Tag: profiteering

The US Is Making Billions Being Warlords in Yemen

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

One of Biden’s promises during his presidential campaign was to immediately move to end all support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen. In February 2021, Biden stood at a podium at the State Department and proclaimed that the war in Yemen must end. Biden underlined the humanitarian crisis as the key reason the United States withdrew support. An investigation (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office found that the United States is training the Saudi-led coalition, and the US has troops on the ground in Yemen. Biden confirmed that the United States has troops in Yemen in a letter to Congress in June last year. Biden lied to the American people when he claimed that the United States was withdrawing US support for the war in Yemen in 2021.

The US Is Making Billions Being Warlords in Yemen

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

One, the bans are generally designed to agitate a xenophobic base and give the impression the GOP is “doing something about China.” But the party that couldn’t care less about rampant corruption or privacy violations isn’t doing much of anything meaningful to thwart China. In fact, letting adtech, telecom, and app companies run rampant with little oversight runs contrary to any such goal.

Two, the bans distract the public and press from our ongoing failure on consumer privacy and security issues. Banning TikTok, but doing nothing about the accountability optional free for all that is the adtech and data-hoovering space, doesn’t actually fix anything. China can just obtain the same data from a universe of other international companies facing little real oversight on data collection.

Three, the ban is really just about money. Trump gave the game away with his proposal that TikTok be chopped up and sold to Oracle and Walmart. That cronyistic deal fell through, but it’s pretty clear that this moral panic is designed to either help TikTok’s competitors (Facebook lobbyists are very active on this front), or force the sale of the most popular app in modern history to GOP-allies. At which point they’ll engage in all the surveillance and influence efforts they pretend to be mad about.

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Here is the Truth: Medicare Advantage Is Neither Medicare Nor an Advantage

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Right now, well-funded lobbyists from big health insurance companies are leading a campaign on Capitol Hill to get Members of Congress and Senators of both parties to sign on to a letter designed to put them on the record “expressing strong support” for the scam that is Medicare Advantage.

Here is the Truth: Medicare Advantage Is Neither Medicare Nor an Advantage