Category: Business

IS Alt Energy The Answer?

I wrote this draft before the idiot won the election…..and Donny has a hard on for alt energy so this may be a moot point I will make.

We are bombarded daily by ads telling us the strives that big business is making to save the environment…..big oil, auto makers, bottlers, etc…..but are these forward looking business just blowing smoke up the consumers ass?

The latest report on CO2 emissions is not a good one (btw it may be the last report we get for at least 4 years)….

The Met Office has issued a dire warning: global warming is accelerating beyond control, pushing Earth off-track from meeting the 1.5°C (2.7°F) target set in the Paris Agreement.

The latest data shows a rapid rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and record-breaking temperatures – raising serious concerns about the future of our planet.

Scientists warn that without immediate and drastic action, we are heading toward a climate crisis that will be difficult to reverse.

The year 2024 officially became the hottest on record, with global average temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. This milestone highlights the increasing intensity of climate change and the urgent need for action.

https://www.earth.com/news/global-warming-is-accelerating-beyond-control-as-co2-levels-rise/

But the problem is the energy production…..trying to solve our energy problem we are embracing alt energy…..or are we?

Rising energy costs, unreliable power grids, and climate change continue to exacerbate the global energy crisis and its impact on both businesses and households.

To be sure, electricity access has been improving, the cost of solar energy has dropped by over 80% since 2010, and renewable energy installations have consistently outpaced fossil fuel developments. But even with all that progress, projections signal a rough road ahead for energy usage around the world—one that will continue to impact families struggling to pay bills, industries facing operational disruptions, and economies hindered by resource instability.

One major contributor to the calamity: the world’s reliance on centralized energy grids. Although centralized grids are pivotal to the generation and distribution of energy across many major cities of the world, a lot of these grids are getting old and outdated, overburdened, and ill-equipped to handle the demands of modern economies.

Fortunately, decentralized grids are emerging to help solve that problem. “The rise of decentralized energy solutions, like microgrids, is a direct response to the limitations of traditional grids,” Gil Kroyzer, CEO of Solargik, tells Fast Company. “Unlike centralized systems, decentralized solutions bring energy production closer to the end consumer, improving reliability and reducing infrastructure stress.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91257084/can-renewable-energy-really-fix-the-global-energy-crisis

There are no easy answers and kicking the can down the road at every opportunity will do nothing to save the planet.  Plus we have a new admin in DC that hates the environmental oversight and will work tirelessly to overturn any and all progressive we have made as little as it may be.

I am glad I am old and will not see the final destruction of the planet.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Never to Return

Most of us shop for eggs and most of us have been bitching about the stark rise in prices…..the question has been asked….will we ever see cheap eggs again?  Many do not understand what is happening so I feel a little background will help….

Bird flu is forcing farmers to slaughter millions of chickens a month, pushing US egg prices to more than double their cost in summer 2023. As the AP reports, it appears there may be no relief in sight, given the coming Easter demand. The average price per dozen nationwide hit $4.15 in December. That’s not quite the $4.82 record set two years ago, but the USDA predicts prices are going to soar another 20% this year. “It’s just robbery,” says Minneapolis resident Sage Mills. “Eggs used to be kind of a staple … (but now) you might as well just go out to eat.” A look:

  • What’s driving prices? In two words, bird flu. More than 145 million chickens, turkeys, and other birds have been slaughtered. Cage-free egg laws in 10 states that set minimum space for chickens may also be responsible for some supply disruptions and price increases.
  • Why is the virus so hard to control? Bird flu is primarily spread by wild birds such as ducks and geese as they migrate. It’s also easily tracked into a farm on someone’s boots or vehicle. The virus found a new host in dairy cattle last March, creating more opportunities for it to linger and spread. More than five dozen people have also become ill with bird flu and one died.
  • What’s being done? Many poultry farms installed truck washes to disinfect vehicles and require workers to shower and change clothes before stepping inside a barn. Some farmers have even invested in lasers that shoot beams of green light to discourage wild ducks and geese from landing. Cooking meat to 165 degrees kills bird flu, and pasteurization kills it in milk.
  • How much has the outbreak cost? It’s impossible to know how much farmers have spent to seal barns, build shower houses, or adopt other biosecurity measures. “Over the last five years, my small farm alone has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on biosecurity,” says Minnesota turkey farmer Loren Brey. The USDA has spent at least $1.14 billion compensating farmers for the birds they’ve had to kill. A USDA rep said the department also spent more than $576 million on its own response

The answer is probably never again.

Why?

The egg industry has learned from the oil industry….take advantage of a situation and raise prices then come down a few cents and people will reveille in their savings and what a good job the industry is doing to help the common man.

Of course that will be bullshit and greed has set in so high prices are the norm and for a long time.

Here’s a factoid for you about the egg industry…..

As avian flu rapidly circulates in the U.S., Cal-Maine Foods, the nation’s largest egg producer, appears to be having a bumper year, bolstered in part by taxpayer bailouts in the multi-millions.

The company’s stocks recently soared to a record high, as its net sales rose by a staggering 82 percent last quarter. Cal-Maine Foods expanded its operations last spring, paying around $110 million in cash to acquire the assets and facilities of another egg producer, ISE America. Despite culling at least 1.6 million hens on infected farms last year, the poultry corporation is getting richer and bigger.

U.S. taxpayers have given the poultry giant a lift. The company has received $44 million in indemnity payouts to compensate for bird deaths tied to the avian flu outbreak. Despite the company’s growth, Cal-Maine Foods is the fourth largest recipient of indemnity payments for the ongoing outbreak from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)’s indemnity program.

The compensation system, distinct from the agency’s program for livestock, pays poultry farmers and producers for the market value of the birds and eggs. It does not pay for birds that directly die from avian flu. It only pays for “infected or exposed poultry and/or eggs that are destroyed to control the disease,” — i.e. deliberately killed to prevent the spread of the virus. The agency also provides compensation for other virus control activities, such as destroying contaminated supplies and disinfecting a barn after an outbreak.

How U.S. Taxpayers Bailed Out the Poultry Industry, and Helped Entrench Avian Flu

Here is my problem….if these people are compensated for their loss how can the government allow them to fleece the public.

Basically it is corporate welfare….and you about those ‘welfare queens’ (sorry for the use of this insulting bullshit)

You might want to pay attention for this is not the only industry that gets rich from fucking the public.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is United Healthcare Evil?

Since the CEO of United Healthcare was popped on the streets of NYC there has been scrutiny over what drove the assassin to commit murder.

There have been several stories of people that were screwed over by the big insurance giant…..this is the one that stuck with me….

A month after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson prompted many Americans to share personal horror stories of the company’s coverage denials and other practices, a doctor in Austin, Texas on Wednesday shared her own experience that she said exemplified how the for-profit health system “just keeps getting worse.”

In a video posted to TikTok, Dr. Elisabeth Potter said she recently received an unprecedented phone call from UnitedHealthcare about a patient—one who was already under anesthesia and having surgery.

Potter, a plastic surgeon who specializes in reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients who have had mastectomies, said she was performing a bilateral deep inferior epigastric perforator [DIEP} surgery when UnitedHealthcare called her in the operating room.

The call was urgent, she was told, and needed to be returned right away.

“So I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman said he needed some information about her,” said Potter. “Wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified.”

Potter found that the person calling wasn’t aware that the patient whose care he was questioning had breast cancer and was in the operating room—that information was known by “a different department” at UnitedHealthcare.

Potter’s account, said Nidhi Hegde, managing director at the American Economic Liberties Project, was “another horror story from a doctor dealing with United Healthcare’s terrible authorization process.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-healthcare-surgery-coverage

This is horrific but it is not an outlier…

Then there is news about their and others drug pricing…..

The Big 3 companies acting as intermediaries between drugmakers and insurance providers made billions by needlessly jacking up the prices of lifesaving drugs, according to the Federal Trade Commission. In its second interim staff report on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), released Tuesday, the FTC said CVS Health’s Caremark Rx, Cigna’s Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx “marked up numerous specialty generic drugs dispensed at their affiliated pharmacies by thousands of percent, and many others by hundreds of percent,” generating $7.3 billion in revenue in excess of the acquisition costs of the drugs over five years beginning in 2017.

In theory, PBMs act as middlemen, negotiating fees with drugmakers on behalf of employers and reimbursing pharmacies for prescriptions, per Reuters. But the FTC’s earlier report on PBMs, released in July, found they are “vertically integrated” with healthcare conglomerates, which “exercise vast control over huge swaths of the healthcare sector.” That report analyzed two specialty generic drugs, flagging markups over 1,000%. This report expands the analysis to 51 specialty generic drugs. For these, the Big 3’s price-markup revenue climbed from $522 million in 2017 to $2.1 billion in 2021. “Cancer drugs alone made up nearly half of the $7.3 billion” in revenue over five years “with multiple sclerosis medications accounting for another 25%,” per NBC News.

The companies—found to have “reimbursed their affiliated pharmacies at a higher rate than they paid unaffiliated pharmacies on nearly every specialty generic drug examined”—also generated an additional $1.4 billion over five years through the practice of billing plan sponsors more than they reimbursed pharmacies for the drugs, the report notes. A rep for Express Scripts says the report is misleading, with the analyzed drugs accounting for less than 2% of what health plans spend on medications in a year, per Reuters. An OptumRx rep said the company lowers drug costs and saved patients $1.3 billion last year. But the report found patients’ out of pocket costs for the 51 drugs totaled $279 million in 2021, “an annual compound increase of 14%-21% since 2017,” per Reuters.

To my way of thinking this is evil and all the industry needs to be held to a higher standard than it is today….but sadly if that happens it will be after this next 4 years.

These companies are just sick as well as greedy and evil…..period.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

US Farmers Plead

The president-elect has promised to massively deport immigrants on day one….and that is yet to be seen….but US farmers are in a panic at the possible loss of workers….what to do?  What to do?

Beg….comes to mind….

As Donald Trump’s second presidential transition hurtles forward, his plan to mass-deport undocumented immigrants is causing farmers to panic — and, tellingly, to beg for exemptions.

With undocumented farmworkers potentially being targeted in the vague incoming immigration raids, lobbying groups are proposing expanded legal pathways to help undocumented agricultural workers attain visas.

“We need the certainty, reliability, and affordability of a workforce program and programs that are going to allow us to continue to deliver food from the farm to the table,” John Hollay of the International Fresh Produce Association told Reuters.

During his last turn at the head of ICE, Homan became infamous for defending the first Trump administration’s cruel family separation policy. In light of his second incoming stint with the president-elect, some farmer advocates are using that rhetoric against the proposed policy.

In an interview with Newsweek, dairy farmer Jennifer Tilton Flood of the Flood Brothers Farm in Maine said that because her family’s facilities are located close to the United States’ border with Canada, it’s “within the control” of Customs and Border Patrol. As such, that department could potentially act “without due diligence” to deport the people who work there.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/farmers-deportation-cheap-labor-trump

Is their concern the loss of workers or the loss of cheap labor?

Trump may listen if the huge agribusiness talks but if it is just the little farmer they may just bend over a accept their fate for their vote.

Will the farmers keep their cheap labor?

Will the decision be a shot at the consumer yet again?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Does Trump Have A Smell?

The title leaves the door open for those that want to take a shot at Trump.

The huckster is back!

In the past our newly elected president has had many, many retail cons…..there was the vodka, water, steaks, ties, university, bibles, watches, let us not forget those $11,000 guitars and now a cologne.

That’s right you can now smell like Trump (this of course could lead to many off color jibes)…..

Donald Trump raised eyebrows earlier this month when he announced he was selling a line of $11,000 guitars – the musical instrument becoming the latest item in a string of Trump-endorsed products that include sneakers, a Bible and a “victory cologne”.

Billed as “the only guitar officially endorsed by President Donald J Trump”, the acoustic and electric axes bear all the gaudy insignia of Trump’s political campaigns, and have been developed “with the help of a master luthier”.

The guitars have the slogan “Make America Great Again” embossed on the neck, and an eagle in front of an American flag on the body. The headstock has the number “45” – Trump was the 45th president – surrounded by a lot of stars. An autographed electric version costs $11,750, the acoustic $10,250.

Trump announced the move in a post on Truth Social, and the associated Trump Guitars website shows a photograph of Trump, mouth agape, holding a pen to the frame of one of the instruments.

But as quickly as Trump attempted to get the music going, it was potentially silenced: Gibson told Guitar World this week that it issued a cease and desist order to Trump Guitars owner 16 Creative over the use of its single-cut electric guitar model, “as the design infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape”.

Entering into guitar sales is a left-field choice for Trump, whose most notable connection to the guitar is his ability to get bands that use the instrument to order him to stop playing their music. But throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has made it clear that he will endorse almost anything, as long as there is profit to be made.

Trump owes more than $500m in legal penalties related to his defamation of E Jean Carroll, a writer who a civil trial found had been sexually abused by the president-elect, and to financial fraud stretching over a decade.

An eclectic range of product endorsements has been helpful to Trump in raising at least some of that money.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/trump-merchandise-for-sale

You too can smell like “victory”…..it probably stinks but that is just my thought.

Me?  I will reserve my money to help fight the inflation that is coming my way in 2025.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Dreaded Black Friday

Since today will be a slow day here on IST I thought I would offer up a little history on the trials and tribulations of this day.

Black Friday has traditionally been the day after Thanksgiving that offers up sales and cheaper Christmas gift….it is considered to be the busiest shopping day of the year.

Until recently it was a single day of craziness and business but recently it has bee the whole month of November…..but where did all this craziness begin?

Might as well learn something….and that is why I am here….

The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.

The most commonly repeated story behind the Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. Though it’s true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is the officially sanctioned—but inaccurate—story behind the tradition.

In recent years, another myth has surfaced that gives a particularly ugly twist to the tradition, claiming that back in the 1800s Southern plantation owners could buy enslaved workers at a discount on the day after Thanksgiving. Though this version of Black Friday’s roots has understandably led some to call for a boycott of the retail holiday, it has no basis in fact.

The real history behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only were Philly cops not able to take the day off, but they had to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters also took advantage of the bedlam in stores and made off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.

https://www.history.com/news/black-friday-thanksgiving-origins-history

There you have it….while you are out throwing money at retailers you can see that it is just blind consumerism and not something that will benefit you personally.

On another side….ever hear of ‘Brown Friday”?

Plumbers have!

If you’re one of those sit-com families that sit around the table on Thanksgiving and tell everybody what you are grateful for this year, maybe your answer should be “plumbers”.

While you eat your turkey, various potatoes, squashes, vegetables, and cranberry sauce, spare a thought for plumbers, who are preparing for what has become known in the industry as “Brown Friday”. The day is often the busiest of the year for the professionals, as they tackle the aftermath of Thanksgiving.

According to data analyzed by Yelp, searches for “emergency plumbing” surged by an impressive 65 percent on the day following Thanksgiving in 2023 compared to the previous and following two weeks. Google data shows a similar spike in searches for the same term.

Los Angeles saw a particularly sharp increase in searches around Brown Friday, with a 73 percent increase in searches for terms related to plumbing, and a 400 percent increase in searches for “plumbing repair”.

The cause for this surge in interest in plumbing is fairly obvious, as people stay at home and use their toilets and sinks more, while also not following the best guidance on disposal of foods and fats.

“Turkey may seem like the one thing that doesn’t cause harm to a kitchen sink, but that’s exactly what makes it such a threat,” Mr Rooter Plumbing explains in a blog post, outlining the main culprits. “While most of us know not to throw poultry skin and bones into the garbage disposal, grease is another matter. If poured into a kitchen sink drain, the drippings from your turkey can re-solidify into fats that coat your drain and lead to serious clogs.”

https://www.iflscience.com/while-you-enjoy-thanksgiving-plumbers-are-preparing-for-brown-friday-nightmare-76989

There you have it….the Black and the Brown…..

Enjoy your day and think about where all this began and why.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

An Automated Farm?

Let’s change the pace of the day….

There is a report that some of the agribusiness has taken on the chore of bring automation to farming…..but will this help the price of food or will it just mean more profits and less safety?

Jeremy Ford hates wasting water. As a mist of rain sprinkled the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford bemoaned how expensive running a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his 5-acre farm was—and how bad it was for the planet. Earlier this month, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically saturate the roots of his crops, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” Although they may be more costly upfront, he sees such climate-friendly investments as a necessary expense—and more affordable than expanding his workforce of two. It’s “much more efficient,” says Ford.

A growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture, reports the AP in a broad look. It could ease the sector’s deepening labor shortage, help farmers manage costs, and protect workers from extreme heat. Automation could also improve yields by bringing greater accuracy to planting, harvesting, and farm management, potentially mitigating some of the challenges of growing food in an ever-warmer world. But many small farmers and producers across the country aren’t convinced. Barriers to adoption go beyond steep price tags to questions about whether the tools can do the jobs nearly as well as the workers they’d replace. Some of those workers wonder what this trend might mean for them. A few examples of the tech:

  • Frank James grew up on a cattle and crop farm in northeastern South Dakota that has had to cut back on farmhands due, in part, to lack of available labor. They swear by tractor autosteer, an automated system that communicates with a satellite to help keep the machine on track. But it can’t identify the moisture levels in the fields, which can hamstring tools or cause the tractor to get stuck, and requires human oversight to work. “You build a relationship with the land, with the animals, with the place that you’re producing it. And we’re moving away from that,” says James.
  • Extreme heat, drought, and intense rainfall have made detasseling corn in the Midwest even harder. Jason Cope, co-founder of farm tech company PowerPollen, created a tool a tractor can use to collect the pollen from male plants without having to remove the tassel. It can then be saved for future crops. “We can account for climate change by timing pollen perfectly as it’s delivered,” he says. “And it takes a lot of that labor that’s hard to come by out of the equation.”

I do not foresee this benefiting society and its people but rather increasing profits and allowing the greed to grow deeper and deeper.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Thieves In Business suits

A change of pace….we will be bombarded with stats and reports for the next few days so let’s try and change the tone.

I know I do go on about the War Department and it’s inflated budget that grows yearly….and I rail about the sycophants with buckets on money that buy off Congress and the White House….the corruption is just getting worse with every admin that comes to power.

For instance one of the preeminent defense industry has just bee caught gouging.

Indictments of arms contractors for corruption and malfeasance are not uncommon, but recently revealed cases of illegal conduct by RTX (formerly Raytheon) are extraordinary even by the relatively lax standards of the defense industry.

The company has agreed to pay nearly $1 billion in fines, which is one of the highest figures ever for corruption in the arms sector. To incur these fines, RTX participated in price gouging on Pentagon contracts, bribing officials in Qatar, and sharing sensitive information with China.

Engaging in illegal conduct on this scale suggests that, far from being an aberration, this behavior may be business as usual for the company. Given the scale of RTX’s malfeasance, the Justice Department should take a close look at the practices of other arms contractors to determine whether these infractions are industry standard.

The company’s approach is reminiscent of the way arms companies did business in the 1960s, when, for example, massive cost overruns on Lockheed Martin’s C-5 transport plane drew fire from internal critics like Ernest Fitzgerald and congressional gadflies, like the-Democratic Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin.

Resorting to bribery has been less prevalent since Sen. Proxmire pushed through the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, which was a response to a massive scandal involving the bribery of officials in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. The exposure brought about by the scandal – which covered events going back to the 1950s that were not known to the general public until a set of 1975 Senate hearings on the activities of multinational corporations showed the world how bribery was used to sway the decisions of foreign policy makers. This resulted in major consequences, including the conviction of former Japanese Premier Kakuei Tanaka, along with 10 other business people and government officials.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/raytheon-corruption/

This is disgraceful….if these thieves are caught red handed then they should be fined and sent to the bottom of any future contracts.

I wish I could say this was a one off incident….but it is all too common.

Then there is Boeing, you know the plane maker that has been doing shoddy work, it was also caught gouging….

A new report from a Department of Defense watchdog claims Boeing managed to slip a few pricey items through, reports Reuters, inflating the cost of a dozen spare parts for C-17 transport planes used by the Air Force to the tune of almost $1 million. According to the DOD’s Office of Inspector General report released Tuesday, included in those spare parts were bathroom soap dispensers that ran the military arm nearly $150,000 in unnecessary costs. The markup on the soap dispensers was 7,943%, the report noted—or more than 80 times what similar commercially available dispensers cost, per CBS News.

“The Air Force needs to establish and implement more effective internal controls to help prevent overpaying for spare parts for the remainder of this contract, which continues through 2031,” says Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch in a statement. He makes the point that “significant overpayments for spare parts may reduce the number of spare parts that Boeing can purchase on the contract, potentially reducing C-17 readiness worldwide.”

Under that contract, Boeing is the entity that buys the spare parts for the C-17 planes, then is reimbursed by the Air Force. The inspector general’s review was spurred by an anonymous tip about the soap dispensers. Boeing, meanwhile, says the spare parts had to be significantly modified to meet military specs, and that it plans to dive into the details in its own written response “in the coming days,” per Reuters. The Air Force says it concurs with the “intent” of the watchdog’s recommendation to “determine whether spare parts prices are allowable and reasonable before payment,” adding that it would seek to recoup more than $902,000, reports USA Today.

These are not solo incidents this practice is all too common and there is little oversight anyone thanks to the GOP and stupidity.

This is taxpayer money and should be reported whenever abuse has been rooted out….but rooting it out seems to be a huge obstacle.

But that is just my wish for this government.

Taxpayer cash side note: 

A new report by the Israeli outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since October 7, finding that Washington is funding 70% of Tel Aviv’s military costs. In a little over a year, the US has provided Israel with more than $20 billion in military aid. 

“The scope of American aid since the beginning of the war is about 85 billion shekels… According to official estimates by the Bank of Israel, the total cost of the war is…approximately NIS 118 billion.” It continues, “Therefore, according to a simple calculation, The Americans financed about 70% of the war effort.”

According to the Cost of War Project, the US has given Israel $22.57 billion in military aid since the Hamas attack. Calcalist concludes without US support, Tel Aviv’s war would simply be unaffordable.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/washington-is-funding-70-of-israels-wars/

And no one seems to care how much money is being pissed away on these endless wars.

Why is that?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Those Damn Gas Prices

We all get sticker shock at times when we stop off to fill our gas tank….but then it comes down a wee bit and we accept that as a lower price.

But why are all gas prices within a couple of cents of each other?

I believe that is called ‘price fixing’.

Consumer advocates demanded congressional hearings on alleged price fixing by oil giants on Monday after the Federal Trade Commission banned an executive from serving on the board of Chevron, saying he had colluded with international representatives to keep oil prices high.

The FTC said it would prohibit John B. Hess, CEO of the Hess Corporation, from serving on Chevron’s Board of Directors as part of Chevron’s acquisition of the company, citing Hess’ public and private communications “with the past and current secretaries general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and an official from Saudi Arabia.”

“In these communications, Mr. Hess stressed the importance of oil market stability and inventory management and encouraged these officials to take actions on these issues and speak about them at different events,” said the FTC.

The FTC’s complaint marks the second time since May that an oil executive has been accused of collusion and price fixing to ensure Americans would continue paying high prices for gas, adding an estimated $500 per year, per vehicle, in fuel costs for the average U.S. household.

…

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said that “jail time should seriously be considered,” highlighting the financial pain Sheffield’s actions added to households already struggling to afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials.

The five largest U.S. oil companies have reported more than $250 billion in profits over the last two years.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ftc-oil-price-fixing

But I will bet that these thieves get away with it….after all they own the Congress.

It is not just the oil industry that is doing this….agribusiness….car dealers….you pick a commodity and there will be some sort of collusion going on.

These corporations will get a slap on the wrist and pay a small fine and promise to never do it again….a promise that is broken before the ink is dry on the deal.

Time for somebody to step up and take on these thieves….and I wait.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Another Trump Business?

Today is all Trump all day!

I thought the big news would be that Trump rules out a third debate….

Republican nominee Donald Trump said on Thursday he would not participate in another presidential debate against Kamala Harris ahead of the Nov. 5 election, after several polls showed his Democratic rival won their debate earlier this week.
“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” the former president wrote on social media site Truth Social. Trump had participated in a debate against President Joe Biden in June before his debate against Harris on Tuesday.
After having his butt handed to him by Harris I can understand that decision.
But the bigger news, at least for me, is his new business adventure.

Over the years Trump has had many failed businesses….a university, a casino, steaks, water, vodka and the list goes on…..and now news he has a new adventure to scam the public…..crypto

Donald Trump plans to deliver remarks next Monday about cryptocurrency and the launch of the company World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform controlled by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric. “We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” Trump said in a video posted Thursday to X, the social media site that will also host his address on the subject at 8pm EDT on Monday from his Mar-a-Lago home. The launch of the business will come just 50 days from Election Day, per the AP.

As part of his presidential campaign, Trump has pledged to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.” He has received big donations from some industry leaders, including from twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, notes the New York Times. The new business could raise conflict-of-interest concerns if Trump wins reelection and his economic policies benefit the new company.

Cryptocurrencies are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. The trading often depends on online marketplaces that charge fees for transactions, so that the cryptocurrencies can be exchanged for US dollars and other currencies. Trump opposed crypto during his presidency, but he has since warmed to the sector. He has suggested the government create a strategic reserve of bitcoin and has vowed to block the creation of a Federal Reserve-administered Central Bank Digital Currency, a digital form of central bank money that would be available to the public.

This from a guy that is peddling the Bible for profit.

Do I smell another Trump failure?

Crypto has all the makings for a scam….just look at those that have been arrested for fraud.

My daughter’s adventure into bitcoin has not been good and all I can say to the gullible out there….’buyer beware’.

If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

Do not fall victim to a scam….do the research and do NOT take anyone’s word for it.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”