Posts

Showing posts with the label Corporatism

An Assassin Showed Just How Angry America Really Is

Image
  An Assassin Showed Just How Angry America Really Is The murder of UnitedHealth Care CEO Brian Thompson was brutal. The reactions were telling. Elite disdain for the rule of law is leading to a society that is spinning out of control. Matt Stoller In his speech for the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, Senator John Sherman of Ohio made a number of legal points about how to understand competition. But the thrust of his argument was about law and order, for the specter of violence was hanging over a nation that had within living memory experienced a massive and traumatic civil war. And there had been significant, and violent, strikes involving railroads, sometimes nationwide. Sherman believed America as a free people simply could not sustain the rise of immense concentrations of power in the industrial corporations he saw in his day. Congress had to act, or chaos would reign. Here’s what  he said : You must heed their appeal or be ready for the socialist, the communist, and the ni...

Death of a Salesman

Image
  Death of a Salesman A Complex Tragedy Librarian of Celaeno On the morning of December 4th, at 6:45 AM, Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, was murdered in Times Square as he was on his way to a shareholder meeting. At the time this is being written, the identity of the killer is unknown, and the motive yet to be definitively determined. However, much speculation has emerged around words written on shell casings left at the scene- “deny,” “defend,” and “depose.” These terms echo what trial lawyers  have labeled basic insurance company tactics to avoid paying claims - “delay, deny, defend.” In other words, it seems the killer may have been motivated by revenge for some wrong done to him, perhaps a denied claim on his or a loved one’s behalf, which caused him to seek out and kill Thompson as an act of retribution. This information has in turn led to some social media unpleasantness. Thompson’s death was roundly mocked on X, with people claiming to need  prior authori...

Crony Capitalism: Everything Has a Price

Image
  Crony Capitalism: Everything Has a Price Supplemental industries for sale Donald Jeffries When I was a boy, an obese boy when obesity wasn’t cool, I never dreamed that one day we would all know the glory of paying for water. I would bring a thermos with ice water to baseball games. For basketball games, I drank out of the gym’s water fountain. I had no idea what was in that non-purified water. Fluoride was first added to our water supply in 1945. But that was only in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One of the initial proponents of putting this known poison into our drinking water was Harold Hodge, who was part of the human radiation experiments taking place around the same time. You know, where they injected vulnerable “test subjects” with plutonium and uranium. I guess they anticipated something wonderful happening as a result. The “science” behind putting a deadly toxin in our water was provided by some of the largest corporations in the country; Alcoa, the American Petroleum Institute...

Whistling Past the National Train Wreck

  Whistling Past the National Train Wreck Pointlessly rearranging the deck chairs DONALD JEFFRIES There are only so many ways one can say that America is collapsing. That the Fat Lady is nearing the end of her song. That we’re running on fumes. If Yogi Berra were around, he’d say it’s over. We had a good run, as far as civilizations go. We  were  the light of the world for a long time. Maybe even Reagan’s shining city upon a hill. Yesterday, Jason Whitlock reported on one Dexter Taylor, a software engineer who was just convicted and sentenced to  ten  years for constructing his own guns without a license. Shades of January 6. Taylor is Black, by the way, for those of you to whom that matters. I don’t expect to see former crack dealer turned FBI informant “Reverend” Al Sharpton leading a protest about  this  particular Black man being a victim of injustice. Our record-setting prisons are overflowing with people like Taylor, of all races. People who most...