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Regardless of Who’s Elected, Imperial Corruption Rules the Nation

November 9, 2022

Regardless of Who’s Elected, Imperial Corruption Rules the Nation

But in the meantime, enjoy the political theatrics down on the sand-strewn floor of the Coliseum.

While the much-touted differences between America’s political parties get obsessive, hysterical attention, the sameness of Imperial corruption, waste and squalor regardless of who’s in power gets little notice. Scrape away the differences–mostly in domestic issues–and we see the dead hand of Imperial Corruption is on the tiller.

The core of Imperial Corruption is the disconnect between the nation’s ideals of representational democracy and open markets and the sordid reality: elites serve their interests by corrupting both democracy and open markets.

Unfettered democracy and markets cannot be controlled by a tiny, self-serving elite. Stripped of corruption, democracy and markets are free-for-alls that are constantly evolving, as highly adaptive islands of coherence coalesce that influence the quasi-chaos, competing with other islands of coherence but never gaining dominance due to the open-ended dynamism of collaboration-competition that is the beating heart of both democracy and open markets.

The only way to control democracy and markets to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many is to corrupt them completely by destroying the dynamism of collaboration-competition. Democracy is replaced by an auction of political power to the highest bidder that rewards cronies and devotes all its resources not to solving the nation’s problems but to whipping up conflagrations of divisiveness and partisan hysteria that wash away the middle ground where problems can actually be addressed.

This crippling of the nation’s ability to actually solve difficult problems serves the interests of self-serving elites whose sole interest is accumulating personal wealth and power…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Political Backlash Grows Over Google’s Pressure To Censor “Independent” Think Tank

September 4, 2017

Political Backlash Grows Over Google’s Pressure To Censor “Independent” Think Tank

It was only a matter of time until this happened…

For years now, the politicos of the Left have embraced a perfectly symbiotic relationship with the ‘progressive’ leaders of Silicon Valley.  Tech titans, like Google’s Eric Schmidt who got very cozy with the Hillary Clinton campaign, have poured million of dollars of their tech fortunes into Democratic coffers all while colluding with elected officials, “independent” think tanks and “institutions of higher indoctrination” to ram their progressive agenda down the throats of the American public.

It was a great relationship for Democrats because Silicon Valley’s elites had all the money of Wall Street without the negative stigma…until now.

Google’s recent problems with censorship, which came first in the firing of James Damore and was quickly followed up by the firing of an “independent” research team at a think tank funded by Google, has exposed what many have known for some time but others were too enamored to see, namely that Silicon Valley companies like Google are every bit as motivated by their relentless pursuit of power and wealth as Wall Street…they’re just better at wrapping their motivations in a nice progressive bow.

Unfortunately, the cat is now out of the bag and it has forced a growing number of the Left’s most progressive politicians to distance themselves from America’s new breed of “evil corporations.”  As The Hill notes this morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Keith Ellison have already started to distance themselves:

Google is facing blowback after one of its most prominent critics was fired from a think tank funded by the tech giant.

The incident is raising new questions about Google’s influence over think tanks and academic research.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]

September 1, 2017

Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]

llustration: Jim Cooke/GMG, photo: Getty

The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance.

The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record-breaking $2.7 billion fine for privileging its price-comparison service over others in search results. That post was briefly taken down, then republished. Soon afterward, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”

I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, Plus.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New Think Tank Emails Show “How Google Wields its Power” in Washington

September 1, 2017

BARRY LYNN, THE critic of monopolies fired this week from the New America Foundation, insisted in emails to his superiors that pressure from Google got him and his Open Markets program terminated. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the think tank’s CEO,  has denied that Google played any role in Lynn’s termination from the think tank.

Last night, New America released three emails from Slaughter to Lynn. They reference two separate events: an anti-monopoly conference organized by the Open Markets program in June 2016 that featured Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as the keynote speaker, and a series of communications in June and July 2017, involving the termination of Lynn and his group.

The emails New America released did not include Lynn’s side of the email. The Intercept obtained his responses.

The first set of emails concerned the June 2016 conference, notable because a politician of Warren’s stature made a full-throated endorsement of Lynn’s work. For 15 years, Lynn has pointed out the dangers of increasing concentration in practically every sector of the U.S. economy, including technology and internet companies.

Slaughter began the chain by asking Lynn to answer questions — which were not in the emails obtained by The Intercept — from Meredith Hanley, New America’s director of development, who is responsible for day-to-day fundraising. Slaughter mentioned that she would be meeting with Google’s top lobbyist, former Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., and she needed answers about why Lynn’s New America colleagues and Google weren’t alerted about the conference and Warren’s participation.

Google, and the family foundation of Eric Schmidt, executive chair of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have donated $21 million to New America over the years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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