caucus99percent

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Recent Reads:
Matt Stoller recently wrote an article for the Guardian called 'Corporations are forcing Americans to pay more for less – in their own words'. It's worth a read; it dives into the proof that's available that the high prices (a very recent example, utility prices going up) and bad economy many of us are feeling are real, despite all the good stuff like more jobs, etc.

I wasn't at all surprised to learn that big business groups are conspiring/plotting through price-fixing to make us pay more on things like gasoline, housing, utilities, meat/food, hotels and more. I wish more people in power would pay attention to this, but that's a pipe-dream, isn't it?

Stoller concludes:

There are also a number of concrete steps policymakers can take to respond to this price-fixing.

The first is to arrest or sue the offending executives for criminal activity.

The second is to strengthen price-fixing and merger laws, allow more private class-action suits, force judges to speed up cases and increase the budget of antitrust enforcers to make collusion more difficult.

The third is to reform the Federal Reserve so policymakers there stop using macro-economic models that avoid considerations of profits and price-fixing.

And the fourth is, frankly, political. One key reason there is action on these schemes is because Biden has prioritized antitrust enforcement. He hasn’t put enough into antitrust, and he doesn’t talk about it very often. But he should, or else Americans are likely to fall into the trap of thinking that what is good for big business is good for their pocketbooks, when the opposite is so often the case.

781 BC Oldest known Chinese recording of a solar eclipse

1769 A transit of Venus is followed five hours later by a total solar eclipse, the shortest such interval in history

UCSC for short. Friday my electronic mailbox received this message from the Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, no doubt sent to the entire Alumni Association:

Dear UC Santa Cruz Community,

Whirlwind of Wars

Are we on the brink of WWIII or are we already in it? There's a looming war with China. A NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine which has the west in a panic. Plus the Gaza genocide which has SW Asia in a swirl of conflict, and the global majority seeing the US as aiding and abetting the criminal conflict. Additionally our own government appears to be targeting its own people with health scams, mass migration, and the kabuki theater of election distraction to make us think we have options. Yeah right. All as the Biden regime conducts lawfare against Trump.
The positive news comes from the BRICS+ and their new world order prospering through cooperation. All this and more below the fold...