Apple

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PRIMARY 10 26 BALLROOM AI RX RFK DR OZ

famously refused FBI req?

BALLROOM 25m$ #1 // NVIDIA , GOLD PHONE TARIFFS

SEE TIM COOK MELANIA DOKU

ICE APPS? NAVALNY

SEE AI RFK RX DATA AND CRYPTO

SEE 80 200 IZRAEL

MILLER STRATEGIES LOBBYIST

TED OLSON?

CSR SOLAR?

greenpeACE?

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with apple pulled navalny voting app russia vlad cave/fail hid behind TOS?

maps makes crimea part of russia 1119

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ceo good at PR?

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-=-=-

PUBLIC CIT BALLROOM

no lnx

Donor Corporate Sector Federal Enforcement Faced

Apple Big Tech DOJ litigation alleging antitrust violations to monopolize the

smartphone market.

NLRB cases alleging unfair labor practices.

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AN KFF 10 26

A cadre of elite techies, financiers, and high-level Trump administration officials have spent a year quietly charting an extraordinary and rapid campaign to persuade Americans to use apps and other artificial intelligence-powered tools to manage their healthcare and medical records.

As that campaign has unfolded, administration officials have granted tech companies an unusual opportunity to nudge the nation’s health department toward a loosely regulated future for AI health apps in which the government reimburses them for services as it does medical professionals.

In February, federal health officials invited those businesses — including tech giants Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, and Google — to a listening session on conversational AI products for patients, such as chatbots. Representatives from at least 35 industry organizations attended the meeting held by the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for regulating health apps as medical devices. Companies were prompted in advance to explain their AI products and how they access p

MUCH MORE

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Investigation

Rotten Apple: Dozens of Former Israeli Spies Hired by Silicon Valley Giant

Apple has made headlines in recent weeks for touting its commitment to privacy and human rights, rolling out tools to limit surveillance and spyware. But behind the corporate messaging lies a much darker reality.

The company has quietly brought in dozens of veterans from Unit 8200, Israel’s shadowy military intelligence unit known for blackmail, mass surveillance, and targeted killings.

Many of these hires took place as Israel escalated its war on Gaza, and as CEO Tim Cook publicly expressed support for Israel while disciplining employees for pro-Palestinian expressions. Apple’s deepening ties to Israel’s most controversial intelligence raise uncomfortable questions, not only about the company’s political loyalties, but also about how it handles vast troves of personal user data.

A MintPress News investigation has identified dozens of Unit 8200 operatives now working at Apple. The company’s hiring spree coincides with growing scrutiny of its ties to the Israeli government, including its policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF and the Jewish National Fund, both of which play a role in the displacement of the Palestinian people. The intense pro-Israel bias at the corporation has led many former and current employees to speak out.

This investigation is part of a series examining the close collaboration between Unit 8200 and Western tech and media companies. Previous investigations examined the links between Unit 8200 and social media giants like TikTok, Facebook and:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: :{Google, and how former Unit 8200 spies are now responsible for writing much of America’s news about Israel/Palestine, holding top jobs at outlets like CNN and Axios.

Revealed: The Former Israeli Spies Working in Top Jobs at Google, Facebook and Microsoft

Hundreds of agents from Israeli spying organization Unit 8200 are now employed in top roles at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

MintPress News·Alan Macleod·Nov 16, 2022

A Few (Dozen) Bad Apples

Israel’s international reputation has taken a severe hit amid multiple spying scandals and ongoing attacks against its neighbors. During this same period, Apple has ramped up its recruitment of former Israeli intelligence personnel.

The Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of former agents from the controversial Israeli intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, raising questions about the corporation’s political direction.

Nir Shkedi is among the most prominent examples. From 2008 to 2015, he served as a commander and Chief of Learning at Unit 8200, leading a team of approximately 120 operatives who developed new artificial intelligence tools to perform rapid data analysis.

Unit 8200 is at the forefront of this technology, and is known to have used AI to auto-generate kill lists of tens of thousands of Gazans, including children. These tools helped the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) bypass what it called human targeting, “bottlenecks,” and strike huge numbers of Palestinians.

Shkedi has been a physical design engineer at Apple’s Bay Area campus since 2022.

Noa Goor is another senior Unit 8200 figure turned Apple employee. From 2015 to 2020, Goor rose to become a project manager and head of cybersecurity and big data development team at Unit 8200, where she, in her own words, “invent[ed] creative technological solutions for high priority intelligence goals” and “manag[ed] two strategically important cyber projects” for the IDF.

One of the most important cyber projects Unit 8200 has launched in recent times is the September pager attack on Lebanon, an act that injured thousands of civilians and was widely condemned as an act of international terrorism, including by former CIA Director Leon Panetta. While Goor was not personally involved in that operation, Unit 8200 has spearheaded similarly nefarious actions for decades.

In 2022, Goor was hired by Apple as a system-on-chip design engineer.

Eli Yazovitsky, meanwhile, was directly recruited from Unit 8200. In 2015, he left a high-powered nine-year career as a manager in the military unit to join Apple, where he rose to become an engineering manager. He has since moved on to tech giant Qualcomm.

Unit 8200 is Israel’s most elite—and most controversial—military intelligence unit. It serves as the backbone of both Israel’s burgeoning tech sector and its repressive surveillance apparatus. The unit has developed cutting-edge technology like facial recognition and voice-to-text software to surveil, repress, and target Palestinians.

The vast amounts of data gathered on the Palestinian population, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, have been used for coercion and extortion. If a certain individual needed to travel across checkpoints for crucial medical treatment, permission could be suspended until they complied. Information about extramarital affairs or sexual orientation, especially homosexuality, is exploited as blackmail material. One former Unit 8200 agent recalled that he was instructed during his training to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen out for them in intercepted conversations.

Internationally, Unit 8200 may be best known for its “former” agents who created the notorious Pegasus software, used by repressive governments around the world to spy on tens of thousands of prominent figures, including royals, heads of state, activists, and journalists.

Among them was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated by Saudi operatives in Türkiye in 2018.

While military service is mandatory for Jewish Israelis, few end up in Unit 8200 by accident. Described as “Israel’s Harvard,” parents spend fortunes on STEM-based extracurricular lessons for their children in the hopes that they will be selected to join the IDF’s most elite and selective unit. Those chosen are rewarded with lucrative careers in the tech industry upon completion of their service.

Given Unit 8200’s documented history of violence, espionage, and surveillance, both domestically and internationally, it is worth asking whether tech giants should be hiring its alumni in such large numbers.

Shkedi, Goor, and Yazovitsky are the most high-profile examples, but they are from alone. A closer look reveals that dozens of other Unit 8200 veterans have also secured key roles at Apple.

Engineering and Hardware Design:

Natanel Nissan, formerly head of data analysis at Unit 8200, joined Apple’s Tel Aviv office in 2022. Ofek Har-Even, a longtime officer and manager in the unit, has been a design verification engineer at Apple since 2022. Gal Sharon, a former intelligence systems operator and data analyst, has also worked as a physical design engineer since that same year.

Mayan Hochler and Shai Buzgalo, both former Unit 8200 analysts and instructors, hold roles in physical design and validation engineering, respectively.

Software and Cybersecurity:

Ofer Tlusty, who served nearly six years in Unit 8200 as a security and intelligence analyst, has worked as a software engineer at Apple since 2021. Ofek Rafaeli, who served between 2012 and 2016 and rose to project manager during Israel’s 2016 assault on Gaza, became a software engineer at Apple in 2023.

Guy Levy, a former intelligence analyst, now also works as a software engineer.

AI, Machine Learning, and Validation:

Avital Kleiman, a six-year veteran of Unit 8200, is now a machine learning algorithm engineer at Apple. Niv Lev Ari, currently a validation engineer, notes in his LinkedIn profile that he received a letter of commendation from Unit 8200 commander Aviv Kochavi for his work in the unit.

Other Technical Roles:

Shahar Moshe, who worked as an intelligence specialist at Unit 8200 from 2012 to 2015, is now a design verification engineer. Gil Avniel, who spent over five years in the unit, currently serves as a network engineer.

An Apple Rots From the Core

The growing number of former Israeli intelligence operatives working at Apple does not seem to concern the company’s senior management. CEO Tim Cook is known to hold strongly pro-Israel views and has spearheaded the Silicon Valley giant’s collaboration with the Israeli state.

Apple has acquired several Israeli tech firms and now operates three centers in the country, employing around 2,000 people. In 2014, Cook invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the company headquarters in Cupertino, CA, where, in front of the cameras, the two openly embraced. The following year, Cook accepted an invitation from President Reuven Rivlin to visit Israel. “It is a great privilege to host you and your team here,” Rivlin said, “Even for me, as one who prefers to write with a pen and paper, it is clear what a great miracle you have created when I look at my staff, and my grandchildren.”

Effusive praise for the Apple CEO has also come in the form of honors from pro-Israel organizations. In 2018, the Anti-Defamation League presented Cook with its inaugural Courage Against Hate Award at its Never Is Now Summit on anti-Semitism and Hate, where the organization described him as a “visionary leader in the business community.”

Netanyahu meets Apple CEO Tim Cook during a visit to Apple in 2014. Photo | Israeli GPO

In the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks, Cook sent out a company-wide email expressing his solidarity with Israel. “Like so many of you, I am devastated by the horrific attacks in Israel and the tragic reports coming out of the region,” he wrote, My heart goes out to the victims, those who have lost loved ones, and all of the innocent people who are suffering as a result of this violence.”

Yet, according to Apples4Ceasefire—a group of former and current employees opposing Israeli actions in Gaza—he has yet to say anything publicly about the mass devastation caused by the Israeli response to October 7.

Indeed, the Silicon Valley corporation has a policy of matching employee donations to groups such as Friends of the IDF, which raises money to buy equipment for IDF soldiers, and the Jewish National Fund, an organization that participates in the theft and destruction of Palestinian land.

Under Cook’s leadership, Apple employees have been disciplined or even fired for wearing pins, bracelets, or keffiyehs in support of the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, groups such as Apples4Ceasefire continue to speak out about what they describe as Apple’s complicity in genocide.

The Unit 8200 Tech Takeover

To be fair, Apple is far from the only tech or media company to hire large numbers of former Unit 8200 operatives. A 2022 MintPress exposé revealed hundreds of Israeli intelligence veterans working at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Perhaps the most notable of these is Emi Palmor, a former Israeli justice ministry official who sits on Facebook’s 21-person Oversight Board. Described by Mark Zuckerberg as his platform’s “supreme court,” the board ultimately decides what content is allowed or removed from the world’s largest social network. Facebook has worked closely with the Israeli government to censor or deplatform Palestinian content and accounts.

Even TikTok, often seen as a more open platform, has been hiring former Israeli spies to help manage its operations, according to a November investigation by MintPress. Reut Medalion, for example, served as a Unit 8200 intelligence commander and led its cybersecurity operations team.

TikTok isn’t anti-Israel: It’s Hired Unit 8200 Agents to Run its Affairs

A MintPress News study has unearthed a network of former agents of Israeli spying agency Unit 8200 working at TikTok, a company charged with supposedly being a Chinese-owned hub of anti-Semitic content., Chinese influence TikTok, Israeli spying influence TikTok, Project Texas TikTok, TikTok anti-Palestine bias, TikTok former CIA hires, TikTok Israel content moderation, TikTok Israeli intelligence hires, TikTok pro-Palestine suppression, TikTok U.S.

MintPress News·Alan Macleod·Dec 30, 2024

In December 2023, during the peak of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Medalion moved to New York City to accept a job as global incident manager for TikTok’s trust and safety division. Considering the events going on in the world at the time, it’s worth asking what sorts of “global incidents” she was brought in to manage.

After MintPress exposed Medalion’s past to a worldwide audience, she deleted her entire digital footprint from the internet.

Former Israeli intelligence operatives have also found their way into American newsrooms, shaping coverage of the Middle East. A recent MintPress investigation uncovered a network of former Unit 8200 operatives working in some of the most influential newsrooms in the United States.

Revealed: The Israeli Spies Writing America's News

Media personalities like Barak Ravid, an ex-Israeli spy turned Washington journalist, play a key role in shaping media coverage that protects Israeli military actions and influences unwitting American audiences., Barak Ravid, Barak Ravid spy, Biden administration, Israel-Palestine conflict, Israeli intelligence, Israeli media influence, Media Manipulation, media whitewashing, pro-Israel bias, U.S.

MintPress News·Alan Macleod·Dec 8, 2024

Among them is Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, whose Middle Eastern coverage won him the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award. Until at least 2023, Ravid was a member of Unit 8200. CNN has also hired at least two former agents to produce their news coverage, one of whom, Tal Heinrich, now serves as the official spokesperson for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Given this pattern, Silicon Valley’s partiality towards Israel should not come as no surprise. From tech giants like Google and Amazon to social media powerhouses like TikTok and Facebook, the field is filled with former Israeli spies. Apple is no exception, having hired dozens, if not more, Unit 8200 operatives to run its platforms and shape the company.

This investigation does not claim that the Israeli state is deliberately infiltrating Silicon Valley. However, what it does unquestionably suggest is that the outlook and general biases of these entities are strongly pro-Israel. What does it say about Silicon Valley’s culture that individuals with well-documented ties to a controversial foreign spy agency are considered ideal hires?

It is unthinkable that former intelligence agents of Hezbollah, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, or Russia’s FSB or GRU would be hired en masse, and trusted with our most sensitive data. Yet, when it comes to Israel (or U.S. surveillance agencies), the answer is different. Many of these employees are not even “former” agents, and are directly recruited from Unit 8200 while still in active service, despite Israeli law explicitly prohibiting the group’s members from identifying themselves or divulging their alliances.

Thus, in this light, it appears that those like Apples4Ceasefire struggling to end the company’s double standards are fighting an uphill battle.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod.*

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MintPress News

https://www.mintpressnews.com › apple-israel-unit-8200-hiring › 290226

Rotten Apple: Apple Hires Dozens of Israeli Spies From Unit 8200

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WIRED

Apple Took Down These ICE-Tracking Apps. The Developers Aren't Giving Up

“We are going to do everything in our power to fight this,” says ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron after Apple removed his app from the App Store.

The developer behind Eyes Up, one of the many Immigration and Customs Enforcement-related apps removed by Apple in recent days, was busy on Wednesday evening at a local planning session for the nationwide “No Kings” protest, scheduled for later this month. When WIRED eventually reached him by phone, he asked to be only identified by his first name, Mark, for safety reasons. “The administration will act on their grudges,” he says. “And they are not afraid to do so, frequently.”

...Reece Rogers

Lily Hay Newman

Security

Oct 9, 2025 1:22 PM

Apple Took Down These ICE-Tracking Apps. The Developers Aren't Giving Up

“We are going to do everything in our power to fight this,” says ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron after Apple removed his app from the App Store.

Apple Took Down These ICETracking Apps. The Developers Aren't Giving Up

He should know.

Mark’s app, a platform built to serve as a repository for videos and other materials documenting ICE activity, is not alone in getting kicked off Apple’s App Store. Earlier in October, ICEBlock was among the first ICE-related apps Apple removed. The decision followed claims from US attorney general Pam Bondi that such tools endanger ICE officers. Apple has also removed other tracking apps—including Red Dot and DEICER—as well as Eyes Up.

Like Mark, ICEBlock’s developer, Joshua Aaron, is determined to reverse the app store bans. “While I cannot speak to specifics right now, I can tell you that ICEBlock has an incredible legal team behind it and we are going to do everything in our power to fight this,” Aaron tells WIRED.

Apple did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.

Regarding Eyes Up, Mark says he has already appealed Apple’s decision to delist the app, twice.“I will appeal every single time they reject me, until it's back in the App Store,” he says. “Because it's pure cowardice, what they're doing. I'm not gonna let off the gas with Apple.”

The ban ignited a fire under Mark, who’s performing more community outreach to let people know about Eyes Up and encouraging them to upload publicly documented encounters with ICE agents to the app, which is still currently available on the Google Play store and the Eyes Up website.

Rafael Concepcion, who was previously a professor at Syracuse University, first designed DEICER to be a “rights app,” with the ICE-location map added on as an accountability tool. Concepcion was heavily inspired by musician Peter Gabriel and his WITNESS organization, started in the 1990s, that documented human rights violations. While gone from Apple’s App Store, DEICER is also still available via Google Play and a website.

While Apple has not yet commented on its decisions to remove ICE monitoring apps from the App Store, Migrant Insider reported this week that in the case of the DEICER iOS app, the company justified removal under a developer guideline that prohibits “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content” toward “religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups.” Google, which has also removed ICE monitoring apps in recent days, told 404 Media last week that it also considers ICE officers to be a vulnerable group.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tools that include a law enforcement monitoring or transparency mechanism are not unprecedented in mobile apps, though. In fact, Apple and Google both develop apps with these features. The driving directions and traffic app Waze—which is owned by Google and can also be downloaded for iOS—has long offered a crowdsourced tool for reporting and receiving alerts about police sightings on public roads. Apple Maps and Google Maps offer similar features.

“I am not in favor of Apple removing ICE-tracking apps from the App Store, nor the app that simply let users archive videos of ICE,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy researcher at Stanford University. “This seems like more needless kowtowing by Tim Cook.” The Apple CEO has appeared at several events with President Donald Trump and reportedly donated $1 million to attend his inauguration.

Apple Goes All In on Crypto: What It Means for the Future of Money

May 3, 2025AI-Powered Finance: Apple's AI can create smarter financial tools that work with crypto and open banking systems. Imagine your phone automatically managing your crypto investments or payments with smart suggestions-all while keeping your data private.

EconoTimes

https://www.econotimes.com › Apple-Intelligence-to-Fuel-AI-Coin-Rally-as-iPhone-16-Launch-Sparks-Investor-Excitement-1686432

Apple Intelligence to Fuel AI Coin Rally as iPhone 16 ... - EconoTimes

Sep 8, 2024As Apple prepares to unveil Apple Intelligence with its iPhone 16, excitement is building for a potential AI coin rally. Analysts suggest this could be the breakout moment for AI-focused ...

99Bitcoins

https://99bitcoins.com › news › top-3-ai-crypto-to-buy-in-june-as-apple-partnership-poised-to-supercharge-ai-narrative-in-crypto

Top 3 AI Crypto To Buy in June As Apple Partnership Poised to ...

Jun 11, 2024However, Apple's pact with Sam Altman's OpenAI is sealed, promising future AI integration in IOS devices. Apple also announced new AI features and a ChatGPT tie-in that could soon boost AI crypto scene. When Apple finally gets AI, it is set to rocketship the AI crypto narrative, so here

duck 1 26

CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com › news › apple-removes-iceblock-ice-tracker-from-app-store

Apple removes app that tracks ICE agents from its App Store, developer ...

Oct 3, 2025The developer of the ICEBlock app said the software has been removed from Apple's App Store due to "objectionable content."

WIRED

https://www.wired.com › story › apple-took-down-ice-tracking-apps-their-developers-arent-giving-up

Apple Took Down These ICE-Tracking Apps. The Developers Aren't Giving ...

Oct 9, 2025Apple has also removed other tracking apps—including Red Dot and DEICER—as well as Eyes Up. Like Mark, ICEBlock's developer, Joshua Aaron, is determined to reverse the app store bans.

AP News

https://apnews.com › article › apple-ice-iphone-app-immigration-fb6a404d3e977516d66d470585071bcc

Apple and Google remove crowdsourced ICE agent tracking apps | AP News

Apple and Google blocked downloads of phone apps that flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents, just hours after the Trump administration demanded that one particularly popular iPhone app be taken down.

CNN

https://www.cnn.com › 2025 › 10 › 03 › tech › iceblock-apple-removed-trump

Apple removes ICE tracking apps after Trump administration says they ...

Oct 3, 2025Following a Trump administration request, Apple has removed ICEBlock and similar apps that allow people to alert others nearby about sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in ...

Reuters

https://www.reuters.com › sustainability › society-equity › apple-removes-ice-tracking-apps-after-pressure-by-trump-administration-2025-10-03

Apple removes ICE tracking apps after pressure by Trump administration

Oct 3, 2025Apple said on Thursday that it had removed ICEBlock and other similar ICE-tracking apps from its App Store after it was contacted by President Donald Trump's administration, in a rare instance of ...

NPR

https://www.npr.org › 2025 › 10 › 03 › nx-s1-5561999 › apple-google-iceblock-app-removal

Apple bows to Trump pressure to remove ICEBlock app : NPR

Oct 3, 2025Apple said it yanked an app called ICEBlock from its app store after the "safety risks" of the app were made known to the company.

Forbes

https://www.forbes.com › sites › siladityaray › 2025 › 10 › 03 › apple-takes-down-iceblock-app-after-doj-demand-heres-what-we-know

'ICEBlock' Removed From Apple's App Store After DOJ Demand

Oct 3, 2025Apple removed the ICEBlock app from its App Store on Thursday, after the Trump administration urged the iPhone maker to take action against the crowd-sourced platform, which allowed users to ...

NBC News

https://www.nbcnews.com › news › us-news › apple-removes-iceblock-app-criticism-trump-administration-rcna235333

Apple removes ICEBlock app after criticism from Trump administration

Oct 3, 2025Google also removed similar apps from the app store for Android devices, although ICEBlock was never available on the Google Play store.

MSN

https://www.msn.com › en-us › news › technology › ice-tracking-app-removed-from-apple-app-store › ar-AA1NOiXV

ICE tracking app removed from Apple App Store - MSN

DALLAS - Apple has removed ICEBlock, a controversial app used to track U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities, from its App Store. The removal follows a deadly shooting at an ICE ...

Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com › apple-iceblock-app-store-removed-2025-10?op=1

Apple removes ICEBlock app from App Store - Business Insider

Oct 3, 2025Apple has removed ICEBlock, an app that allowed users to monitor and report the location of immigration enforcement officers, from the App Store.

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SJMN AN 11 25

As recently as the 1980s, California was still a red state — from Bakersfield to San Diego to Simi Valley to Glendale. Orange County south of Los Angeles was a bastion of conservatism, and the state's famously conservative GOP governors included Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson.

These days, California is a Democratic stronghold. Yet it still has pockets of conservatism, including Silicon Valley tech bros who have allied themselves with President Donald Trump. And according to Mercury News reporter Ethan Baron, that bond is showing no signs of weakening.

Baron, in an article published on November 2, reports, "Silicon Valley technology companies' cozy relationship with President Donald Trump appears to be deepening and bearing fruit, as firms and their leaders show fealty with gifts, policies, and public statements of support, and CEOs show their ability to influence the president on matters of politics and business. In recent weeks, the White House has confirmed that Google, Meta, Apple, and HP donated to the construction of Trump's new White House ballroom, with Santa Clara chip giant Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, later saying he was 'delighted to be part of it'…. Google and YouTube parent Alphabet, in late September, agreed to pay $22 million toward the ballroom, in a settlement over a lawsuit by Trump over his suspension from YouTube after the January 6 insurrection."

Baron adds, "In similar cases, Meta agreed to pay $22 million toward Trump's presidential library, and X agreed to pay a settlement of about $10 million."

Jan English-Lueck, a San Jose State University anthropology professor known for studying the tech industry, told the Mercury News that Silicon Valley tech bros "need to protect the assets of their companies from the very real threats that they could face."

IFrame Content

Nolan Higdon, a lecturer at Cal State East Bay lecturer, told the Mercury News, "When they need something, they give him things…. Trump has shown that unless you force him to stop or defeat him, he won’t stop. That begs the question with these tech execs: How much is he going to ask of them and how much are they going to give?"

*Read Ethan Baron's full Mercury News article at this link (subscription required).

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an 1 25

In his farewell address, outgoing US President Joe Biden warned “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy”.

The comment suggests that, under Donald Trump’s second term as president, it will be billionaires rather than the people who shape public policy.

There is certainly some evidence Biden’s ominous caution should be taken seriously. The world’s richest man and the owner of X, Elon Musk, has been a vocal supporter of the Republican candidate. Other billionaire tech moguls to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion after his 2024 election victory include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai.

There is nothing unusual about business leaders wanting the ear of an incoming president. What has concerned Biden and others is that so many of Trump’s influential backers also own media platforms and have the ability to sway public opinion.

Should these new tech titans be thought of as oligarchs?

What is an oligarchy?

Like many of the academic and scientific categories we still use today, oligarchy was originally defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

In The Politics, he argued people are “political animals”, social by nature, and instinctively want to live in a community. He studied different governments of the ancient world and concluded there were six essential types.

A state could be ruled by a single leader, a small group of elites, or through mass participation of the people. If the leadership acted in the common advantage (koinê sumpheron), he termed these constitutions to be monarchy, aristocracy or polity, respectively.

If the constitutions became corrupt and the leadership acted only to advance their own self-interest, he labelled them tyranny, oligarchy and democracy.

[

So for Aristotle, an oligarchy is a corrupt form of government. It is when power is in the hands of a small group of elites who advance their own interests rather than the common good.

In Aristotelian terms, democracy is also a corrupt form of government in which the majority uses its power to abuse minorities. While the term democracy has been rehabilitated and is usually seen as a positive, the word oligarchy has retained its negative connotations.

When the United States was created, the founding fathers looked back to Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero and other ancient thinkers to try and create the best kind of constitution.

Following the Aristotelian tradition, they tried to design a mixed constitution where neither the one, the few nor the many could dominate the others. The president has great power. But their power is kept in check by Congress and the judiciary, which is in turn kept in check by the media and, ultimately, the people through regular elections.

Modern oligarchies

In modern politics, the term oligarch is most often used in a Russian context. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, opportunistic tycoons made enormous fortunes from buying up state assets such as energy companies and financial institutions, which also brought them significant political influence as a result.

Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, however, Russia has become increasingly authoritarian. While there is still an oligarchic class, their power has been reined in. They must not challenge Putin’s power or vision for the state.

Although China is ostensibly a communist state, the Gini index (the measure of social inequality) has blown out in recent years as a small group of elites become increasingly wealthy.

Despite the state’s official commitment to socialist principles, political scientist Ming Xia has argued China is now transitioning into a modern oligarchy.

What about the United States and Australia?

Despite Biden’s warning of a potential oligarchy, political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page argued back in 2014 the US already was one.

The US has the essential features of a liberal democracy (fair and regular elections, freedom of speech, and an independent press). But Gilens and Page worried large businesses and a small group of affluent citizens had a disproportionate influence on policy.

In Australia also, it could be argued an oligarchy is either emerging or has already taken hold.

Australia has a similar-sized economy to Russia and a growing list of billionaires who appear to have significant influence over government policy.

The power of the Murdoch family and their media empire is well-documented. We have also seen increased political activity from other billionaires including Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer – who went as far as to start his own political party.

There is no question billionaires in the US and Australia have enormous power and influence. But that in itself does not make an oligarchy.

In Aristotelian terms, the defining feature of an oligarchy is the ruling elite blatantly use their status for their own personal gain rather than the public good.

This is a moral judgement, and one that is increasingly hard to make when so many of the ultra-wealthy own traditional news media and social media platforms that can shape public opinion.

Nevertheless, any shift towards oligarchy should be a cause of alarm to all who value the long democratic tradition in both the US and Australia.

Whether it is a symptom of Trumpism, as Biden suggests, or part of a longer trend, strengthening our democratic institutions and curtailing the disinformation and misinformation that are all too prevalent on social media, is part of the solution.

Benjamin T. Jones, Senior Lecturer in History, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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mma

Google and Apple are hosting an app dedicated to TheDonald and other far-right forums that were banned from Reddit](

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald/google-and-apple-are-hosting-app-dedicated-thedonald-and-other-far-right-forums-were-banned)

06/05/24

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nyt-jon-stewart-to-end-show-after-apple-tells-him-not-to-criticize-china-or-ai

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torres -sp

Chapter 7 · Avoiding the Taxman 143

TJ: "Merchants have no country"

taxes are test of allegiance

local tax breaks rarely produce much in terms of jobs (bail for better deal); NASCAR has own tax break;corps can write off legal fees when do crimes 147;

Int'l BK Canada tim horton; Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich;Appleavoided 9B$ in taxes in 2012; OECD says 100-240B$/yr. GGl Dutch 99.8%; many #; 2014 Farm Bill 50% for food aid on US ships

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921

infra twin bill

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/lobbying-congress/

New report details a 'massive lobbying blitz' against Biden's agenda — but Sanders has a warning for them

an 921

...no lnx

...the Post, which published Sanders' remarks on Tuesday, offered a detailed look at the "massive lobbying blitz" that corporate America has launched in recent days in a bid to water down—or kill entirely—the reconciliation package, a centerpiece of President Joe Biden's economic and climate agenda.

The range of big-name corporations involved in the campaign—from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to the fossil fuel behemoth ExxonMobil—reflects the potentially far-reaching scope of the nascent reconciliation bill, which could allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, reverse former President Donald Trump's corporate tax cut, institute paid family and medical leave, strengthen workers' rights, and establish a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

"The emerging opposition appears to be vast, spanning drug manufacturers, big banks, tech titans, major retailers, and oil-and-gas giants,"the Post's Tony Romm reported. "In recent weeks, top Washington organizations representing these and other industries have started strategizing behind the scenes, seeking to battle back key elements in Democrats proposed overhaul to federal healthcare, education, and safety net programs."

One of the organizations that has been "most active" in the effort to prevent passage of the reconciliation bill, according to the Post, is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying organization in the country. Romm reported that the Chamber is "in the early stages of putting together an economywide coalition to coordinate the fight against the still-forming economic package, including its significant price tag, policy scope, and potential for tax increases."

"The Chamber-organized effort could encompass traditional lobbying on Capitol Hill as well as advertising campaigns targeting Democratic lawmakers," Romm noted. "The group has been in talks with potential allies such as the National Association of Manufacturers, whose board includes executives from firms such as Dow Inc., Exxon, Caterpillar, and Johnson & Johnson... Other opponents include the Business Roundtable, whose board counts the chief executives from Apple and Walmart."

As Democrats move further along in the process of translating their newly approved $3.5 trillion budget blueprint into legislative text—a process lawmakers hope to complete by next month—the lobbying push is likely to intensify. The Hill reported Monday that corporate influence-peddlers are growing "increasingly optimistic" that they will succeed in keeping major tax hikes, Medicare expansion, and other critical measures out of the final package...

"The business community has made progress with certain Democrats on legitimate policy concerns with some of these proposals and their implications on the economy and international competitiveness," an unnamed lobbyist with ties to Senate Democrats told The Hill. "A lot of those arguments are landing."

While The Hill does not name the "certain Democrats" who have been receptive to lobbyists' arguments, the outlet noted that "business interests have Democratic allies in Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and the group of House moderates led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.)"—all of whom have voiced opposition to the $3.5 trillion price tag.

But Sanders—who has characterized the reconciliation bill as potentially the most consequential legislation since the New Deal—said in an interview last week that $3.5 trillion is "the minimum of what we should be spending."...

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/parler-returns-to-apple-app-store-after-hate-speech-crackdown-can-it-compete-with-alternatives/

:{:{}:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/ralph-nader-ranks-the-infinite-greed-power-and-controls-of-giant-corporations

Ralph Nader ranks the infinite greed, power and controls of giant corporations

The combination of greed and power often spin out of control and challenge the enforceable rule of law and the countervailing force of the organized civic community.

When greed and power are exercised by giant multinational corporations that escape the discipline of the nation-state, the potential for evil becomes infinite in nature. Enough is never enough.

Global giant companies, aided and abetted by their corporate attorneys and accountants, can literally decide how little taxes they are going to pay by shifting profits and expenses among different tax haven countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg, and Panama.

These same companies then proceed to lobby any nation, including most prominently the United States. Congress and the White House are pushed to cut formal tax rates, pack the tax laws with loopholes, and lower further the effective tax rate. The formal top tax rate for billions of company profits is now 21%, while the actual tax rate is lower – much lower for banks, insurance companies, drug companies, and behemoth tech companies like Apple that master tax avoidance.

"Generous” is not a word one can associate either with Apple or it’s avaricious, CEO Tim Cook. One of the first moves Tim Cook made, after replacing legendary Apple Founder, the cancer-stricken innovator Steve Jobs, was to arrange a $378 million, 2011 compensation package for himself and launch the biggest stock buyback in corporate history. Apple, which is worth $1.5 trillion has spent $327 billion since 2013 to buy back 2.5 billion shares of stock. Yet Apple has done little to produce productive investments, remediation of used and very toxic Apple products when discarded, or increase pay for the 350,000 serf-labor workers in China toiling under its merciless contractor Foxconn.

Apple made $104 billion in the last 12 months, puffed up by tax-avoidance, tax cuts and a no tariff deal with Trump on its Chinese imports, yet Tim Cook has rejected pleas to spend a little over $2 billion (deductible) to award a full year’s pay bonus to the 350,000 Foxconn workers who build Apple’s iPhones and iPads.

Apple’s massive stock buybacks have, however, increased the metrics to set compensation levels for Tim Cook and his executive sidekicks. Unfortunately, stock buybacks do little to tamp down excessive prices for Apple products. The massive stock buybacks also send a message that Apple’s management has no other uses for its corporate cash – not for R&D, not for improving the nature and security of its workers’ pensions, not for investing in curtailing the damaging side effects of Apple products on the environment and not for reducing other offloaded damage to society.

Tim Cook and Apple are also stingy, given their vast wealth, with charitable contributions. So stingy that Apple’s bosses do not even come close with the company’s charitable deduction limit of five percent of adjusted gross income. In 2018 Apple gave $125 million to charities. Apple’s net income for 2018 was $59.53 billion – a tiny fraction of one percent!

Recently, the New York Times published articles showing how tiny the executive pay cuts were by the very few executives who announced and declared sympathy for their laid-off and impoverished workers.The media has also been reporting illicit maneuvers developed by corporate attorneys to help chain stores get relief payments that should have gone to legitimate small businesses. (Why isn’t the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) speaking out against this abuse and avarice?)

Replacing some of their greed with generosity could be directed to the estimated $6 billion to $11 billion needed this coming school year to give low-income students full equipment and connectivity to the internet for remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. States and localities need $4 billion to assure the voting process will be fair and that all votes be counted and on time. The Republicans in the Senate are blocking the money needed to guarantee free and fair elections. Four billion dollars for the profit-glutted Silicon Valley giants Facebook, Google, Apple plus Amazon, and Microsoft, is peanuts. These high-tech digital giants could easily contribute the money needed to avert a widely predicted election time disaster and weeks of understaffed counting after November 3^rd. Imagine such a show of patriotism from these companies.

Then there are the matters of woefully inadequate supplies, facilities, and training programs to counter the spreading Covid-19 pandemic that is crumbling the economy. These record-setting profitable companies, with soaring stock prices due to their monopolistic powers or consumer-gouging, should return some of Trump’s giveaway tax cuts of 2017 and the burgeoning corporate welfare payments from crony-capitalistic Washington, D.C. to help their afflicted or vulnerable fellow Americans. Many of these people are their own workers, friends, and relatives.

Economists should develop a “Hedonistic Index,” to rank the “greed-with-power” status of the 500 largest U.S. corporations.

People have the right to know how CEOs and major corporations do on the “Hedonistic Index” of greed and power. After all, at the end of the day, we are all paying the price of the full measure of the infinite avarice spiraling from these corporate supremacists and their private governments of control.

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1984 superbowl aD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/robert-reich-heres-how-ceos-are-ruining-america/

no lnx

Robert Reich: Here’s how CEOs are ruining America

Written by Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog April 13, 2020

Today, America’s wealthiest business moguls – like Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase – claim that they are “patriots before CEOs” because they employ large numbers of workers or engage in corporate philanthropy.

Rubbish.

CEOs are in business to make a profit and maximize their share prices, not to serve America. And yet these CEOs dominate American politics and essentially run the system.

Therein lies the problem: They cannot be advocates for their corporations and simultaneously national leaders responsible for the wellbeing of the country. This is the biggest contradiction at the core of our broken system.

A frequent argument made by CEOs is that so-called “American competitiveness” should not be hobbled by regulations and taxes.Jamie Dimon often warns that tight banking regulations will cause Wall Street to lose financial business to banks in nations with weaker regulations. Under Dimon’s convenient logic, JPMorgan is America.

Dimon used the same faulty logic about American competitiveness to support the Trump tax cut. “We don’t have a competitive tax system here,” he warned.

But when Dimon talks about “competitiveness” he’s really talking about the competitiveness of JPMorgan, its shareholders, and billionaire executives like himself.

The concept of “American competitiveness” is meaningless when it comes to a giant financial enterprise like JPMorgan that moves money all over the world. JPMorgan doesn’t care where it makes money. Its profits don’t directly depend on the wellbeing of Americans.

“American competitiveness” is just as meaningless when it comes to big American-based corporations that make and buy things all over the world.

Consider a mainstay of corporate America, General Electric. Two decades ago, most GE workers were American. Today the majority are non-American. In 2017, GE announced it was increasing its investments in advanced manufacturing and robotics in China, which it termed “an important and critical market for GE.” In 2018, over half of GE’s revenue came from abroad. Its once core allegiance to American workers and consumers is gone.

Google has opened an Artificial Intelligence lab in Beijing. Until its employees forced the company to stop, Google was even building China a prototype search engine designed to be compatible with China’s censors.

Apple employs 90,000 people in the United States but contracts with roughly a million workers abroad. An Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible” – and showing profits big enough to continually increase Apple’s share price.

American corporations will do and make things wherever around the world they can boost their profits the most, and invest in research and development wherever it will deliver the largest returns.

The truth is that America’s real competitiveness doesn’t depend on profit-seeking shareholders or increasingly global corporations. The real competitiveness of the United States depends on only one thing: the productivity of Americans.

That in turn depends on our education, our health, and the infrastructure that connects us. Yet today, American workers are hobbled by deteriorating schools, unaffordable college tuition, decaying infrastructure, and soaring health-care costs.

And truth be told, big American corporations and the CEOs that head them – wielding outsized political influence – couldn’t care less. They want tax cuts and rollbacks of regulations so they can make even fatter profits. All of which is putting Americans on a glide path toward lousier jobs and lower wages. How’s that for patriotism?

The first step toward fixing this broken system is to stop buying CEOs’ lies. How can we believe that Jamie Dimon’s initiatives on corporate philanthropy are anything other than public relations? Why should we think that he or his fellow CEOs seek any goal other than making more money for themselves and their firms? We can’t and we shouldn’t. They don’t have America’s best interests at heart — they’re making millions to be CEOs, not patriots.

Big American corporations aren’t organized to promote the wellbeing of Americans, and Americans cannot thrive within a system run largely by corporations. Fundamental reform will be led only by concerned and active citizens.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/republican-lawmakers-personally-made-millions-from-their-giant-tax-cut-report/

no lnx

Republican lawmakers personally made millions from their giant tax cut: report

Written by Alex Henderson January 24, 2020

Although the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 did precious little to reduce the tax burden of middle-class Americans, it has been great for millionaires. And according to Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity, that includes many of the Republican senators and House members who rammed it through Congress.

Discussing the Center’s analysis of the 2017 law in an article for Vox this week, Cary explains: “Cutting tax rates for companies like Apple and hundreds of other stocks they own was one of many ways Republican lawmakers enriched themselves after they passed the tax law…. Democrats also stood to gain from the tax bill, though not one voted for it. All but 12 Republicans voted for the tax bill.”

After the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed, Cary explains, stock shares increased in price. Dividends were raised — and many of the Republicans in Congress who voted for the law just happened to own stock in the companies that paid higher dividends.

“When the price ofApple stock hit a then-record high in October 2018,” Cary observes, “among the shareholders counting their gains were 43 Republicans in Congress, who collectively owned as much as $1.5 million worth of the tech giant’s shares.”

One of the Republicans who has benefited from owning Apple shares is Sen. David Purdue of Georgia.

Cary notes, “Perdue is one of the wealthiest senators, with a net worth of $15.8 million — $14 million of which is in stocks, according to Roll Call. In 2018, with his wife, Perdue owned $100,000 to $250,000 in Apple stock, he reported. The couple sold some of it and received annual dividends and capital gains that year between $15,000 and $50,000.”

Cary goes on to explain that “net corporate dividends reached a new high in 2018 of more than $1.3 trillion, nearly 6% more than the previous year…. Bigger dividends put even more money in the pockets of stockholders.”

Liberal economists like Paul Krugman (a long-time New York Times columnist) and Robert Reich (who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton) have been highly critical of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, arguing that it ignored the needs of the American middle class. Cary, similarly, stresses that the “benefits” of the law — which reduced the corporate tax rate in the U.S. from 35% to 21% — “mainly went to the rich, as the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 84% of all stocks.

“The ten richest Republicans in Congress in 2017 who voted for the tax bill held more than $731 million in assets — almost two-thirds of which were in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other instruments, according to Roll Call’s semiannual assessment of Congress’ wealth,” Cary reports.

Cary wraps up his article with a quote from Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen. Holman said of millionaires in Congress, “They are passing tax laws and legislation that disproportionately favors the wealthy class, and that means they personally benefit from this type of legislation. And from what we’ve seen — especially from the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act of 2017 — that tax bill clearly favored the very wealthy over the rest of Americans, and that means it favored Congress over the rest of America.”

facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a false answer during a congressional hearing before the House Financial Services Committee when asked about a division of right-wing website The Daily Caller being involved in Facebook’s fact-checking efforts.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asked Zuckerberg why a division of The Daily Caller is included in the Facebook fact-checking project given the publication has many ties to white supremacists. Zuckerberg demurred on the question of Facebook’s role, and instead claimed that a third party was responsible for appointing the fact-checkers.

That claim is false. Facebook requires its partners to be accredited by the organization, but it is Facebook who decides which organizations they use in the fact-checking project. And yet, Zuckerberg repeated this falsehood during a follow-up question.

Breitbart in the Facebook News tab: As if that wasn't bad enough, Facebook announced its new "news tab" this week. While the company refused to release a full list of news organizations who are participating, it did announce that Breitbart was part of it.

Breitbart is certainly a disreputable website known for spreading misinformation. For example, in 2017, Breitbart’s editor-in-chief admitted that the website’s all-in defense of Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore was not a product of any news judgment about whether Moore had been accurately accused of child molestation, but instead was a political calculation meant to protect President Donald Trump against reports of his own sexual misconduct. When Breitbart petitioned for a permanent Senate press credential, it could not prove that it was editorially independent.

What stands out most in Breitbart’s inclusion in Facebook News is the supposed prohibition on hate speech. Breitbart has a long history with hate speech, including letting neo-Nazis ghostwrite articles. That is not an exaggeration, and it's only the tip of the iceberg.

When pressed about Breitbart's inclusion, Zuckerberg claimed that the news tab needs a "diversity" of views. It's just another standard BS answer that panders to the right - something that all of Facebook's executives are extremely well-practiced at by now.

Also: It turns out that Breitbart is also in Apple News.

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Google, Apple, and the Saudi wife-tracking app

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san bern phone case

tim cook fundraiser event for hillary

With James S. Henry, senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network, a global justice fellow at Yale, a senior fellow at the Columbia University Center for Sustainable investment and former chief economist of McKinsey and Company.

Henry‘s books include The Blood Bankers: Tales from the Global Underground Economy and The Pirate Bankers. kpfa

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-september-1-2016/

ireland eu tax

http://www.alternet.org/economy/robert-reich-finally-someone-had-guts-take-tech-behemoth-apple-mat-and-won

For years, Washington lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have attacked big corporations for avoiding taxes by parking their profits overseas. Last week the European Union did something about it.

The European Union’s executive commission ordered Ireland to collect $14.5 billion in back taxes from Apple.

But rather than congratulate Europe for standing up to Apple, official Washington is outraged.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan calls it an “awful” decision. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who’s likely to become Senate Majority Leader next year, says it’s “a cheap money grab by the European Commission.” Republican Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, accuses Europe of “targeting” American businesses. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden says it “undermines our tax treaties and paints a target on American firms in the eyes of foreign governments.”

P-l-e-a-s-e.

These are taxes America should have required Apple to pay to the U.S. Treasury. But we didn’t—because of Ryan, Schumer, Hatch, Wyden, and other inhabitants of Capitol Hill haven’t been able to agree on how to close the loophole that has allowed Apple, and many other global American corporations, to avoid paying the corporate income taxes they owe.

Let’s be clear. The products Apple sells abroad are designed and developed in the United States. So the foreign royalties Apple collects on them logically should be treated as corporate income to Apple here in America.

But Apple and other Big Tech corporations like Google and Amazon—along with much of Big Pharma, and even Starbucks—have avoided paying hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes on their worldwide earnings because they don’t really sell things like cars or refrigerators or television sets that they make here and ship abroad.

Their major assets are designs, software, and patented ideas.

Although most of this intellectual capital originates here, it can be transferred instantly around the world—finding its way into a vast array of products and services abroad.

Intellectual capital is hard to see, measure, value, and track. So it’s a perfect vehicle for tax avoidance.

Apple transfers its intellectual capital to an Apple subsidiary in Ireland, which then “sells” Apple products all over Europe. And it keeps most of the money there. Ireland has been more than happy to oblige by imposing on Apple a tax rate that’s laughably low—0.005 percent in 2014, for example.

Apple is America’s most profitable high-tech company and also one of America’s biggest tax cheats. It maintains a worldwide network of tax havens to park its global profits, some of which don’t even have any employees.

Sitting atop this network is “Apple Operations International,” incorporated in Ireland. Never mind that Apple Operations International keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California. It’s still considered Irish. And its main job is allocating Apple’s earnings among its international subsidiaries in order to keep taxes as low as possible.

As a result, over last decade alone Apple has amassed a stunning $231.5 billion cash pile abroad, subjected to little or no taxes.

This hasn’t stopped Apple from richly rewarding its American shareholders with fat dividends and stock buybacks that raise share prices. But rather than use its overseas cash to fund these, Apple has taken on billions of dollars of additional debt.

It’s a scam, at the expense of American taxpayers.

Add in the worldwide sales of America’s Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Franchise operations, and the scam is sizeable. Over $2 trillion of U.S. corporate profits are now parked abroad—all of it escaping the U.S. corporate income tax.

To make up the difference, you and I and millions of other Americans have to pay more in income taxes and payroll taxes to finance the U.S. government.

Why can’t this loophole be closed? In fact, what’s stopping the Internal Revenue Service from doing what the European Commission just did—telling Apple it owes tens of billions of dollars, but to America rather than to Ireland?

The dirty little secret is the loophole could be closed, and the IRS could probably do what Europe just did even under existing law. But neither will happen because Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Franchise have enough political clout to stop them from happening.

Ironically, the European Commission’s ruling is having the opposite effect in the United States. It’s adding fuel to the demand Apple and other giant U.S. global corporations have been making, that the United States slash taxes on corporations that move their overseas earnings back to the United States.

In other words, they want another tax amnesty.

Congress’s last tax amnesty occurred in 2004, when global U.S. corporations brought back about $300 billion from overseas, and paid just a tax rate of 5.25 percent rather than the regular 35 percent U.S. corporate rate.

Corporate executives argued then—as they argue now—that the amnesty would allow them to reinvest those earnings in America.

The argument was baloney then and it’s baloney now. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 92 percent of the repatriated cash was used to pay for dividends, share buybacks or executive bonuses.

“Repatriations did not lead to an increase in domestic investment, employment or R.&D., even for the firms that lobbied for the tax holiday stating these intentions,” the study concluded.

The political establishment in Washington is preparing for another tax amnesty nonetheless. In a white paper published last week, the Treasury Department warned that an American corporation like Apple, ordered by the European Commission to make tax repayments, might eventually use such payments to offset its U.S. tax bill “when its offshore earnings are repatriated or treated as repatriated as part of possible U.S. tax reform.”

Rather than another tax amnesty, we need a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance.

Instead of criticizing the European Commission for forcing Apple to pay up, American politicians ought to be thanking Europe for standing up to Apple.

At least someone has.

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His website is www.robertreich.org.

As part of its ongoing efforts to minimize its environmental footprint, Apple has issued $1.5 billion in bonds that will finance sustainable business projects. This is the largest ever “green bond” issued by a U.S. corporation.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/apple-green-bond/

Despite Claims of Progress, Labor and Environmental Violations Continue to Plague Apple

Nicki Lisa Cole, Jenny Chan /Truthout

Will Apple Challenge Tesla in the Electric Car Market? 2/15

:{:{http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/29/elon-musk-china-solar/}:

With solar deal, Apple raises the bar yet again for corporate climate leadership

Blog by David Pomerantz | February 10, 2015

In the last three years, more and more companies have committed to power their operations with 100% renewable energy. Technology companies have led the way, helped along by a nudge from Greenpeace and its supporters, as companies like Apple, Box...

*For Release:February 28, 2014

Contact:Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org or David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or (703) 568-4727 (text enabled) or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org*

Tim Cook to Apple Investors: Drop Dead

Apple CEO Tim Cook tells Investors Who Care More About Return on Investment than Climate Change: Your Money is No Longer Welcome

As Board Member Al Gore Cheers the Tech Giant's Dedication to Environmental Activism, Investors Left to Wonder Just How Much Shareholder Value is Being Destroyed in Efforts to Combat "Climate Change"

Free-Market Activist Presents Shareholder Resolution to Computer Giant Apple Calling for Consumer Transparency on Environmental Issues; Company Balks

Cupertino, CA / Washington, D.C. - At today's annual meeting of Apple shareholders in Cupertino, California, Apple CEO Tim Cook informed investors that are primarily concerned with making reasonable economic returns that their money is no longer welcome.

The message came in response to the National Center for Public Policy Research's shareholder resolution asking the tech giant to be transparent about its environmental activism and a question from the National Center about the company's environmental initiatives.

Apple’s former vice president of “worldwide government affairs,” Catherine Novelli, earned over $7.5 million last year while helping the company deal with congressional inquiries about its alleged tax-dodging strategies, without registering as a lobbyist. [we only know b/c fia senate confrim docs]Deborah Lee James, until recently the vice president for government affairs at SAIC, a major defense contractor, earned nearly $1 million in 2013 despite also being unregistered.

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alternet:

Tim Cook: Lost Even with a Compass

The $100 million club, researchers from the corporate watchdog GMI Ratings revealed [26] this past October, has become a bit less exclusive.Last year, for the first time, America’s ten highest-paid CEOs all realized over $100 million in compensation. High on that list, at $143.8 million: Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook’s good fortune came as no surprise to computer industry observers. Apple retail stores,notes [27] Forbes, “take in more money per square foot than any other United States retailer.”

Yet Apple store employees only average $25,000, and Apple can’t seem to afford to compensate its 42,000 retail workers for the time they spend every day waiting to get searched — for stolen goods — before they can leave the store premises. Two former Apple employees havefiled [28] a class-action lawsuit to recoup those unpaid wages, estimated at about $1,500 per year.

But give Apple credit. The company remains an equal-opportunity exploiter. The company mistreats workers both at home and abroad.Workers at Apple’s offshore suppliers continue to work in factories that, says [29] the Economic Policy Institute, “reflect some of the worst practices of the industrial era.”

Apple, details EPI analyst Isaac Shapiro, “has not met commitments to ensure that workers in its supply chain receive retroactive compensation for working unpaid overtime” or “ensured promised wage increases.”

Apple CEO Cook’s response to critiques like this?

“Apple,” he told [30] reporters before U.S. Senate testimony this past spring, “has a very strong moral compass.”

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AlterNet [1] / By Lynn Stuart Parramore [2]

6 Reasons Your Apple Product Has Become Very Uncool

June 3, 2013 |

It’s hard to identify the moment when a company once beloved by trendsetters becomes uncool. Sometimes the firm gets too big for its britches and starts pissing off its customers. Others times the hipsters who first embraced the products grow too long in the tooth to seem cool anymore. Lots of times innovation starts to lag as a firm shifts its focus from making cool stuff to shoveling money toward executives.

Apple’s cool factor seems to be suffering for all of these reasons and then some. So what, you say. It’s just a vibe. They still have gobs of money. Well, the problem for Apple is that its marketability has been built on the cool factor, and once you lose it, it’s not easy to get it back. Here are six unmistakable signs that Apple is on the downward slide.

1. Apple is boring. That’s not what you want to hear when you’re trying to be the cool company. And yet USA Today [3] reports that college students are feeling unbedazzled by Apple CEO Tim Cook’s promises of amazing new gadgets at a recent conference. “Some college students are losing their enthusiasm for Apple after recent product upgrades have been underwhelming,” notes collegiate correspondent Mark Lieberman. Among the student complaints were overpricing, lack of ability to customize Apple products, and various technical challenges.

Other Apple-watchers have voiced similar beefs, pointing out that for all the iPhones, iPads and MacBooks, the whole just adds up to a big yawn. Ashraff Eassa at the Seeking Alpha blog doesn’t mince any words [4]: “Apple’s problem today is that it's just plain boring. Yeah, it makes a lot of money, and yeah, it makes good products, but people forget that tech stocks are all about who's got the most glam.”

2. Headline headaches. One minute Tim Cook is defending tax-dodging practices that screw American taxpayers out of billions and leave us with no money to pay for decent schools that, you know, educate Apple’s workers or roads that, ahem, allow the company to ship its products around the country. The next minute Apple is on the hot seat for allegedly fixing prices on ebooks [5] -- and we’re talking emails between Steve Jobs and James Murdoch (son of Rupert) in which Jobs essentially says, hey, let’s make a deal that screws our customers!

These are not the sorts of activities many customers will find endearing. Making headlines for all the wrong reasons is not going to help Apple get its mojo back. Gangsta-style capitalism is a lot of things – cool is not one of them.

3. Going Wall Street. Apple’s customers have long hailed the company for its snazzy designs and user-friendly interface. But its ability to excel in playing Wall Street casino games was never really on the list.

These days, however, Apple is all about Wall Street. The company is sitting on a mountain of cash, but instead of doing something useful and intelligent with that money such as, I dunno, paying workers a decent salary or investing in innovative new products, Apple announced it is spending an eye-popping $60 billion [6] on a buyback. Stock buybacks, a practice that took off in the go-go ‘80s, is a pernicious trend in which a company buys back its own shares from the marketplace and thereby reduces the number of outstanding shares. It’s a terrible way to allocate resources, and it’s mainly about making executives richer. As Eamonn Fingleton recently put it over at Forbes [7], “every dollar spent on a buyback is one dollar less invested in a corporation’s future.”

Economist William Lazonick, head of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness at the University of Massachusetts, has criticized buybacks because they are designed to manipulate stock prices, reward executives at the expense of other stakeholders, and are often accompanied by things like insider trading. As Lazonick explained in an AlterNet series, “Corporations For the 99%,” stock buybacks have no positive economic purpose and we should “ban large established companies from buying back their own stock, and reward them instead for investing in the retention and training of their employees.”

Doing stock buybacks, along with other practices like giving executives obscene pay packages compared to workers (Apple execs are among the highest paid in the country [8]), are examples of what economists call the financialization of corporations –which is a major driver of economic inequality, stagnation and social unrest.

Definitely not cool.

4. The Jobsless factor. Complaints that Apple has gotten boring are usually followed by the observation that it wasn’t like that when Steve Jobs was around. Under Steve Jobs, the thinking goes, Apple was super-fresh, but now it’s gotten stale and kind of bland.

However you feel about Steve Jobs, he’s an icon of American business, and his vision is considered by many to have been an essential element in the Apple success story -- the kind of vision needed to imagine new territories and untapped markets. Even 16 months after Jobs’ death, Apple executives like Chairman Art Levinson described how “weird [9]” it was to work without the inspirational leader.

5. War on workers.When a company starts getting a reputation for greed and profit-maximization rather than product development and employee satisfaction, the cool factor tends to suffer. Screwed-over workers is not something you want people to think about when they see your logo.

As Daniel Huang of PolicyMic has observed [10], Apple’s main supply chain partner is none other than Foxconn Corporation, a ginormous global contract manufacturer that employs 1.2 million Chinese workers, some of whose deaths and suicides as a result of horrific working conditions started to make international news in 2010.

And Apple’s apparent disregard for the well-being of its workers is not confined to overseas suppliers. In a New York Times [11]piece about Apple’s badly paid employees [11] in the U.S., David Segal outlines the frustration felt by Americans who would like to feel pride working for a company whose products they have admired, but have to suffer with peanut wages, unpleasant working conditions and knowing that they will have little to show for helping to make a success of a company that enjoyed $16 billion in sales in 2011. As Segal explained:

“About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy, and many of them earn about $25,000 a year. They work inside the world’s fastest growing industry, for the most valuable company, run by one of the country’s most richly compensated chief executives, Tim Cook. Last year, he received stock grants, which vest over a 10-year period, that at today’s share price would be worth more than $570 million.”

Apple likes to boast that it’s a job creator, but most of the jobs it has created are in the service industry, and it seems determined to pay those workers as little as possible and make sure they can’t make a career with the company. Not cool.

6. Pissing off customers.Apple seems to have a knack lately for kicking its customers in the teeth. Remember when it replaced Google maps on the iPhone with shitty maps that gave out bad driving directions and so on? The bad vibes were so thick that Tim Cook had to write a letter of apology to customers [12].

That’s just the latest in a slew of actions that have raised customer hackles, from punishing early adopters of products by quickly slashing prices [13] after a much-hyped launch, to releasing new versions so quickly with aggressive upgrade cycles [14] that customers feel betrayed.

Apple has even managed to screw customers with actual screws – switching to a new kind of screw so that you can’t open your iPhone [15].

See more stories tagged with:

Apple Inc. [16],

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Apple store workers, he wrote, make up a large majority of Apple's US workforce—30,000 out of 43,000 employees in this country—and they make about $25,000 a year, or about $12 an hour.

Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute notes that that's just a dollar above the federal poverty level. This for a company that paid nine of its top executives a total of $441 million in 2011.

“The discrepancy between Apple’s profits/executive pay and its compensation to its workers is a particularly glaring example of what is occurring in the wider economy,” Mishel writes.

http://www.alternet.org/story/156042/corporate_profits_at_all-time_high%3B_wages_at_all-time_low%3A_can_we_call_it_class_war_yet?akid=9032.1076705.aq-HdF&rd=1&t=11

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http://grist.org/list/apples-massive-solar-farm-looks-kind-of-awesome-from-the-air/

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5/13 ireland offshore tax dodge

david cay johnston fine print

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/apple-tax-dodging-bigger-scandal-congress-knew-says-133333028.html

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/lisa-jackson-apple-epa_n_3352408.html?ref=topbar

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will be joining Apple, CEO Tim Cook announced Tuesday. The news came at All Things Digital's D11 conference in Southern Calif.

Jackson will coordinate environmental practices for the company, All Things D reported. “Apple has shown how innovation can drive real progress by removing toxics from its products, incorporating renewable energy in its data center plans, and continually raising the bar for energy efficiency in the electronics industry,” she told Politico in an email.

Apple's 2012 environmental report showed all of the company's data centers, and 75 percent of all facilities, were powered by renewable energy. Yet Apple's overall estimated greenhouse gas emissions rose 34 percent between 2011 and 2012. Apple explains 98 percent of its carbon footprint comes from "the manufacturing, transportation, use and recycling," of its products.

Politico notes the company left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009after comments from the group "opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases," according to Apple's resignation letter.

Jackson stepped down from her role as EPA chief in February, after serving for four years. Her replacement at the EPA, Gina McCarthy, is currently awaiting confirmation from the full Senate. McCarthy's nomination was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 16 after an initial boycott from Republicans.