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1. Embed this notice
   Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 02:05:11 JST Chuck Darwin

   It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against #Rockefeller and his fellow #monopolists.

   Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to #competition and the de-throning of that age’s #oligarchs.

   The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).

The result was constant strife, #strikes, and the murder of labor leaders;
   entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with #labor conflict.

   The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day.
   As President Grover Cleveland
   — the only Democrat elected during that period
   — proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:

   “As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies,
   🆘 while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.
   ⚠️Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

   ... But back to Jeff #Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The #Washington #Post.

   https://hartmannreport.com/p/democracy-dies-in-their-wallets-when-ec9

   • Embed this notice
     Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 02:05:09 JST Chuck Darwin

     in reply to

     Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age
     — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams
     — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.

     Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies
     to amplify their other business interests?

     Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians?

     Most Americans would probably say “No” to both.

     ⚠️ At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem.

     ✅ And the sooner the better, if we don’t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.

     #Musk #X #Bezos #WashingtonPost

   • Embed this notice
     Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 02:05:10 JST Chuck Darwin

     in reply to

     To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk
     — with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia
     — purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.

     And he’s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office,
     presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.

     We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age,
     and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the “merger mania” of the 1980s and bringing us today’s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.

     #Musk #X #Bezos #WashingtonPost

     Bill repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im)'s status on Sunday, 10-Nov-2024 02:05:11 JST Chuck Darwin

     in reply to

     Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses;

     There might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town,
     but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

     But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act,
     -- which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market.

     It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on.

     In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.

     ⭐️The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T,
     going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries.

     ⚠️It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.

     Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition.

     The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job;

     🆘A Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.

     Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump
     because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes;

     Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft rather than Bezos' Amazon Web Services, shocking analysts across the industry.

     Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company
     to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts.

     He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies.

     ❌Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?

     Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk,
     in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin,
     is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies
     (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):

     — Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues,
     with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.
     — SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.

     — The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.

     — The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.

     — The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.

     — The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.

     — The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.

     — The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.

     — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.

     — SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

     #Musk #X #Bezos #WashingtonPost

     Bill repeated this.