Tag Archives: Corporations

The Mason Missile, October 27, 2024

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Greetings, Americans!

We have commemorated the holidays of Rosh ha-Shona and Yom Kippur, along with Sukkot and Simchat Torah; may we continue to learn the true meaning of these events, that a new start is possible.

Finally, the news media has been paying attention to trump’s mental health, or lack thereof, with his speeches going all over the place, and he goes on about everything but the topic he’s been asked about. Why has the news media, before Biden dropped out, been so fascinated with Biden’s mental health, but they’ve given trump a pass on it? Perhaps it’s because trump has been in the media for four decades, being hyped as a genius real-estate and casino tycoon, squiring some beautiful women all around Manhattan, and getting into tabloid fodder scandals, and that form of “news” veers into entertainment.

Or perhaps also, some billionaire corporate interests, including some media corporations—yes, it’s a business like any other—don’t care about trump’s cognitive decline, or his racism, or his associating with neo-Fascists; all they care about are tax cuts they WOULD receive, along with the repression of workers and of women seeing reproductive freedom, people of color seeking equity and their REAL history told, and of LGBTQ+ people just wanting to live their lives without the risk of harassment and death. Project 2025, the brain-worm of the Heritage Foundation, is still on their minds, no matter how much the trump campaign tried to disassociate itself from it.  (https://kamalaharris.com/project2025/)

It’s NO different from the German industrial magnates who thought investing in Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP would be a great investment for putting down “Communism”—meaning any effort to empower workers, after the 1929 Crash and the Russian Revolution—and they paid no attention to Hitler’s rantings, the party’s violence and anti-Semitism, the brown-shirted goons stomping on their enemies and playing tin soldiers. They got their profits and the unions were destroyed, so what did they care?

Of course you may think, correctly, of the German firms Krupp and IG Farben, who used the slave labor from the concentration camps; and there was Hugo Boss, the fashion house, which manufactured those uniforms for all the NSDAP’s branches, like the SS. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss)

But American firms did business with Germany during the Second World War. (https://www.adl.org/resources/news/german-industry-and-third-reich) One is Ford, and Henry Ford was also a notorious Jew-hater and fanboy of Hitler; several subsidiaries of Ford held factories in Cologne and Berlin, using concentration-camp slave labor. Other corporate accomplices included Coca-Cola, Eastman-Kodak, IBM (for the record-keeping machinery they maintained regularly in the concentration camps, and their investments in several German firms, like the aircraft firm Focke-Wulf), General Motors (their Opal division),  and certain American and British banks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust)

(https://lorimer.ca/adults/product/big-business-and-hitler/)

And if these corporations could collaborate with a foreign tyrant and murderer, they damn sure would be happy to work with a home-grown tyrant, like a future trump regime—which we must make DAMN SURE there isn’t any.

We tried it before with trump; respectable, mainstream politicians thought that trump would have “adults in the room,” competent cabinet members and staff workers who could keep him from doing or saying anything stupid; but he was subservient to Putin in that meeting in Helsinki, praised neo-Nazis as “very fine people,” scapegoated immigrants from the Mexican border (but not the Canadian border, mind you) and Muslims (with the travel ban), the contempt he has shown towards women—his bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade, his insults towards accomplished women, and his sexual abuses—his contempt for military personnel (“suckers and losers”), for a start.

And we can’t treat this election  as just an “election,” a contest between two candidates with more or less differing ideas—or, as some adults I heard say, “just a bunch of crooks, they’re all the same” during my growing-up years. It isn’t. It’s for the future of America and its people; and it would be a disgrace for us to allow trump back into power, so he can abuse it by attacking his enemies—meaning US, his fellow Americans.

But, just as our ancestors crossed an ocean to fight foreign fascists—some of them even dying—we can defeat the home-grown fascists of today. Freedom-fighting is in the American blood, from the Revolution, through the movements of pass women’s suffrage and end chattel slavery, through the Civil War and the struggle to organize workers, through the World Wars, through the Civil Rights movements for African Americans and other people of color, for women, for LGBTQ+ people. We Americans have a long and venerable history of standing up to oppressors and bosses, and asserting our right, and in the process, asserting our significance, our value, as human beings.

SO, November 5, Americans, don’t let our ancestors, or our progeny, down.  Don’t forget the great freedom fighters of our true, sanitized history. Let’s continue to put in the work, to campaign, and VOTE. When we stand up to the fascist goons arrayed against us, we’ll see they’re not so tough after all.

Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! America will be free! Bye!

My Novel, “Soldier Of The Cross.”

Hemperiffic LLC
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The Mason Missile, May 22, 2024

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Greetings, Americans!

On April 23, I did my duty as an election board worker for my division in Philadelphia. We need more people to step up and take part in OUR political system, and play a part in positively shaping OUR community. Maybe YOU could run for an office? Why not?

And we must stand up to the violent minority who, through their terrorism (terrorism IS very much American, not always abroad) attempt to prevent or weaken the public’s right to vote. Such terrorism includes “voter ID” laws, limiting the number of drop-off boxes for mail-in ballots, and, as in Georgia, prohibiting serving food or beverages to people in line, for hours in whatever weather, to vote. Our right to vote is a mighty weapon in our hands, and certain powerful forces want to take this weapon away from us. Let’s not allow this to happen.

We are in the season of Memorial Day, where we show our respects to those men and women in our Armed Forces who died in service to their country. We must continue to honor their memory, and to assist and aid their loved ones. As opposed to so many political hacks who want to talk all badass without risking themselves (and send low-income kids to get killed), we must genuinely worry about the needs of military families.

The danger of fascism is ALL too real, and it’s not hyperbole, it’s a genuinely American strain we’re up against. Recently, trump, over his “Truth Social” rag of a social media site, put out a video, with AI-generated images of old-time newspapers, on the theme of “What if trump wins? (God forbid!)” One smaller headline talked about a “unified Reich,” as in hitler’s Third Reich. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/not-an-accident-trump-s-unified-reich-video-alarms-historians-and-fascism-experts/ar-BB1mMZvo)

The campaign took down the video, but trump showed us once again, for any of us paying attention, what he would do to this country, IF he is elected again. We must add this alongside the march of the torch-bearing neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, where he said there were fine people “on both sides”; his telling his rally attendees to beat up anyone who dares stand up to him; his dining with such Jew-haters as Nick Fuentes and Kanye West; his hiring while in office of Steve Bannon, online conspiracy-monger and believer in racist conspiracy theories; trump saying, according to General John Kelly, that hitler “did some good things”;  trump doing nothing while COVID-19 spread all over the country, saying “It is what it is (dictators think their citizens are expendable); and NEVER forget about how trump urged his followers to rampage through the Capitol, to try to destroy the peaceful, democratic transfer of power after losing the 2020 election. NEVER, Americans, forget all that.

Just as hitler cozied up to the big industrialists, financiers, and other conservative elites of Germany for their support (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis), trump is trying to get money out of the billionaire class to finance his campaign—and to pay for his legal bills. recently, trump held a dinner at Mar-A-Largo with fossil-fuel executives, telling them IF he is elected, he would give them everything they wanted—ending Biden Administration executive orders to protect the environment, eliminating prohibitions in offshore drilling, ending all of Biden’s green energy programs, and granting them more tax breaks—IF they collectively give him $1 billion. (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131) (https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-offers-oil-execs-110bn-in-savings-exchange-support-2024) Oil industry lobbyists are already drawing up proposals and strategies to implement these policies IF trump wins.

The fossil fuel moguls may act liked they’re shocked—shocked, I tell you!—but they have no more use for democracy, or for the lower classes (that’s us), than the industrial moguls who thought hitler was a good investment in order to beat down communists, Social Democrats, and unions, and then after the Second world War acted so innocent about what the regime did. Industrial and commercial corporations are authoritarian, hierarchical systems, spanning throughout the globe, and so what chance has a poor individual working person have against such a vast bureaucracy? (Yes, that’s what they are, bureaucracies, raking in TRILLIONS of dollars, and none of this Ayn Rand “rugged individualist” bullshit!)

It’s only through organizing from the grassroots, in our worksites and neighborhoods, we have ANY chance of standing up to these Wall-Street gangsters, and their congressional concubines, and their pet media, and their deluded thugs. Remember November 5 is just a few months away, and we must take our stand and get out and VOTE like our lives, and our country, and our democracy, depend on it, because it does.

Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chi! America will be free! Bye!

http://johnomson.com

My Novel, “Soldier Of The Cross.”

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The Mason Missile, January 29, 2019

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Greetings!

The shutdown of the federal government-and the forced unemployment, or employment without pay, of approximately 800,000 federal employees- is AT LAST over. The almost 800,000 federal workers included air-traffic controllers, TSA agents screening bags at airports, EPA and OSHA technicians inspecting the safety of the environment and worksites, inspectors of food and drugs, Coast Guard personnel and FBI agents; civil servants (like I was for the City of Philadelphia), not well paid but earning a living, sustaining our families and ourselves, working people like you, the focus of vilification by right-wing propagandists for decades; like the school teachers in Michigan under Scott Walker-how many bought into the slander that Walker put upon them, that they were such horrible people because they (allegedly) had such great pay and benefits, sue to their having a union-so, instead of breaking their union and taking away their benefits, why don’t such people JOIN a union, so THEY can get such goodies? There are people like this, who are in a miserable situation, and instead of joining others to alleviate their situation, they want others to also be miserable. (I grew up among people like that.)

THESE are the horrible federal “bureaucrats”  the right-wing propagandists have for decades, have vilified as oppressing the American people-particularly the entrepreneurs who just want to do their capitalist thing and make all Americans prosper-a myth typified in the ravings, uh, writings of Ayn Rand, and which they tried to implement into public policy-weaken workers’ unions; hamper regulations on their activities-pollution, investments, workplace safety, equal opportunity and discrimination; lessen taxes on corporations so they “can invest in new equipment and hire more workers”; and diminish welfare benefits, even those for the elderly, children, and retirees.

It never works out like that in real life. Taxes are cut for corporations and the uber-wealthy, and they invest their extra money in offshore bank accounts- as was shown in the cases of the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers. The environment is mangled due to greater pollution from car exhaust, chemicals spilling into rivers (thus contaminating sources of drinking water), excessive mining creating earthquakes, polar icecaps melting, and other forms of meteorological disasters. Factories, instead of hiring more workers in THIS country, set up in low-wage regions that have no real worker protections-and finally end up in nations with repressive governments who happily accommodate the companies’ anti-union mood.

In the new model of capitalism-as was practiced my Mitt Romney and his alma mater, Bain Capital- a hedge fund purchases a corporation, loads it up with debt it could not possibly pay off, then sells off parts of it, increasing the profit for the investors-and leaving workers without pay, without work, and without hope-except for some raving maniac who wants to float into office by telling jobless workers that their REAL enemy is the dark-skinned “inferiors” who live off welfare, who commit crimes, who use the government for their advantage (like no one should?), and who want to rape your sister.  

I always wondered why conservatives and other corporate apologists have a hatred for welfare: it can’t just be their whining about “lazy welfare bums who don’t work”-cutting their welfare benefits would never close any federal deficit, and sick, elderly people and children, aren’t in any shape to work some jobs.

Plus, with the globalization of the economy, with the shifting of investments, and factories, from one low-wage regions of the country to the next-and even from one low-wage country to the next- jobs aren’t always available, with factories closing down, leaving workers unemployed, and so they’re not able to purchase goods at local stores, closing them down in turn; and local governments can’t collect as much as before in taxes, thereby having to cut back services.

There are several factors to this conservative welfare bashing;

With a welfare system and a labor movement, workers could maintain a level of independence-not complete, but some-from corporate managers, who believe their own propaganda about their own infallibility in managing the economy.

It creates a scapegoat like I said earlier, a THOSE PEOPLE for working people only slightly higher up the economic scale, who are also trying to pay bills and get by.  Throw race into the mix, and you get a source of division which politicians, subsidized by corporations, love to exploit-and working and low-income people of BOTH races remain in the same difficult economic situation. For the white working class, the false drug of “racial superiority” does no good.

As a working person, a trade unionist, and as a Democratic Socialist, I must continue to point this out and work to correct it. Bye!