibility for benefits,

however, amnesty would transform illegal

immigrants from net contributors into net

beneficiaries, imposing steep costs on the

Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
 
Jason Richwine, resident scholar at the Center and author of the report, said, "Amnesty transforms illegal immigrants from net contributors to net beneficiaries of our entitlement programs. It is important to acknowledge this large added cost, but the CBO's 10-year budget window will miss it." 
 
Key findings:
 
  • Amnesty would impose a lifetime net cost on Social Security and Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) of about $129,000 per amnesty recipient. This cost is the present discounted value of benefits received minus new taxes paid.
 
  • If 10 million illegal immigrants receive amnesty, the total cost to Social Security and Medicare Part A would be roughly $1.3 trillion in present value, equivalent to a one-time transfer of 6 percent of GDP.
 
  • Because most of these costs would occur outside its 10-year budget window, the Congressional Budget Office is unlikely to include them when it scores amnesty legislation.
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A NATION UNRAVELS - VICTOR DAVIS HANSON - 10 RADICAL NEW RULES THAT ARE CHANGING AMERICA..... OR UNRAVELING A NATION

This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.

Columnists

HANSON: The 10 radical new rules that are changing America

Author of the article:Victor Davis Hanson

1) Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air. Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.

Prior presidents ran up huge annual deficits, but at least there were some concessions that the money was real and had to be paid back. Not now. As we near $30 trillion in national debt and 110% of annual GDP, our elites either believe permanent zero interest rates make the cascading obligation irrelevant, or the larger the debt, the more likely we will be forced to address needed income redistribution.

2) Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden took an oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But he has willfully rendered federal immigration laws null and void. Some rioters are prosecuted for violating federal laws, others not so much. Arrests, prosecutions and trials are all fluid. Ideology governs when a law is still considered a law.

Crime rates do not necessarily matter. If someone is carjacked, assaulted or shot, it can be understood to be as much the victim’s fault as the perpetrator’s. Either the victim was too lax, uncaring and insensitive, or he provoked his attacker. How useful the crime is to the larger agendas of the left determines whether a victim is really a victim, and the victimizer really a victimizer.

3) Racialism is now acceptable. We are defined first by our ethnicity or religion, and only secondarily — if at all — by an American commonality. The explicit exclusion of whites from college dorms, safe spaces and federal aid programs is now noncontroversial. It is unspoken payback for perceived past sins, or a type of “good” racism. Falsely being called a racist makes one more guilty than falsely calling someone else a racist.

4) The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. The newcomer, unlike the host, is not stained by the sins of America’s founding and history. Most citizens currently must follow quarantine rules and social distancing, stay out of school and obey all the laws.

Yet those entering the United States illegally need not follow such apparently superfluous COVID-19 rules. Their children should be immediately schooled without worry of quarantine. Immigrants need not worry about their illegal entry or residence in America. Our elites believe illegal entrants more closely resemble the “founders” than do legal citizens, about half of whom they consider irredeemable.

5) Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. They cannot be asked to provide an ID to vote. “Noble lies” by our elites about COVID-19 rules are necessary to protect “Neanderthals” from themselves.

Americans deserve relief from the stress of grades, standardized testing and normative rules of school behaviour. They still are clueless about why it is good for them to pay far more for their gasoline, heating and air conditioning.

6) Hypocrisy is passe. Virtue-signaling is alive. Climate change activists fly on private jets. Social justice warriors live in gated communities. Multibillionaire elitists pose as victims of sexism, racism and homophobia. The elite need these exemptions to help the helpless. It is what you say to lesser others about how to live, not how you yourself live, that matters.

7) Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it. It is more humane to let thousands of homeless people live, eat, defecate and use drugs on public streets and sidewalks than it is to green-light affordable housing, mandate hospitalization for the mentally ill and create sufficient public shelter areas.

8) McCarthyism is good. Destroying lives and careers for incorrect thoughts saves more lives and careers. Cancel culture and the Twitter Reign of Terror provide needed deterrence.

Now that Americans know they are one wrong word, act or look away from losing their livelihoods, they are more careful and will behave in a more enlightened fashion. The social media guillotine is the humane, scientific tool of the woke.

9) Ignorance is preferable to knowledge. Neither statue-toppling, nor name-changing, nor the 1619 Project require any evidence or historical knowledge. Heroes of the past were simple constructs. Undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees reflect credentials, not knowledge. The brand, not what created it, is all that matters.

10) Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity. Its priesthood outnumbers the clergy and exercises far more power. Silicon Valley is the new Vatican, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter are the new gospels.

Americans privately fear these rules while publicly appearing to accept them. They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.

The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it.

Victor DavisHanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.

Data: Multinational Corporations Kept Outsourcing American Jobs in Pandemic

Big Tech
Graeme Jennings-Pool/MANDEL NGAN/MICHAEL REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
3:40

A number of multinational corporations and outsourcing firms continued outsourcing American white-collar jobs in Fiscal Year 2020 to H-1B foreign visa workers, data reveals.

Thirty multinational corporations, big banks, and outsourcing firms were awarded approval by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency to outsource more than 33,000 American white-collar jobs to H-1B foreign visa workers, according to data compiled by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) researchers.

“Members of Congress and Presidents from both parties over the past 14 years — who have been well-informed that the H-1B program has morphed into a corporate scam to offshore U.S. tech jobs and underpay migrant workers — have turned a blind eye to fixing it,” the EPI researchers write.

The H-1B visa program allows companies to bring 85,000 foreign workers to take American jobs each year and likely thousands more as universities and nonprofits are exempt from this annual cap.

There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.

The data from October 2019 to September 2020 shows that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Qualcomm, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Walmart, and McKinsey, as well as big banks such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs, and outsourcing firms like Infosys, Tata Consulting Services, Tech Mahindra Americas, IBM, Deloitte, Cognizant, and Capgemini were among the firms that were approved to outsource more than 33,000 American jobs.

In total, these 30 corporations, banks, and outsourcing firms were approved to import nearly 4-in-10 of all the H-1B foreign visa workers allowed to take American jobs last year.

Of the 30 top outsourcers, more than half are outsourcing firms whose business model relies on widening profit margins by outsourcing and eventually offshoring American jobs.

“Many of the outsourcing firms on this list have been reported to use the H-1B program to replace U.S. workers in cases that garnered national attention,” the researchers noted.

Even as about 17 million Americans remain jobless, all of whom want full-time work, President Joe Biden has ended former President Trump’s executive order that paused visa programs like the H-1B visa to shore up jobs for unemployed Americans.

Biden’s restarting the visa program came after corporate interests had lobbied the administration to let the Trump order expire. Many of those corporations who lobbied Biden will now more easily be able to outsource American jobs.

Despite the decision, the latest survey from Rasmussen Reports finds that 66 percent of likely U.S. voters say it is better for businesses to raise wages and provide better benefits to recruit Americans rather than importing foreign workers — 73 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of Democrats, and 62 percent of swing voters.

Likewise, 65 percent of voters said the nation’s labor market “already has enough talented people to train and recruit for most of those jobs” and does not need more.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.


Amazon, the multinational online retail


conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to


the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs


than Facebook and Google combined. 


                                              JOHN BINDER

Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.

BIDEN CRONY JEFF BEZOS OF AMAZON SAYS HE CAN’T AFFORD TO PAY LIVING WAGES!

 HERE’S WHY:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTYfJwTuP4A

Inside Jeff Bezos' $175 Million Mansion 

Is anyone expecting the Dems and union bosses to pile on and pillory Bezos as a ruthless capitalist?  Anyone?  Anyone?

In addition to the pending complaint, Amazon is fighting unionization:


National Labor Relations Board rules that Amazon illegally fired activist workers

Jeff Bezos may use his online retailing operation to censor conservatives and publish a Democrat/Deep State apologist newspaper, The Washington Post, but when his money is at stake, he looks indistinguishable from a union-busting robber baron of old.  CNBC reports:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has found Amazon illegally retaliated against two of its most outspoken internal critics when it fired them last year.

Last April, Amazon fired Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, two former user experience designers, for "repeatedly violating internal policies." Cunningham and Costa argued they were fired in retaliation for their continued criticism of Amazon.

The NLRB confirmed to CNBC that it found merit to Cunningham and Costa's unfair labor practice complaint, which was filed last October. If Amazon doesn't agree to settle the case, the agency said it would file a complaint against Amazon in the next few weeks and set a trial date in the coming months. News of the NLRB's decision was first reported by The New York Times.

Is anyone expecting the Dems and union bosses to pile on and pillory Bezos as a ruthless capitalist?  Anyone?  Anyone?

In addition to the pending complaint, Amazon is fighting unionization:

The NLRB decision comes as Amazon is staring down a closely-watched union vote at one of its Alabama warehouses. The NLRB began counting votes last week and it could take a few days or weeks to reach an outcome.


Amazon Fulfillment Center, Shakopee, MN.
Photo credit: Tony Webster CC By-SA 2.0 license.

In my opinion, Bezos is buying protection for his hard-line tactics against his own employees by acting as a propagandist for the left.  This is as cynical as it gets.  Once the left consolidates power, if H.R. 1 passes and Dems never lose another national election, they will come for him.  He is what Lenin called a "useful idiot."

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.


Josh Hawley Calls for Criminal Probe of Amazon

SEAN MORAN

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday, urging him to open a criminal antitrust investigation against Amazon for stifling competition.

According to a Wall Street Journal report released last week, Amazon used data and sales to develop its own, competing products against other businesses competing on its Amazon marketplace. The Journal wrote:

The online retailing giant has long asserted, including to Congress, that when it makes and sells its own products, it doesn’t use information it collects from the site’s individual third-party sellers—data those sellers view as proprietary.

Yet interviews with more than 20 former employees of Amazon’s private-label business and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal that employees did just that. Such information can help Amazon decide how to price an item, which features to copy or whether to enter a product segment based on its earning potential, according to people familiar with the practice, including a current employee and some former employees who participated in it.

In one instance, Amazon employees accessed documents and data about a bestselling car-trunk organizer sold by a third-party vendor. The information included total sales, how much the vendor paid Amazon for marketing and shipping, and how much Amazon made on each sale. Amazon’s private-label arm later introduced its own car-trunk organizers.

Hawley contended that Amazon’s business practices serve as an existential threat to small businesses competing against Amazon on the Internet giant’s marketplace.

“These practices are alarming for America’s small businesses even under ordinary circumstances. But at a time when most small retail businesses must rely on Amazon because of coronavirus-related shutdowns, predatory data practices threaten these businesses’ very existence,” the Missouri senator wrote.

“Abusing one’s position as a marketplace platform to create copycat products always is bad, but it is especially concerning now,” Hawley added. “Thousands of small businesses have been forced to suspend in-store retail and instead rely on Amazon because of shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon’s reported data practices are an existential threat that may prevent these businesses from ever recovering.”

Hawley noted that the European Union already opened an investigation into Amazon using data in an anticompetitive fashion against third-party businesses.

“In the light of the enormous evidence already gathered, I ask that you look into this issue and open a criminal antitrust investigation of Amazon,” Hawley wrote.

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

 German Economist Says

‘Great Reset Will Cause a

Crash Worse than 1930s’

JAMES DELINGPOLE

The Great Reset is real, it’s happening now and will lead to devastation worse — “much, much worse” — than the Weimar Republic, a German economist has warned.

Dr Antony Mueller, Professor of Economics at the Federal University of Sergipe in Brazil, says that the Chinese coronavirus ‘pandemic’ is being used as cover by the globalist elite to destroy small businesses and hasten a new world order based on “expertocracy, climate green religion, and brutal depopulation”.

This globalist elite — inspired by the World Economic Forum’s ‘Build Back Better’ campaign for a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and by the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 — are killing Main Street, together with thousands of jobs, by keeping economies across the Western World in near-permanent lockdown.

“Most people have not noticed yet because at the moment governments can afford to give them subsidies and welfare payments. But the question is: ‘For how long?’ We know this money is coming to an end and that it will soon be over. Next you will see massive unemployment all over Europe as one country pulls down another country.”

The coming economic crisis will be worse than any the world has seen before because all the countries in the Western world will become impoverished simultaneously and be unable to help one another.

“We are seeing the destruction of the economy in all Western countries — from the U.S. and Canada to New Zealand and Western Europe. 2020 as been a big catastrophe in the making. It’s just not here yet but it will be worse — much, much worse — than Weimar.”

It was the decline of Germany’s Weimar Republic — a period of high unemployment, deprivation, and hyperinflation — which led to the rise of Hitler. But however bad it might have been, the coming depression is going to be much worse because society is more atomised and less family-oriented and religious.

“In Weimar you still had large parts of the population who were religious — which gave them a sense of community and mutual help. They also had strong families. Now from Spain to Ireland, you have single households, which is going to make it much harder for people to survive.”

BLOG EDITOR: BEZOS HAS DESTROYED EVERY BOOK STORE IN AMERICA. WHAT'S NEXT?

Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”

The other factor which is going to make this depression almost uniquely horrible is that because all the small businesses are being methodically and deliberately wiped out by government fiat, there will be nothing to make ordinary life bearable.

“We know, for example, that Argentina has had economic crashes. But they were always survivable because there were always small businesses — you could get your car repaired, go to the butcher for meat, the bars and cafes stayed open. In this new crash the bars and cafes will be all closed.”

This has nothing to do with the virus, says Professor Mueller, and everything to do with government policy: “The real pandemic will be the effect of the lockdown.”

“We had a foretaste in 2008. You remember the pictures of lines of people waiting to draw their cash from the bank? This could well happen because you will have a collapse of credit… Unemployment will come. The government will have no funds. It will be mega inflation or a major contraction.

“It was not the virus that did this. It was the lockdown. Most people cannot comprehend it because the dimension explodes anything we are used to.

“History has many examples where we ask ‘How could they do this?’ But they did.

“One should not bank on having money. People say: ‘Oh I have a pension.’ But the government won’t be able to pay your pension. ‘Oh I have some savings.’ But you won’t have any access to your savings account.”

While Mueller says the prognosis is bleak, his disastrous scenario may not come to fruition if Western economies see sense.

The best immediate hope, he says, would have been if Donald Trump got re-elected.

“This will end the lockdowns. There will be a strong, quick recovery. And the Europeans will follow.”

He says he takes no pleasure in warning of disaster.

“I hope it will not happen. I do not make prophecies. I only see the implications of what is happening now with lockdowns, what the future looks like.”

Professor Antony Mueller was talking to James Delingpole on the Delingpod podcast. You can see the full interview here. You can support James’s podcast at https://www.subscribestar.com/jamesdelingpole and https://www.patreon.com/jamesdelingpole

 

WSJ: Amazon Wins by ‘Steamrolling’ Smaller Rivals

LUCAS NOLAN

In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal outlines how e-commerce giant Amazon gains an advantage over smaller competitors, “steamrolling” their business with similar products and services on its massive platform.

In an article titled “How Amazon Wins: By Steamrolling Rivals and Partners,” the Wall Street Journal outlines how the e-commerce giant Amazon uses its vast influence to push out competitors and rivals. The company often does this by targeting items that are selling well and creating their own version of the product, selling it at a cheaper price and undercutting the original manufacturer.

The Wall Street Journal writes:

No competitor is too small to draw Amazon’s sights. It cloned a line of camera tripods that a small outside company sold on Amazon’s site, hurting the vendor’s sales so badly it is now a fraction of its original size, the little firm’s owner said. Amazon said it didn’t violate the company’s intellectual-property rights.

When Amazon decided to compete with furniture retailer Wayfair Inc., Mr. Bezos’s deputies created what they called the Wayfair Parity Team, which studied how Wayfair procured, sold and delivered bulky furniture, eventually replicating a majority of its offerings, said people who worked on the team. Amazon and Wayfair declined to comment on the matter.

Amazon set its sights on Allbirds Inc., the maker of popular shoes using natural and recycled materials, and last year launched a shoe called Galen that looks nearly identical to Allbirds’ bestseller—without the environmentally friendly materials and selling for less than half the price.

Allbirds Co-CEO Joey Zwillinger commented on the situation stating: “You can’t help but look at a trillion-dollar company putting their muscle and their pockets and their machinations of their algorithms and reviewers and private-label machine all behind something that you’ve put your career against. You have this giant machine creating all these headwinds for us.”

As multiple tech companies such as Facebook and Google face antitrust lawsuits, Amazon pushing out competitors could see the company in the sights of the Justice Department next.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.c


In bipartisan vote: US House approves record $741 billion military spending bill.... HOW MUCH GOES INTO BIDEN CRONY BEZOS' POCKETS???

The overwhelming bipartisan vote by the House of Representatives Tuesday evening to approve the largest military budget in American history demonstrates the reality of capitalist politics. Democrats and Republicans are supposedly at each other’s throats over an array of social and political issues, but they are entirely in agreement on funding the world’s largest and most lethal military machine.

The House vote for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was by a massive margin, 335–78. Democrats supported passage by 195–37. Republicans supported passage by 140–40. Every leader of the House Democrats backed passage: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn. They were joined by the top Republicans: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Whip Steve Scalise and the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, the co-sponsor of the massive bill, Mac Thornberry of Texas.

The margin was far more than the two-thirds required to override a threatened Trump veto, although it is not clear that Trump will actually follow up on his tweets demanding two changes in the bill, neither relevant to its basic purposes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said the Senate will pass the NDAA in the next few days. The margin is likely to be even more decisive than in the House.

While rubber-stamping the largest-ever Pentagon budget, the House and Senate remain locked in a protracted stalemate which has blocked the payment of a single dollar of federal supplemental unemployment insurance since the benefit expired last July 31.

The $741 billion for the Pentagon is approximately six times as much as the $121 billion in unemployment benefits paid out to 60 million workers since the coronavirus pandemic struck.

The goal of the NDAA, according to its preamble, is to achieve “irreversible momentum in the implementation of the National Defense Strategy” spelled out by the Pentagon in 2018, which identified “strategic competition” with Russia and China, not terrorism, as the “preeminent challenge” of US military policy. This includes, according to the various subdivisions of the massive bill, achieving “Superiority in the Air”, “Superiority on the Seas,” “Superiority on the Land,” and, in keeping with the demands of Trump, “Superiority in Space.”

After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

It is not hard to imagine what the rest of the world is to think of this all-out US drive for military power “uber alles”: China, Russia and imperialist powers like Germany, Britain, France and Japan are all engaged in military build-ups to match that in America, bringing ever closer the danger of an uncontrolled military clash between great powers, most of them nuclear armed.

Well short of such an apocalypse, the arms race involves an unforgivable squandering of economic resources needed to meet social concerns such as education, health care, alleviating poverty and retirement security.

One of the largest single components of the Pentagon budget is Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), funded to the tune of $69 billion. This is the spending for ongoing military operations where US forces are deployed: primarily Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as well as the Persian Gulf, where vast naval and air assets are arrayed against Iran. The OCO also covers active drone missile warfare operations across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Democratic and Republican leaders on the committees overseeing Pentagon policies and military budgets gave unanimous support to the NDAA, boasting that the military budget has passed Congress by huge majorities for 59 straight years, and the Fiscal 2021 budget will be number 60.

When it comes to the most critical institution of the capitalist state, there is not even a two-party system in America, there is only one party: the party of the military-intelligence apparatus, which is required both to assert US imperialist interests around the world and to defend the financial aristocracy against the looming threat of social disorder and class conflict at home.

This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.

Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.

“Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble.”

                                                                  DANIEL GREENFIELD 

Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”

Amazon, the multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER

Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.

 THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WAGES WAR ON AMERICA!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/bill-gates-zuckerberg-jeff-bezos.html

"GOP estb. is using the $5 billion border-wall fight to hide up to four blue/white-collar cheap-labor programs in lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that salaries are too damn high, & estb. media does not want to know." 

 

TOP EVIL CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA 

Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON CRONIES

JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES

ExxonMobil

Halliburton BUSH CRIME FAMILY CRONIES

British American Tobacco

Dow Chemical

DuPont

Bayer

Microsoft

Google CLINTON CRONIES

Facebook OBAMA CRONIES, BIDEN CRONIES

Amazon WORKS FOR BIDEN, OR DOES HE WORK FOR JEFF BEZOS?

Walmart

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.”

                                             THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Graph from the Economic Policy Institute

Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019...watch those numbers go up with Bidenomics!

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

By Gabriel Black

The massive increase in the value of the stock market, which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America combined last year.

The father of US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin just completed the most expensive purchase of a living artist’s work in US history, spending over $91 million on a three-foot-tall metallic sculpture. Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund Citadel, recently dropped $238 million on a penthouse in New York City, the most expensive US home ever purchased. And Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, has invested $42 million in a 10,000-year clock  (BEZOS OWNS ABOUT $300 IN RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES HE CONSIDERS HIS HOMES THESE INCLUDE $135 MILLION MANSION IN BEVERLY HILLS, A $40 MILLION DOLLAR TOWNHOUSE IN D.C. AND $100 MILLION IN CONDOS IN NYC).

Amazon’s 25th anniversary: A conglomerate based on parasitism and exploitation

Last week, Amazon commemorated its 25th anniversary. From its beginnings in a garage in Seattle, Washington, Amazon has grown into a multinational technology conglomerate with a market capitalization of nearly one trillion dollars.

In 1994, future Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos left his job at hedge
fund D.E. Shaw to get out in front of the possibilities opened up
by the accelerating development of the internet, beginning with
the modest idea of an online bookstore. Bezos went on to become
the wealthiest man on the planet, his hoard by one estimate
peaking at a record $157 billion before his assets were divided in
a divorce earlier this year.

Now considered one of the “Big Four” technology monopolies alongside Apple, Google and Facebook, Amazon controls the largest marketplace on the Internet: Amazon.com. The conglomerate’s reach extends from Whole Foods Market, which Amazon purchased in 2017 for $13.4 billion, to consumer electronics such as the Kindle reader and the voice-controlled Alexa. Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems announced in April of this year that it will spend a decade launching 3,236 satellites into space to provide broadband internet.

Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” Using its vast flows of cash, Amazon ruthlessly undercut its rivals, from neighborhood stores to diaper manufacturers, accepting losses in order to drive competitors out of its way. Meanwhile, Amazon demanded and obtained free money from state and local governments in the form of tax breaks and other concessions.

Amazon’s annual revenues reached $233 billion in 2018, on which the conglomerate is expected to pay zero federal income tax. To put this figure in perspective, these revenues are nearly at the level of the annual tax revenue of Russia, which amounted to $253.9 billion in US dollars in 2017. Amazon’s revenues are higher than the government revenues of Turkey ($173.9 billion), Austria ($197.8 billion), Poland ($90.8 billion) and Iran ($77.2 billion).

Nearly half of American households now have subscriptions to Amazon Prime. The click of a mouse on a personal computer, or the tap of a finger on a mobile device, now sets into motion the speedy delivery of commodities from around the world, or the instantaneous electronic transmission of a film, song or book. Behind these deceptively simple transactions lies Amazon’s vast and complex commercial, logistics, distribution and computing empire.

Promising advances have indeed been made in automation and artificial intelligence. These technological advances carry with them tremendous liberating potential for human civilization as a whole. Heavy and repetitive toil by humans can increasingly be mitigated by robots, and possibilities appear on the horizon for advanced levels of coordination and integration around the world, assisted by artificial intelligence.

But under capitalism, new advances in technology have made possible new techniques of exploitation. Amazon has become a watchword for a new kind of despotism in the workplace.

In Amazon “fulfillment centers,” workers are forbidden to carry cellphones or to talk to each other. They are searched coming in and out, and minute details of their activity throughout the workday are tracked. Amazon specializes in putting constant pressure on workers to move as fast as possible, with electronic devices constantly prompting and prodding them to complete the next task.

Workers are instructed to compete with each other to surpass each other’s rates, which they are admonished constitutes “fun.” Arbitrarily high rates are demanded, and then raised, and then raised again. A worker who takes a moment to rest, to drink water, or to go to the bathroom can be criticized for a diminished rate. The workers who are deemed too slow, or who simply tire out, are replaced.

Amazon is now the second-largest employer in the United States, and there are around 647,000 Amazon workers worldwide. Journalist John Cassidy, writing about Amazon in The New Yorker in 2015, commented: “Behind all the technological advances and product innovation, there is a good deal of old-fashioned labor discipline, wage repression, and exertion of management power.”

Over the past week, we published an article exposing the injury of 567 workers over a two-year period at Amazon’s DFW-7 fulfillment center near Fort Worth, Texas. In December of last year, the WSWS reported how Amazon had hired a private detective to spy on 27-year-old worker Michelle Quinones in an effort to block compensation for her injury.

Amazon has appeared in the “Dirty Dozen” list maintained by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) for two years in a row. The 2019 report highlights six worker deaths in seven months, 13 deaths since 2013, “a high incidence of suicide attempts, workers urinating in bottles and workers left without resources or income after on-the-job injuries.”

Amazon’s techniques are merely a refined expression of conditions being imposed on workers around the world. In March of this year, Ford Motor Company announced the hiring of its new chief financial officer, Tim Stone, who previously served as Amazon’s vice president of finance and the leader of the Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods. Stone was hired as Ford carries out brutal cost-cutting in the US, Europe and around the world.

There is no shortage of opposition among Amazon workers. On social media, current and former Amazon workers are contacting each other, looking for ways to fight back. In Poland, where Amazon workers make around $5 per hour, Amazon walked out of negotiations on July 2 with two unions over working conditions, setting the stage for a strike.

To fight for their interests, Amazon workers cannot allow their struggles to be corralled and smothered by the pro-capitalist trade unions, which are doing everything they can to block a fight against inequality and exploitation. 

In 25 years, Amazon produced the biggest individual fortune in history, and it did so on the backs of hundreds of thousands of workers. Amazon’s trajectory represents an “accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital.”

Not just Bezos, but many others have enriched themselves or stand to enrich themselves from Amazon’s rise. Wall Street has its fingers in the pie. The Vanguard Group currently owns $55 billion of Amazon stock, BlackRock owns $45 billion and FMR owns $30 billion.

The parasitic activities of Amazon, through which it has sought to appropriate for itself the surplus value accumulated by other companies, have been integrated with the financial parasitism of the American economy. Amazon’s own stock has been buoyed ever higher as part of the speculative mania on Wall Street.

Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.

In 2013, Bezos personally purchased, and now operates, the Washington Post, which has been a main media voice for the Democratic Party’s anti-Russia campaign and the overall interests of American imperialism.

The increasing integration of Amazon with the repressive apparatus of the state, while its tentacles stretch into every corner of society. 

Amazon must be placed under public ownership and democratic control. It must be taken out of the hands of the financial oligarchy and transformed into a public utility. The technology and infrastructure behind Amazon’s meteoric trajectory and the biggest individual fortune in modern history must be turned towards the needs and aspirations of the world’s population as a whole.

This program can only be achieved through the mobilization of the working class on an international scale on the basis of a fight to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a democratically-controlled socialist economy, run on the basis of social need, not private profit.

ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER…. Amazon’s JEFF BEZOS PLAN FOR A NEW AMERICAN SLAVERY

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/11/amazon-billionaire-jeff-bezos-says-fuck.html

"Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble. " --- DANIEL GREENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG

Traditional book publishers were decimated by the arrival of Amazon, which aggressively pursued them, in the words of Bezos, “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”


MODERN SLAVER JEFF BEZOS

AMAZON’S ASSAULT ON AMERICA CONTINUES


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/modern-slaver-jeff-bezos-of-amazon.html


Amazon, the multinational online retail


conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to


the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs


than Facebook and Google combined. 


                                              JOHN BINDER

"Today, each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 million people, more than the total population of Latin America and double the population of the US."

“A comprehensive new report released Sunday by the New York-based labor rights watchdog China Labor Watch (CLW) has shed new light on the barbaric and illegal practices that Amazon employs to boost its profits by driving down production costs on the backs of factory workers at the company’s electronics assembly plants in China.”

JEFF BEZOS of AMAZON DECLARES THAT AMERICAN-BORN SLAVES ARE NOT CHEAP ENOUGH. CHINA MUST DELIVER THE REAL SLAVE LABOR!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/hundreds-of-miserably-paid-employees-at.html

“A comprehensive new report released Sunday by the New York-based labor rights watchdog China Labor Watch (CLW) has shed new light on the barbaric and illegal practices that Amazon employs to boost its profits by driving down production costs on the backs of factory workers at the company’s electronics assembly plants in China.”

Amazon, the multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER

 

AMAZON’S JEFF BEZOS IS THE FACE OF MODERN SLAVERY! 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-face-of-evil-jeff-bezos-assault-on.html

The gains for employees are a novel pain for the investors and employers who have been able to hold down wages for decades because the federal government is trying to grow the economy via cheap-labor legal immigration.

“INVESTORS” HAVE AND WILL DESTROY THIS NATION IF IT WOULD IMPACT THE NEXT QUARTER’S EARNINGS!

Amazon, the multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more foreign workers to the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than Facebook and Google combined. JOHN BINDER

"Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble. " --- DANIEL GREENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG

 

Hunger and evictions surge in the US

The worst social catastrophe to befall the US working class since the Great Depression of the 1930s continues to leave millions of people hungry, jobless and facing eviction.

Feeding America, the second-largest food charity in the US, estimates that upwards of 54 million people, including one in four children in the US are facing food insecurity.

 

People line up and check-in for a food giveaway at Harlem's Food Bank For New York City, a community kitchen and food pantry, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, in New York. Over five hundred turkeys and produce food boxes were given away by lottery to needy families for Thanksgiving. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

The growing need for food among millions of workers and their families is coinciding with record levels of COVID-19 infections reported in states across the country. In Texas, over 1 million have contracted the coronavirus, with over 20,000 perishing, the second highest tolls in the country behind New York. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts roughly another 190,000 deaths by March 1, 2021 if current trends continue.

On top of food insecurity, between 11 and 13 million renter households across the country are at risk of eviction, according to research by Stout, an investment bank and global advisory firm.

The Eviction Lab at Princeton University reports that eviction filings increased in several major metro areas following the expiration of CARES Act provisions at the end of July and before the CDC eviction moratorium was implemented on September 4. However, even with the moratorium, Princeton researchers note that evictions have continued across the country, and Stout estimates that with its expiration at the end of the year, this could lead to up to 6.4 million eviction filings.

The Eviction Lab data shows that two weeks after the CDC moratorium was implemented, evictions still continued to be processed, with 508 in Fort Worth and 1,053 in Houston, Texas. Filings also increased on a month-to-month basis in several cities, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in the Florida cities of Tampa, Jacksonville and Gainesville.

In North Carolina, almost 25,000 eviction cases were filed between July and September, according to data from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts, with almost 15,000 completed. Overall, Stout estimates that between 300,000 and 410,000 North Carolina households are unable to pay rent, with 240,000 expected eviction filings by January 2021.

In an interview with CNN, attorney Michael Trujillo commented on the bind that renters will find themselves in come January 1, 2021. “The pandemic is not going away before the end of the year,” he said, adding that without additional protections, “a huge wave of evictions” is on the horizon.

In a Hill-HarrisX poll taken between November 10 and November 13, 77 percent of US voters were in favor of passing a coronavirus relief package “as soon as possible.” Yet despite massive popular support for more stimulus, no relief is coming.

After the House and Senate passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act at the end of March, which provided billions to Wall Street, large corporations and the well-connected, ensuring their financial stability for a lifetime, workers were left with limited protections and only temporary unemployment relief. Congress has yet to pass another bill long after the $1,200 stimulus checks have been sent out and enhanced unemployment benefits have expired. Months of inaction have left millions of workers and their families without additional stimulus, eviction protection, health care, food or medicine, exacerbating mental health issues and stress.

Included in the CARES Act was an eviction moratorium that expired, along with the federal $600-a-week unemployment supplement, at the end of July. After Congress failed to come to terms on another bill at the end of July, the Centers for Disease Control, on September 4, implemented a federal eviction moratorium, which required tenants to sign a declaration and provide a copy to their landlord. This, along with additional federal unemployment assistance distributed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs, are set to expire the final week of December, leaving millions of people who have yet to find jobs or come up with the monies needed to pay back rent facing eviction in less than 50 days.

As of October, some 13 million people were receiving benefits through the PUA or PEUC program, more than from state unemployment insurance, which has also expired for millions of workers.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that over 11.1 million people are unemployed, thousands of workers, primarily low-wage workers, continue to be laid off. Last week, the BLS recorded over 700,000 first-time unemployment filings for the 34th week in a row, with first-time unemployment claims exceeding any week throughout the 2008-09 Great Recession.

Washington Post analysis found that among higher education workers, low-wage and administrative staff have seen ongoing monthly job losses or have not been called back to campus, while higher paid instructors have been hired back. The Post found that while colleges hired 180,000 workers during the fall semester last year, only 20,000 jobs were added this year.

Mass unemployment has led workers to apply for state unemployment benefits, but hundreds of thousands have yet to receive anything nearly eight months into the pandemic. In Wisconsin, reporters working with Wisconsin Watch found that nationally only 56 percent of unemployment claims were paid from March through August, while in Wisconsin the level was only 42.5 percent. As of November 10, more than 94,000 people in the state were still waiting for either state or federal unemployment benefits.

For those who were fortunate enough to receive benefits, their expiration and the inability to find safe well-paying work have left them unable to afford basic necessities.

The out-of-control spread of the virus coupled with overcrowded hospitals prompted a flurry of public health declarations over the past 72 hours from Republican and Democratic governors, such as Iowa Republican Kim Reynolds and Michigan Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. These included curfews, mask mandates and calls to limit social gatherings to 10 people or less. However, not one politician in either party is advancing the necessary demand to resume lockdowns of all non-essential businesses, with guaranteed pay for jobless workers and small business owners.

As Democratic President-elect Joe Biden made clear in his speech yesterday after meeting with corporate executives, the number one concern of the ruling class is “to get the economy back on track,” not to stop the spread of the virus, feed the hungry, provide relief or house the homeless. All policy is focused on ensuing the flow of profits to the corporations and Wall Street.

Not once in Biden’s speech did he call for resuming the unemployment benefits in the CARES Act or extending eviction moratoriums.

This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.

In the latest round of political theater on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appealing, “for the sake of the country,” to “come to the table and work with us to produce an agreement that meets America’s needs in this critical time.”

The letter noted that the negotiations should begin from the previous failed starting offer of $2.2 trillion, which McConnell and the Republicans have dismissed, a position from which they have not budged for the last six months. Despite the intransigence on the part of the Republicans, the fact is that the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have found time to advance several of President Trump’s federal judges past committee hearings, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, allowing them to be approved.

Ultimately, both parties see the provision of even the most meager benefits as a “disincentive” for their real aim: getting workers back on the job in factories and other workplaces amid a raging pandemic.

 

This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon, and the military-industrial complex.

Amazon is entangled not only with Wall Street, but also with the US military and intelligence apparatus. Amazon was awarded a $600 million contract with the CIA in 2013, followed by a $10 billion contract with the Department of Defense last year to move government data onto the cloud. Meanwhile, Amazon’s facial-identification software “Rekognition” is being marketed to federal and local police.

Biden names national security team of right-wing militarists

· 

President-elect Joe Biden sent a clear message to the world and to the American people with the first announcement of the top appointees to his cabinet and White House staff: the number one priority of the incoming Democratic administration is to build a US-led front of imperialist powers in preparation for stepped up military pressure and outright war on Russia and China.

All six of the appointments announced Monday in press releases—the nominees themselves will be introduced to the public later today—are in the sphere of foreign policy and national security. All are veterans of the Obama-Biden administration, and many were confirmed in those earlier positions by a Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell, demonstrating that Biden intends to form a government entirely acceptable to the Republican right.

 

Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken speaks during a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, March 6, 2015. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

The six officials named Monday include:

Antony Blinken, secretary of state: Blinken is a long-time Biden national security aide in both the US Senate and during Biden’s vice presidency, and he was deputy secretary of state in 2015-2016.

Jake Sullivan, national security adviser: Sullivan succeeded Blinken as national security adviser to Vice President Biden, as well as serving as chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Avril Haines, director of national intelligence: Haines was on Biden’s staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then on the Obama-Biden National Security Council before serving two years as deputy director of the CIA in 2015-2016.

Alexander Mayorkas, secretary of homeland security: a Cuban-born son of immigrants, Mayorkas is a career domestic security official who was deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the Obama administration, which deported more immigrants than any previous government.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, ambassador to the United Nations: the highest ranking African American in the career foreign service, Thomas-Greenfield was named ambassador to Liberia by George W. Bush, then State Department personnel chief under Obama and later assistant secretary for African Affairs. She was forced out by Trump in 2017 and became a counselor with the Albright-Stonebridge Group, a foreign policy think tank for Democrats headed by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

John Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate: the former senator, presidential candidate and secretary of state, now 76, co-chaired Biden’s climate change task force along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He will head a US effort to rejoin the Paris climate accord.

The first and most obvious fact about all six nominees is that they are dedicated defenders of American imperialism and the interests of Wall Street. Several are multi-millionaires, while all are comfortably within the top tier financially. Blinken, for example, is the son of a founder of Warburg Pincus investment bank, Donald Blinken, who was for 12 years chairman of the board of the State University of New York.

For all the hosannas in the media over the “diversity” of these initial appointees—one African American, one Hispanic, two women—these facets of their identities are entirely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter to the victim of torture in a CIA secret prison that the torturer (or her boss in Washington) is female. It doesn’t matter to refugee children separated from their parents by immigration agents that the DHS secretary is Hispanic. It doesn’t matter to the victims of US military aggression that the diplomat who defends this violence before the world is black.

The emphasis on diversity is used to distract from the reactionary character of the foreign policy orientation of the incoming Biden administration, which his apologists seek to disguise using the skin color, gender and national origin of the personnel who will carry it out.

There has been little discussion in the media of the significance of Biden choosing, in the midst of a nationwide and worldwide public health catastrophe that has already taken the lives of a quarter million Americans, to announce his foreign policy team first. If victory over coronavirus was the number one priority, as Biden claimed during the fall campaign, why not announce those who will head up the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies with the main responsibility for the fight against the pandemic?

This is a signal that the real point of difference between the Democrats and Trump is not his catastrophic performance in relation to COVID-19. While Trump now openly embraces “herd immunity” and dismisses the death toll as inconsequential, the Democrats will pursue essentially the same policy, and Biden has flatly rejected any new lockdown of the US economy.

Ever since Trump took office, the focus of Democratic Party opposition has been on foreign policy, particularly Trump’s allegedly “soft” line on Russia and his pullout, albeit largely rhetorical, from US commitments to Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that Biden expects to be in control of US foreign policy in less than 60 days, he is demonstrating that this will be the initial focus of policy changes.

BLOG  EDITOR: THE WASHINGTON POST IS OWNED BY BIDEN CRONY JEFF BEZOS.

Both major pro-Democratic Party newspapers emphasized this in their coverage of the Biden team’s rollout. The Washington Post wrote, “Biden is planning to prioritize foreign policy as a major pillar in his administration, with vows to reassemble global alliances and insert the United States into a more prominent position on the world stage.”

The New York Times was even blunter, identifying China as the main target of the new administration. In a front-page profile, the Times described Blinken as “a defender of global alliances” and said that he “will try to coalesce skeptical international partners into a new competition with China…” It identified trade in the Indo-Pacific region, technology investments, and Africa as areas in which the US would be “competing with China.”

Other profiles have noted that Blinken and Biden were generally aligned on foreign policy issues during the Obama administration, except on two occasions—the US attack on Libya, and US policy towards Syria—where Blinken favored more aggressive US intervention and Biden was more cautious.

The two were completely in step in relation to Ukraine, where Blinken played a key public role in turning the Crimean secession and reunification with Russia into a major international crisis. Blinken was the main US spokesman advocating heavy sanctions on Russia, to punish not only the Putin government, but also the population of the country as a whole. In a speech at the time, he said sanctions were needed to “demonstrate to the Russian people that there is a very hefty fine for supporting international criminals like” Putin.

Of the other appointees, Avril Haines is also a close personal associate of Biden, serving on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was chairman, then moving to the National Security Council in the Obama-Biden White House before her two years at the CIA. After leaving the government when Trump came in, Haines joined Blinken at the newly formed WestExec Partners, a national security think tank peddling advice to US corporations. Another partner was Michele Fluornoy, the former Pentagon official under Obama who is widely expected to be Biden’s choice as secretary of defense.

Late Monday, after the rollout of the group that Biden called the “crux” of his national security team, the Biden transition revealed that his next major cabinet pick would be former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to serve as Treasury secretary. This underscores the absolute subservience of the incoming administration to Wall Street, since Yellen was identified with the Fed policy of unrestrained opening of the financial spigots to support the financial markets during the 2008-2009 Wall Street crash.

Yellen was a top Fed official from 2004 on, working with then-chairman Ben Bernanke, moving up to vice chair in 2009 and appointed by Obama to succeed Bernanke in 2013. Trump declined to reappoint her to a second term in 2017.

 

Wall Street, Republicans and militarists back Biden campaign

 
9 July 2020

Anyone who wants to know what type of policies will be pursued by a Biden administration in the event the Democrats win the November 3 presidential election has only to look at the social and political forces that are rallying to his campaign.

BLOG EDITOR: BIDEN WAS ENDORSED VERY EARLY BY WAR PROFITEER AND PARTNER FOR RED CHINA SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN.

They include Wall Street, prominent Republicans and veterans of the Obama national security team.

Thanks to strong support from big business, the presidential campaign of the former vice president outraised President Trump’s reelection campaign in June, according to figures announced by the two campaigns last week. Joe Biden raked in $141 million, while Trump’s campaign took in $131 million.

It was the second consecutive month that Biden collected more in campaign contributions than Trump, following a $6 million edge in May, $80.8 million to $74 million, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The Trump campaign still leads in cash in the bank, with $295 million on hand as of July 1, as it had few expenses during the Republican primaries, where Trump had only token opposition. Biden’s campaign was effectively broke at the time of his breakthrough victories in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, but he now has amassed a war chest of at least $125 million, according to published estimates.

ActBlue, the online fundraising vehicle for the Democratic Party as a whole, took in $392 million in June, shattering all previous records, the bulk of it in smaller donations and contributions from first-time donors. This is an indication of the widespread popular hostility to Trump, exacerbated by his vitriolic attacks on the mass protests against police violence that took place throughout the month, as well as his refusal to take any serious action to stem the coronavirus pandemic.

BLOG EDITOR: THE RICH KNOW WHO WILL SERVE THEM BEST! ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS.  THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE RICH IN AMERICAN HISTORY OCCURRED DURING THE BANKSTER REGIME OF OBAMA-BIDEN-HOLDER.

But a major factor in Biden’s fundraising surge has been a series of virtual events featuring former President Obama, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Kamala Harris, at which wealthy contributors were invited to give the maximum donation of $5,600 directly to Biden as well as much larger sums to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the political action committee favored by the Biden campaign, Priorities USA, which expects to spend $200 million by itself to support his election.

Under the terms of an agreement between the Biden campaign and the DNC, the Biden Victory Fund can receive checks as large as $620,600 from wealthy donors. The money is then distributed in smaller amounts to the campaign, the DNC and various state parties in order to comply with campaign finance regulations.

According to figures released this week by the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street in particular is favoring Biden’s campaign over Trump’s. The group found that Biden has raised $52.4 million from the finance, insurance and real estate industries, of which $32.2 million came from “securities and investment.”

Trump raised $33.5 million from the broader category of finance, insurance and real estate. He was competitive with Biden among the real estate moguls, who view Trump as one of their own, but trailed badly, with only $7.8 million, from the “securities and investment” subcategory.

In other words, Wall Street favored Biden by better than four to one, and Biden’s $23 million lead among the financial elite accounted for more than his entire $16 million edge over Trump in fundraising in May and June.

Along with the support of the stock exchange and financial institutions, Biden is winning support from sections of the Republican Party. This includes the well publicized Lincoln Project, established by former Republican campaign operatives Reed Galen, John Weaver, Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt, with the support of other former party officials like Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, and George Conway, a prominent Republican lawyer and husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

The Lincoln Project began running television and internet commercials denouncing Trump from a right-wing foreign policy standpoint, criticizing him as soft on China and Russia. One ad, released after the New York Times launched its fabricated and unsubstantiated charge that Russia paid bounties to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, features a former Navy SEAL who attacks Trump for not ordering military action to kill Russians. The ad is titled “Betrayal.”

BLOG EDITOR: BOTH BIDEN AND GEORGE W BUSH ARE GLOBALIST FOR OPEN BORDERS AND ENDLESS WAR. THE BUSH FAMILY, LONG PARTNERED WITH THE 9-11 INVADING SAUDIS, STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST IRAQ WHICH ARE STILL FILLING THEIR POCKETS.

Another political action committee, “43 Alumni for Biden,” consists of hundreds of former officials in the Republican administration of George W. Bush (the 43rd US president). They declare they are “choosing country over party” in the November election, stating: “We believe that a Biden administration will adhere to the rule of law ... and restore dignity and integrity to the White House.” As a Super PAC, the group can raise unlimited sums of money to run ads attacking Trump or boosting Biden.

The final component in the rapidly coalescing coalition of reactionaries supporting the Biden campaign consists of former military-intelligence officials of the Obama administration, who have made a killing in the lucrative business of “strategic consulting” and now hope to return to power in a Biden administration. Several of them, including former deputy defense secretary Michele Flournoy and former deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state Anthony Blinken, have signed on as Biden’s top national security advisers.

A remarkable article in The American Prospect—a liberal publication that supports Biden against Trump—makes a devastating exposure of these militarists for Biden, under the headline, “How Biden’s Foreign Policy Team Got Rich.”

It documents the creation of a strategic consulting firm called WestExec Advisors (named after West Executive Avenue, the street outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington D.C.). WestExec was founded by two lesser operatives, Sergio Aguirre, former chief of staff to Samantha Power, UN ambassador under Obama, and Nitin Chadda, a former aide to Obama Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

These two recruited Flournoy and Blinken to serve as the group’s biggest “names.” Flournoy was widely expected to become secretary of defense if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election and she is once again at the top of the list for Pentagon boss under Biden.

Under Trump, Flournoy served on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the CIA director’s External Advisory Board, before leaving once the 2020 presidential campaign heated up. She is a notorious warmonger, and The American Prospect article details her role in advocating continued US military support to Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen, which has resulted in $3 billion in weapons contracts for Raytheon. WestExec principal Robert Work, a former deputy defense secretary, is a member of Raytheon’s board of directors.

WestExec quickly made a splash in Washington with its launch party attended by top former Obama national security aides such as Susan Rice, Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough. It lined up a list of clients so potent that neither WestExec nor the Biden campaign would release the names, for fear of exposing the fact that Biden’s foreign policy advisory group is a wholly owned subsidiary of the big military contractors.

One particularly noxious principal at WestExec is former Deputy CIA Director Avril Haines, who, as The American Prospect put it, “helped design Obama’s program of using drones for extrajudicial killings.” In June, the Biden campaign announced that Haines would oversee foreign policy for the Biden transition team.

While the former drone missile chief prepares plans for the future Biden administration, the current advisers, with their lucrative “consulting” affiliations, are listed by The American Prospect as follows: “Nicholas Burns (The Cohen Group), Kurt Campbell (The Asia Group), Tom Donilon (BlackRock Investment Institute), Wendy Sherman (Albright Stonebridge Group), Julianne Smith (WestExec Advisors) and Jake Sullivan (Macro Advisory Partners). They rarely discuss their connections to corporate power, defense contractors, private equity, and hedge funds, let alone disclose them.”

This is what Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and their various liberal and pseudo-left apologists have embraced as the alternative to the fascistic Trump administration—a government of warmongers and corporate shills, no less committed to the defense of the interests of the American ruling elite.