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jim hightower
Beware This Libertarian Oligarch's Ecological Utopia in Texas
Even as one arm of Elon Musk's empire was extolling his vision of a Garden of Eden situated along the beauty of the Colorado River, another arm was scheming to pollute it!
Mar 22, 2023
Exciting news, people: Utopia is on the rise!
Space Commander Elon Musk has announced that His Magnificence (i.e., him) intends to construct his very own private town on 3,500 acres of farmland near his new Tesla plant southeast of Austin, Texas. More than a town, Musk explains that he will create utopia in Texas, promising an "ecological paradise" where his Tesla workers can live and do fun things like swimming, pickleball... and paying rent to him.
The gabillionaire is certainly rich enough to erect his own Muskopolis. But, alas, the "utopia" name is already taken. Indeed, I've been to Utopia, Texas, a small town west of San Antonio that was founded in 1855 by (cover your ears, Elon!) Swiss Socialists. Of course, history shows that a company town is ruled by the company, not by residents (much less socialists). And Musk has made clear at Tesla, Twitter, etc. that his personal whims rule over workers, consumers, our environment... and even truth.
Which brings us to that ecological worker's paradise he's promising. Even as one arm of his empire was extolling his vision of a Garden of Eden situated along the beauty of the Colorado River, another arm was scheming to pollute it! Musk is asking Texas' corporate-controlled regulators to let him use the site to dump 140,000 gallons a day of his industrial wastewater into the Colorado.
Excuse me, but that turns Elon's ecological paradise into a fraud. Worse, it adds up to Musk pouring 50 million gallons a year of his waste into the river, fouling the main water source for dozens of towns and hundreds of farms downstream.
Musk seeks to extend the long, sordid history in our country of company-town hucksters, and his latest Texas scam is proof that we should never trust a billionaire promising us paradise.
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When the Book-Burners Come to Your Town
In the future Ron DeSantis would build, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries for having "banned" books on the shelves.
Mar 15, 2023
Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned and, well... crude.
Yet, the concept is burning hotter than ever among a gaggle of testosterone-driven Republican leaders eager to show voters that they will go to extremes to incinerate progressive ideas and people's personal liberties. Rather than lighting bonfires, though, the new fad for GOP politicians is simply to use government power to ban the offending books (thus saving the expense of matches and lighter fluid).
It might not surprise you to learn that our Lone Star State's extremist political operatives are leading today's book-banning frenzy. One Jonathan Mitchell, for example, is going from town to town pushing Texas Republican officeholders to pass local ordinances he labels "Safe Library Patron Protection." Yes, patrons, censoring what you can read is necessary to "protect" you. The GOP ban prohibits libraries from having books, videos, etc. that contain "immoral content," which he defines as depictions of nudity, sexual behavior, mentions of masturbation, LGBTQ+ life, etc. It's also autocratically homophobic, making it illegal for librarians to display LGBTQ flags or even mention "LGBTQ Pride Month."
This repressive monomania stabs even deeper into our freedom of expression by concocting a "right" of right-wing vigilantes to enforce the ordinances. Yes, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries (and individual librarians) for having "banned" books on the shelves. To spur this political malice, Mitchell's scheme provides a $10,000 reward for every violation a vigilante finds (or fabricates).
Well, you say, thank God I don't live in Texas! But — Hello! — repression doesn't recognize state borders, so the pernicious idea of paid library marauders is spreading across the country.
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Will the United States Ever Become a Strong Nation for the Common Good?
Even more transformative than the particular components is Biden's back-to-the-future method of paying for the Rebuild America agenda: returning to highly progressive taxation.
Apr 07, 2021
It's time for America to go back to the future -- a future of true greatness created by a people united to build a strong nation for the Common Good.
From the start of our United States, rather than shrinking at the right-wing bugaboo of "Big Government," Americans have backed leaders who dared to do big public projects: Abraham Lincoln's fight for a transcontinental railroad and a land-grant college network to serve small farmers; Teddy Roosevelt's establishment of our national park system; Franklin D. Roosevelt's electrification of rural America, creation of social safety nets and conservation initiatives; Dwight Eisenhower's interstate highway system; Harry Truman's GI Bill; John F. Kennedy's moonshot; and Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty and civil rights achievements.
It's only during the last 40 years, since Ronald Reagan's "government is evil" demagoguery, that our presidents and lawmakers -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- shriveled to no-can-do mediocrities, unwilling to even try tackling America's big needs or invest in our people's unlimited possibilities. This meek failure of leadership is why our nation's infrastructure -- once world-class -- has deteriorated to an embarrassing 16th in the world, as ranked by the Global Competitiveness Report, putting us beneath such smaller and poorer nations as Iceland and Portugal. It's hard to muster any national pride in chanting, "We're No. 16!"
But -- surprise! -- here comes Joe, a lifelong go-slow Democrat, unexpectedly rising to the challenge by proposing a get-serious, roll-up-our-sleeves $2 trillion package of investments to modernize and extend Americas collapsing infrastructure. While President Biden's plan is not as big as it needs to be, neither is it merely more tinkering around the edges, meekly trying once again to "incentivize" the corporate plutocracy to put another coat of pain on our country's structural inadequacies.
Biden's proposal would not only repair roads, bridges and dams but also give a long-overdue boost to such needs as rural high-speed broadband, replacing the country's deadly networks of lead water pipes, building clean energy systems, constructing affordable housing, upgrading public transit systems, increasing home health care for the elderly and providing affordable child care facilities -- all geared toward creating good union jobs and lifting local economies.
Even more transformative than the particular components is Biden's back-to-the-future method of paying for the Rebuild America agenda: returning to highly progressive taxation. Instead of the same old no-tax, laissez-fairyland extremism that Washington has practiced for 40 years (leading to the deep infrastructure hole we're now in), Biden will at long last demand that multinational corporate behemoths and their greed-fueled, uberrich chieftains stop dodging their tax obligations to America. It's the same fair-taxation policy that funded our interstate highway system and the Space Race -- a period of unmatched USA productivity and rising living standards for millions of working families.
An old political truism expresses that often-frustrating challenge of making big change: "Where there's a will, there are 1,000 won'ts."
And, oh, what a hurricane of won'ts swirled out of Washington's power centers in March to pummel Joe Biden! Corporate lobbyists and their congressional hirelings howled and blustered at him for declaring that he would seek a tax increase on corporations to pay for the essential, overdue job of repairing and expanding our nation's antiquated, dilapidated and wholly inadequate infrastructure. Biden wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from its present 21%. Blowhard Mitch McConnell, the GOP's Senate leader, practically blew a gasket, wailing that poor corporate America should not be singled out to bear this "burden."
But wait -- didn't Mitch single out the corporate giants in 2017 to receive a windfall in their tax rate, lowering it from 35%? Yes, and they pocketed hundreds of billions of dollars from that giveaway. So, nudging them up to 28% is hardly punishment, for they still come out way ahead of the rates that regular people pay.
And the corporate tax rate is a sham, for the giants have wormed loopholes in the law to give them exemptions so they can avoid paying what they owe. A new study reports that at least 55 of the biggest corporations paid a goose egg in U.S. income taxes last year -- zero, nada -- despite hauling in billions in profits. As Sen. Bernie Sanders points out: "If you paid $120 for a pair of Nike Air Force 1 shoes, you paid more to Nike than it paid in federal income taxes over the past 3 years, while it made $4.1 billion in profits." In those three years, Nike honcho Phil Knight worked the system to increase his personal wealth by $23 billion.
That's the corrupt wealth system that McConnell, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the corporate plutocracy are defending. Oh, they exclaim, we think it's essential to repair and update America's crucial public systems -- BUT, as McConnell so gingerly put it, "As much as we would like to address infrastructure," asking our corporate political funders to pay more "is not going to get support from our side."
So, who do they want to pay for it? You. Working people and the poor. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and GOP leader, points to putting more user fees on drivers and adding taxes on consumers as the way to go.
To see a list of other major corporate scofflaws who've been pocketing billions in profits yet paying zilch to the upkeep of America, visit the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy website at ITEP.org.
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Trump to Working Class: 'Adios, Chumps'
The guy who pretended to be a champion for America's workers has been a one-man working-class wrecking crew, systematically destroying employee rights and protections against the abuses of corporate bosses
Jun 12, 2019
Congratulations on that nice pay raise you got last year, a 7% hike--wow!
Seven percent might not sound all that big, but after 40 years of stagnant wages, even a small uptick can help cover some of your old credit card bills or get an upgrade on your 10-year-old pickup.
Oh, wait ... You say you didn't get 7%? Oops, my mistake. It was the CEOs of corporate giants who reported to the Associated Press that they enjoyed a median jump of 7% last year. And as their paychecks were already king-size, that uptick amounted to an extra $800,000 in their take-home, for a median yearly income of $12 million each. Bear in mind that "median" means half of the corporate bosses grabbed more than 7%. For example, David Zaslav, honcho of the Discovery television network, had a 207% boost in pay, raising his total take in 2018 to $130 million.
These lavish payouts to top-floor bosses--combined with a miserliness toward rank-and-file employees who actually produce the corporate wealth--is creating an untenable income disparity in corporate America, stretching inequality in our Land of Egalitarianism to the snapping point. The pay gap between aloof CEOs and typical employees nearly doubled last year at a range of corporate giants, from PayPal to CVS Pharmacy, and it tripled at Discovery. AP's recent survey of 340 major corporations found that compensation inequality is now so extreme that a middle-wage employee would have to work 158 years to make as much as his or her chief executive was given last year alone. This separation is widening at warp speed, propelled by the boundless greed and narcissism of so-called leaders like Zaslav. To amass as much pay as he pocketed in 2018, a typical Discovery employee would have to work 989 years.
The economic "boom" that he so vaingloriously talks about is actually the sound of the middle class crashing.
When you hear corporate chieftains and such corporate cheerleaders as Donald Trump gloat that our economy is "booming," ask yourself: A boom for whom?
We have a president who mistakes price for value. Thus, to measure America's economic health is simple for him: Just check the price of corporate stocks and any fool can see that he's the best president ever at running the economy. After all, since he's been in office, Wall Street has been whizzing! Unfortunately, though, it's whizzing on you and me.
Wall Street is an inequality machine. It encourages top executives to jack up their own wealth by artificially inflating their corporation's stock prices. Then it rewards executives who offshore jobs, cut wages, monopolize markets, bust unions, gouge consumers and dodge taxes. Far from reining in Wall Street's destructive plutocratic power, Trump has juiced it up with new tax advantages for big investors and the removal of rules to restrain banker scams.
Meanwhile, the guy who pretended in his campaign to be a champion for America's workers has been a one-man working-class wrecking crew, systematically destroying employee rights and protections against the abuses of corporate bosses. On everything from overtime pay and minimum wage to workplace safety and the right to form a union, Trump & Company has sided with corporate interests over working stiffs, essentially saying to workers: "You're on your own. Adios, chumps."
So, the economic "boom" that he so vaingloriously talks about is actually the sound of the middle class crashing. That thunderous boom-boom-boom represents millions of Americans who're living paycheck to paycheck, who have little to no savings and inadequate health coverage, who can't afford the rip-off drug prices Big Pharma is being allowed to charge, who're sinking in debt. And all they're getting from Trump are his vapid political rallies, shouting "MAGA"--"Make America Great Again."
Inequality doesn't just happen; it's caused by the deliberate actions of power elites. Far from reducing inequality, Trump has intentionally escalated the corporate war on working-class Americans. Under his regime, nearly half of all new income today is going to the wealthiest 1%.
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How to Arm Nature Against Corporate Profiteers
Corporate powers—who have perverted law, logic and nature to have their lifeless profiteering entities declared "persons"—are aghast that Mother Nature not only has rights but those rights can be legally and morally superior to the claim that a corporation's right to profit is absolute
Jun 05, 2019
There's a hunters' nightmare in which a group of them flush some rabbits out of the brush, but rather than scampering away, the furry bunnies turn toward their stalkers. "Run!" shouts one of the hunters. "Run for your lives! The rabbits have guns!"
Arming animals would make the sport of hunting a bit more sporting, wouldn't it? Well, what if we did give all wildlife a fighting chance against the destructive firepower of profiteers who so carelessly ravage their habitats and kill them off? Of course, we can't arm nature with guns, but we could recognize that other species and ecosystems are living creatures with intrinsic legal rights to exist and flourish, thus giving nature its day in court to defend its well-being.
Like us humans, the lakes, forests, wildlife, etc. could have legal status to sue and be represented by lawyers to protect themselves from mindless exploitation, injury and death
Like us humans, the lakes, forests, wildlife, etc. could have legal status to sue and be represented by lawyers to protect themselves from mindless exploitation, injury and death. This Rights of Nature concept is already being applied in such countries as Ecuador and New Zealand, and more than three dozen U.S. cities and towns have passed grassroots ordinances acknowledging that various natural resources in their areas have inherent rights to take polluters and other despoilers to court.
Ironically, the corporate powers--who have perverted law, logic and nature to have their lifeless profiteering entities declared "persons"--are aghast that Mother Nature not only has rights but those rights can be legally and morally superior to the claim that a corporation's right to profit is absolute.
At its core, the Rights of Nature movement is asserting the obvious: Earth's biosphere is not a free candy store for our taking. Water, land, air and fellow creatures are not our property. We are one with the natural world and must find ways to cooperate fully with its health for our own survival. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is working to help ordinary people bring the Rights of Nature laws into their communities. We cannot count on our so-called leaders in Washington to save our natural resources from corporate profiteers. We the People must take a stand.
The real site of America's founding was not in such stately venues as Independence Hall but in America's countless taverns, pubs and saloons of the late 1700s. Free-flowing spirits, mixed with the spirit of rebellion, generated big ideas and passionate, often rowdy arguments about democratic rights.
Indeed, "pub democracy" remains one of the last and best sources for generating (and plotting) anti-establishment movements. No surprise, then, that the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was conceived a few years ago by a hardy group of rebels quaffing beers in a Toledo, Ohio, pub. In 2014, residents of this city on the edge of Lake Erie were sickened by a toxic algae bloom that poisoned their drinking water. State officials were in the pocket of polluters who caused the bloom, so they did nothing to protect the lake and community from more poisoning.
Well, thought the pub party, what if Lake Erie could protect itself by establishing its own legal right to "exist, flourish, and naturally evolve?" From that fertile thought, the group drafted the lake's bill of rights as a proposed amendment to the city's charter. They defied local naysayers by getting double the number of signatures required to put the bill of rights on the ballot, beat back the power structure's legal ploy to deny a vote on the proposal and mounted a door-to-door people's campaign to counter a media blitz partially funded by such giants as Coca-Cola, FedEx and PhRMA. And they won! In the February election, 61% of Toledo's voters said YES to recognizing legally enforceable rights for the natural world.
Supercilious corporate elites, however, refuse to let such a trifling matter as the will of the people interfere with their sense of entitlement to poison for profit. So they've now gotten top Ohio officials to shill for them in a court filing asserting that the state is the "proprietor in trust" of Lake Erie. Thus, they claim that local voters (i.e., Toledo's people) have no power to deny so-called corporate "persons" permission to pollute real, live, breathing people's water.
Of course, the democracy rebels are not about to back down. Keep up with them at Toledoans for Safe Water, www.LakeErieAction.org.
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Let's Re-fund America
We must create a politics that directly confronts the narcissistic nabobs who're knocking down our people and our country
May 08, 2019
The powerhouses of Wall Street have tunneled directly into the cloistered backrooms of Washington deal making, extracting trillions of dollars worth of government bailouts, special tax breaks and regulatory favors every year. Yet, in a stupefying act of hypocrisy, they have also been the major force pushing policymakers to embrace extreme laissez-faire bunkum and to inflict the most austere budgetary minginess on the American people.
Through their lobbyists, front groups, economic shills, media hacks and the politicians they've purchased, these pampered princes of high finance have gained a stranglehold on policy, choking off the public investment that our country desperately needs. In a nonstop drone, their operatives chant: "America is broke. Fiscal doom looms. Government spending is the cause. Austerity policies are our only hope."
And Washington is buying this snake oil. In a Fox News appearance, George Will, the GOP's high priest of the plutocratic order, declared victory for the laissez-fairyites, noting that they have taken control of Washington's conversation on public spending: "We are now talking entirely on Republican terms, in Republican vocabulary. No taxes, how much is the spending going to be cut? The federal workforce is being cut."
No doubt the debate in Will's tiny circle is focused entirely on shrinking America into its dark vision of parsimonious plutocracy. But I find that most people, living way outside George's bubble of elites, have a far bigger vision of what America can be, and they're engaged in a less constipated conversation about ways to meet our country's budgetary needs.
If you review opinion polls, hear the results of door-to-door outreach campaigns, or just have a few real conversations at various chat-and-chew cafes, you'll tap into ordinary people's simmering anger at the Wall Street/Washington axis that's dictating a harsh normal of economic inequality, declining opportunity and diminished democratic control. The elites are constantly monkey-wrenching the public's ability to act together, thus limiting our nation's possibilities and causing America's present drift from world leader to mediocrity.
This undermining of the workaday Americans goes against the very essence of America, from our egalitarian ideals to our can-do spirit. We must create a politics that directly confronts the narcissistic nabobs who're knocking down our people and our country -- and rally an increasingly restive workaday majority to come together in an expansive, aggressive effort to re-fund America. For example:
- As the richest country in the history of the world, the USA ought to have the top public education system, not one of the worst among wealthy nations.
- Improve Obamacare to Medicare for All.
- Let's reestablish our technological supremacy, from building the green economy of the future to reaching boldly again into outer space.
- Our priceless system of public parks should be flourishing and expanding, not firing park rangers and locking entry gates.
- Rather than succumbing to a bleak future of low-wage, part-time, temporary, no-security jobs, let's publicly invest in full employment, world-class skills and technology that works for workers.
- Restore democratic power with public financing of all election campaigns, enact labor law reforms so workers themselves can democratize the workplace and encourage the development of co-ops as an alternative to corporate control of the economy.
That's an America that is worthy of ALL of us -- a society of historic democratic vision, genuine opportunity for all and a shared prosperity. Most people would feel good about bringing children into that world. That's the America we should strive to be.
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Where the Money Is
As most Americans now realize, the tax cut was not for them but instead was a disgraceful trillion-dollar-a-year giveaway to corporate giants and their wealthiest shareholders
May 01, 2019
Famed bank robber Willie Sutton once explained that he busted into banks because "that's where the money is." What a small-timer! Corporate thieves--including the biggest banks--know that the big scores are in the tax code and federal budget. America's superrich establishment decided to woo Trump and his fanatical constituency to back their agenda of plutocratic plunder.
It's working. The big legislative accomplishment of the guy who claimed to be a working-class hero was his 2017 Christmastime signing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. As most Americans now realize, the tax cut was not for them but instead was a disgraceful trillion-dollar-a-year giveaway to corporate giants and their wealthiest shareholders.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness, hundreds of TCJA's corporate backers are already making a killing. In just the first three quarters of 2018, big business quietly pocketed stunning tax savings they would have -- and should have -- paid to support America's public needs:
-- Apple: $4.5 billion
-- AT&T: $2.2 billion
-- Bank of America: $2.4 billion
-- Verizon: $1.75 billion
-- Walmart: $1.6 billion
And what about the "jobs" part of the act? Its core promise was that CEOs would devote their huge tax gift to new jobs and pay raises for working stiffs. Indeed, in 2017, about three dozen brand-name giants funded a lobbying front, deceptively named Reforming America's Taxes Equitably, to promote the notion that a tax break would "boost job creation."
But ThinkProgress found that in 2018, RATE members -- including AT&T, Capital One, CSX, Ford, General Dynamics, Intel, Kimberly-Clark, Lockheed Martin, Macy's, Northrop Grumman, T-Mobile, Verizon, Viacom and Walmart -- instead eliminated more than 100,000 U.S. jobs. Verizon, for instance, promptly offered a "voluntary severance package" to 44,000 employees and offshored thousands of its U.S. jobs to India. It was "an opportunity to find more efficiencies," the CEO told workers, "and help expedite ... an innovative operating model for our future." Or, to put it more simply: It was greed.
Ah ... there you have it: Forget America's fundamental values of justice and opportunity for all and don't expect even a modicum of honesty from rich shareholders and top executives. For example, Kevin Hassett, a far-right corporate ideologue chosen by Trump to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers, flat-out lied that the corporate gifts would spark "an immediate jump in wage growth" averaging as high as $9,000 a year.
Got yours yet?
So where did the money go? To the top. After all, only the tax giveaways were mandated -- not a dime in obligations (not even thank-you notes) was written into law. With no strings attached and union voices largely hushed or marginalized, top executives and board members spent it on themselves and their big investors, hiding their grubby motives behind "stock buybacks," an accounting gimmick that hikes the pay of bosses who do nothing to earn it. The three-step fraud:
1. Humongous Incorporated gets a $1 billion tax gift from Uncle Sam.
2. HI quickly spends the booty to buy its own stock, which inflates the shares' value. 3. Since HI top executives are awarded big chunks of company stock -- abracadabra! -- they can reap huge gains by selling that stock at the inflated price.
Workers, who mostly own no stock, gain little to nothing from these buyback scams. Today's corporate ethic (shamelessly practiced by the president) is clear: Take the money and run. For example, as Politico reported last July:
-- Two weeks after AbbVie, a pharmaceutical giant, announced a $10 billion buyback in February, its stock price soared, and eight top execs cashed in $27 million in stock.
-- After Mastercard's $4 billion stock buyback, its CEO cashed in for a personal payday of $44 million.
-- After Oracle jacked up its stock price with a $12 billion buyback, its co-CEO cashed in a whopping $250 million in shares.
All is not lost. While the piggiest corporations gorge themselves at the public trough, a growing number of their corporate cousins have stood up for a better way of doing business: B Corporations. The B stands for benefit, referring to these corporations' pledge to benefit workers, the community and the environment. The B Corp community works toward lower levels of poverty and inequality, a healthier environment, stronger communities and high-quality jobs with dignity. For more details and a list of B Corps, go to bcorporation.net.
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What Is the 'AI Agenda,' Who's Pushing It and Why?
Executives try to skate by the human toll by saying that the machine takeover is a natural process, the inevitable march of technological progress. That's hogwash. It's all about profit.
Apr 24, 2019
The great thing about corporate giants is that they are such amazing business innovators. Look at the Big Four airline oligopoly, for example. They've perfected the unique business model of the "double-squeeze": squeezing more customers into ever-smaller seats while simultaneously squeezing more money out of customers' pockets. What genius!
But in the category of "wheel-spinning" innovation -- i.e., trying to change a corporation's course without actually changing anything -- it's hard to top McDonald's. For several years, the fast-food chain has been losing customers to younger chains with healthier, more stylish offerings. So, its CEO, Steve Easterbrook, has tried again and again to recoup the losses by tinkering with the menu, calling it "healthy" and "fresh." But McNuggets and fries are still what they are, so people have not bitten the PR bait.
"The AI agenda is not coming from the gods, nature or machines. It's a choice being made by an elite group of corporate and political powers trying to impose their selfish interests on everyone else."
So the burger boss looked out at his 38,000 chain stores, and he had a vision -- eureka! -- of the creative change that would cause hungry eaters to flock to the Golden Arches: AI.
What? AI stands for artificial intelligence, the rapidly advancing digital technology of creating cerebral computers -- essentially, robots that think. Able to program themselves, act on their own and even reproduce, these cognitive automatons are coming soon to McDonald's and other workplaces near you.
Yes, exclaimed the innovative CEO, consumers need a robotic order-taker to advise them on what to order -- based on AI's ability to analyze millions of data bits about the weather, traffic, time of day and what other people are ordering. "Decision technology" it's called, and Steve spent 300 million McDollars to buy a whole company that peddles these so-called thinking machines.
The AI outfit says the benefit of its brainy computer system is that it allows "the rapid and scalable creation of highly targeted digital interactions." Now what could be more inviting than that?
Easterbrook adds excitedly that his innovative deployment of this artificial intelligence network will provide an "even more personalized customer experience." Sure, Steve, nothing like more computers to add a warm personal touch to wolfing down another cookie-cutter Big Mac.
Far from helping you, the snazzy new AI ordering system at McDonald's will be helping the corporation by silently compiling personal information about you, ranging from your "movement patterns" to your license plate number. As Easterbrook admits, McDonald's will use the technology to "make the most" of the data collected.
The CEO of McDonald's may be talking about his "digital interaction" plan, but most corporate bosses won't talk about theirs in public. Amongst themselves -- psssst -- they whisper excitedly about implementing a transformative "AI agenda" across our economy.
Not wanting to stir the preemptive rebellion by human workers who're being targeted for displacement, corporate chieftains are carefully avoiding terms like "robotic automation," substituting euphemisms like "digital transformation." In their boardrooms and clubrooms, however, top executives see AI as their golden calf -- a holy path to windfall profits and personal enrichment by replacing whole swaths of their workforce with an automated army of cheap machines that don't demand raises, take time off or form unions. Kai-Fu Lee, a longtime tech exec, confided to The New York Times that AI "will eliminate 40 percent of the world's jobs within 15 years."
Some CEOs are so giddy about AI's profiteering potential that they openly admit their intentions. Take Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics giant hailed as a job-creating savior by Donald Trump last year when it was given $3 billion in public subsidies to open a huge manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. Now, it's reneging on its promises, and Foxconn's honcho says he intends to replace 80% of its workers with robots within 10 years. Corporate apologists cavalierly claim that displaced humans can be "reskilled" to do something else. But what? Where? When? No response ... and no plans.
Executives try to skate by the human toll by saying that the machine takeover is a natural process, the inevitable march of technological progress. Hogwash! The AI agenda is not coming from the gods, nature or machines. It's a choice being made by an elite group of corporate and political powers trying to impose their selfish interests on everyone else.
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As We Gape at Trump's Sideshow, Corporations Are Picking Our Pockets
When Trump Inc. crashed into Washington—KABLOOIE!—incrementalism exploded into a government of agencies almost wholly owned and run by Wall Street bankers, CEOs, industry lobbyists and corporate lackeys often plucked from the ranks of former Congress critters
Apr 03, 2019
As America rapidly urbanized in the 1920s and '30s, nearly every burgeoning city gave rise to a jumbled, boisterous side of town that lay somewhere between exciting and dangerous. One such place in my state, known as "Deep Ellum," was a stretch of Elm Street in East Dallas. A predominantly African American community, it also hosted a freewheeling mix of immigrant laborers, rural migrants, musicians, saloonkeepers, preachers, fortune-tellers and assorted hustlers. It was both bedazzling and dicey -- the sort of place where the blues lay in wait for innocents. As a popular song of the day warned:
"If you go down in Deep Ellum,
"Keep your money in your shoes
"Or you'll go home
"With the Deep Ellum blues.
"Oh, sweet mama,
"Your daddy's got them Deep Ellum blues."
A 1937 article in a black weekly described it as a rollicking scene "where business, religion, hoodooism, gambling, and stealing goes on at the same time without friction." The writer told about seeing a Bible-thumping street preacher mesmerize a crowd by prophesizing that "Jesus Christ would come to Dallas in person in 1939." As the evangelizer grew louder, "a pickpocket was lifting a week's wages from another guy's pocket, who stood with open mouth to hear the prophecy."
Some 80 years later, our whole country is living through a reign of pure flimflam -- one without any of Deep Ellum's sketchy charms. Our media, politics, government, public discourse and civic focus have been captured by the mesmerizing sideshow of AllThingsTrump -- from the Putin bromance to the Saudi bone-saw horror, from constant Cabinet chaos to the caravan bugaboo, from his vanishing middle-class tax cut to his illusory wall, from peep-show vulgarity to full-monty corruption ... and to the nonstop spectacles emanating from this White House. As we gape 24/7 at the amazing ridiculousness of The Donald, however, our pockets are being picked, not by scammers who are barely getting by themselves but by wildly rich, greedy and powerful corporations.
These members of the corporate elite in America profess dismay at Trump's ignorance, arrogance and all-around awfulness, but they're delighted to exploit his power of distraction, which helps them grab more power and wealth at the expense of you and me.
These members of the corporate elite in America profess dismay at Trump's ignorance, arrogance and all-around awfulness, but they're delighted to exploit his power of distraction, which helps them grab more power and wealth at the expense of you and me. They've known all along that Trump's "drain the swamp" campaign pledge was a cynical political slogan. After all, he is the scion of a New York real estate con artist, who followed Daddy into the mucky gurgles of deep financial rot. Sure enough, far from draining Washington's pay-to-play swamp, Trump promptly repackaged it as a luxury hot tub resort, selling off parcels to eager corporate buyers.
And lo, in practically no time, the slick ooze of Trump's swamp (including tax breaks, regulatory repeals, monopoly promotion and labor suppression) has lubricated the way for the biggest, richest and greediest of corporate powers to broaden and deepen their control over consumers, workers, suppliers, competitors, technology and government itself.
The dominance of these profiteering interests did not, of course, begin with Trump. For the past half-century, they and their acolytes have steadily spread the pernicious legalistic fiction that a corporation's sole obligation is to generate as much profit as possible for its shareholders. Every administration since (Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama) has essentially accepted this ridiculous fairy tale as fact. And, to one degree or another, each has taken steps that have incrementally advanced the supremacy of corporate interests over all others.
But when Trump Inc. crashed into Washington--KABLOOIE!--incrementalism exploded into a government of agencies almost wholly owned and run by Wall Street bankers, CEOs, industry lobbyists and corporate lackeys often plucked from the ranks of former Congress critters. Rather than seeking favors from government officials, corporate interests have now largely become the government. And while we gawk at the president's monkeyshines, these gluttons are looting the people's treasury and fast locking in a permanent American oligarchy.
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Trumponomics: Batman...or Dracula?
Trump's economic report is shamelessly grandiose, replete with flagrant fabrications of facts and pretensions that his failed trickle-down policies are record-setting successes
Mar 27, 2019
It's shocking, I tell you, shocking that some millionaires and billionaires would brazenly lie and cheat in a corrupt nationwide scheme to rig the entrance procedures of top colleges.
As recently reported, these self-entitled elites were gaming the system in order to weasel their undeserving children into prestigious schools, displacing more-qualified students. Where do these privileged grown-ups get the idea that truth and integrity don't matter, that they can just make up facts and bend any rules for their personal advantage?
Trumpsters insist that their massive tax giveaway is producing a surge in corporate investment that--abracadabra!--creates jobs and pay hikes. Only ... there's been no investment surge. Corporate chieftains simply pocketed Trump's handout.
For one answer, look no further than the Economic Report of the President, which was released at the same time the college admissions scandal was making the news. Rather than real analyses, these annual forecasts by the White House's handpicked economists have become political documents puffing up a president's record. But even by partisan public relations standards, Trump's report is shamelessly grandiose, replete with flagrant fabrications of facts and pretensions that his failed trickle-down policies are record-setting successes.
In particular, the president's voodoo economists tried to pass off his 2017 trillion-dollar corporate tax break as a mighty engine of growth for the working class. Speaking in the ecstatic tongue of voodoo sorcerers, the Trumpsters insist that their massive tax giveaway is producing a surge in corporate investment that--abracadabra!--creates jobs and pay hikes. Only ... there's been no investment surge. Corporate chieftains simply pocketed Trump's handout.
When the verbal lies of economic scoundrels aren't working, they resort to charts that convert lies into a visual appearance of progress. The Trump report has a dandy chart of deception with a baseline showing slow growth under President Barack Obama and a bright line streaking dramatically higher to show phenomenal growth when proposals such as Trump's bold infrastructure plan are enacted. Of course, the chart would be more convincing if Trump were to have actually proposed such a plan and were aggressively pushing it through Congress. But he's made no such effort, so the chart is a double fraud -- or, as economist Paul Krugman calls it, "voodoo squared."
But even a White House report that's a pack of lies can reveal some awful truths.
First, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has issued a national forecast that exposes its members as the Council of Presidential Butt-Kissers. Essentially hailing Trump as genius on a stick, the sycophantish advisers tell us that his amazing set of economic policies will achieve solid growth and prosperity for the people in perpetuity. In fact, though, he's only been able to get a couple of his policies enacted, and most aren't even being considered -- which is why serious policymakers are paying zero attention to this fantastical document. Indeed, some student interns who worked on the report mocked it by slipping in the names of such comic superheroes as Batman, Captain America and Spider-Man, citing them for helping prepare it!
However, on second glance, the report details a radical right-wing deregulation agenda that Trump & Company are quietly but determinedly pushing under the ruse of stimulating economic growth. For example, it calls for eliminating minimum safety and educational standards for operators of child care centers. Huh? Yes, the Trump laissez-faire ideologues declare that such regulations to protect children can "increase the cost of obtaining care, thus serving as a disincentive (for parents) to work." Yeah, just shoo the little tykes into unregulated corporate hog pens so Mom and Dad can work minimum wage jobs, thus boosting corporate profits all around ... and then call it progress.
Meanwhile, the president's economists also admit that the only way they can get America's economic growth above a dismal 2 percent a year is for Congress to make two big changes:
1. Roll back labor rules that protect America's workers from corporate exploitation. 2. Pass another round of even deeper tax cuts for corporations and billionaires, as the 2017 cuts didn't work.
Do they think we have sucker wrappers around our heads? Trump's economic report is not written by superheroes like Batman, but by Goofy, Dracula and Scrooge. When top leaders lie so blatantly for their own gain, we can't be surprised that other narcissists will take it as moral permission to do the same.
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