Even in blue states, corporations that promise jobs & economic growth, dictate the rules, which frequently means low pay & few regulations:
Amazon gets $137M in NY State welfare.
In violation of state open records laws, the secretive state Subsidy Board waived rules on hiring & prevailing wages.
#Argentina#Milei#AnarchoCapitalism: "Depending on who you ask, Javier Milei’s speech at the 2024 World Economic Forum was one of two things: an endorsement of free-market fundamentalism so bold the Wall Street Journal called it a “spine transplant” or an uninspired list of Hayekian clichés, replete with outdated talk of “defending Western values” against the creep of “socialist serfdom.”
The forum was, if nothing else, a coming-out party for the anarcho-capitalist president of Argentina. Certainly, calling the Davos elite a “socialist cabal” was an attention-grabbing stunt. However, back home, Argentines have had over a month to come to terms with Milei’s slash-and-burn approach to politics. And, as they do, they are beginning to realize that their new leader is not bluffing.
During his first month in office, Milei has announced his intention to deregulate and liberalize the economy, sell off public assets, drastically cut spending, and raise taxes on low-income earners, all in the name of eliminating the country’s deficit. Contained in an omnibus bill currently under debate in Congress, the battery of measures is a bold statement of intent backed by the credible threat of state violence.
Whether Milei’s government will actually be able to pursue its authoritarian brand of “crack-up capitalism” remains to be seen. As several note, much of Milei’s agenda reads like it was lifted from the 1990s Washington Consensus playbook.
To get a better sense of Milei’s short-term agenda and long-term prospects, Jacobin commissioning editor Nicolas Allen spoke with historian Pablo Pryluka."
The world’s richest & most powerful oligarchs are depending on the GOP Party to make the world safe for their 21C form of autocratic kleptocracy. #TFG (owned by the KGB/GRU) is their man.
The oldest form of govt in the world (at one time or another ruled every “civilized” nation on Earth) is oligarchy.
“The green Ford Falcon means endorsing the disappearance, torture and extremely violent death of all those who opposed the dictatorship,” said Beatriz Busaniche, president of the human rights and technology foundation, Vía Libre. She described Milei and Villarruel’s denialism as “re-legitimising” discourse that was widely discredited in Argentine society.
“There’s been a retreat of public discourse,” she said. “The sphere of public debate has become so aggressive that many people have started to lock their accounts and leave social media.”
Despite his promises, it is not clear whether Milei would be able to privatise Argentina’s public media, because doing so would require changing the law that governs them, explained Agus Lecchi, secretary general of the SiPreBA journalists’ union, who works for Argentina’s Televisión Pública. That means it would have to pass through Argentina’s congress. Milei’s Freedom Advances coalition will not have a majority in either the deputies or the senate.
Nonetheless, Argentina’s public media have come under fire from hostile governments before: in 2018, right-wing President Mauricio Macri’s administration attempted to lay off 68 journalists at the state news agency, Télam, although all were reincorporated after a labour court found their dismissals to be illegal."
CFPB Dir Chopra is warning that the nature of the technology powering AI could lead to oligopolies with sweeping implications for the economy.
The reaction to Altman’s firing — & his subsequent hiring by Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor — underscores how AI’s future will likely rest with a handful of very large companies & their boards.
Cruise is taking all its vehicles off public roads amid expanded safety probe -CNBC 11/15/23
Feds have no idea how many times cruise driverless cars hit pedestrians. Last mo., CA ordered Cruise driverless cars to stop operating in the state after a Cruise vehicle dragged & injured a pedestrian in SF. The NTSA launched a “preliminary investigation” into the company's cars-.
I was watching a video from More Perfect Union about how the US and Puerto Rico itself have created a wealth inequality that is as profoundly unique as it is disturbing.
In a clip from this video, I noticed something called Anarchapulco in the background. So, I paused it and looked it up.
Upon looking up this AnarchApulco nonsense, I first click to see what it costs (ignoring the fact that they have a menu at the top for NFTs.
The tickets are $600 per person.
So I click on the speaker page. It's as diverse as a Connecticut country club squash team, filled with white grifters pushing conspiracy theories, crypto, and tips to living like them (which never includes being handed their wealth or social connections to acquire wealth).
The leader of this shitshow is a self-proclaimed AnCap Libertarian named Jeff Berwick. Dude pushes Crypto, NFTs, and his own newsletter called the Dollar Vigilante.
Next is Max Igan. Max Igan has links to MeWe and Rumble (far-right friendly platforms). He also uses the term "globalist" in his biography on "The Other Side of Midnight" which appears to be some sort of right-wing, online radio station.
For those unfamiliar, "Globalist" is a euphemism for Jew. It's a frequent term used by far-right, like Alex Jones.
Next is Larken Rose. He's another AnCap Libertarian. He's done time for tax evasion. And is well-known enough that Wesley Snipes tried to use Rose's arguments at his own tax evasion trial.
Rose is pushing his new movie, about a plantation that likens actual slavery to wage slavery and capitalism. While there are parallels, Rose (who is white) wrote a script in which he drops the N-word in an opening scene. Beyond that, the movie is full of exposition and lacks any real talent or vision for storytelling.
I'm not going to go through every grifter on this list, because I do have actual work to do, but there are two more standouts beyond the pasty homeopaths, internet-only radio disk jockeys, and COVID deniers.
I was going to do one last sketch on Ian Smith, but, to be honest, he's just a gymbro science-denier that sells "water treatments" and supplements. 🥱
What's the point of all this?
These grifters are insidious and the far-right is trying to appropriate leftist terminologies and twist them.
They take small grains of truth, the base rhetoric of AnComs and grow genetically modified shitmuffins from them. If you ever doubt this is happening, remember that Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Watch yourselves out there, keep your heads on a swivel, and don't assume that people are who they say they are.