Jamie Dimon is taking on the role of keeping up tradition:
J.P. Morgan and the Railroads
“The wild fraud on the railroads led to more control of railroad finances by bankers, who wanted more stability-profit by law rather than by theft. By the 1890s, most of the country's railway mileage was concentrated in six huge systems. Four of these were completely or partially controlled by the House of Morgan, and two others by the bankers Kuhn, Loeb, and Company.
J. P. Morgan had started before the war, as the son of a banker who began selling stocks for the railroads for good commissions. During the Civil War he bought five thousand rifles for $3.50 each from an army arsenal, and sold them to a general in the field for $22 each. The rifles were defective and would shoot off the thumbs of the soldiers using them. A congressional committee noted this in the small print of an obscure report, but a federal judge upheld the deal as the fulfillment of a valid legal contract.
Giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes)
Ice Age National Scientific Reserve Unit, Wisconsin, USA
2019-08-23 _F2A2922aaa
Morgan had escaped military service in the Civil War by paying $300 to a substitute. So did John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour, Jay Gould, and James Mellon. Mellon's father had written to him that "a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable."
It was the firm of Drexel, Morgan and Company that was given a U.S. government contract to float a bond issue of $260 million. The government could have sold the bonds directly; it chose to pay the bankers $5 million in commission.
On January 2, 1889, as Gustavus Myers reports:
... a circular marked "Private and Confidential" was issued by the three banking houses of Drexel, Morgan & Company, Brown Brothers & Company, and Kidder, Peabody & Company. The most painstaking care was exercised that this document should not find its way into the press or otherwise become public.... Why this fear? Because the circular was an invitation ... to the great railroad magnates to assemble at Morgan's house, No. 219 Madison Avenue, there to form, in the phrase of the day, an iron-clad combination. ... a compact which would efface competition among certain railroads, and unite those interests in an agreement by which the people of the United States would be bled even more effectively than before.
There was a human cost to this exciting story of financial ingenuity. That year, 1889, records of the Interstate Commerce Commission showed that 22,000 railroad workers were killed or injured.
In 1895 the gold reserve of the United States was depleted, while twenty-six New York City banks had $129 million in gold in their vaults. A syndicate of bankers headed by J. P. Morgan & Company, August Belmont & Company, the National City Bank, and others offered to give the government gold in exchange for bonds. President Grover Cleveland agreed. The bankers immediately resold the bonds at higher prices, making $18 million profit.
A journalist wrote: "If a man wants to buy beef, he must go to the butcher.... If Mr. Cleveland wants much gold, he must go to the big banker."
While making his fortune, Morgan brought rationality and organization to the national economy. He kept the system stable. He said: "We do not want financial convulsions and have one thing one day and another thing another day." He linked railroads to one another, all of them to banks, banks to insurance companies. By 1900, he controlled 100,000 miles of railroad, half the country's mileage.
Three insurance companies dominated by the Morgan group had a billion dollars in assets. They had $50 million a year to invest-money given by ordinary people for their insurance policies. Louis Brandeis, describing this in his book Other People's Money (before he became a Supreme Court justice), wrote: "They control the people through the people's own money."
~ A People's History Of The United States - Howard Zinn
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“Humans are crossing ‘wetbulb’ temperature limit, new climate change research shows
Being able to regulate our temperature has played a key role in enabling humans to survive. But climate change is severely testing it.”
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Today the bodies are aspects of our planet’s environment:
“I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still you. And I can see that something else died there is the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream…the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.” Black Elk, Ogalala Sioux
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“If Democrats and Republicans didn’t work for same people one would offer you healthcare and wipe the other off the electoral map.”
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“The Republican solution (according to platform) is to get government out of healthcare and go back to a free market solution. Honestly, how many people here have heard that the U.S. medical industry is the most heavily regulated, licensed, subsidized, litigated industry on Earth? Before Democrat-RINOs started micromanaging medical providers to death, medical care only cost 5% of GDP, and almost all employers provided it. The FDA's 10-18 year approval process has not only driven up pharmaceutical costs but killed an estimated 1-1.1 million Americans. Get government out of everything. See less”
“National health Expenditures per capita, 1960-2023”
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The dying is ramping up:
“Ice-locked Russian Arctic towns might not get needed supplies”
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“Hundreds of St Abb's Head seal pups killed in Storm Arwen”
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The American Judiciary:
Excerpt paraphrased from Howard Zinn’s 1970 speech:
“The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law. When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to recognize this.”
Full excerpt at:
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Xavier Rosseel
“Unfortunately, at the rate we're injecting plastic into the environment, we can't wait millions of years for microbes to naturally manage humanity's plastic waste before it does severe harm to global ecosystems and ourselves. Thus, scientists are rushing engineer these plastic-eating microbes and speed up the process, but it remains to be seen if these efforts will pay off in any meaningful way.
There's another, more drastic option that we might consider: releasing engineered plastic-eating microbes into the wild. But this could backfire big time. Plastic, for all its problems, is a sizable store of carbon. Breaking down the world's plastic pollution with microbes would send a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, further exacerbating global climate change. And, of course, we probably don't want to release engineered microbes into the environment haphazardly, as doing so could result in unforeseen consequences.
Earth's long-ago lignin saga showcases that our planet's natural systems are more than capable of cleaning up gigantic messes over lengthy timespans. When it comes to plastic pollution, the real question is how much damage we'll do in the meantime, both to ourselves and to the natural world. As problem-solvers attempt to harness microbes to decompose or recycle plastic waste, it might be wise for the rest of us to find ways to use less of it.”
“Can Bacteria Solve Our Plastic Pollution Problem?”
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“In the advanced capitalist countries, the radicalization of the working classes is counteracted by a socially engineered arrest of consciousness, and by the development and satisfaction of needs which perpetuate the servitude of the exploited. A vested interest in the existing system is thus fostered in the instinctual structure of the exploited, and the rupture with the continuum of repression—a necessary precondition of liberation—does not occur. … The entire realm of competitive performances and standardized fun, all the symbols of status, prestige, power, of advertised virility and charm, of commercialized beauty—this entire realm kills in its citizens the very disposition, the organs, for the alternative: freedom without exploitation”
~Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (1969)
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“Here’s What’s Really in an Impossible Burger”
"The most popular plant-based alternatives, Beyond and Impossible Burgers, produce about 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions in comparison with beef. They reduce land use by at least 93% and water use by 87% to 99%. They also generate no manure pollution." — Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability program director
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Eward Doubell
“Most animals die because we eat them. Most humans die because we get sick from the animals we eat.
Covid19, Swine Flu, Ebola, Bird Flu, MERS, Mad Cow disease, SARS are all zoonotic diseases caused by animal consumption.
Eating meat also causes heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, infection, cancer, obesity, harmful cholesterol, acne, and erectile dysfunction.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change, habitat destruction, wildlife extinction, ocean dead zones and deforestation.
If you haven't identified the problem yet, there is no hope for humanity.”
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“The “misguided 40-years experiment” started when the Reagan administration began dismantling governmental protections in the 1980s. After 40 years of letting giant corporations acquire more power, we have slower economic growth and a declining standard of living.”
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Christian baker
“If only the main religion in the US was based upon a guy who opposed central banking. And if only the very founding fathers of the US would have warned us. How wonderful life would be ...
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, they will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1809”
“Jesus at Occupy Wall Street: ‘I feel like I’ve been here before’”
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“Police don’t prevent crime. They show up after it happens. Crime prevention starts with funding social programs and creating opportunity.”
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In their pursuit of ever more power & wealth subject to their view of a class system Dems\Reps kill millions at home and abroad. Social Murder & Imperialism by the US 4th Reich are the modern equivalent of the 3 Reich’s ovens
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“Sustainable banking is an important part of addressing climate change
Sustainable banks drove a record amount of clean energy investment last year.”
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NPR Propaganda: “ how horrible health care is in Venezuela”. Discussing economic and other issues in Venezuella, Syria, Iran, etc etc without discussing the impact of US imposing harshest economic embargoes, sabotage, coup..just makes you a Corp tool
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Picture of ghislaine maxwell at Chelsea clinton’s wedding:
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Not built by an American company? Blame DemGOPS:
“This is an interesting article. Read it and see what the US cannot build in this country. There is no American company at this time that can build rail cars for subway systems! Trump banned a bid D.C. metrosystem got from China so they got a Japanese firm and didn't use federal funding.
The last big bridge to the best of my knowledge was the cantalivered Bay bridge to SF which a Chinese company had to manufacture steel and build. California turned down federal funding to get the bridge finished.”
“New Metro rail cars will e built in the D.C. area under $2.2B deal with Hitachi”
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Shipping Supply Problems:
“Take It From a Trucker: There's No Trucker Shortage. It's a Pay Shortage | Opinion”
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Not a good thing right now:
“PFIZER IS LOBBYING TO THWART WHISTLEBLOWERS FROM EXPOSING CORPORATE FRAUD
Pfizer is among the Big Pharma companies trying to block legislation strengthening whistleblowers’ ability to report corporate fraud.”
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Christian baker
“It's 2030. Only 3 billionaires are still alive and preparing their rockets for their last trip. To their respective personal space stations. They started building in late 2027. Playing 4-way split screen Mario Cart together with Mark II Zuckerberg in MetaLand. Just with a lot of network delay and no audience. As everybody else was dead.
Opinion | Elon Musk Is Building a Sci-Fi World, and the Rest of Us Are Trapped in It”
“Elon Musk Is Building a Sci-Fi World, and the Rest of Us Are Trapped in It”
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“Science Update: The Arctic is a Bellweather for Irreversible Climate Change”
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“Science Update: Earthshine Declines as Earth Warms”
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“Black History 101”
“When we think of the Black Panthers, this is usually the image that comes to mind. Did you know they also: Operated free clinics; Taught self-defense classes; Fed kids breakfast before school; Delivered groceries to the elderly; Started a free school; Started the nutrition program for new Moms and their babies which later became WIC. This has been you Black History Moment.”
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I doubt the super rich give a damn since they consider themselves genetically superior
“Capitalism imposes massive suffering on the poor and working class. But even the detestable superrich are being made miserable by the sadistic things market competition implores them to do to the rest of us.”
“Capitalism Is Making Us All Miserable — Even the Superrich”
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Standard Oil:
““The Standard Oil Company,
by 1899, was a holding company which controlled the stock of many other companies. The capital was $110 million, the profit was $45 million a year, and John D. Rockefeller's fortune was estimated at $200 million. Before long he would move into iron, copper, coal, shipping, and banking (Chase Manhattan Bank). Profits would be $81 million a year, and the Rockefeller fortune would total two billion dollars.
Andrew Carnegie was a telegraph clerk at seventeen, then secretary to the head of the Pennsylvania Railroad, then broker in Wall Street selling railroad bonds for huge commissions, and was soon a millionaire. He went to London in 1872, saw the new Bessemer method of producing steel, and returned to the United States to build a million-dollar steel plant. Foreign competition was kept out by a high tariff conveniently set by Congress, and by 1880 Carnegie was producing 10,000 tons of steel a month, making $1 1/2 million a year in profit. By 1900 he was making $40 million a year, and that year, at a dinner party, he agreed to sell his steel company to J. P. Morgan. He scribbled the price on a note: $492,000,000.
Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie's corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive.
And so it went, in industry after industry-shrewd, efficient businessmen building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies. These industries were the first beneficiaries of the "welfare state." By the turn of the century, American Telephone and telegraph had a monopoly of the nation's telephone system, International Harvester made 85 percent of all farm machinery, and in every other industry resources became concentrated, controlled. The banks had interests in so many of these monopolies as to create an interlocking network of powerful corporation directors, each of whom sat on the boards of many other corporations. According to a Senate report of the early twentieth century, Morgan at his peak sat on the board of forty-eight corporations; Rockefeller, thirty-seven corporations.
Meanwhile, the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described a capitalist state: pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich. Not that the rich agreed among themselves; they had disputes over policies. But the purpose of the state was to settle upper-class disputes peacefully, control lower-class rebellion, and adopt policies that would further the long-range stability of the system. The arrangement between Democrats and Republicans to elect Rutherford Hayes in 1877 set the tone. Whether Democrats or Republicans won, national policy would not change in any important way.”
~ A People's History Of The United States - Howard Zinn”
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