How The Fed Is Screwing Your Retirement By Taking Care Of The Rich

By Allan Sloan/ProPublica

The Federal Reserve, which these days seems to be the only major part of the federal government capable of operating drama-free, has done a lot to help keep our economy afloat. It has cut interest rates to unprecedented low levels, bought billions of dollars of corporate IOUs, helped stabilize the debt markets and helped rescue a stock market that had begun falling sharply in mid-February when the COVID-19 recession started and that seemed headed for a crash.
In the process, the Fed has indirectly provided support to house prices and to the vital home construction business by forcing down mortgage interest rates to all-time lows of about 3%. Given that home equity is a major asset for many middle-class Americans, supporting home prices is especially important. As is supporting the home construction industry, which is a major source of blue-collar jobs.
But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that the Fed is unintentionally worsening economic inequality by providing the most help to Americans who are least in need of it. And it’s also putting stress on the middle class’ most important asset: retirement benefits.

Posted on October 30, 2020

A Simple Notion: U.S. Companies Complicit In Human Rights Abuses Abroad Should Be Held Accountable

By Cindy Cohn and Sophia Cope/Electronic Frontier Foundation

For years the EFF has been calling for U.S. companies that act as “repression’s little helpers” to be held accountable, and now we’re telling the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite all the ways that technology has been used as a force for good – connecting people around the world, giving voice to the less powerful, and facilitating knowledge sharing – technology has also been used as a force multiplier for repression and human rights violations, a dark side that cannot be denied.
Last week, the EFF filed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to preserve one of the few tools of legal accountability that exist for companies that intentionally aid and abet foreign repression, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).
We told the court about what we and others have been seeing over the past decade or so: surveillance, communications, and database systems, just to name a few, have been used by foreign governments – with the full knowledge of and assistance by the U.S. companies selling those technologies – to spy on and track down activists, journalists, and religious minorities who have been imprisoned, tortured, and even killed.

Posted on October 29, 2020

Workers Fired For Reporting COVID Safety Violations

By Michelle Andrews/Kaiser Health News

When COVID-19 began making headlines in March, Charles Collins pulled out a protective face mask from the supply at the manufacturing company in Rockaway, New Jersey, where he was the shop foreman and put it on. The dozen or so other workers at the facility followed suit. There was no way to maintain a safe distance from one another on the shop floor, where they made safety mats for machines, and a few of the men had been out sick with flu-like symptoms. Better safe than sorry.
Management was not pleased.

Posted on October 25, 2020

Greedy Goldman Guilty

By The U.S. Department of Justice

Links added by The Beachwood Value Added Affairs Desk.
The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (Goldman Sachs or the Company), a global financial institution headquartered in New York, New York, and Goldman Sachs (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. (GS Malaysia), its Malaysian subsidiary, have admitted to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a scheme to pay over $1 billion in bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to obtain lucrative business for Goldman Sachs, including its role in underwriting approximately $6.5 billion in three bond deals for 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (1MDB), for which the bank earned hundreds of millions in fees.
Goldman Sachs will pay more than $2.9 billion as part of a coordinated resolution with criminal and civil authorities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and elsewhere.

Posted on October 22, 2020

Social Media Platforms Remove War Crimes Evidence

By Human Rights Watch

Social media platforms are taking down online content they consider terrorist, violently extremist, or hateful in a way that prevents its potential use to investigate serious crimes, including war crimes, Human Rights Watch has found. While it is understandable that these platforms remove content that incites or promotes violence, they should ensure that this material is archived so it can possibly be used to hold those responsible to account.

Posted on October 12, 2020

The Pentagon Took PPE Money And Bought Weapons

By Phyllis Bennis/OtherWords

As the pandemic continues to claim lives across the country, new information keeps coming out about how the Trump administration has made it harder for Americans to protect themselves.
We now know, for example, that early in the pandemic the U.S. Postal Service had planned to deliver five face masks to every U.S. household. It could have made mask-wearing a lot more common a lot earlier – and saved a lot of lives. But the White House scrapped the idea.
Now we also know that the Trump administration took $1 billion in stimulus funds that were supposed to go towards making masks and other protective equipment for the pandemic and gave most of it to weapons manufacturers.

Posted on October 7, 2020

Breaking: Trump Will Not Recognize His Own Re-Election

By Steve Eckardt

Transcript of this morning’s statement by the President of the United States.
Hello, this is President Donald Trump reaching out to America to say I’m feeling fine. And to say, “Thank you, thank you” to all the people that’ve stood beside me during this minor incident.
It’s like I’ve said: I am stronger than the Chinese virus and so are the American People!
I’ve had a worse time with Athlete’s Foot than with this supposed killer.

Posted on October 6, 2020

Law & Order | Trump Let MBS Get Away With Murdering Jamal Khashoggi

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies/Common Dreams

Agents of Saudi Arabia’s despotic government brutally murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018 on direct orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).
Eight Saudi men have been convicted of Khashoggi’s murder in a Saudi court in what the Washington Post characterized as sham trials with no transparency. The higher-ups who ordered the murder, including MBS, continue to escape responsibility.
Khashoggi’s assassination and dismemberment was so horrific and cold-blooded that it sparked worldwide public outrage. President Trump, however, stood by MBS, bragging to journalist Bob Woodward that he saved the prince’s “ass” and got “Congress to leave him alone.”

Posted on October 4, 2020