Tag: corruption

The fake Nobel economics prize was part of a ploy to de-democratize control over economic decisions. And it worked!

Another year, another round of Nobel Prizes, and yet another opportunity to remind people that — unlike the other Nobel Prizes — there is no actual Nobel Prize in Economics. There never has been. 

The fake Nobel prize in economics was part of a propaganda ploy hatched in the 1960s by Sweden’s activist central bank to imbue neoclassical (aka neoliberal) economic theories with mainstream credibility and respect. The plan was to give what was in essence a radical political ideology the sheen of a real, hard science — in line with the Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics and biology.

That history is reflected in this year’s winners — two obscure economists working in a very narrow field: a subset of game theory that deals with optimizing auctions. Wow! Wait, auctions? Huh? 

We’re surrounded by oligarchy, austerity, corporate power over every aspect of our lives, environmental destruction on a global scale. And we’re talking designing slightly more efficient auctions? I don’t know about you, but it seems like some seriously narrow-minded accountant-type work given our dire apocalyptic times.

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Judge’s Son Gets Zero Prison Time After Pleading Guilty To Child Pornography

A 34-year-old man who had been found guilty of possessing 25 counts of child pornography has walked away with an extremely smaller sentence because he happened to be a sitting judge’s son. The incident occurred in Butler County, Pennsylvania where locals are alleging that John Paul Doerr III only received a six-month house arrest, five years of probation, and 15 years on Megan’s Law registry because the accused’s father was a powerful man in the community, reports WPXI-TV. Normally, the maximum sentence for a crime such as this easily goes up to more than 250 years in prison.

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As World Plunges Into Poverty, Super Rich Top Unprecedented $10 Trillion Net Worth Thanks to COVID-19

Make no mistake, the government’s reaction to COVID-19 — shutting down business, forcing people to state home, all the while granting monopolies to massive chains like Amazon, Walmart, etc. — has decimated the middle class and pushed the already-struggling poor that much deeper into despair. But you won’t see the owners of those monopolies complaining as they have seen their wealth soar to unprecedented highs.

As the rest of the country struggles to pay their mortgages, has their businesses shut down, and descends into poverty, COVID-19 for the super rich has been a record setting windfall. Four of the most controversial billionaires on the planet, have seen their wealth increase by over a combined $100 billion in just the last 10 months.

Since the COVID-19 lockdowns began, Jeff Bezzos has seen his net worth shoot up by nearly $70 billion. Bill Gates, who has been embroiled in controversy and has somehow become the mainstream media’s go-to “expert” on COVID-19, has seen his net worth increase by nearly $10 billion. As his platform censors any information that challenges the establishment’s narrative on COVID-19, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth increased by $20 billion. And, as his platform also censors information like Facebook, Larry page has seen his profits from Google add $5 billion to his net worth.

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Unusual ‘fellowship’ paid high-profile, repeat Democratic candidates between runs

Several repeat Democratic candidates in high-profile races who lost their 2018 bids for Congress got direct financial help from a nonprofit organization in the form of an unusual “fellowship” during the interim period before they launched 2020 campaigns.

New Politics is a 527 advocacy group that seeks to “revitalize American democracy by recruiting, developing, and electing servant leaders” — mostly veterans, but also those who were part of national organizations or worked in national security and intelligence — ”who put community and country over self.” It has an affiliated 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit group called the New Politics Leadership Academy, which hosts a training program for prospective candidates and a fellowship program.

Six unsuccessful Democratic 2018 congressional candidates were named fellows in the inaugural fellowship class in January 2019, and four of them later launched campaigns in major races again this year: Amy McGrath, Gina Ortiz Jones, Dan Feehan, and Roger Dean Huffstetler.

A press release announcing the program gave vague descriptions of projects, such as, “examine the nature of today’s political engagement with rural voters” or to “conduct research on how to further close the rural-urban political gap.”

Gabriel Ramos, communications director for both New Politics and the New Politics Leadership Academy, told the Washington Examiner that the opportunity to become a fellow was extended to both Republican and Democratic former candidates.

“The expectation of these fellows was that they would work to advance and inform NPLA’s mission of ‘revitalizing our democracy’ through their advocacy, research, and engagement with our community,” Ramos said in a statement. “The fellows worked on several initiatives related to NPLA’s leadership development and educational mission — including projects that provided NPLA with quantitative research about the rural-urban divide and insight into how issues that are typically understood as domestic or state-level challenges, may ultimately affect national security.”

Previous comments from the group’s founder and director, Emily Cherniack, seemed to suggest that the fellowship endeavor is part of a creative way to give perpetual candidates a financial cushion in the brief period between runs for office in back-to-back election cycles.

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