“Russia's biggest oil project rises on coast of Yenisey Bay”
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Here's the reason we must defeat D.C. corporate Democrats, such as Pelosi & Schumer –"
Key Passage:
“Executives are seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices,” reads a Wall Street Journal story explaining that around two-thirds of the largest publicly traded companies are showing profit margins higher today than they did in 2019, before the pandemic. Over 100 companies show profit margins of 50 percent or more above those 2019 levels.
The tawny emperor (Asterocampa clyton) female
Ice Age National Scientific Reserve Unit, Wisconsin, USA
2020-07-11 _F2A1166aaa
More from David Dayen
In other words, inflation is being enhanced by exploitation. Profiteers are using the frenzy around higher prices as an excuse to reel in much more than increased costs. President Biden has only tiptoed around calling this out and taking action. But telling a story about corporate price-gouging and sustaining a push against it is a key component to resolving the crisis—and, perhaps, reversing Biden’s slump.
Corporate executives are not hiding their handiwork; instead, they’re boasting about it in financial disclosures and earnings calls. “We have not seen any material reaction from consumers,” said the chief financial officer of Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer goods company, which has hiked prices three times in the past year. “What we are very good at is pricing,” said Colgate-Palmolive’s CEO. “We find that taking several small price increases is more effective than one large price jump,” added the CFO of Unilever. Dollar Tree, a discount store which has the word “dollar” in its name, has decided to permanently set its price point at $1.25, stating specifically that the move is “not a reaction to short-term or transitory market conditions.”
“Fighting the Inflation Profiteers
Companies are raising prices well above increases in their costs. The only antidote is to finally take action against corporate power.”
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“What you learned about the ‘first Thanksgiving’ isn’t true. Here’s the real story”
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“We Don't Talk About Collapse To Revel In It, We Talk About Collapse to Prevent It” - by Charles Hugh Smith
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“Black Friday reminder that we need a 15% corporate minimum tax so corporations pay their fair share of taxes like everyone else.”
“This tax would make wealthy corporations pay their fair share”
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“The Great Dying: The Permian Mass Extinction”
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Time to take inventory of the people who played a role in bringing America down... and seize the wealth so accumulated:
“Professor Alfred McCoy: The Rise & Decline of US Global Power”
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“Historian Alfred McCoy Predicts the U.S. Empire is Collapsing as China’s Power Grows”
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“As a coal plant fights for life, it could enrich Manchin
A West Virginia power plant proposal hangs in the balance as Manchin battles over clean energy plans in social spending bill.”
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Alessandro Stefani
“Middle East Heat Wave:Today 25 November was another record hot day in the Middle East. Maximum temperature reached 37.0C at Qarn Al Alam in Oman (this value exceeds the national monthly record of December with 5 days to go). Cooler conditions are expected from next week.”
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“Adaptive evolution of flight in Morpho butterflies”
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“There are 4,000 species of native bees in North America. 70% of them nest in the ground”
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“Carrion-eater gut bacteria help vulture bees ditch nectar for meat”
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Christopher Kelly:
“It amazes me.
The most important event is transpiring. Centuries in the making, it is happening now and seemingly no one knows. We are going extinct. We are taking most if not all life on earth with us.
I have been watching the arrival of the Apocalypse for more than a decade, and it is here. In the past as I attempted to pass on information it was met with silence. In less than twelve months, the food shortage will turn to no food at all ever again.
BS? Recorded 7 years ago, this lecture will give you an understanding of what is happening:”
“Guy McPherson speaks about abrupt climate change at SFU”
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Trudeau needs to be dealt with harshly:
“Pam Palmater
All parties including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Canada), Premier John Horgan (BC), the RCMP, and Coastal GasLink pipeline have breached Indigenous, Canadian and international laws and human rights in the violent forced removal of Wet'suwet'en from their lands - AGAIN. Canada must abide by calls from the United Nations to stop these grave human rights violations.”
“7 Things to Know About the RCMP [“Royal Canadian Mounted Police”] Invasion of Wet'suwet'en Yintah”
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“Russia Losing 1-3 Meters of Arctic Shoreline to Climate Change Annually – Scientists”
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“CO2 storage: Flora overvalued, soils undervalued”
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Biden’s Theater: Time to wake up: Manchin and Sinema are the chosen lightning rods for a position on BBB that A L L Democrats are in favor of
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“Socialists Secure Massive Victory in Venezuelan Elections”
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It cost money to make the world turn the way your rich want it to:
“What China Learned From U.S. Capitalism’s Development”
“U.S. capitalism was, in certain ways, the world’s most successful capitalism until recently. Better than the capitalist systems of Britain, Germany, and Japan, U.S. capitalism avoided two key traps. First, it found a remarkable way to manage the capitalist-worker class struggle for a long time before it lost that capacity. The United States also found a way to organize its imperial rule without the overt colonialism that provoked rising resistance that eventually became too costly and unmanageable for Britain, Germany, Japan, and other colonial powers. But in recent decades, U.S. capitalism failed to manage its class struggles or to reverse the decline in its informal imperialism.
Chinese leaders have learned, implicitly or explicitly, from how U.S. capitalism lost those capacities.”
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Social Security:
MICHAEL HUDSON:
The mythology aims to convince people that if they’re the beneficiaries of Social Security, they should be responsible for saving up to pre-fund it. That’s like saying that you’re the beneficiary of public education, so you have to pay for the schooling. You’re the beneficiary of healthcare, you have to save up to pay for that. You’re the beneficiary of America’s military spending that keeps us from being invaded next week by Russia, you have to spend for all that – in advance, and lend the money to the government for when it’s needed.
Where do you draw the line? Nobody anticipated in the 19th century that people would have to pay for their own retirement. That was viewed as an obligation of society. You had the first public pension (social security) program in Germany under Bismarck. The whole idea is that this is a public obligation. There are certain rights of citizens, and among these rights is that after your working life you deserve to live in retirement. That means that you have to be able to afford this retirement, and not have to beg in the street for money. The wool that’s been pulled over people’s eyes is to imagine that because they’re the beneficiaries of Social Security, they have to actually pay for it.
This was Alan Greenspan’s trick that he pulled in the 1980s as head of the Greenspan Commission. He said that what was needed in America was to traumatize the workers – to squeeze them so much that they won’t have the courage to strike. Not have the courage to ask for better working conditions. He recognized that the best way to really squeeze wage earners is to sharply increase their taxes. He didn’t call FICA wage withholding a tax, but of course it is. His trick was to say that it’s not really a tax, but a contribution to Social Security. And now it siphons off 15.4% of everybody’s pay check, right off the top.
The effect of what Greenspan did was more than just to make wage earners pay this FICA rake-off out of their paycheck every month. The charge was set so high that the Social Security fund lent its surplus to the government. Now, with all this huge surplus that we’re squeezing out of the wage earners, there’s a cut-off point: around $120,000. The richest people don’t have to pay for Social Security funding, only the wage-earner class has to. Their forced savings are lent to the government to enable it to claim that it has so much extra money in the budget pouring in from social security that now it can afford to cut taxes on the rich.
So the sharp increase in Social Security tax for wage earners went hand-in-hand with sharp reductions in taxes on real estate, finance for the top One Percent – the people who live on economic rent, not by working, not by producing goods and services but by making money on their real estate, stocks and bonds “in their sleep.” That’s how the five percent have basically been able to make their money.
The idea that Social Security has to be funded by its beneficiaries has been a setup for the wealthy to claim that the government budget doesn’t have enough money to keep paying. Social Security may begin to run a budget deficit. After having run a surplus since 1933, for 70 years, now we have to begin paying some of this savings out. That’s called a deficit, as if it’s a disaster and we have to begin cutting back Social Security. The implication is that wage earners will have to starve in the street after they retire.
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Biden didn’t deliver a $15 wage.
Biden didn’t deliver $2,000 checks.
Biden didn’t deliver student loan foregiveness
Biden didn’t deliver a Public Option
Biden didn’t deliver an Eviction Moratorium
Biden didn’t deliver $3.5 trillion Recon. Bill.
Liberals
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“Australia Is Lobbying for a New Cold War Between China and America”
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“Shop With Your Heart Grocery List”
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“Just in case the amnesia has set in too severely, this was American under Democratic Leadership when indigenous people protested a fossil fuel corporation.”
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“What Animals Are Likely to Go Extinct First Due to Climate Change”
"One in six species could disappear as the climate warms over the next century with animals and plants in South America particularly hard hit..."
How You Can Help to Save Wildlife
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“Deadly Fungi Are the Newest Emerging Microbe Threat All Over the World
These pathogens already kill 1.6 million people every year, and we have few defenses against them”
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“La Nina is back. Thank God.
But El Niño will be hell. And it's just a few years away. Please think of your kids future.
#DrPeterCarter: "June 2021 is at +1.17C, +1.5C is 2035 and +2C is 2045 (2018 #IPCC 1.5C report)."
"Hard to imagine, but please do so for the sake of your #children, and #please don't do nothing about it for them."
Dr Peter Carter
Director of the Climate Emergency Institute Canada and IPCC Reviewer
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GEORGE TSAKRAKLIDES:
“How To Sell Your Mother”
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“Wolff Responds: Price vs. Wage Inflation
In this Wolff Responds, Prof. Wolff explains the difference between rising prices and wages. He argues that prices are rising faster than wages, decreasing the purchasing power of most Americans, who are falling further and further behind.
“It's the old class struggle. That's right, between employers and employees. That's what's going on, and when you hear about inflation then wages, that's what the issue is.”
Follow Richard D. Wolff on Facebook and Twitter to hear daily analysis of current events. Subscribe to his YouTube channel to get notifications of new Wolff Responds videos. “
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“Amazon warehouse ambulance callouts surge in run-up to Black Friday as unions slam safety standards”
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“Police called to remove union officials from Amazon warehouse in Sydney”
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“India police charge Amazon execs in alleged marijuana smuggling case”
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“Corporate Greed the 'Real Culprit Behind Rising Prices,' Researchers Say
"The more sway mega-corporations have over our economy, the more power they have to gouge customers, squeeze Main Street, and exploit workers."”
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