66,000 PEOPLE SIGN PETITION TO BLOCK BIDEN CRONY JEFF 'BEZOSHEAD' BEZOS FROM RETURNING TO EARTH - 66 MILLION PEOPLE SIGN PETITION TO DEPORT JOE BIDEN TO GITMO AND KEEP HIM THERE

 

Biden Admin Tells Struggling Small Businesses To Work More With Amazon

U.S. Commercial Service partners with Big Tech to promote international trade

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks at the White House in 2016 / Getty Images

Leif Le Mahieu • June 23, 2021 5:00 am

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The federal government is steering small businesses to do more business with Amazon to help them recover from the economic crisis prompted by the pandemic.

The U.S. Commercial Service, a trade promotion agency, is hosting a series of "Go Global" webinars with Amazon in June to teach small businesses to access markets in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates by becoming sellers on the e-commerce behemoth. Some entrepreneurs are crying foul, blaming Amazon as the source of their woes.

Gina Schaefer opened up her first hardware store in Logan Circle, Washington, D.C., in 2003. Alongside her husband, she expanded the business to 13 locally owned hardware stores, employing roughly 300 people in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia metro areas. She said a retailer like Amazon is the last place to which the federal government should turn to help small businesses.

"The larger Amazon has gotten, the fewer number of independent businesses we have," Schaefer told the Washington Free Beacon. "One by one industries have been picked off by predatory pricing and overlooked government regulations to the point where starting a new business, at least in the retail sector, is nearly impossible."

The agency's webinars with Amazon are designed to get clients for the web giant. The lessons on offer at the June 15 event included helping businesses create Amazon Global Accounts. A follow-up webinar in July will teach entrepreneurs how to not only team up with Amazon but also with U.S. trade authorities.

"We will cover … how to sign up for a [Amazon] Global Seller Account … [and] the role the U.S. Commercial Service plays in providing comprehensive export counseling to support your global business strategy," the event page says. "We'll connect you … to explore free resources and government funding to support your e-Commerce and export-related activities."

In response to Amazon's growing market dominance, small businesses are forming coalitions seeking to leverage anti-trust legislation to ensure that they are not crushed. Schaefer, a member of the Small Business Rising coalition, said the Commercial Service partnership with Amazon will further undermine small businesses as they struggle in the post-lockdown economy to stay independently viable. Like many other small business owners in retail, she supports the idea of Amazon being broken up.

"No one ever envisions that street empty or only populated by a soulless Amazon store.  Yet businesses are failing at alarming rates now, in large part to concentrated market power," Schaefer said.

Amazon has maintained close ties with American trade officials over the years. It employed 28 lobbyists working on trade issues in 2020 and 2021 as part of its multimillion-dollar influence operation, according to federal lobbying records. Seven of those lobbyists held high-ranking trade-related positions at the federal government, including at the U.S. Commercial Service and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, before joining the Silicon Valley giant. Its leadership has also been closely allied to Democrats, with employees contributing more than $2 million to the Biden campaign and 75 percent of its donations going to benefit Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Representatives from the U.S. Commercial Service and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.

Small business advocates say that the mass closures of mom-and-pop stores during the pandemic require bold steps from lawmakers. Sarah Crozier, of Main Street Alliance, faulted the Biden administration for promoting Amazon rather than cracking down on alleged market manipulations.

"The federal government is critical to help level the playing field for small businesses by improving anti-monopoly protections against giants like Amazon and creating opportunity for small businesses," Crozier said.

Some lawmakers have begun speaking out against Amazon's sway within the administration and on Capitol Hill. Rep. Ralph Norman (R., S.C.) said Amazon has not proven to be a faithful business partner to the third party sellers that populate its website.

"From motor oil to children's clothing, we need to know if the oddly random (and growing) list of Amazon's own products were identified and developed by exploiting sales & product data from its third party sellers. And we need to know why there are countless reports of retaliatory and anti-competitive conduct from Amazon," Norman said. "On multiple fronts, Amazon has given us plenty to be concerned with. Congress needs answers about the rampant reports of harmful and monopolistic behavior from that company."

66,000+ People Sign Petition to Stop Jeff Bezos from Returning to Earth After Spaceflight

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Mark Wilson/Getty Images

LUCAS NOLAN

21 Jun 202182

2:18

More than 66,000 people have signed two petitions calling to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to not return to earth after he leaves the planet on a Blue Origin rocket next month.

Business Insider reports that more than 66,000 people have signed two petitions calling for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to not reenter Earth’s atmosphere after he launches into space next month. Bezos, who along with running Amazon and enjoying his status as the world’s richest man is also the founder of space-exploration firm Blue Origin, said earlier this month that he and his brother Mark Bezos would be flying into space aboard the company’s New Shepard rocket on July 20.

The launch will be Blue Origin’s first flight carrying people. Three days after Bezos’ announcement, two different petitions were launched in an attempt to prevent the billionaire from returning to Earth. Each garnered thousands of followers in just 10 days, with more than 46,000 people signing a Change.org petition titled “Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth.”

The petition description states: “Billionaires should not exist…on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there.” Many signatories provided reasoning for their signing, such as “being let back into Earth is a privilege — not a right,” and “Earth don’t want people like Jeff, Bill, Elon and other such billionaires” referring to Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

Another petition, called “Petition To Not Allow Jeff Bezos Re-Entry To Earth,” has received more than 20,000 signatures. Jose Ortiz, who set up the petition, said in the description that Bezos was “an evil overlord hellbent on global domination.” He added: “The fate of humanity is in your hands.”

Both petitions are seeking 25,000 to 50,000 signatures which would make them two of the top-signed petitions on Change.org.

Read more at Business Insider here.

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.com

Stephen Moore: Biden Economic Strategy: Put America Last

 By Stephen Moore | June 22, 2021 | 10:24am EDT

 

 

 

Joe Biden attends a campaign event. (Photo credit: KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden's performance at the meeting with foreign leaders in Britain last week was a disgrace. Biden cut deals with Britain that sold out America's interests, and for doing so, he won the worshipful accolades of the Europeans, the Brits, and the Canadians. It's amazing how popular you are at a party when you pay everyone's bills. Except Biden isn't spending his own money, of course. He's spending ours.

It would be an understatement to say that the Euroland leaders weren't big fans of former President Donald Trump. Trump went to the G-7 meetings and told his international peers that there was a new sheriff in town and that his foremost mission was to put America first. He canceled bad trade deals in which other countries were cheating. Trump insisted that the Germans, the French, and the Italians paid more of the NATO bills for their own defense. He pulled America out of the Paris climate accord in part because almost none of the other nations were abiding by it.

What a difference a new president makes. The Euroland leaders of the G-7 are beside themselves with joy over Biden's "cooperative tone" and concessions at the meetings in Britain this weekend. A Reuters headline captured the euphoria of the foreign heads of state: "G7 Source Praises Biden After 'Complete Chaos' of Trump."

Is anyone surprised by the lovefest? "It's great to have a U.S. president who is part of the club," France's Emmanuel Macron said in a lengthy statement, saturating the new American president with praise.

Why wouldn't Canada, Russia, and the Europeans be celebrating? Biden gave away the store. Let me count the ways:

No. 1: He reiterated his promise that America will jump off the climate change cliff first and dismantle U.S. energy production as a sign of his commitment to stopping global warming. Yes, that is Russian President Vladimir Putin smiling. This is a reaffirmation of the U.S. undermining our own energy security after Beijing announced it has no interest in compromising its economic prosperity in the name of global warming. They have more significant and more immediate ambitions than to worry about the planet's temperature in 50 or 75 years.

No. 2: He agreed to a global tax that will harmonize U.S. taxes with those of the socialist European nations and fight against international tax competition, which has historically benefited the United States. America is supposed to be the low-tax country globally, and now we are ratcheting up our taxes to the levels commonplace in Europe. When Trump cut our tax rates, more than $1 trillion, much of it from socialist Europe, flowed into the U.S., financing new jobs and new enterprises. Now Biden wants a U.S. rate that matches that of Europe and exceeds that of China.

No. 3: Biden agreed to a "tax on tech" that will allow the Europeans and other international competitors to the U.S. to extract tens of billions of tax dollars every year from iconic American tech leaders such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. Meanwhile, as The Wall Street Journal has pointed out, the Europeans continue to lobby to ensure that their large companies are exempt from these international taxes. What kind of president sells his own nation's companies down the river?

Don't be surprised if the Biden administration tells the Germans, the French, and the Italians that they can forget about those Trump demands that Europe pay more for their own defense at future NATO meetings. Uncle Sam is happy to keep picking up the tab.

Trump promoted American values and relentlessly fought for American interests when meeting with G-7 leaders. He told the Europeans that if they want to get richer, they should be more like us. Now, we have a president who wants America to be more like them.

This isn't leadership. It is a first step in surrendering America's power, prosperity, and sovereignty.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of "Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy."

Analysis: Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Makes Unemployment Crisis Worse

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JOHN BINDER

22 Jun 202147

2:28

Giving amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, who would then enter the United States workforce to take jobs, would make the nation’s ongoing unemployment crisis worse, new analysis finds.

Analysis by Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota shows that if Congress were to approve and President Joe Biden were to sign H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act — which would provide at least 4.4 million illegal aliens with amnesty — it would drag down efforts to bring jobless Americans back into the workforce.

Camarota writes:

Allowing all illegal immigrants who came at younger ages or have TPS status to stay and giving them all legal status so they compete with legal immigrants and the native-born throughout the labor market will likely make it increasingly difficult to draw more Americans back into the labor market.

As Camarota notes, about 9.3 million Americans remain unemployed as of May — roughly 3.4 million more than those who were unemployed in May 2019. Likewise, more than 38 million Americans between 25 to 64-years-old were out of the labor force entirely last month, including three-fourths who do not have a college diploma.

(Chart via Center for Immigration Studies)

The H.R. 6 amnesty would also cost American taxpayers about $35.3 billion over the course of only 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). As Camarota mentions, this cost estimate does not include the net fiscal drain locally and at the state level for taxpayers.

Already, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants a year and awards them green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas to work in the U.S. annually while hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens arrive at the southern border.

The CBO has repeatedly noted that mass immigration cuts Americans’ wages.

In 2013, CBO analysis stated that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan would “slightly” push down wages for the American workers. A 2020 CBO analysis stated that “immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.”

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

Report: Older Americans with Student Debt Fastest-Growing Demographic — Could Be Paying in Their 90s

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PENNY STARR

22 Jun 20217

3:32

Older Americans represent the fastest-growing demographic for student loan debt either from their own debt or that incurred on behalf of their children, data from the U.S. Department of Education shows.

Most of the discussion about student loans centers on recent college grads and debtors in their late 20s and into their early 30s, but Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors, said that about 20 percent of those who still owe student loans are 50 and older, “and the fastest growing population of U.S. citizens carrying student loan debt are the over-65s.”

Marketplace reported on the surprising data:

One reason is that more people are going to college and graduate school, said Anqi Chen, an economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “And then there’s also been an increase in parents taking on either co-signing or getting a parent PLUS loan for their kids,” Chen said.

People over 50 who are still carrying student debt also tend to struggle more than younger borrowers to pay it back, Mayotte said.

“We talk a lot about how, you know, it delays buying homes, it delays some people from getting married or having children,” but, Mayotte said, for older people who are still paying student loans, it can make it a lot harder to save for retirement — or to retire at all.

Financial Advisor magazine also reported on this new angle on the $1.7 trillion student loan debt in the United States:

There are now about 8.7 million Americans aged over 50 who are still paying off college loans, and their debt has increased by about half since 2017.

Some took out loans to help their children, and could be well into their 90s before they’re done repaying. Others went back to school later in life. In both cases, borrowers got saddled with hefty interest rates that inflated their balance.

That’s why the looming resumption of payments on student loans is a challenge that spans the generations. A pandemic moratorium is due to run out at the end of September, with no progress so far on the debt forgiveness that President Joe Biden promised during his election campaign.

“The interest accrued big-time,” Alma Topete, who is 60 and borrowed about $30,000. She owes $70,000 today, according to the Financial Advisor report.

“I never expected to have a loan at this age,” Topete said.

Frank Sizer Jr., 77, said he figures it will take two more decades to settle his debt. Sizer borrowed money to help his son study biology at Bridgewater College in Virginia. He retired in 2010, two years after his son graduated, and now owes about $52,000.

“God knows what the original amount was,” said Sizer, who has a $500 a month payment. “It just continued to grow.” 

“Since mid-2006, federally backed loans under the Parent PLUS program have charged an average of 466 basis points above U.S. Treasury bonds, well above the typical rate for student borrowers,” Financial Advisor reported. “And loans to parents come with a hefty one-time origination fee too. The current going rate is 4.23 percent of the total amount borrowed—about four times what students are typically charged.”

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com.

Poll: 85% of Americans Are Concerned About Inflation

Nerthuz

JACOB BLISS

22 Jun 20218

1:59

Across the country, there is an overwhelming majority of Americans who are starting to be concerned about the increase in inflation rates, according to a poll.

Eighty-five percent of the registered voters had said they were “at least somewhat concerned about inflation.” This includes the 45 percent who have said they feel  “very concerned.” It was reported that the “consumer price index rose 0.6 percent last month as the economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.”

The Director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, Mark Penn, told the Hill, “Concern about inflation is reaching new highs as people begin to spend their savings from COVID lockdowns. … The administration has to watch this as a potential issue on the horizon.”

The poll also found that an astonishing 58 percent of Americans said they “trust the Federal Reserve to keep inflation in check.”

A minority (42 percent) of the respondents said they “aren’t confident in the central bank’s ability to manage rising costs.” Forty-five percent did say they have “little confidence in the Biden administration’s ability to reel in inflation,” compared to the majority (55 percent) of the respondents that said they could put trust in the administration to “curb” the inflation rates.

Additionally, 57 percent of the registered voters said that the economy is getting stronger, which the Hill noted is a 12 percent increase from January. There was also 37 percent who has said that their financial situation has been improving, which has also improved by 9 percent since January.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll surveyed 2,006 registered voters and was conducted between June 15 to 17. The poll was done collaboratively with the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The report did not note a probability confidence interval.

Inflation at Second Highest Ever Level in Richmond Fed Factory Survey

file/Getty Images

JOHN CARNEY

22 Jun 20210

2:49

Inflationary pressures continue to run at near-record highs in the central Atlantic region of the U.S. in June, data from a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond showed Tuesday.

The Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity’s gauge of prices paid by manufacturers showed prices rising at an annualized rate of 9.42 percent, more than 450 percent of the long-term average. That is the second-highest rate recorded in data going back to 1997, just below the 9.81 percent recorded in May.

Manufacturers said they have been able to hike the prices of their own goods at an annualized rate of five percent in June, which is five times the long-term average. That too is the second-highest rate recorded after May’s 5.41 percent price gain.

The data comes from the Richmond Fed’s survey of manufacturing firms across the Fifth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and most of West Virginia.

Expectations for rising prices and costs in the future also remain just below the record highs set in May. Manufacturers say they expect prices paid to rise at an annualized rate of 5.19 six months from now. They expect to be able to raise the prices of their goods at an annualized rate of 4.8 percent.

Surveys by the New York Fed and Philadelphia Fed released last week also showed powerful forces of inflation at work. The “Empire State” survey showed a record number of firms saying they had seen increases in prices paid and prices received. The Philadelphia Fed’s survey, which is the longest running of the regional Fed manufacturing surveys, indicated the most inflation since 1979.

Manufacturers indicated that many increased employment and wages in June, albeit at a slower pace than in May, and expected further increases in the next six months. Factories struggled to find workers with the necessary skills, a difficulty that manufacturers expect to continue this year.

The composite index rose to 22 in June, up from 18 in May, indicating ongoing expansion. The reading beats the forecasts from economists polled by Econoday, who expected the indicator to stand at 18.

The gain in the composite index was driven by an increase in the new orders index, while the other two component indexes — shipments and employment — also remained in expansionary territory, the Richmond Fed said. Manufacturers continued to report shrinking inventories, growing order backlogs, and lengthening vendor lead times.

Existing Home Sales Fall For Fourth Straight Month as Prices Hit Record High

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JOHN CARNEY

22 Jun 20215

2:27

Sales of existing homes fell in May for the fourth straight month as a very low supply of homes on the market pushed prices to a new record high.

Existing home sales declined nine-tenths of a percentage point in May from April to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 5.8 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. Economists had forecast an even steeper decline of 2.7 percent.

Sales were 44.6 percent above the year-ago level. But that comparison is misleading because much of the housing market was shutdown at the start of the pandemic last year.

The 5.8 million rate is slightly above the prepademic rate.

“Sales are essentially returning towards pre-pandemic activity,” noted Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors association. “Lack of inventory continues to be the overwhelming factor holding back home sales, but falling affordability is simply squeezing some first-time buyers out of the market.”

Some homeowners may be holding back on selling because of a lack of affordable alternatives. It does a homeowner no good to pocket a big gain on a sale if the next home is just as pricey.

Inventory is down to just 1.23 million homes for sale, a decline of 20.6% from a year ago. At the current sales pace that amounts to a 2.5-month supply.

The median price of an existing home in May was $350,300, the highest median price ever recorded. That is 23.6 percent above the May 2020 median price, the fastest ever price gain.

Properties typically remained on the market for 17 days in May, unchanged from April and down from 26 days in May 2020. Eighty-nine percent of the homes sold in May 2021 were on the market for less than a month.

Sales dropped in the Northeast, the West, and the South. Sales rose 1.6 percent in the Midwest, the NAR said.

Single-family home sales dropped to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.08 million in May, one percent below April’s level, and up 39.2% from one year ago. The median existing single-family home price was $356,600 in May, up 24.4 from a year ago.