What a lot of nonsense. It's a feeble attempt to deflect the blame for inflatiom from where it really lies -- the Biden administraton. Inflation occurs when monetary growth outpaces productivity growth. That's it. And Biden has been spending new money at a great rate. He can't finance his big new spending out of taxes so he HAS to print money to pay for it all
California sued Amazon on Wednesday, accusing the company of pushing sellers and suppliers into anticompetitive deals that lead to higher prices, including at rival online stores.
The lawsuit, filed by state Attorney General Rob Bonta, focuses on the way Amazon — the largest online retailer — deals with third-party merchants, who account for most of the sales on the platform.
California alleges that Amazon penalizes sellers and suppliers that offer cheaper prices elsewhere on the internet, including Walmart and Target, for example by displaying their items lower or less prominently or outright blocking their new postings.
"Amazon makes consumers think they are getting the lowest prices possible," the lawsuit alleges, "when in fact, they cannot get the low prices that would prevail in a freely competitive market because Amazon has coerced and induced its third-party sellers and wholesale suppliers to enter into anticompetitive agreements on price."
California's antitrust lawsuit is among the biggest legal challenges to Amazon in recent years, as lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. and abroad have investigated the retail giant for potential anticompetitive practices.
Amazon has denied any antitrust violations. Its representatives did not immediately comment on Tuesday's lawsuit.
California also accuses Amazon of creating a "vicious anticompetitive cycle": Sellers view Amazon as a must; Amazon charges them higher fees to be able to sell on its platform; Sellers, in turn, raise their Amazon prices. And, even though it costs them less to sell on other websites, Amazon's policies push sellers to raise prices on those sites, too.
"Through its illegal actions, the, quote, "everything store" has effectively set a price floor, costing Californians more for just about everything," Bonta said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, a judge dismissed a similar lawsuit that was filed in Washington, D.C., though the city's attorney general has appealed.
In that case, Amazon argued its deals with merchants were meant to prevent shoppers from being overcharged, and punishing Amazon would hurt consumers.
Amazon has separately proposed a settlement with European antitrust regulators, who charged the company with violating competition laws. Their key allegations accused the company of using data it collected from third-party sellers to its own benefit.
****************************************************
Conservative anti-immigration leader claims victory in Swedish elections
A coalition of right wing parties have claimed victory in the Swedish elections, ousting the centre left bloc from power.
Jimmie Akesson, who leads the nationalist and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, said his party would be "a constructive and driving force" in rebuilding safety in the country, adding it was "time to put Sweden first".
The populist grouping of Sweden Democrats, the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals appears to have won a small majority now most of the votes have been counted - with 176 seats in the Riksdag, compared to 173 for the centre left group.
But while Mr Akesson's party seems to have the biggest slice of the vote with 20.6%, it will be the Moderates' Ulf Kristersson who will lead the new government, as the coalition partners will not back the Sweden Democrats leader due to his party's far right roots.
Mr Kristersson, whose party appears to have secured 19.1% of the vote, said: "I will now start the work of forming a new government that can get things done, a government for all of Sweden and all citizens."
The current Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has already accepted defeat, saying "the preliminary result is clear enough to draw a conclusion" she had lost power.
But she said she understood concerns about the victory of the former fringe party, adding: "I see your concern and I share it."
Ms Andersson became Sweden's first female PM in 2021 and led the country in its bid to join Nato after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She said: "The four right-wing parties appear to have received just under 50% of the votes in the election, and in the Riksdag, they have gained one or two mandates. A thin majority, but it is a majority.
"Tomorrow I will therefore request my dismissal as prime minister and the responsibility for the continued process will now pass to the parliament speaker and the Riksdag.
***************************************************
The For-Profit D.C. Firm Staging America’s ‘Grassroots’ Movements
Behind the closed doors of an unassuming philanthropic consultancy in Washington, D.C., is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States. The Atlantic has called it “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.” The Washington Post believes its potent lobbying arm is reason enough for Congress to enact forced donor disclosure laws, while Politico labelled it a “dark-money behemoth.” “The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money,” wrote The New York Times, “and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.”
Meet Arabella Advisors, the brainchild of ex-Clinton administration staffer Eric Kessler and the favorite tool of anonymous, billionaire donors on the progressive left. Since 2006, the Arabella hub has overseen a growing network of nonprofits—call them the “spokes”—that collected $2.4 billion in the 2019-20 election cycle, nearly twice as much as the Republican and Democratic national committees combined.
These nonprofits in turn manage and supervise a vast array of “pop-up” groups—mainly political attack-dog websites, ad campaigns, and “spontaneous” demonstrations staffed by Arabella’s network of activist professionals who pose as members of independent activist organizations. These groups—such as Fix Our Senate, the Hub Project, and Floridians for a Fair Shake—typically emerge very suddenly in order to savage the political opposition on the policy or outrage of that particular day or week, then vanish just as quickly. The pop-ups do not file IRS disclosures or report their budgets, boards, or staff. In most cases, their connection to Arabella goes unreported. Many of them have offered sympathetic ordinary voters the opportunity to donate to whatever the “grassroots” cause happens to be, when in fact the money feeds back into Arabella’s enormous dark-money network.
The relatively novel and innovative model of political activism perfected by Arabella, which was founded 2005, went more or less unnoticed until 2018, when I was reporting on the activist groups that attempted to prevent the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Among the sea of picket signs outside the court in July 2018 was the name of an unfamiliar group: Demand Justice. A search of the IRS nonprofit archives showed the name itself wasn’t listed. What did turn up in an online search was a downtown address on Connecticut Avenue shared by dozens of other organizations, including the Arabella “spoke” that appeared to be running Demand Justice, Sixteen Thirty Fund.
It isn’t uncommon for political groups to share expensive D.C. office space, especially when they’re affiliated, like the Center for American Progress (CAP) and its lobbying arm, CAP Action. But Arabella’s arrangement is unique: A for-profit consultancy (Arabella Advisors) is the central hub; four (perhaps five) tax-exempt nonprofits (New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, Windward Fund, and possibly North Fund, all founded and led by Arabella leadership) are the spokes; and countless ephemeral pop-ups branching out from the nonprofits.
In early 2019, the Capital Research Center (where I work) released a report on the network. Since then, my colleagues and I have collected large amounts of data on Arabella’s origins, lobbying, pop-up campaigns, board connections, and donors, which helped lay the groundwork for later reporting on Arabella in mainstream outlets like The Atlantic and New York Times—which have since acknowledged that the political “left” has outraised and outspent the political “right” using dark money in recent years by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.
And yet today, the vast majority of American voters remain unaware of Arabella’s existence, even as it promises to play an increasingly central role in American politics, and as the culture wars and fight for control of federal institutions reaches a fever pitch in the fall of 2022.
Before Arabella Advisors, there was Eric Kessler. Today he is the company founder, principal, and senior managing partner, and at one point served as a board member for four of the Arabella network’s five nonprofits. Kessler is considered by many in Washington to be a leading expert on philanthropy and foundation-giving.
Kessler’s career began over 30 years ago not in philanthropy but in grubby political activism. In 1990, he was a student at the University of Colorado where he met David Brower, founding director of the Sierra Club and a population-control advocate who created the environmental groups Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute, among others. Over Tanqueray martinis, according to the Earth Island Journal, Brower convinced Kessler to hitchhike to San Francisco as an Earth Island volunteer focusing on water conservation problems in Siberia.
In 1993, Kessler became national field director for the League of Conservation Voters, a powerful environmental lobbying group—also founded by Brower in 1970—that spends heavily on boosting Democratic turnout each national election cycle. In 1996, following successful campaign work, Kessler was appointed to President Bill Clinton’s Department of the Interior under Secretary Bruce Babbitt, an aggressive regulator who had run the League of Conservation Voters from 1988-93. From 1999 to 2005, Kessler was senior manager of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which promotes a progressive vision of democracy in developing countries (he now serves on the board).
The crucial turn in Kessler’s life came in 1998, when his family sold its fifth-generation auto parts company in Chicago, Fel-Pro, for a reported $750 million. At 26 years old, Kessler had become quite wealthy. He got involved in his family’s charity, the Family Alliance Foundation, a modest grant-maker to health care research whose board still includes him and his parents.
In 2005, Kessler left the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs to found Arabella Advisors. While it remains unclear exactly what inspired it, the company’s current business model—a for-profit hub that directly controls a series of nonprofit spokes—was visible at the beginning. Almost immediately after Arabella was formed, Kessler started the 501(c)(3) Arabella Legacy Fund, now called New Venture Fund, the largest nonprofit in the Arabella network.
The Arabella hub has since added three more spokes—the 501(c)(3) Hopewell and Windward Funds and 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund—and perhaps a fifth, semirelated (c)(4) sibling, North Fund, which shares common characteristics. All except North Fund share the same address. (It’s perhaps worth noting that in 1630, when the Puritan John Winthrop and his followers departed England for Massachusetts, a new venture that led to the founding of Boston, they traveled aboard the ships Arabella and Hopewell. “Windward” is likewise a nautical term.)
*********************************************
Tribalism and Electoral Politics
Humans have always lived and worked in groups and instinctively seek to cooperate with others in their group while viewing people in other groups with hostility. People in the same tribe work together for their common good. People in other tribes are potential predators or potential prey.
Those tribal instincts have stuck with us in modern times, often in socially harmful ways. Tribal instincts are the basis for racism and lay the foundations for nationalism. Modern societies have developed institutions to channel tribalism in non-destructive ways, such as organized sports. Rather than going to war with those of another tribe, we play games against them, giving us the satisfaction of battling another tribe while minimizing the death and destruction that accompanies other types of battles.
Electoral politics also plays on tribal instincts. We choose sides, and it is us against them. How sides are chosen is, at least partly, up to the politicians who are up for election.
The 2016 presidential election offers a good example. In a contest that pits “us” against “them,” Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables,” clearly placing Trump supporters in the “them” category. Meanwhile, Trump was critical of Mexicans, Chinese, and illegal immigrants who were rapists and murderers.
One interesting aspect of these appeals to tribal instincts is that Clinton put many potential voters, the Trump supporters, in the “them” category. Trump put foreigners who don’t vote, in the “them” category. He included all Americans as a part of the “us” group.
As Trump framed it, we Americans, who could vote in the election, were a part of his group, whereas as Clinton framed it, some Americans were in her tribe but others were not. Trump’s framing pitted Americans against foreigners. All voters were in his “us” group. Clinton’s framing pitted some voters against others.
We are seeing Clinton’s brand of tribalism play out again, as President Biden has labeled MAGA Republicans as semi-fascists. Why would a politician want to alienate such a large proportion of potential voters? Would it make more sense to try to unite voters against a common enemy rather than branding perhaps half of potential voters as the enemy?
The more inclusive message would seem to make more sense if the object of tribal rhetoric is to win over undecided voters or convince potential voters to switch to the speaker’s side. Trump’s strategy says that we Americans, who vote, are all in this together against a common enemy–foreigners who do not vote.
However, not that many voters are genuinely undecided, and even fewer who have already chosen a side will defect to the other side. Electoral politics is more about turnout. Voter turnout tends to run about 50% in mid-term elections, so the road to victory must be fueled by getting “our” supporters to show up and vote while discouraging “their” supporters from voting.
A charitable way to view the tribal strategies of Clinton and Biden is that casting their opponents in an undesirable light will encourage Clinton and Biden supporters to turn out to vote against the deplorables and fascists. They’re acting to motivate their base.
Still, this seems like a poor strategy because it has the potential to motivate their opponents’ base at least as much as their own. Suppose you are one of those people who are being called deplorable and fascist. In that case, you might be motivated to strike out at those who are making those accusations.
My guess is that by deliberately trying to alienate a large share of voters, the Clinton-Biden tribal strategy costs more votes than it gains, because it motivates the “them” voters more than the “us” voters. Trump’s approach of including all Americans in the “us” group against foreigners in the “them” group seems like better electoral politics. Trump did attack Clinton, calling her “lying Hillary,” but he didn’t attack Clinton’s supporters.
President Biden was his party’s choice in the presidential election of 2020 partly because he was viewed as a more moderate Democrat who could appeal to a broader spectrum of voters. After he was elected, he presented himself as a president who wanted to unite America. It appears that he now has chosen a different political strategy–a strategy that may have kept Clinton out of the White House rather than his old strategy that may have put him in the White House.
Humans still have those tribal instincts, and politicians can play them differently by defining who they include in their “us” group and who they define as “them.” Their strategies are fully intentional. President Biden’s characterization of MAGA Republicans as semi-fascists was fully intended to play on the tribal instincts of his base, but likely will have a bigger impact on the tribal instincts of those outside his base. You don’t have to be a MAGA Republican to be offended that the president would label a large proportion of Americans as semi-fascists.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/09/07/tribalism-electoral-politics/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
/>
Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
No comments:
Post a Comment