Bezos

SEE amazon TWO bezos

see amazon e-commerce; amazon want to BE the MKT?!

#1 $ in world?!

CONTRACTOR CORRUPT ON BLUE ORGIN 10 24 TRUMP

see boy billionaire space race

1 of 6 in space soon

---

YiKES OMG SEE FAscism see pluto

an 10 24

Former Washington Post editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, revealed to The Daily Beast on Saturday that the newspaper's owner — Amazon's Jeff Bezos — and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump, allegedly agreed on a plan to "kill" thePost's endorsement of 2024 Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, the news outlet reports.

The Beast notes:

Bezos knows first hand the consequences of criticizing the former president. The Post’s 2016 endorsement of Hillary Clinton is widely thought to have led to him losing out on a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract awarded by the Trump administration.

Following his Friday resignation from thePost,Kagan told the Beast "that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazonfounder killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal."

READ MORE:['Bit of a panic': Trump adviser’s attack on bombshell WaPo report fact-checked by expert

The ex-Post editor said, "Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people. Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

Per the report, Kagan warned that this kind of "alleged collusion between" the billionaire tech founder and Trump "is just the beginning," and emphasized there will be "a lot of self censorship [in the media] and a lot of changing course just to be sure that they’re not going to be punished," if the MAGA leader wins the White House.

"This is what we have to look forward to," Kagan told the Post. "All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee."

pro pub 7 24

...“There’s a perceived gap of ‘We aren’t getting the support from big-name, big-dollar donors that we deserve and want and need.’”

That’s where Ziklag comes in.

Speaking late last year to an invitation-only gathering of Ziklaggers, as members are known, Charlie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turning Point USA organization, named left-leaning philanthropists who were, in his view, funding the destruction of the nation: MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; billionaire investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are secular people giving more generously than Christians?” Kirk asked, according to a recording of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if people who hate life, hate our country, hate beauty and hate God wanted it more than us.”

“Ziklag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Ziklag is the counter.”

...

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sonali an 1 23

https://www.alternet.org/nepotism-babies-myth-american-meritocracy/

There is a common feeling that many of us have experienced in professional or academic environments, especially when we struggle against gender or racial bias. It’s called “imposter syndrome”—the feeling that one doesn’t deserve one’s position and that others will discover this lack of competence at any moment. I felt this way as a female graduate student in a science field in the 1990s. I felt it as a young journalist of color in a white-dominated industry.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The rich and the elite among us appear to feel the opposite—that they are deserving of unearned privilege. A recent series of stories in New York Magazine headlined “The Year of the Nepo Baby” has struck a chord among those who are being outed for having benefited from insider status. Nepo babies are the children of the rich and famous, the ones who are borne of naked nepotism and whose ubiquity exposes the myth of American meritocracy. Nepo babies can be found everywhere there is power.

The New York Magazine stories have predictably generated defensive responses from nepo babies. Jamie Lee Curtis, actor and daughter of famed Hollywood stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, wrote a lengthy post on Instagram defending her status. Although she admitted that she benefitted from her parents’ fame—“I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me, I don’t pretend there aren’t any”—she also clapped back at critics, saying she was tired of assumptions that a nepo baby like her “would somehow have no talent whatsoever.” Curtis went further in claiming that the current focus on people like her was “designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.”

Curtis is clearly a talented actor, of that there is no doubt. But, in defending her privilege from critique, she reveals just how deserving she considers herself. It is the converse of imposter syndrome—the insider syndrome.

The act of calling out nepotism doesn’t necessarily imply that nepo babies are not talented. (Nepo babies are sometimes talented—and sometimes not.) It means pointing out that some talented people are able to benefit from family connections and fame that other equally talented people are not able to.

The critique is intended to call out elitism, not “diminish,” “denigrate” or “hurt,” as Curtis accuses journalists of doing. Journalism that exposes power and its corruptive influence among elites punches up, not down. Curtis is hardly a disadvantaged person whose well-being will suffer from such coverage. Rather, stories pointing out her parental advantages could potentially help to even the playing field so that it is unacceptable in the future to consider family connections in film and TV auditions.

Recall the college admissions scandal of 2019 when it was revealed—again through good journalism—that wealthy parents like TV star Lori Loughlin used all the power and money at their disposal to bend the rules of elite school admissions for their children. Many of those children may well have deserved to get into the schools they attended. But, in the face of stiff competition, untold numbers of equally deserving youth who did not have powerful and wealthy parents willing to break rules were not admitted. Now, many of those same nepo babies’ parents who were tried and convicted are using their money and connections to win shortened prison sentences.

But Hollywood celebrities, however much they enjoy prestige and privilege, are an easy target. Nepotism is rife in all the halls of power—in the world of art, sports, and even journalism, and especially in corporate and political circles.

Billionaires (especially those in tech) may propagate the myth of the merit-based American dream, but some of the most dramatic success stories began with a parent using their wealth or connections to give their child the upper hand. Take Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, who became one of the world’s wealthiest people in his 30s. Gates’s early success was largely due to the well-documented connections that his parents flexed on his behalf to get his fledgling company off the ground. Other tech nepo babies include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose father loaned him $100,000 to start his company, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose parents were early investors in his online retail business to the tune of nearly $250,000.

Nepotism is part of the fabric of capitalism. For centuries, unfair advantages were available to those who have historically faced fewer hurdles, through the sheer luck of being born into a family with wealth, connections, or respect within their field. Indeed, in order to beat back the imposter syndrome, many advise channeling the unearned confidence of a mediocre straight white man.

Our economy is rigged to encourage nepotism by ensuring that the already wealthy pass their wealth—and by extension the power that their money buys—to their children. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) pointed out how the tax code is written in order to benefit the moneyed classes. According to a CBPP report, “High-income, and especially high-wealth, filers enjoy a number of generous tax benefits that can dramatically lower their tax bills.”

Nepo babies who defend their status reinforce the notion that wealth, fame, and privilege equal brilliance, talent, and genius. The reality is that the privileged among us simply have the means to cheat. The rest of us are sold the lie that working hard will bring rewards—rather than unearned wealth.

This, in turn, encourages cheating among those who cannot rely on nepotism to gain power. One well-known example of the “fake-it-till-you-make-it” approach is Anna Sorokin, a woman whose fabricated lies about wealth and power landed her in prison and made her the focus of a Netflix show. Sorokin faked being a nepo baby—a German heiress—in order to live a lavish lifestyle. Sorokin learned that to gain the edge that moneyed elites have, one must internalize the insider syndrome.

Republican Congressman George Santos, who was recently exposed as a fraud for lying about his work experience, wealth, and even ethnicity, is another prime example. His political party has made a habit of encouraging (real or fake) nepo babies like Donald Trump, who openly admitted to tax avoidance in a debate and whose company was convicted of criminal tax fraud.

The GOP has for years led the charge to protect the interests of the wealthy while insisting on means testing and drug testing for the rest of us to receive benefits.

In truth, the emperor has no clothes. The meritocracy of American capitalism is a myth built on smoke and mirrors, on lies and false confidence. The current long-overdue conversation around nepo babies may help to further class consciousness among Americans who may see a bit more clearly now just how scantily clad the emperor really is.

Author Bio: Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is *Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice* (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/bernie-sanders

bezos spacex bailout

subsidy military contractor?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/bezos-space/

no lnx twt

'Inappropriate giveaway of galactic proportions': Outrage over $10 billion taxpayer gift to Bezos space obsession

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos/Twitter

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams November 18, 2021

Progressives on Wednesday slammed what they called a proposed $10 billion handout to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—the world's first multi-centibillionaire—in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act as a "giveaway of galactic proportions" in the face of growing wealth inequality and the inability of U.S. lawmakers to pass a sweeping social and climate spending package.

According to Defense News, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to merge the $250 billion U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA)—aimed largely at countering the rise of China—with next year's NDAA, which would authorize up to $778 billion in military spending. That's $37 billion more than former President Donald Trump's final defense budget and $25 billion more than requested by President Joe Biden.The NDAA includes a $10 billion subsidy to Bezos' Blue Origin space exploration company.

"Providing Jeff Bezos with $10 billion of taxpayer money would be an inappropriate giveaway of galactic proportions," Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), said in a statement Wednesday.

"Jeff Bezos shouldn't receive taxpayer subsidies for his personal projects—period,"he continued. "In at least two recent years, one of the richest people on the planet paid no income tax; yet he then demands billions in taxpayer funds for a project that's already been awarded to another company. This is the height of hubris."

"Rather than waste $10 billion on a redundant space contract for Bezos, that money could be used to adequately fund Social Security Disability, Medicare and Medicaid, and the food stamps that many of his own employees at Amazon and elsewhere have to rely on to make ends meet," Appelbaum said.

"Jeff Bezos's business model includes feasting on public subsidies—and the U.S. Senate must not acquiesce to his demands," he added. "Furthermore, until Jeff Bezos changes the way his employees are mistreated and dehumanized at Amazon and elsewhere, no elected official should support the passage of subsidies for him or any of his projects."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has condemned the NDAA for containing $52 billion in "corporate welfare" for Big Tech. Explaining why he would vote against the NDAA, Sanders said Tuesday that "combining these two pieces of legislation would push the price tag of the defense bill to over $1 trillion—with very little scrutiny."

"Meanwhile," he added, "the Senate has spent month after month discussing the Build Back Better Act and whether we can afford to protect the children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the future of our planet. As a nation, we need to get our priorities right."

921

no link

oIL COMPANY OFFICIAL OVERSEEING CRACKDOWN ON PIPELINE RESISTANCE CUT TEETH AT AMAZON AND EXXON

In the small world of corporate security, officials like Enbridge’s Troy Kirby take counterinsurgency practices from one megacompany to another.

Alleen BrownAlleen Brown

September 17 2021,

Policing the Pipeline

Part 15

When the oil company Enbridge sought to build its Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, it faced opposition from Indigenous-led water protectors. The company moved to coordinate with local police as they cracked down on the resistance.

EXPAND ALL PARTS

THE HEAD OF security for the oil transport company Enbridge built his résumé managing Exxon Mobil’s response to community protests in Nigeria and helping oversee Amazon’s Global Security Operations Center, a division that has monitored environmental groups and union organizers.

Now, at Enbridge, Troy Kirby oversees efforts to combat a protest movement aimed at stopping construction of the company’s Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota. Enbridge’s security operation has drawn criticism for its efforts to influence the police response to the Indigenous-led movement, whose members are known as water protectors.

“These are the people that specialize in the dark arts. Maybe it’s a bit more banal than we might imagine, but these are the spooks.”

Enbridge’s response to the water protectors is part of a pattern of megacorporations working to quell resistance to their environmentally harmful activities. Enbridge’s close cooperation with police, including payments and intelligence sharing, has been deemed by academics and water protector critics as emblematic of corporate counterinsurgency — a suite of tactics, ranging from public relations campaigns to surveillance and support for armed force, designed to win over communities to controversial profit-making projects.

“You have companies that have entire departments dedicated to making sure you stay in your place, that you don’t resist, that you don’t talk about it, and you most certainly don’t act on it,” said Alexander Dunlap, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, who has written extensively about how corporations utilize counterinsurgency tactics to quell movements against environmental degradation. “These are the people that specialize in the dark arts. Maybe it’s a bit more banal than we might imagine, but these are the spooks.”

Policing the Pipeline

An Enbridge spokesperson said the company supports the rights of individuals to protest lawfully and peacefully. “Security teams use a ‘people first’ concept to ensure public safety — their mission is to observe, respond, and report safety issues,” said Juli Kellner, a communications specialist for the company. Kellner did not make Kirby available for an interview.

As this story was being reported, Kirby’s Amazon job description was deleted from his LinkedIn page.

AS SOPHISTICATED CORPORATE security efforts have burgeoned, lucrative positions lure specialists from company to company, linking together the practices of megacorporations. Kirby, for his part, started at Enbridge in 2019 after a three-year stint as Amazon’s head of corporate security throughout the Americas, according to LinkedIn. Part of his role included overseeing the online giant’s Global Security Operations Center. Internal Amazon documents dated to the year Kirby left, obtained by Vice, provide clues. According to the report, security personnel with the center used Facebook and Instagram to monitor environmental groups as well as union organizers.

In Poland, operatives working for the private security company Pinkerton were sent to an Amazon warehouse to investigate reports of employee misconduct, Vice reported. Pinkerton got its start in the late 19th century, using undercover operatives and agents provocateurs to bust unions. The firm is now a subsidiary of the private security giant Securitas — one of the companies providing security for Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota.

Before Amazon, Kirby spent 16 years doing security work for Exxon Mobil. For at least four years, he worked for Exxon in Nigeria — where there is a history of energy company complicity in human rights abuses. During his time in Nigeria, Kirby was an adviser on “strategic security countermeasures,” which involved managing so-called crises, including pirate attacks and kidnapping, as well as “community protests,” according to a section of his LinkedIn page that has since been deleted.

As in Minnesota, the work in Nigeria included collaborating closely with public agencies. Kirby’s LinkedIn page said he “Established a Nigerian based security network with private and public sector security leaders” and was involved in “Oversight of host government security forces.”

The Exxon Mobil security operation was heavily militarized and focused in part on Exxon’s offshore oil operations. Kirby described designing a “Security Maritime Operations center including a fleet of 17 military-grade security vessels.”

FOR CRITICS OF corporate counterinsurgency, Kirby stands as just one example of corporate officials steeped in highly militarized security efforts abroad bringing those practices back home.

“To corporate entities like Energy Transfer and Enbridge, water protectors and land defenders are perceived as ‘security threats’ endangering shareholders’ profits.”

“It’s telling, but not at all surprising, that the head of security for Enbridge has trained in the so-called Third World to deal with high-stakes security issues impacting corporations in Africa and the Americas,” said Natali Segovia, an attorney and the legal director for the Water Protector Legal Collective. The collective is representing opponents of Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access pipeline, who argue that aggressive law enforcement tactics used near the Standing Rock reservation were influenced by the contract security firm TigerSwan, run by special operations military veterans. “To corporate entities like Energy Transfer and Enbridge, water protectors and land defenders are perceived as ‘security threats’ endangering shareholders’ profits,” Segovia said.

Kirby appears to have put some of the lessons he learned with Exxon Mobil in Nigeria into practice on Enbridge‘s project in Minnesota. Under Kirby’s watch, Enbridge pays law enforcement for pipeline-related police activity. The company’s security team members have set up trainings for local law enforcement and have been invited to attend public safety officials’ intelligence sharing meetings, where information on individual pipeline opponents has been discussed.

[Related

Minnesota Law Enforcement Shared Intelligence on Protest Organizers With Pipeline Company]

In advance of Line 3 pipeline construction, Kirby planned meetings with local law enforcement officers to discuss Enbridge’s approach to responding to opposition. When a local sheriff expressed concern over whether law enforcement agencies would be reimbursed for pipeline-related expenses, Kirby reassured him that the security head had influence over the appointment of the public official who would approve reimbursement requests, according to the sheriff. As the sheriff recalled in an email, Kirby told him “he would be involved to ensure we are taken care of, one way or another.”

It’s Kirby’s colleague Brian Aldrich, Enbridge’s Line 3 security lead, who has worked more routinely on the ground in Minnesota. Aldrich, according to an email sent to state officials, served with the Marines before working for large security firms including Control Risks and Gavin DeBeckerand Associates. He also has an Amazon connection — providing personal security for the corporate giant’s founder and executive chair, Jeff Bezos himself.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/jeff-bezos/

salon doj looking for leaker?! no salary/income, just mortgage/borrow against assets

A bombshell report published by ProPublica on Tuesday detailed leaked IRS filings suggesting that some of the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. pay next to nothing in federal taxes, despite reaping hundreds of millions or more in annual income. But now the report itself has become enmeshed in controversy over journalistic ethics and privacy concerns, especially the question of when it's newsworthy to reveal personal financial information of private citizens.

ProPublica's report, which relies on IRS records whose source remains unknown, provides a startling glimpse into the true extent of tax avoidance schemes among the richest one-tenth of the one percent.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for example, paid zero federal income taxes for both 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk paid nothing for 2018. Investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros also paid zilch over the course of three years.

Other billionaires detailed in the report include former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who paid $70.7 million in federal income taxes in 2017, despite claiming $1.9 billion in personal income. (That represents roughly a 3.7% tax rate, when it arguably should have been around 52%.)

Billionaire investor and businessman Carl Icahn deducted large interest payments on his companies' debts, allowing him to avoid federal income tax payments in 2016 and 2017. That scheme involved taking out large bank loans to invest in the stock market, because the interest paid on those loans is tax-deductible, offsetting investment gains and other income.

Other billionaires lowered their taxable income by claiming they had incurred net losses. In 2011, for example, Bezos alleged he had lost money, although that his wealth of roughly $18 billion held steady from the previous year. He paid no federal income taxes thanks to his "investment losses," which in fact earned him a $4,000 family tax credit.

ProPublica also reports that corporate taxes do not make up for the tax losses resulting from these billionaire tax-avoidance schemes, largely because the corporate tax rate has plummeted in recent years, in the wake of tax cuts enacted by the Republican Congress in 2017 and signed by then-President Trump. Additionally, many companies — such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple — can circumvent a large proportion corporate taxes by claiming that their profits were made abroad.

From Your Site Articles

As laid off workers face a financial cliff, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos grows $13 billion richer in one day

Common DreamsJuly 24, 2020

Days before the expiration of federal unemployment benefits is expected to bring about a wave of evictions, food insecurity and widespread economic pain for millions of Americans, Amazon founder Jeff…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/**silicon-valley-rips-off-the-mask-as-tech-ceos-veer-right**-amid-political-turmoil/

karlis

The times are a-changing in Silicon Valley. Once a reliable bastion of libertarianism from the CEOs at the top to the workers at the bottom, new schisms are forming between the workers and the owners — from white-collar software engineers unionizing at Kickstarter to Googlers and Amazon workers publicly denouncing their executives.

This article firstappeared in Salon.

Yet as employees have begun to wake up to the many ways in which their employers exploited them in exchange for nap pods and free snacks, the titans of industry themselves appear to be showing their true colors. The pandemic prompted mass layoffs and swift changes in policy for many tech titans; yet coupled with the anti-police racism protests, we are starting to see the far-right soul of Silicon Valley’s leaders — belying the stereotype of technology as synonymous with progressivism.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, profited tremendously off the pandemic, seeing his wealth rise $30 billion. Yet his empire still saw fit to stop paying a $2 an hour hazard pay bonus to its warehouse workers — a high-risk job. Putting them at risk has resulted in a lawsuit from warehouse workers, claiming the company put their families at risk.

amazon continues to try and position itself as a progressive company, unlike other big corporations. Recently, Amazon tried to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement by tweeting “the inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop. Together we stand in solidarity with the Black community — our employees, customers, and partners — in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.”

There was a tinge of irony to the statement, given the company’s history of enabled authoritarian surveillance. To that end, the American Civil Liberties Union quickly replied: “Cool tweet. Will you commit to stop selling face recognition surveillance technology that supercharges police abuse?”

Bezos isn’t the only CEO who treats his workers with utter disregard for safety or health. Tesla Inc. In mid-May,CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he was defying Alameda County shelter-in-place order and restarting production at the Alameda County Tesla factory, which employs more than 10,000 people. On his Twitter account, Musk said he will be “on the [assembly] line with everyone else,” and stated that he was willing to be arrested for the noble “cause” of restarting production. Musk filed a lawsuit against Alameda County for injunctive relief and threatened to take his factory to another state, then took a jab at the Alameda County’s interim health officer, Dr. Erica Pan, whom Musk called “ignorant.”

Previously, Musk expressed repeated disdain for the virus or the potential for a pandemic (i.e. “the coronavirus panic is dumb“) mirroring much of the American right, who value economic activity over lives and pivoted their politics to that effect, in defiance of scientific evidence and models.

The Trumpian head-in-sand attitude coming from Musk is unsurprising. As I’ve written before, Musk and Trump have much in common: they’re both entitled, wealthy businessmen who profit off the backs of a vast underclass — which is why Musk played the victim card when his factory couldn’t operate during shelter-in-place.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has shown bitter resistance in the face of evidence that his platform has become a fount of disinformation around both the coronavirus and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. In an interview with Fox News last week, Zuckerberg said that he doesn’t believe social media platforms should become the “arbiter of truth”.

“We have a different policy than Twitter on this,” Zuckerberg said in comments that first aired Wednesday. “I believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. I think in general private companies, or especially these platform companies, shouldn’t be in the position of doing that.”

The comments mirror his attitude in 2017, when he commented on Facebook’s role in fomenting political disinformation amid the 2016 election. “Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of content, influenced the election in any way — I think that is a pretty crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said then. “Voters make decisions based on their lived experience.”

Zuckerberg’s attitude towards the role of social media in serving as an arbiter of truth differs from his peers at Snapchat and, recently, Twitter, which made an about-face in its policies around Trump’s sophistic tweets. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey fired back at Zuckerberg: “We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make. This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth.’ Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.”

Zuckerberg’s inaction with regard to censoring or labeling Trump’s misinformation has led up to unprecedented internal actions this week, like employees staging a virtual walkout. Facebook employees are notorious for their fealty to their CEO; internal leaks or dissent were rare, until recently.

They say the bad times bring out the best in people. In that case, it’s certainly worth examining why Silicon Valley’s overlords appear to be a notable exception.

520

aha:

lip service from rt, entrepreneur hero and all, but amazon bookseller no sales tax; corps get most covid bill $, must be tight w/ bank to get;

along w/ educ said to be the great way to move up/ meritocracy , but up against walmart, outsource factory, walmart is front end for china imports

no big corp loopholes subsidy like amazon warehouses new rich prime customers

520

You really have to wonder if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is plotting his next move from a secret mountain hideout while stroking some exotic cat, like the supervillain in a James Bond film.

He is the richest person on earth.

In fact — while most of us are suffering through a global emergency unlike anything humanity has faced for at least a century — Bezos has seen his net worth go UP since the coronavirus hit.

By $30 billion in just the past two months.

That’s $365,497.08 every minute!

Nevertheless, Amazon just announced that it plans to stop paying its warehouse workers hazard pay of $2/hour.:{

covid: hire 100K, up 2 bucks

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/grotesque-level-of-greed-jeff-bezos-whole-foods-wants-workers-to-pay-colleagues-sick-leave-during-coronavirus/

mbs

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/saudi-princes-hacking-of-bezoss-phone-raises-serious-questions-about-other-compromised-elites-un-report/

Bezos’s Vision of the Future Is Basically Blade Runner

11.27

Paris Marx

Jeff Bezos wants us to leave Earth and save ourselves by building space colonies. We want to stay on Earth, build a viable future, and make Jeff Bezos leave....

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/welcome-to-amazons-post-truth-society/

no lnx

Welcome to Amazon’s post-truth society

Written by Keith A. Spencer / Salon November 9, 2019

This year’s election for Seattle city council was a referendum — not on any issue or party, but on the ability of Amazon, the 13th largest corporation on Earth, to manipulate public opinion and subvert democracy in order to maintain political control over its hometown.

Among all seven city council seats that were up for election, there was a pro-Amazon candidate and a candidate that favored populist will over the needs of massive corporations. Amazon spent money to support seven different candidates, one for each open seat.As you might expect, all of the candidates Amazon backed were neoliberals — an excellent, general political term to refer to these politicians’ collective belief in social liberalism (as long as it doesn’t interfere with the profit margins of corporations) and economic policy of deferring to the ruling elite and their consultant-class lackeys on such policy matters.

Neoliberalism is an anti-democratic political position; it presupposes that the liberal capitalist democratic order maintains some stable state when the ruling class pulls the levers that govern society, and keeps the pesky masses barred from interfering in their accumulation of capital. “[Neoliberalism] means the dismantling of publicly owned industry and deregulation of capital, especially finance capital; the elimination of public provisions and the idea of public goods; and the most basic submission of everything to markets and to unregulated markets,” scholar Wendy Brown told Salon in 2016.

The votes are still being tallied, but relatively speaking, it seems Amazon’s electioneering was partly successful: three pro-Amazon candidates seem all but certain to win election to city council, three seemed destined to lose, and one race is still very much up in the air, the competition between District 3 incumbent Councilmember Kshama Sawant and her competitor Egan Orion.

Yet three (or four) victories out of seven is a good outcome for Amazon when you consider their bang-to-buck ratio. Amazon’s revenues last year were $232.8 billion; they spent about $1.5 million backing neoliberal candidates in Seattle, by way of donating to an Orwellian-named political action committee (PAC) called Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy. $1.5 million may sound like a lot to you or me, but it is pocket change for Amazon — 0.00064% of the company’s 2018 revenues. This is the equivalent of someone with a $100,000 annual salary donating 64 cents to a political cause.

Vote tallies continue to come in, but as of publication, three-term Councilmember Kshama Sawant is running a few hundred votes behind Amazon-sponsored Egan Orion, and she may well be unseated. That would suit Amazon’s interests nicely: Sawant’s policy platform was that of a left-populist, and she, like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, was working to build a democratic coalition to fight for the economic rights of the masses over the “rights” of corporations like Amazon. These include Seattle’s $15-an-hour minimum wage, which Sawant helped usher in; the ongoing fight for comprehensive rent control; and taxes on big corporations to help pay for housing and homelessness services. This kind of people power terrifies corporations and their CEOs, who prefer neoliberal candidates who believe in rule by the elite.

All of this is to say that a corporation’s massive sums of money, when invested in public relations firms to craft a propaganda message, work pretty well. Modern corporations understand that people’s minds are malleable; one only needs the right dosage of industrial-psychological manipulation to sway public opinion.

The fact that the amount of money that Amazon sank into the race spent was a pittance (to them) is important. It means that they know now how much it costs to manipulate public opinion for their own gain. Spending twice as much or even ten times as much on the next city council race would still constitute a rounding error to their accountants — as consequential to Amazon’s bank account as the loss of a single drop of blood is to a blue whale.

Part of the philosophical justification for democracy is that the masses are clever enough to figure out what is best for them and what isn’t. But money is generally the determining factor in who wins an election — or more specifically, the ability of money to pay for propaganda. One of the most important yet under-appreciated academic studies of the past half-decade, a paper by Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen, and Jie Chen titled “How Money Drives US Congressional Elections,” found a linear correlation between a candidate’s war chest and their probability of victory for all Senate and House elections from 1980 through 2012. In this chart from their paper, the horizontal axis shows the difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates’ campaign money. The vertical axis shows the percentage of votes the Democrat won over their GOP opponent. The correlation is remarkable.

“The conclusion has to be that spending by major political parties is indeed strongly related to the proportion of votes they win and has been for as long as we have data,” the authors write.

This is all to say that propaganda works incredibly well — and the kinds of propaganda that rich people and industry have the capacity to fund can sway people routinely to vote against their best interests. To use a loaded term, “brainwashing” is real, but it doesn’t look like we think it does, creating vortices over our eyes as we gaze at a candidate. It’s just a function of money.

When I was a kid, I remember my liberal family crowing about conservatives “voting against their best interest.” But it’s not merely conservatives that do this. There’s a selection bias for the kinds of liberal candidates that make it past the Democratic primaries, or the parties that we’re “allowed” to vote for; all of this is controlled, more or less, by the money and influence of these rich people. Industrial psychology is so sophisticated, so sinister, that it is not at all difficult (with money) to manipulate the populace en masse such that they vote for the ruling class’s preferred candidates, whether neoliberal liberals or neoliberal conservatives.

This all goes back to a phrase that’s become in vogue lately: post-truth. We are told we are in a new epoch of American civilization, the post-truth society, where many of us deny facts because we have chosen a different social media reality bubble, or because our dear leader tells us so. We often hear that this phenomenon was uniquely created by Trump and his underlings who aspire to be like him, but particularly by his unique ability to confidently fabricate facts, ideas and policies without blinking.

Yet this Trumpian trait, I think, is more a function of being a rich asshole who has been surrounded his entire life by yes-men than it is due to some kind of nascent political transformation. All billionaires and CEOs are uniquely convinced of their godliness and self-righteousness; just look at Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who think that they alone have the fortitude and wisdom to lead humanity to the stars; or Mike Bloomberg or Tom Steyer, who feel they are uniquely situated to decide our political fortunes for us. No, the post-truth society precedes Trump, or any of these men who fund (or become) political candidates. It is something innate to capitalism itself.

Democracy and capitalism are incompatible inasmuch as the rich are given free license to employ public relations teams and marketers — propagandists, largely — to manipulate and dictate public opinion, and sway many to vote against their best interest. They, and their think tanks and assistants and firms, tell us what political positions are realistic, and which are impossible; which candidates are viable or not; which future paths are possible for humanity. It is very difficult to think beyond the specter of the future they set out for us through their media. This extends to art, particularly film and video games — but that story is one best saved for a different article.

In certain western democracies, there is marginally more control over the ability of the rich to influence elections. But the impact of said regulations are marginal at best; even when the rich can’t give to candidates, they often own papers or media outlets, and can, in other ways, subtly dictate the political reality of a nation-state. In other words, you can temper the ways in which capitalism and inequality distort and undermine democracy; but you cannot eliminate it completely so long as its innate class antagonisms remain intact. That means the post-truth society is with us now, as it has always been; it is intrinsic to our economic system.

an 919

Bezos abruptly cuts health benefits for nearly 2,000 part-time Whole Foods workers: ‘This is disgusting’

Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday cut benefits for part-time workers at his grocery chain Whole Foods.

Saudi Arabia ‘had access’ to Jeff Bezos’ phone: Investigator drops bombshell allegation against the Middle East kingdom

Bob Brigham / Salon

Renowned celebrity private investigator Gavin De Becker “concluded with high confidence” that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had access to the cell phone of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner…

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/how-a-failing-capitalist-system-is-allowing-amazon-to-cripple-america/

Capitalism is failing in America, and Amazon is both the cause and beneficiary of much of the breakdown.

Jeff Bezos said, “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” He might have added three capitalist practices familiar to his company: (1) Pay no taxes; (2) Drive competitors out of business; and (3) Exploit workers.

Anarcho-Capitalism: The Sordid Details of Amazon’s Tax Avoidance

In 2018, according to its own SEC filings, Amazon claimed a refund on its $11 billion in U.S. profits. It did the same on nearly $6 billion in profits in 2017. The company has reportedly positioned itself to avoid even more future taxes with unspecified tax credits.

In the most extreme form of capitalism taxes do not exist. This is called “anarcho-capitalism.” Among all corporations, Amazon may be the leading advocate of this philosophy. They haven’t paid federal income tax for the past two years. They set up headquarters in Luxembourg for tax breaks that are now being challenged. They claim minimal profits on hundreds of billions in revenue, resulting in one of the lowest profit margins among major corporations, and thus much less tax. Of course, Amazon claims to be using tax credits from past losses that stemmed from investment in research and development (R&D). But the company appears to overstate and obfuscate the R&D numbers. Its only ‘explanation’ of R&D in its annual report comes in an ambiguously all-encompassing section called “Technology and Content.” Plus, that’s no excuse to dodge taxes. Walmart and Google each spent nearly $12 billion on technology in 2018, almost as much as Amazon, but Walmart paid 28 percent in federal taxes, and Google 14 percent.

We learn much more at the state level. Amazon has played one state against another for tax breaks over the years, most recently negotiating an estimated $3 billion tax credit from the state of New York before residents rebelled — as well they should have. The Economic Policy Institute found that employment levels don’t significantly change in communities with new Amazon warehouses, and a recent study by The Economist concluded that the opening of a fulfillment center in a given community actually depresses warehouse wages. Furthermore, as an indication of the folly of wooing corporations with state subsidies, Upjohn research found that in the great majority of cases incentives are not even a part of a company’s decision to locate in a given area.

Most insidiously, Amazon’s seemingly fair-minded acceptance of state sales taxes likely has a dark side. For years the company fought the state tax as it built a competitive advantage over smaller firms. Now that it’s firmly established, online variety and convenience have replaced price as the primary incentives for most consumers, and so Amazon now supports a sales tax, very likely to discourage competition. Evidence comes from one study that found Walmart 34 percent cheaper than Amazon in four of five product categories.

Monopoly: Amazon and the Killing of Competition

Kiplinger compiled a remarkable list of 49 companies, many of them familiar to almost all Americans, that are in danger of being driven out of business by Amazon. One of them, Toys ‘r’ Us, has already succumbed. Sears is nearly gone. Others include Barnes & Noble, Kroger, Rite Aid, Best Buy, Etsy, Yelp, Pandora, and even stalwarts like Target and Trader Joe’s and UPS and Fedex and Office Depot and Staples. Investopedia agrees, adding Macy’s and even Walgreen’s and CVS and Costco.

In a summary of “The Myth of Capitalism,” by Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn, it is argued that “an increase in market concentration across the United States has resulted in a system that is not true capitalism, since freedom is being restricted…Amazon is crushing retailers…It can determine what products can and cannot sell on its platform, and it competes with any customer that encounters success.” Columbia University and UN economist Howard Steven Friedman adds, “Monopolies are one example of capitalism failing. Monopolies have virtually no competition and can dictate prices to their customers unless they are restricted by regulators.”

Of course, along the way Amazon has destroyed or dismantled or discouraged many smaller businesses. Like the jewelry store in New Mexico owned by Candelora Versace, who said her customers have started buying gems online, in part to avoid state taxes, and then visiting her store just for the settings. She considers the far-reaching effects of Amazon’s tax avoidance: “The roads don’t pay themselves. The schools don’t fund themselves…When they don’t want to pay the tax, it cheats us.”

Labor in Decline: The Economic and Physical Abuse of Amazon’s Workers

Amazon warehouse workers make about $13 per hour. That’s not a living wage for a U.S. family of four, and not even for a single person in many areas of the country. So the employees of this super-rich company turn to food stamps, letting U.S. taxpayers take care of them. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, one in ten Amazon workers were recently on SNAP. In Arizona, one in three. Along with the low pay comes intolerable working conditions, with overheated warehouses and employees using water bottles to avoid bathroom breaks in order to meet their schedules. And worse, employees have suffered workplace injuries that leave them homeless, disabled, or unable to earn an income. Employees are also forced to deal with constant surveillance, anti-union pressure, and the threat of losing their jobs. Much of Amazon’s over-hyped R&D spending is focused on the development of robots to replace human workers.

Capitalism has failed workers, and it has caused a surge in inequality that gets worse with each passing year. In Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty showed that for 40 years, from 1970 to 2010, labor’s share of national income (wages and salaries) has declined. Stanford research reveals that “the declining labor share at the economy level is driven by the growth of large firms.” Like Amazon.

A Good Reason for Democratic Socialism

There may be no better argument for democratic socialism in America than the way individual state leaders have been falling over each other trying to lure corporations to their states with tax subsidies. We Americans have never been able to cooperate in ending this pointless waste of tax money that should be going to education and jobs and infrastructure.

Does Jeff Bezos have any sense of social responsibility for all the societal benefits heaped upon his company? Amazon has arguably benefited more than any other company from what The Economist calls the “game-changing breakthroughs” of the Internet, which was built with our tax money through the National Science Foundation since the 1980s, and before that by the taxpayer-funded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Fortune refers to Amazon’s actions as “extracting public money for its own enrichment.”

But perhaps the Amazon boss doesn’t care. According to The Atlantic, “Bezos has argued that there is not enough philanthropic need on earth for him to spend his billions on.” If that truly reflects the man’s attitude, it shows an incomprehensible ignorance or disdain on his part. Bezos himself said, “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel…I am going to use my financial lottery winnings from Amazon to fund that.”

Good work, Jeff. Benefit from seventy years of public inventiveness and productivity and funding, and then fly off to the skies before you have to pay for it.

===

https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-bezos-pecker-players-20190216-story.html#nt=tertiarynavbar

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/national-enquirers-suspected-source-for-bezos-story-believed-trump-knew-and-supported-the-effort-report/

On Sunday, The Daily Beast reported that the National Enquirer’s likely source for the steamy text messages between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his mistress Lauren Sanchez was the mistress’ brother, Michael Sanchez.

But the saga could be deeper than that. It turns out that Sanchez believed that the Enquirer, and its parent company AMI, were acting with the blessing of President Donald Trump, who allegedly wanted revenge on Bezos for negative coverage about him in the Washington Post:

Documents reviewed by The Daily Beast show that Michael Sanchez believed the Enquirer pursued its story about Bezos with “President Trump’s knowledge and appreciation” — a chase encouraged, in Sanchez’s estimation, by Republican operatives “who THINK Jeff gets up every morning and has a WaPo meeting to plot its next diabolical attack on President Trump.”

Bezos, the richest man in the world, purchased the Post in 2013. However, there is no evidence he plays any role in the paper’s editorial direction, and the Post has actually run a number of articles critical of Amazon under his ownership without comment from him.

AMI and its owner, David Pecker, are facing backlash after Bezos revealed that the company tried to blackmail him with nude photos after he launched an investigationinto how they acquired text messages from his affair.

Pecker, a friend of Trump’s, was granted immunity last fall as part of an investigation by the Southern District of New York attorney’s office into Trump’s hush payments to women prior to the 2016 presidential election, one of which — to cover up Trump’s encounter with Playboy Playmate Karen MacDougal — was brokered by AMI. If it turns out that AMI broke the law by blackmailing Bezos, which could constitute criminal extortion, this would violate the terms of their immunity agreement, meaning SDNY prosecutors could pursue charges against the company.

Moreover, there may be yet another side to Trump’s alleged involvement. The president has reportedly “rewarded” Pecker by putting him in touch with people connected to the Saudi royal family, at roughly the same time that AMI was attempting to secure funding from the Saudis to acquire Time Magazine and ran a special edition that lavished praise on Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

If it transpired that Trump tried to hook up his publisher friend with funding from a despotic foreign regime in return for helping to discredit a businessman at the center of a personal vendetta, then the Russia collusion allegations could be just the tip of the iceberg for the president’s wrongdoing. Sanchez’s belief that Trump gave his imprimatur to AMI’s actions does little to help him.

Pecker’s alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would not ordinarily attract my eye, except for this paragraph:

“And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:

“After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions.…”

We knew that Pecker had brought the French investment banker and Saudi publicist Kacy Grine to the White House.

And Spencer Ackerman had reported on Pecker’s strange move to put a pro-Saudi glossy magazine in grocery store checkout lanes in spring of 2018.It is as though he thought American housewives would thrill to the soap opera in Riyadh, where the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman had, in summer of 2017, sidelined his rival, Mohammed bin Nayef, dethroning him as crown prince and greedily taking his place, before he kidnapped many in the Saudi elite to shake them down for $100 billion while imprisoning them in the Ritz-Carlton. “Days of Our Lives” had nothing on the Saudis.

In short, there is every reason to believe that Pecker is entangled with the Saudi royal court of bin Salman, perhaps, as Bezos alleges, in search of investment opportunities.

One question I have long had is whether investigators looking at the Russian element in the election of Trump are not unduly downplaying a United Arab Emirates and Saudi angle. That is, did those two oil monarchies help put Trump in power in the first place, and is there a prehistory to their entanglements with his circle?

But what Bezos goes on to say is that he hired a private investigator to find out how Pecker got hold of his texts and exchanges of smartphone photographs with his lover, Lauren Sanchez.

And the investigator, Gavin de Becker, looked into whether Pecker’s National Enquirer is influence-peddling for Saudi Arabia for some sort of quid pro quo.

Bezos also hints that Pecker was upset about The Washington Post’s quest to get to the bottom of the Saudi government’s murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 2, 2018. Bezos owns the Post, though he maintains he is a hands-off owner.

Bezos alleges that the investigation of the Saudi connection alarmed Pecker and precipitated the alleged attempt to blackmail the Amazon CEO into falling silent and backing off, with the threat of releasing further compromising photographs and text messages of a private nature.

Ronan Farrow said on Twitter that Pecker’s hired gun, Australian Dylan Howard, also attempted to intimidate him when he was investigating Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of women in Hollywood.

This charge makes me wonder ifPecker isn’t America’s answer to Rupert Murdoch, whose British tabloids were famous for hacking Britons’ telephone messages and then blackmailing or smearing them with the stolen material. Former Prime Minister John Major alleged that Murdoch threatened him with bad press unless he bent to Murdoch’s will.

I have to say that I never took Pecker or the National Enquirer seriously, but maybe he is secretly one of the more powerful men in the world, holding files on politicians and celebrities and coercing them behind the scenes.

One piece of jeopardy for Pecker is that he was granted immunity, for cooperating with the Mueller probe, from charges of election fraud for paying off nude model Karen McDougall, Trump’s lover, to gain her silence during the 2016 election campaign. That immunity depends on his avoiding further acts of illegality. It is not clear that the courts would accept Bezos’ claim of extortion. But Pecker wouldn’t be so nervous about Bezos investigating his Saudi ties unless there was something to hide in that regard.

Finally, the Bezos investigator has been telling The Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia that he does not believe Bezos’ phone was hacked. He thinks that a “government entity” captured the signals from the phone somehow.

Speculation went immediately to Saudi Arabia, which used Israeli spyware to hack Khashoggi’s WhatsApp account.

Of course, Saudi Arabia and its partner in crime, the United Arab Emirates, are also good at hacking, and actually got into the cellphone of the emir of Qatar and then put out fake video of him.

And, since the far-right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu is hoping to be rescued politically by a normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, the Israeli Mossad has a motive to protect Saudi allies like Trump and Pecker as well.

I’m confused, however, as to how a foreign government could capture text and photos from an AT&T or Verizon server (Bezos uses an iPhone). That is to say, the allegation is that the iPhone was not hacked and that the signals were scooped up in some other way. Moreover, the diction is “a government entity,” not a foreign government.

It appears to me that de Becker may be alleging that the U.S. National Security Agency captured that material, a capability that has been well documented. The NSA, of course, reports directly to Trump, Pecker’s dear friend and co-conspirator in election fraud through the suppression of the McDougall affair.

I pointed out in 2016, in a piece at The Nation, that the Bush and Obama administrations had made a huge error in not reining in the NSA on Fourth Amendment grounds, thus bequeathing to a maniac like Trump the ability to spy on all Americans. Are those chickens now coming home to roost? Did the NSA spy on Bezos at Trump’s request and then turn the material over to Pecker?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/federal-prosecutors-are-now-probing-national-enquirers-reported-blackmail-in-light-of-its-role-in-trump-campaign-crimes-report/

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are reviewing the conduct of the National Enquirer and its parent company, American Media, Inc., after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos alleged Thursday that the tabloid attempted to blackmail and extort him by threatening to publish his nude selfies, according to Bloomberg.

The Associated Press has also confirmed Bloomberg’s report.

Bezos said that a lawyer for AMI had formally demanded that he publicly denounce the suggestion that the National Enquirer’s recent coverage of his extramarital affair was driven by political motivation, perhaps because of coverage from the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, about the Trump administration or Saudi Arabia.

AMI and its CEO David Pecker have entered into a non-prosecution deal for their role in the campaign finance crimes carried out by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer. Cohen pleaded guilty to the crimes and said in court that Trump himself had directed him to arrange criminal hush money payments. Trump has a long history of a mutually beneficial relationship with AMI and Pecker.

It’s not clear if AMI’s reported blackmail attempt of Bezos would violate the law, but if it did, it could nullify the non-prosecution agreement with SDNY and open up the company and Pecker to potential criminal charges.

jared k conn to packer nat enq?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/ronan-farrow-says-he-and-other-journalists-got-national-enquirer-blackmail-threats-related-to-trump-reporting/

no lnx

Ronand Farrow and at least one other journalist have allegedly received blackmail threats from the National Enquirer after reporting on the tabloid and President Donald Trump.

Farrow revealed the threats Thursday evening after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos published emails from the tabloid threatening to publish explicit photos taken from his phone if the Washington Post, which he also owns, did not stop investigating the publication, the Post reported.

Ronan Farrow

@RonanFarrow

I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.)

Jeff Bezos

@JeffBezos

I’ve written a post about developments with the National Enquirer and its parent company, AMI. You can find it here: https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f …

37.4K

5:57 PM - Feb 7, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

12.2K people are talking about this

Farrow published a story in April about the Enquirer‘s “catch and kill” practice,” which involves paying off sources and then burying the stories, that helped Trump during his 2016 campaign.

Former Associated Press editor Ted Bridis also tweeted that the media organization had been warned that AMI, the Enquirer’s publisher, hired private investigators to target AP reporters looking into their efforts to help Trump, although he never saw evidence this took place.

The Daily Beast reported that attorneys for AMI aggressively responded, including unspecified threats, to two stories published last week about Bezos and the Enquirer.

The Post obtained documents that show AMI attorneys tried to pressure The Daily Beast not to publish reports suggesting that Trump’s allies were involved in efforts to reveal the Bezos affair.

The tabloid threatened to sue if the website used any material from a former Enquirer executive who has been hired by the website.

Bezos shared threatening emails purportedly from AMI officials, including chief content officer Dylan Howard, who also played a notable role in the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal.

Farrow helped break the Weinstein story into widespread circulation in November 2017.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/zuckerberg-must-resign-outrage-surges-after-report-reveals-facebook-let-corporate

zuck must resign

Just hours after civil rights groups called on Facebook's top executives to step down from the company's board for allowing "viral propaganda" and "bigoted campaigns" to spread on the platform, demands for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to resign intensified after a bombshell New York Timesreportlate Tuesday detailed a "special arrangement" the social media behemoth had with tech corporations that gave them access to users' data and private messages without consent.

"An incredibly damning indictment of Facebook, every single paragraph," Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, wroteof the Times report, which is the latest in a long line of recent revelations about Facebook's intrusive—and possibly illegal—data practices.

Citing hundreds of pages of internal company records and interviews with dozens of former employees, the Times reported that "Facebook allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users' friends without consent" and "gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users' private messages."

Additionally, the Times found, Facebook "permitted Amazon to obtain users' names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends' posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier."

"Facebook is a public trust that has broken our trust," wrote author and NBCpolitical analyst Anand Giridharadas in response to the Times report. "Mark Zuckerberg must resign now."

The New Republic's Jeet Heer added, "Facebook is evil, folks."

It’s worse than you thought.

Facebook gave:

-Microsoft names of users’ friends without consent

-Netflix and Spotify got to read users’ private messages

-Amazon got user contact info via friends.

Big story from @gabrieldance @laforgia_@nickconfessorehttps://t.co/GLF60DYaEf

— Edmund Lee (@edmundlee) December 19, 2018

This seems like the most explosive revelation here. People use Facebook messenger for all kinds of things they probably shouldn't, but the reality is that this likely exposed tons of people's super sensitive information. Info that could get people arrested, deported, stalked, etc https://t.co/wYxdW4Opbu

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) December 19, 2018

In addition to being invasive, former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) officials to the Times that Facebook's data-sharing "partnerships" with other corporate giants may also violate federal law.

"This is just giving third parties permission to harvest data without you being informed of it or giving consent to it," said David Vladeck, former head of the FTC's consumer protection bureau. "I don't understand how this unconsented-to data harvesting can at all be justified under the consent decree."

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, wholeheartedly agreed, declaring, "I don't believe it is legitimate to enter into data-sharing partnerships where there is not prior informed consent from the user."

"No one should trust Facebook until they change their business model," McNamee concluded.

$15/hr employees whole food, what about contractors? bernie BEZOS bill

target by djt, drives down stock price; false cliam ripoff PO, same rates a trump biz 3/18

https://www.alternet.org/media/wall-street-journal-warns-trumps-political-attacks-amazon-and-jeff-bezos-could-lead

conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal took President Donald Trump to task for his bizarre Thursday tweet attacking Amazon.com, saying the assault on the popular company appeared to be political in nature and that he could face impeachment should he decide to sic government agencies on the company.

In the piece published on Friday morning, the WSJ board noted that Trump appears to be going after Amazon because it was founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, which has been highly critical of the Trump administration.

On Thursday, Trump tweeted: “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”

The Journal noted that Trump got his facts wrong about the relationship between Amazon and the U.S. Post Office writing, “Mr. Trump’s other big gripe is that taxpayers are on the losing end of Amazon’s deal with the U.S. Postal Service. But that story is also more complicated. The Post Office has often operated at a net loss, but package volumes grew in fiscal 2017 by more than 11%, making it a rare growth market. Many of the additional 589 million boxes delivered last year came from Amazon.”

“Though imperfect, the deal is mutually beneficial,” the editorial continued. “The Post Office arguably needs Amazon more than Amazon needs the Post Office. The Post Office could drop Amazon as a delivery partner, but it would likely have to raise prices elsewhere or endure higher losses. Would Mr. Trump take credit for that?”

As for the possibility that Trump might try to compel officials in his administration to inflict damage on the company, the Journal warned Trump he might be flirting with disaster and impeachment.

“Mr. Trump could try to unleash the Internal Revenue Service, though that would be a scandal that could be an impeachable offense,” the editorial cautioned. “The press and prosecutors would not give the Trump IRS the pass they gave Lois Lerner during the Obama years for targeting conservative nonprofits with extra scrutiny.”

“Mr. Trump can rail against anyone he wants, but America is still a nation of laws, as Mr. Obama also discovered,” the editors concluded. “This is a lesson Mr. Trump’s critics forgot as they cried wolf over a fascist takeover. The political reality is that the more Mr. Trump publicly assails Amazon, the harder it will be to take regulatory action, deserved or not.”

...

Breitbart.com -- the fake news site known for propelling Donald Trump and Steve Bannon into power -- posts and promotes a large swath of climate-denying content on its widely-read site.

To date, 2,100 companies have stopped advertising on Breitbart, but one major online retailer has not -- Amazon.¹

Tell Amazon to stop funding hate and climate change denial propaganda!

Last week, when Trump backed out of the Paris climate agreement, Amazon made the statement: "Amazon continues to support the Paris climate agreement and action on climate change. We believe that robust clean energy and climate policies can support American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth." ²

So why is Amazon still buying ads on Breitbart, which spreads the lie that climate change isn't real?

Fiegerman, S. (23 May 2017). "Amazon latest brand hit by protests over Breitbart ads." ABC 12 KSAT.com.
Leswing K. (1 June 2017). "Apr." Business Insider.
Cadwalladr, C. (26 February 2017). "Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media." The Guardian.

Donald Trump called out Jeff Bezos on Twitter. Then Bezos called his ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../donald-trump-called-out-jef...

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The Washington Post:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{Dec 7, 2015 - On Monday, :{Trump's:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: ire was directed at The Washington Post and, more specifically, Jeff :{Bezos:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, the founder of Amazon.com and owner of The ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

'Not an appropriate way for a presidential candidate to behave': Bezos ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/...**bezos**...**trump**/.../b72f5054-1d1...:{

The Washington Post

May 18, 2016 - Amazon.com founder and Washington Post owner Jeffrey P. Bezos fired back at presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying on ...

Trump: Bezos using 'Washington Post' to protect Amazon monopoly

www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/.../trump-bezos.../84317954/

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

USA Today:{:(style="border-width:4px 4px 0px;border-style:solid;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{May 15, 2016 - The Amazon CEO is using the reputable newspaper "like a toy," :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: said.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Bezos rebuts Trump's attacks: I'm 'very comfortable' with Amazon's ...

www.cnbc.com/.../bezos-rebuts-trumps-attacks-im-very-comfortable-with-amaz...

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:{May 18, 2016 - :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, the billionaire businessman, told Fox News last week that Amazon has "a huge antitrust problem." He accused :{Bezos:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: of using the Post ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Why is Donald Trump threatening Amazon and Jeff Bezos? - CNET

www.cnet.com › Internet

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:{Feb 28, 2016 - "I have respect for Jeff :{Bezos:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, but he bought The Washington Post to ... :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: on Amazon: "If I become president, oh do they have problems.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

big sticking point at the climate talks will be money _ how much rich countries should invest help poor countries cope with climate change, how much should be invested in renewable energy, and how much traditional oil and gas producers stand to lose if countries agree to forever reduce emissions.

The new initiative is twofold: a public-private project called Mission Innovation, led by governments, and the Gates-led investor group called the Breakthrough Energy Initiative.

The governments pledge to double their spending on low or no-carbon energy over the next five years, according to Brian Deese, senior adviser to Obama on climate and energy issues. They include leading energy producers and consumers, such as the U.S. China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, France and Norway. They currently invest about $10 billion a year total, about half of which comes from the U.S., Deese told reporters in Washington.

Gates committed $1 billion of his money and was the “intellectual architect” behind the effort to get investors involved, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said. The business leaders are making their pledges conditional on governments also pledging more money, said a former U.S. government official who is familiar with the plan.

Editorial: How Bad is the Corporate and Conservative Media?

December 20, 2013 |

HOW BAD IS THE CORPORATE AND CONSERVATIVE MEDIA?

Actually both corporate and right-wing press are getting much worse. There are dozens of examples of journalistic failure every week. The right-wing media is often insane as we report on AlterNet in our super popular weekly series on Right-wing wackos. And, increasingly, mainstream media is about protecting the 1% and the media owner’s financial interests. They too often miss the real story or mislead the reader.

It is no accident that the world's richest man -- Mexico's Carlos Slim, worth $73 billion -- is the second largest stockholder of the New York Times. Or that The Washington Post is now owned totally by one super rich person --Jeff Bezos, the emperor of Amazon.

Bezos recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But, the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.

Too often the media's performance is a disgrace to journalism:

The New York Times, in an astonishing bit ofbig bank propaganda,had the audacity to publish, “It is not a crime to make stupid mistakes, and much of what happened in the years before the financial crisis was more foolish than venal.” This is an astonishingly brazen lie, as AlterNet's writer explains, "…our biggest banks were found to have committed -- or have confessed to committing -- thousands of real and deliberate crimes, some of which rank among the largest financial crimes in history (such as LIBOR falsification, phony mortgage scams, and the $800 billion worth of drug money laundered by HSBC, to give just three examples)."

It also was the New York Times that first called the bumpy rollout of healthcare.gov “Obama’s Katrina" in a front-page story. Soon, this over-the-top message was puppeted all over the media. If ever there was a flawed, destructive analogy, this is it. Hurricane Katrina amounted to an abdication of government responsibility, resulting in the deaths and displacements of many thousands? How can anyone in their right mind compare this disaster with the slow web-site role out of the ACA?

Another media shocker was the shameful and distorted editorial inThe Washington Post, which downplayed the retirement crisis and stoked generational tensions by suggesting that Social Security is a burden on young people instead of a vital safeguard. The editorial actually mocked a sensible bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would boost Social Security benefits by increasing taxes on the wealthy. The Washington Post's nonsense was blasted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke out strongly against cuts of any kind, including Obama's "chained CPI" cut which would prevent Social Security from keeping up with seniors' increasing costs.

Recently, The Washington Post so-called "liberal columnist" Richard Cohen wrote, "People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York—a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.” Enough said on that one. The Post also employs notable rabidly Islamaphobic blogger Jennifer Rubin.

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, actually asserted during an appearance on Morning Joe, “It’s not our job to inform viewers when Republicans lie.” This is what journalism has come to -- in the context of one of the most intense disinformation campaigns in history attacking the Affordable Care Act. What do Chuck Todd and NBC think journalists should do?

There are many more egregious examples... but far too many for this communiqué. Put simply, we cannot trust corporate media to protect us. They too often protect the needs of the billionaire class, not all the classes. Help us provide the alternative 24/7. We have your interests at heart. An end of the year, your tax-deductible contribution will mean a lot.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com let his money do the talking yesterday when it was announced he was buying the Washington Post for $250 million in cash, but offered little comment on what his plans for the newspaper are.Though he just bought one of the most prominent chroniclers of Washington politics, Bezos is not a man known for using his money to make political points.

According to Center for Responsive Politics data, Bezos and his wife Mackenzie have given just $162,000 altogether to federal political candidates or committees since 1998 (only a small portion of which went to federal candidates). Donations to the Amazon.com corporate PAC account for $130,000 of that total. The only cash to any federal candidates that Bezos and his wife have given to in the last six years were $4,800 donations (the maximum) to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in 2009. Since 1998, the couple has given $28,000 to Democratic candidates and $4,000 to Republican candidates.

The top recipient of cash from Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos was Sen. Maria Cantwell(D-Wash.) but she hasn't received a contribution from either since 2006.

Historically, Bezos and his wife have been more active in state-level politics. The couple gave $2.5 million to support a referendum legalizing gay marriage in Washington state. Bezos also gave $25,000 to former fellow dot-com executive Meg Whitman, a Republican, who ran for governor of California.

The Amazon.com corporate PAC itself is more active than the Bezoses, though it must be noted that the company is not involved with the Post purchase, per today's announcement. According to CRP data, the company's PAC has given about $746,000 to federal candidates or committees since 1998, with donations favoring Democrats in recent years, but not by a large margin. Mirroring giving by many corporate PACs, the company PAC has tended to give to the party in power -- in the 2012 cycle it gave far more money to Senate Democrats than Republicans, and far more to House Republicans than Democrats.

Amazon does lobby, however. In 2012, the company **spent $2.5 million** on hiring federal lobbyists -- more than ever before. In just the first half of 2013, the company has already spent $1.7 million. The company has lobbied on the Internet sales tax proposal (which it supports), postal reform, a comprehensive immigration overhaul, online wine sales and various cybersecurity issues -- but nothing related to the newspaper industry.

Follow Russ: @russchoma

Washington Post' To Be Sold To Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Bezos will pay $250 million in cash for the venerable journalism institution.

Digital libertarians like Jeff Bezos of Amazon see these digital marketplaces as the electronic realization of a free market fantasy. They promote platforms like Bezos' "Mechanical Turk" system of online job sharing, unconcerned about their ability to accelerate the destruction of decent wages and secure jobs. (They're also blissfully unaware of the embarrassing contradiction between their own libertarianism and the fortunes they've earned from government-created technologies like the Internet.)

Friedman seems to share a Bezos-like vision of unregulated marketplaces for every aspect of human activity. He waxes ecstatic about Airbnb, which he sees as both a practical solution and a broader model for a future economy. Friedman thinks that renting out your private space, your personal time, and your possessions will soon become the only way to make ends meet - that is, unless you possess extraordinary skills, which could land you a mediocre job at best.