Tag: corporations

Second Boeing whistleblower dies in less than two months

Another whistleblower who publicly spoke out about safety issues with Boeing planes has died, less than two months after fellow whistleblower John Barnett died from a gunshot wound police have yet to finish investigating.

Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems and one of the first to allege wilful ignorance of manufacturing defects on the notorious 737 MAX, died after a “short and sudden illness”, the Seattle Times reports.

The 45-year-old was reportedly “known for a healthy lifestyle” but fell ill and was admitted to hospital a little over two weeks ago due to breathing difficulties. He was subsequently diagnosed with pneumonia and a severe bacterial infection known as MRSA.

Despite various treatments, his condition worsened rapidly before it was revealed he had suffered a stroke, and Dean’s mother posted on Facebook on April 26 that he was “fighting for his life”.

He died Tuesday morning (local time), the Seattle Times quotes his aunt Carol Parsons as confirming. A Spirit spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with Josh Dean’s family. This sudden loss is stunning news here and for his loved ones.”

Dean and Barnett were both represented by the same legal company in South Carolina.

After Barnett died from a gunshot wound in Charleston, the same South Carolina city Boeing has its 787 manufacturing facility, the coroner reported his death appeared to be “self-inflicted”; but the police are yet to complete their investigation into his death.

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The Triumvirate Running America Is Not Who You Think

With more than $23 trillion in assets under their collective management, the Big Three investment managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – are undisputed financial heavyweights.  State Street has more assets under management than the entire annual gross domestic product of Germany. And together, they’ve become known for imposing a woke political agenda on corporate America.

The Big Three have heavily invested in America’s banks. At some of them, BlackRock and Vanguard hold more than 10% of the voting stock. State Street also holds substantial amounts of shares of many banks. That’s important because, under the Change in Bank Control Act, companies are prohibited from acquiring “control” of a bank unless certain federal regulators approve beforehand. Federal regulators long ago adopted regulations that rebuttably presume “control” when a firm holds more than 10% of the voting stock of a publicly held company.

Jonathan McKernan, a Republican on the FDIC’s board of directors, recently called for enhanced monitoring of the Big Three, and for temporarily prohibiting further investments by the investment manager behemoths in FDIC-regulated banks in excess of 10%. Democrat board member Rohit Chopra appears to be on board as well.

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Profits of Doom

A mainstay of the green lobby in the face of its growing number of critics is that climate sceptics are funded by oil, gas and coal interests. By claiming that commentators such as yours truly are merely the PR front for Big Oil, green campaigners feel that they have excused themselves from the need to make rational arguments. Profit, not reason, they claim, drives scrutiny of the climate agenda. But not only do their accusations lack any evidence, they ignore the much greater flow of money between private interests and green lobbyists. So, what’s in it for them?

If only we were funded by Big Oil, perhaps I would be as wealthy as Britain’s top green officials, such as the outgoing Chief Executive of the U.K. Climate Change Committee (CCC), Chris Stark. The civil servant’s total salary and benefits for the financial year 2020-21 amounted to a whopping £400,000. That’s more than the annual total income for the organisation at number one in the green demonology – the Global Warming Policy Foundation – for four out of the last five years. The CCC’s former Chairman, John Gummer, restyled as Lord Deben, was revealed to have made £600,000 from his business dealings with green companies, which he failed to declare in the register of interests – profits that helped him employ a butler, no less, at his Suffolk mansion. Gummer’s predecessor at the CCC, Lord Adair Turner, saves the planet by heating the swimming pool at his country retreat using solar power.

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Genocide profiteer IBM wins big on EU funding

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to select targets in Gaza during the current genocide has garnered many headlines.

Few who have paid close attention to how Israel tests new technology on Palestinians can be surprised. Israel had previously signaled that its May 2021 attack on Gaza gave it an opportunity to experiment with AI.

The proper response to those signals would have been to halt any funding of AI research involving Israeli firms and institutions. The European Union has taken the opposite approach.

In September 2023, the EU authorized a project aimed at realizing a future in which collaboration between humans and AI “takes center stage.”

Participants in the project include IBM Israel – a subsidiary of the US-based giant.

IBM has a long and ignoble history of providing technology to abusers of human rights. Among its past clients were the German government during the Nazi era and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

More recently, IBM has been awarded a series of contracts to run technology support centers for the Israeli military. Robotics are a core feature of the latest such center.

It is a near certainty that IBM products can be found in Israel’s toolbox during the current genocide.

No questions about IBM’s ties to the Israeli military seem to have been asked by EU officials before they rubber-stamped the aforementioned project in September.

I have seen a copy of an “ethics check” carried out on the project – named HumAIne – at the EU’s request.

The exercise was one of box-ticking.

It came to the conclusion that HumAIne had an “exclusive focus on civil applications.” The only significant recommendation was that “an independent ethics adviser must be appointed with the relevant accumulated expertise” so that the project could be monitored.

The recommendation did not address IBM’s connections to Israel’s military. It merely referred to “ethical concerns” surrounding the project, particularly “the involvement of humans in the evaluation of AI systems.”

While HumAIne was signed off by the Brussels bureaucracy before the genocidal war on Gaza was declared in October, the EU has okayed a huge number of new research grants to Israel since then.

IBM Israel is among the recipients of those new grants. It is taking part in a project on data-sharing innovations, which the EU authorized in mid-November.

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Retailer Retaliation: Mega-Stores Use Government to Weaponize Political Power

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, employing nearly half of the U.S. private sector and accounting for nearly two-thirds of all new American jobs for the last two decades.

While their impact is unquestionable, the challenges small business owners face continue to arise at every turn, especially as giant corporate mega-stores wield considerable influence and resources – or in this case, harmful legislation.

Through their credit card bill, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) are proposing to alter the credit card routing system to, as they claim, “boost competition.” In reality, it will fundamentally alter our current safe, secure, and hassle-free system by introducing untested alternative networks. They claim the use of such networks will allow retailers to cut costs and in turn pass these savings on to consumers.

But recent research findings from the University of Miami show otherwise. The report found that consumers and small business owners will not benefit from this bill at all; rather, they will bear the brunt of the bill’s fallouts, all while Durbin and Marshall’s mega-store allies, like Walmart and Target, will gain millions.

According to the study, America’s top 100 retailers could see a benefit of nearly $3 billion, with $1.2 billion going to the top five largest retailers alone. So, where do businesses with less than $500 million in sales fit in?

The report shows that mom-and-pop shops would not only miss out on benefits – they would also lose out on their own rewards. Small business operators receive roughly $12 billion in credit card rewards when they make purchases on their own forms of credit.

This bill jeopardizes credit card rewards programs that both businesses and consumers heavily rely on. By skyrocketing costs and threatening these heavily-relied on cash back, points and rewards programs, already struggling Americans would feel an even tighter financial strain.

This legislation is just another way for corporate mega-stores to benefit, while already struggling business owners and consumers pay the price.

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Prison Phone Companies Involved in Scheme to Ban In-Person Jail Visits, Lawsuit Says

Two lawsuits filed by an activist organization allege a conspiracy between county governments in Michigan and prison phone companies. This conspiracy has involved a “quid pro quo kickback scheme” that eliminated in-person visits at prisons to boost profits for the companies, the litigation claims. As part of the scheme, a portion of those profits were allegedly then shared with the county governments.

The Civil Rights Corps, a non-profit that describes itself as “dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the United States’ legal system,” recently filed the two lawsuits, which allege a similar scheme in both St. Clair and Genesee counties in Michigan. These arrangements involved business relationships with the county sheriffs of St. Clair and Genesee that were predicated on the elimination of in-person prison visits. Under the new systems, visitors to the jails had to pay for phone calls with the incarcerated, and the money from those calls was then shared between the providers and the counties, the lawsuit alleges.

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“Capitalism Has Failed”

Today, more than at any time previously, Westerners are justifying a move toward collectivist thinking with the phrase, “Capitalism has failed.”

In response to this, conservative thinkers offer a knee-jerk reaction that collectivism has also had a dismal record of performance. Neither group tends to gain any ground with the other group, but over time, the West is moving inexorably in the collectivist direction.

As I see it, liberals are putting forward what appears on the surface to be a legitimate criticism, and conservatives are countering it with the apology that, yes, capitalism is failing, but collectivism is worse.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing here is not classical logic, as Aristotle would have endorsed, but emotionalism that ignores the principles of logic.

If we’re to follow the rules of logical discussion, we begin with the statement that capitalism has failed and, instead of treating it as a given, we examine whether the statement is correct. Only if it proves correct can we build further suppositions upon it.

Whenever I’m confronted with this now oft-stated comment, my first question to the person offering it is, “Have you ever lived in a capitalist country?” That is, “Have you ever lived in a country in which, during your lifetime, a free-market system dominated?”

Most people seem initially confused by this question, as they’re residents of either a European country or a North American country and operate under the assumption that the system in which they live is a capitalist one.

So, let’s examine that assumption.

A capitalist, or “free market,” system is one in which the prices of goods and services are determined by consumers and the open market, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.

Today, none of the major (larger) countries in what was once referred to as the “free world” bear any resemblance to this definition. Each of these countries is rife with laws, regulations, and a plethora of regulatory bodies whose very purpose is to restrict the freedom of voluntary commerce. Every year, more laws are passed to restrict free enterprise even more.

Equally as bad is the fact that, in these same countries, large corporations have become so powerful that, by contributing equally to the campaigns of each major political party, they’re able to demand rewards following the elections, that not only guarantee them funds from the public coffers, but protect them against any possible prosecution as a result of this form of bribery.

There’s a word for this form of governance, and it’s fascism.

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The U.S. government defended the overseas business interests of baby formula makers at kids’ expense

When Gustun Aunlamai arrived at school at age 4, he was so overweight that his teacher worried he’d have trouble breathing during naptime. His arms and legs were thick. His mouth peeked out from two ballooning cheeks. He moved slowly.

Throughout his toddler years, Gustun had regularly asked his parents to refill his bottle with his favorite “milk” — a type of formula made especially for kids his age. And they were happy to oblige. Sumet Aunlamai and Jintana Suksiri, who lived in a rural province north of Bangkok, had carefully chosen the brand.

Like other Thai parents, they’d been bombarded by formula advertising on television, online and in grocery stores, where a rainbow of boxes and canisters of powdered toddler milk featured teddy bears in graduation caps and giveaways like toys or diapers. It cost far more than cow’s milk but promised to make Gustun stronger and smarter.

What Jintana didn’t know, as Gustun chugged the formula and his weight neared 70 pounds, was that her son’s choice drink had sparked an international feud.

In 2017, Thai health experts tried to stop aggressive advertising for all formula — including that made for toddlers. Officials feared company promotions could mislead parents and even persuade mothers to forgo breastfeeding, depriving their children of the vital health benefits that come with it. At the time, Thailand’s breastfeeding rate was already among the lowest in the world.

But the $47 billion formula industry fought back, enlisting the help of a rich and powerful ally: the United States government.

Over 15 months, U.S. trade officials worked closely with formula makers to wage a diplomatic and political pressure campaign to weaken Thailand’s proposed ban on formula marketing, a ProPublica investigation found.

U.S. officials delivered a letter to Bangkok asking pointed questions, including whether the legislation was “more trade restrictive than necessary.” They also lodged criticisms in a bilateral trade meeting with Thai authorities and on the floor of the World Trade Organization, where such complaints can lead to costly legal battles.

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Planet Fitness Cancels Membership Of Woman Who Exposed Biological Male Using Women’s Locker Room

Planet Fitness is defending its decision to ban the membership of a customer in Alaska who spoke out about a “man in women’s locker room shaving.”

Patricia Silva left the gym in Fairbanks, Alaska and shared a video on Facebook where she said: “I just came out of Planet Fitness. There is a man shaving in the women’s bathroom.”

She also said the man “woman” was in the locker room at the same time as a 12 year old girl. 

She added: “I love him in Christ. He is a spiritual being having a human experience. He doesn’t like his gender so he wants to be a woman, but I’m not comfortable with him shaving in my bathroom.”

Planet Fitness didn’t take kindly to the interaction and cancelled Silva’s membership, telling ABC affiliate WDPE: “As the home of the Judgement Free Zone, Planet Fitness is committed to creating an inclusive environment.”

The gym said: “Our gender identity non-discrimination policy states that members and guests may use the gym facilities that best align with their sincere, self-reported gender identity. The member who posted on social media violated our mobile device policy that prohibits taking photos of individuals in the locker room, which resulted in their membership being terminated.”

Planet Fitness’ website currently states: “At Planet Fitness, we celebrate and champion diversity and provide an environment where everyone feels accepted, respected and like they belong. Planet Fitness prohibits discrimination and harassment that is based on gender identity or gender expression in the workplace and in our clubs. The following is our corporate policy regarding the accommodation of our members and team members in terms of their gender identity.”

“Planet Fitness prohibits discrimination and harassment that is based on gender identity or gender expression in the workplace and in our clubs.”

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Feds Enforcing Unconstitutional Reporting Law Against Most Businesses

Early this month, a federal judge in Alabama held the Corporate Transparency Act unconstitutional and granted plaintiffs in a lawsuit summary judgment against enforcement of the wide-reaching law, which went into effect this year. For many Americans this raises the questions: “What in hell is the Corporate Transparency Act? Does it affect me?” The quick answer is that it’s a big deal, and if you own an incorporated business, you’ll probably still suffer its intrusive requirements even after the ruling.

“When Congress passed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, it included a bill called the Corporate Transparency Act (‘CTA’). Although the CTA made up just over 21 pages of the NDAA’s nearly 1,500-page total, the law packs a significant regulatory punch, requiring most entities incorporated under State law to disclose personal stakeholder information to the Treasury Department’s criminal enforcement arm,” Judge Liles C. Burke of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama’s Northeastern Division handily summarized in this month’s ruling.

Large businesses are exempt; the law applies to companies with 20 or fewer employees.

Justifications for the law laid out in early versions of the legislation invoked a laundry list of alleged financial horribles including money laundering and tax evasion. The word terrorism appears, too, of course, because that has been the lazy, default justification for legislation for 20-plus years. Basically, the law is targeted at anything that might involve a modicum of financial privacy.

To that end, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) set up an online reporting system through which business owners “are required to report information to FinCEN about the individuals who ultimately own or control them.” FinCEN started compiling reports for such “beneficial ownership information” (BOI) on January 1, 2024 with a deadline for compliance of January 1, 2025, or 30 days after creation for companies registered following that date.

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