Eat the Rich

[billy.pilgrim]

And then I open my news feed. The 3rd article in has this:

A parking space she sees invokes insanity.

It reads, "'I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me," according to local Fox affiliate Fox 59.

"I feel like it’s attacking me as a Jew," she said, according to the outlet.

Gentilesco, whose parents told her stories of the Holocaust, said the quote from an epistle of St. Paul brings back painful memories..

"It brings me to the verge of tears because it brings me back to the 6 million that perished," Gentilesco said. "Six million perished because of our faith — because we’re Jews."'


And it was all about us. The others they tried to exterminate don't really count, this was "because we're Jews" and we are special.

Since when do parking spaces have aphorisms? Ah, Wesley Chapel, FLORIDA. That explains it.
https://fox59.com/news/national-world/b ... ntroversy/

Gentilesco's Jewish victimology is annoying, but so is the parking space proselytizing on public school grounds. Would a Satanic or Wiccan aphorism be tolerated?

Would anyone other than christians and jews be annoyed?

[Vrede too]

... Gentilesco's Jewish victimology is annoying, but so is the parking space proselytizing on public school grounds. Would a Satanic or Wiccan aphorism be tolerated?

Would anyone other than christians and jews be annoyed?

Muslims and maybe some members of minor religions, but they keep a low profile so we might not hear about it from them. Anyhow, christians and jews make up a significant portion of the population and there's always a chance that Faux Noise or some other RW perpetual victims would make it a national cause célèbre about the decaying of America.

[billy.pilgrim]

Sentence them to years of cleaning prison kitchens.

Instead, at most they might pay a fine and pass it on to consumers as a cost of doing business. No one will go to jail, no individuals will be held responsible.

It appears that the parent company may be Jewish owned, so you could go to jail for saying that you will boycott them.

Citation for "Jewish owned"? I came up empty for both Turkey Valley Farms and JBS USA, but I didn't invest much time in it. As for the direct culprit, Packer’s Sanitation Services:
https://www.pssi.com/about/

1973
PSSI is founded in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa by Tom Turner and John Wright, who had a vision of providing contract sanitation services using a non-unionized workforce. His first plant, Illini Beef in Joslin, IL (now part of Tyson Foods), is still one of our customers today.

Don't sound like Jewish names. Then, nothing screams Jewish to me about their Senior Leadership, though it's all White, almost all male and almost all Anglo.

Anti-BDS laws and resolutions apply exclusively to boycotts of Israel, not boycotts of anything Jewish, and I'm unaware of any in the US that have criminal penalties.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/co ... -rcna60355


"An industrial cleaning company accused by federal investigators of hiring dozens of children to clean slaughterhouses during the graveyard shift has resolved the allegations with the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a federal court filing filed Tuesday morning.

As part of the consent order, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, will review and enhance its existing policies and training materials and hire a third-party consultant to conduct “quarterly child labor compliance training” and monitor the company’s compliance for three years"

"In a statement, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin-based company Packers Sanitation Services Inc. said about the consent decree with the feds: “We are pleased"

I bet they are.

[Whack9]

Twitter installing makeshift bedrooms for employees in the office


https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfariv ... inFacebook

Elon Musk's “extremely hardcore” vision for Twitter seems to have manifested itself in sad little conference-room sleeping quarters at the company's recently depopulated headquarters.

It would be one thing if the people putting in the extra hours were getting compensated, but for whatever reason IT jobs are exempt

https://www.arkadylaw.com/computer-prof ... 20employee.

[Vrede too]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/co ... -rcna60355

"An industrial cleaning company accused by federal investigators of hiring dozens of children to clean slaughterhouses during the graveyard shift has resolved the allegations with the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a federal court filing filed Tuesday morning.

As part of the consent order, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, will review and enhance its existing policies and training materials and hire a third-party consultant to conduct “quarterly child labor compliance training” and monitor the company’s compliance for three years"

"In a statement, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin-based company Packers Sanitation Services Inc. said about the consent decree with the feds: “We are pleased"

I bet they are.

Ow ow please stop slapping our wrists.

[billy.pilgrim]

The article is worth reading.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartm ... dium=email

Harding reduced rates from "90% down to 25%"

"It kicked off the “Roaring 20s” that F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled in The Great Gatsby, when the rich got massively richer while working people lost ground and private police murdered union organizers on behalf of wealthy industrialists. It led us straight to the Great Crash of 1929 and the Republican Great Depression.

FDR stepped into the gap in 1933 and began raising that tax back up to an eventual 91%, where it remained until Lyndon Johnson dropped it to 74% (but closed so many loopholes in the same legislation that rich people actually paid more taxes the following year than they had before).

Reagan then took it down to 25% for a year and then up to 27%; today it’s 37%. The period from 1981 to today shows what happens when great wealth isn’t regulated through rational taxation.

The long-term consequence of Reagan’s decision has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the homes and bank accounts of working class people into the money bins of the top 1 percent.

It took the American middle class from two-thirds of us in 1980 down to 45% of us today. To maintain middle-class status now generally requires two workers in a family; it only required one full-time worker when Reagan stepped into the White House."

[billy.pilgrim]

My Grandmother schooled us all in the 7 deadly sins. Pretty much everything she said was right, especially the parts about greed and absolute power.

Another good one from Thom

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartm ... dium=email


"We’re at the tail end of a 40-year political, social, and economic experiment in this country. Reagan and his neoliberal buddies Hayek and Friedman told us that if we’d just let the greediest among us fully exercise their greed in ways that were previously illegal it would bring an explosion of prosperity to our country.

And, sure enough, there was an explosion of prosperity, but only for the top 10% of us. Meanwhile, the economic lifeblood was drained out of the rest of America. Fully $50 trillion has vanished from the wealth of the middle class and magically ended up in the money bins of the morbidly rich.

This “invisible hand” of the economy was so perfect, the neoliberals told us, that we wouldn’t even need to monitor CEOs and the morbidly rich to make sure they weren’t cheating, so we defunded the IRS, under four Republican administrations, so severely that they could no longer audit the returns of the very wealthy.

When the law required the IRS to audit President Trump’s taxes in 2018, for example, that agency was able to come up with one lonely guy to do the job, something that would have taken him two or three decades to just cover one year.

It’s estimated tax fraud by the morbidly rich costs America around $1 trillion a year, according to the IRS Commissioner.

Enough to end all student debt in 18 months. To wipe out child poverty in a year. To fully fund Medicare For All. To end homelessness in America. To cure most cancer and heart disease in less than a decade."

[O Really]

But the foxes are running the hen house, the loons are in charge of the asylum and those who could change it are benefitting from keeping it the way it is. Just another part of the overall inevitable dooming of the country.

[Vrede too]

My Grandmother schooled us all in the 7 deadly sins. Pretty much everything she said was right, especially the parts about greed and absolute power.

Another good one from Thom

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartm ... to-america

Found online:

When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Unattributed. Quote Investigator is unable to nail it down.

[Vrede too]

But the foxes are running the hen house, the loons are in charge of the asylum and those who could change it are benefiting from keeping it the way it is. Just another part of the overall inevitable dooming of the country.

Unprecedented profit for Exxon as travel, and war, heated up
Exxon Mobil posted record annual profits in 2022 as consumers globally struggled with high prices for gasoline, home heating and consumer goods

... The energy giant brought in $55.7 billion in annual profits, exceeding its previous record of $45.22 billion in 2008, when a barrel of oil soared close to $150.

Exxon's bounty came as Americans shelled out $4 per gallon for gasoline throughout most of the spring and summer with millions hitting the road. At one point gasoline topped $5 a gallon. Supplies grew tight and prices rose globally after Russia invaded Ukraine and reduced energy supplies to Europe....

“A windfall tax on oil and gas profits is needed more than ever, to free up money that’s desperately needed to help those struggling with the cost of energy, and as economies around the world face recession," said Jonathan Noronha-Gant, senior campaigner with Global Witness, a nonprofit organization that advocates for environmental sustainability and corporate responsibility.

The European Union imposed a windfall tax on energy companies last fall, and Exxon filed a lawsuit challenging the tax in December....

Exxon.

[GoCubsGo]

Bitch City.

CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'

[Vrede too]

Bitch City.

CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'

MillerKnoll Contact Us

Re: CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/ceo-too ... 00871.html

Our office will not be considering Bitch City furniture for its remodeling this year.

Be better,
(Vrede too)

[GoCubsGo]

Bitch City.

CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'

MillerKnoll Contact Us

Re: CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/ceo-too ... 00871.html

Our office will not be considering Bitch City furniture for its remodeling this year.

Be better,
(Vrede too)

And here I didn't know you were remodeling.

[Vrede too]

And here I didn't know you were remodeling.

Another resident of Bitch City:

Warren Buffett's wife Astrid is overheard complaining about a $4 cup of coffee at 'summer camp for billionaires' in Sun Valley, report says



... Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is worth about $115 billion and is the seventh-richest person in the world on Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. But the Oracle of Omaha also has been known to be frugal. Bill Gates, a longtime friend of the 92-year-old, once recalled the billionaire pulling out a handful of coupons to pay for a McDonald's meal....

Karen.

[O Really]

One way to look at it is that no matter how much money you have, you don't want to get hosed with predatory pricing. But it's hard to understand if you have that much money how you could ever keep any money value in perspective. I knew a guy years ago who was nowhere near billionaire, but was very wealthy. For a trip down to the Keys, he bought a lightly used pickup truck to carry his gear and some stuff he was taking to the boat he kept in Marathon. Said he couldn't get a rental for the time he needed it.

[billy.pilgrim]

Bitch City.

CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'

MillerKnoll Contact Us

Re: CEO Who Took Home Nearly $5M Last Year Tells Employees Hoping for a Bonus: 'Leave Pity City'
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/ceo-too ... 00871.html

Our office will not be considering Bitch City furniture for its remodeling this year.

Be better,
(Vrede too)

And here I didn't know you were remodeling.

It looks like they don't make anything, they just sell other people's stuff.

[billy.pilgrim]

First corporate america destroyed all the family catfish farms in Mississippi. I'm not looking up current stats but as of about 10 - 15 years ago all those catfish restaurants in Mississippi started serving cheaper Chinese and Vietnamese catfish instead of buying from the mom and pop fish farms.
Same happened with honey. Since there's no legal definition of honey, about 70% of our "honey" is flavored corn syrup from China shipped in 50 gallon barrels and repackaged as honey.
Now they're after the oyster industry.

https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supp ... mp-imports

[Vrede too]

First corporate america destroyed all the family catfish farms in Mississippi. I'm not looking up current stats but as of about 10 - 15 years ago all those catfish restaurants in Mississippi started serving cheaper Chinese and Vietnamese catfish instead of buying from the mom and pop fish farms.
Same happened with honey. Since there's no legal definition of honey, about 70% of our "honey" is flavored corn syrup from China shipped in 50 gallon barrels and repackaged as honey.
Now they're after the oyster industry.

https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supp ... mp-imports

Your link is about shrimp, not oysters. Anyhow, this is why I've mostly given up on the seafood I love, and now catfish I guess . I trust the co-op to have sustainable and local-ish fare, but it's very pricey. Their honey is local.

[billy.pilgrim]

First corporate america destroyed all the family catfish farms in Mississippi. I'm not looking up current stats but as of about 10 - 15 years ago all those catfish restaurants in Mississippi started serving cheaper Chinese and Vietnamese catfish instead of buying from the mom and pop fish farms.
Same happened with honey. Since there's no legal definition of honey, about 70% of our "honey" is flavored corn syrup from China shipped in 50 gallon barrels and repackaged as honey.
Now they're after the oyster industry.

https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supp ... mp-imports

Your link is about shrimp, not oysters. Anyhow, this is why I've mostly given up on the seafood I love, and now catfish I guess . I trust the co-op to have sustainable and local-ish fare, but it's very pricey. Their honey is local.

I meant shrimp. Not sure why I wrote oysters.
Yeah, nearly all the shrimp at Winn Dixie, Walmart and all the rest, including restaurants come from Vietnam and China.

It's wrong. These shrimp boats are nearly all individually family owned and operated. Fishing is the only reason for Bayou La Batre's existence and shrimp boats are only set up for catching shrimp, but I'm sure some corporate types will make billions shipping shellfish to the US from China and the Middle Class will pay higher taxes in order to help the victims of this theft.

I feel comfortable buying honey at our co-op, but will no longer buy from trucks parked on the road. Unless I can see the hive, I don't buy.

[O Really]

First corporate america destroyed all the family catfish farms in Mississippi. I'm not looking up current stats but as of about 10 - 15 years ago all those catfish restaurants in Mississippi started serving cheaper Chinese and Vietnamese catfish instead of buying from the mom and pop fish farms.

That's too bad. A little bit longer ago than that I had occasion to be in Tupelo MS, for which I could find no redeeming features whatsoever - until - I ate some of the best catfish ever. Then, about 5-6 years ago I was in Memphis and gave serious consideration to taking the two-hour drive to Tupelo, but it didn't work out to be able to do that. "Settled" for Rendezvous ribs. I guess it's just as well. Sounds like there's a good chance I would have been disappointed.