Tag: Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos’ Charity Spending Millions to Fund Development of Fake Meat

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Lauren Sanchez

The charitable foundation of Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos is pouring tens of millions of dollars into efforts to advance synthetic meat.

The Bezos Earth Fund (BEF) will be spending an initial $60 million to fund research and development of “alternative proteins,” which the University of Melbourne defines as “plant-based and food-technology alternatives to animal protein,” the BEF announced Tuesday. The $60 million commitment is part of the BEF’s $1 billion campaign to transform food systems to fight climate change.

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Former IRS Contractor Charles Littlejohn Sentenced to 5 Years for Releasing Trump Tax Records

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Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday after leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax records, according to NBC News.

Littlejohn, 38, was charged in September 2023 with one count of disclosing information from a tax return for a government official, and he pleaded guilty in October to leaking 10 years of Trump’s tax records to The New York Times. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, according to NBC News.

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Washington Post Disavows Its Own Poll Showing Trump Up by 10 Over Biden

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The Washington Post cast doubt on its own poll with ABC that showed former President Trump up by 10 points over his likely rival President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential contest.

Trump leads Biden 52 percent to 42 percent in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to the Post. The outlet suggested that, given other polling showing a closer race, its own poll is “probably an outlier” and appeared to cast doubt on the sample.

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Leahy and Carmichael Discuss the Vast Donor Group Funding Far-Left Causes Across America and Right Here in Tennessee

Tennessee Star Staff

Original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael and host Michael Patrick Leahy discuss the origins and activities of arguably the largest donor group actively funding far-Left causes throughout the U.S. and Tennessee on Monday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.  TRANSCRIPT Michael Patrick Leahy: 6:50 AM broadcasting from our studios on Music Row, Nashville, Tennessee. Crom Carmichael in-studio. Crom, you know, in 1630, John Winthrop – who became a Puritan leader – and this was when Massachusetts Bay Colony was just being started. He became the first and most prominent governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. He arrived from England on a ship called the Arabella. Twenty years ago a wealthy Leftist started a group called Arabella Advisors to try to kind of co-op this concept of America. And Winthrop actually wrote a letter while he was about to disembark from the Arabella back in 1630 saying we’re trying to build a ‘shining city on the hill’ phrasing that has been used, of course, by Ronald Reagan. So the Left is co-opting that. You sent me this fascinating article. I’ve been familiar with this group for some time. Headline: ‘Documents provide rare glimpse into how Arabella Advisors exerts…

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Soros and Bezos Back Initiative to Raise $3 Trillion Annually to Fight Climate Change

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Left-wing billionaire George Soros and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are helping a World Economic Forum (WEF) climate financing program that aims to raise $3 trillion annually to help slash emissions and restore “nature loss” by 2050.

The WEF and the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations and Bezos Earth Fund, along with more than 43 other nonprofits, businesses and academic institutions, will become part of the “Giving to Amplify Earth Action” (GAEA) initiative that will fund efforts intended to limit global warming, according to a Tuesday WEF announcement. GAEA and its partners will finance charitable partnerships between public and private entities while identifying where the $3 trillion in funding is most needed.

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Jeff Bezos’ Ex-Wife Donates $130 Million to Organization Pushing Woke Education in Schools

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Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, is donating over $130 million to an organization that advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles to be taught in schools, Communities In Schools announced Thursday.

Communities In Schools, a national organization working to support student access to education and resources, announced the $133.5 million donation from Scott on Thursday. The investment is reportedly intended to broaden the efforts of the organization and expand its mission in schools across the country.

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Top Ten Wealthiest Men in the World Doubled Their Wealth During the Pandemic

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A recent report claims that the world’s top 10 richest men all saw their wealth double over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic, while 99 percent of global income dropped dramatically during the same period.

As reported by ABC News, a study published on Monday by the group Oxfam showed that the collective wealth of the top 10 doubled from approximately $700 billion to over $1.5 trillion between March of 2020 and November of 2021. During that same time, over 160 million people fell into poverty as incomes plummeted. The increase for the top 10 in less than two years represented a greater increase for their wealth than their growth over the previous 14 years combined.

The 10 men who were the focus of Oxfam’s study were: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffett. The data for the study was gathered from the World Bank.

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Amazon Mogul Jeff Bezos Will Donate $100 Million to Obama Foundation in Honor of John Lewis

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Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, has announced a donation of $100 million to the Obama Foundation in honor of the legacy of civil rights icon and former Congressman John Lewis.

“Freedom fighters deserve a special place in the pantheon of heroes, and I can’t think of a more fitting person to honor with this gift than John Lewis, a great American leader and a man of extraordinary decency and courage,” Bezos said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to support President and Mrs. Obama and their Foundation in its mission to train and inspire tomorrow’s leaders.”

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Lawmakers Say Amazon ‘Misled’ and ‘May Have Lied’ to Congress

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Top members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy on Monday questioning whether the tech company’s executives lied under oath to Congress.

The letter, sent by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including House Judiciary Committee Chair Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York and House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee Ranking Member Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, referred to Wednesday reporting from Reuters stating that Amazon used its online marketplace to collect data on competitors and manufacture imitations of their products, prioritizing its imitations over competitors’ products in search results. The lawmakers also cited a Thursday investigation by The Markup which found that Amazon provided its “brands” better search result locations than those awarded to competitors with better ratings and reviews.

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Employees Criticize Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for Being ‘Mostly Male and Overwhelmingly White’

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Jeff Bezos

A letter written by current and former employees of Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin took aim at the company’s workplace culture.

The letter, posted on website Lioness and written by former Head of Blue Origin Employee Communications Alexandra Abrams along with 20 unnamed current and former employees, criticized the company’s culture and work environment as “stuck in a toxic past.”

“One-hundred percent of the senior technical and program leaders are men,” the employees wrote, bashing the Blue Origin workforce for being “mostly male and overwhelmingly white.”

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Amazon Plans to Open Department Stores

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Amazon is planning to open department stores where consumers can purchase a variety of goods like clothing and electronics, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The planned expansion of Amazon brick-and-mortar stores is the online retail giant’s latest attempt to disrupt the industry, according to a WSJ report Thursday. The Seattle-based company has recently expanded its brick-and-mortar grocery store footprint, opening 17 Amazon Fresh stores nationwide, and is developing at least 20 more, Bloomberg reported.

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Bezos Offers to Waive $2 Billion in Fees to Secure Lunar Landing Contract

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Jeff Bezos

Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos offered to waive $2 billion in payments to secure his spaceflight company Blue Origin a NASA contract.

Bezos asked NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in an open letter Monday to award Blue Origin a contract to construct a Human Landing System (HLS), a lunar-landing vehicle, as part of the Artemis program, offering to waive up to $2 billion in fees. Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX had been awarded the $2.9 billion contract in April, beating out Blue Origin’s bid, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Artemis program is intended to return human astronauts to the Moon, with a manned mission to Mars planned as well. Though the program was initially planned as a joint contract, it was awarded solely to SpaceX due to budgetary constraints which Bezos’ offer sought to alleviate, according to the letter.

“Blue Origin will bridge the HLS budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2 billion to get the program back on track right now,” Bezos wrote in the letter.

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The Billionaire Space Race: A Competition Between the World’s Richest Men Is Resurrecting an Industry

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Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire to successfully reach outer space this month when his Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft exited the atmosphere Tuesday, the latest development in the ongoing space race between Bezos, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson.

Branson was the first billionaire in space last week when he and several crew members aboard his VSS Unity spaceplane successfully flew to an altitude of 53.5 miles. His company Virgin Galactic, founded in 2004, is developing commercial spacecraft to be used in suborbital flights for those seeking a trip to outer space. Musk’s SpaceX, founded in 2002, has been at the forefront of the private space industry for over a decade, with Musk planning a mission to Mars as early as 2024.

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Jeff Bezos Gifts $200 Million to Liberal Activists Van Jones and José Andrés

Cooper Moran

After completing a 10 minute flight to the edge of space, Jeff Bezos announced on Tuesday that he is gifting $100 million each to Van Jones and José Andrés.

According to Bezos, the new philanthropic endeavor, The Courage and Civility Award, awarded to the two “recognizes leaders who aim high, and who pursue solutions with courage, and who always do so with civility.”

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Jeff Bezos Reaches Space in Successful Blue Origin Launch

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Screen cap of live video of Blue Origin lift off

Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and three other passengers successfully launched into space Tuesday aboard the billionaire’s Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft.

Liftoff!!

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket launches, carrying the company’s first crew and heading toward space.https://t.co/kYI3pmFsLB #BlueOrigin #JeffBezos pic.twitter.com/Xs0TnjpVbE

— Michael Sheetz (@thesheetztweetz) July 20, 2021

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Jeff Bezos Steps Down as CEO of Amazon

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos officially handed over the position of CEO to successor Andy Jassy on Monday, transitioning to the role of executive chair.

Bezos, whose stake in Amazon is worth roughly $180 billion according to the Associated Press, announced in a blog post his plans to step down from the chief executive officer position in February. Bezos said his new position as executive chair would allow him “to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives.”

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Amazon, Which Routinely Avoids Taxes, Supports Biden’s Corporate Tax Rate Hike

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Amazon endorsed President Joe Biden’s proposed higher corporate tax rate despite its history of routinely avoiding most or all of its federal tax obligations.

The massive online retailer supports President Joe Biden’s plan to pay for the $2 trillion infrastructure plan he unveiled last week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement Tuesday. Biden announced that the plan would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%.

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Bezos to Spend $10 Billion by 2030 on Climate Change

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who announced plans to step down as Amazon’s CEO last month to focus on philanthropic and science interests, is set to spend the $10 billion he invested in the Bezos Earth Fund by 2030, the Associated Press reported.

Bezos announced the fund in February 2020, but he offered few details on how exactly the money would be distributed. Andrew Steer, who for eight years has been the head of the environmental nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI), will be the fund’s CEO.

In a series of tweets, Steer revealed very few details, however he did say Bezos’ “goal is to spend it down between now and 2030.”

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Jeff Bezos’ Net Worth Reaches $200 Billion

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Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, solidified his status as the world’s wealthiest man after his net worth reached the $200 billion mark, according to the Daily Caller.

Bezos reached the astounding milestone on Wednesday, with the Caller noting that he is not alone in expanding his wealth during the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, which has significantly increased business for Amazon due to the rise in online shopping. Two other prominent CEOs who saw their net worths reach significant landmarks are Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who both reached $100 billion.

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Zuckerberg Was the Only Tech CEO to Unequivocally Say China Is Stealing American Technology

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the only tech executive at Wednesday’s antitrust hearing who unequivocally said China is stealing technology from American companies.

“I think it’s well documented that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies,” the 36-year-old Silicon Valley executive said after Rep. Greg Steube asked him if China is stealing from U.S. technology companies. The Florida Republican posed the same question to CEOs Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Sundar Pichai of Google.

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Spotlight on Four Big Tech CEOs Testifying in Competition Probe

The Associated Press

They command corporations with gold-plated brands, millions or even billions of customers, and a combined value greater than the entire German economy. One of them is the world’s richest individual; another is the fourth-ranked billionaire. Their industry has transformed society, linked people around the globe, mined and commercialized users’ personal data, and infuriated critics on both the left and right over speech.

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Bezos Could Become World’s First Trillionaire as Amazon Rakes in Cash During Pandemic, Research Shows

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to ride the wave of business his company is collecting during the coronavirus pandemic to become the world’s first trillionaire, research shows.

Bezos’s net worth has grown by 34% on average over the past half decade, which could make him a trillionaire, according to an analysis from Comparisun, a platform that helps companies create business management tools. Along with creating marketing tools, the company also conducts studies forecasting what will happen in the business sector, Comparisun’s website noted.

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Amazon Is Turning 25 – Here’s a Look Back at How It Changed the World

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Amazon Fulfillment

by Venkatesh Shankar   A quarter of a century ago, on July 5, 1994, a company, which shared a name with the world’s largest river, was incorporated. It sold books to customers who got to its website through a dial-up modem. It wasn’t the first bookstore to sell online. (Books.com launched in 1992.) But it behaved like a local store, whose shopkeeper knew customers by name – a bell even rang in the company’s Seattle headquarters every time an order was placed. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, set his sights on making it an “everything store.” The company would go on to become not just an everything store, but an “everything company.” Today, 25 years later, Amazon has reshaped retailing permanently. It is one of the top three most valuable companies in the world, with a market capitalization hovering around US$1 trillion, greater than the GDP of nearly 200 countries. If you had bought $100 worth of its IPO shares in 1997, it would be worth about $120,000 today. Redefining retail Amazon continually took shopping convenience to newer levels. Before 1994, shoppers had to travel to stores to discover and buy things. Shopping used to be hard work – wandering down…

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After 10 Years, Amazon Is Pulling the Plug on Its Business Operations in China

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Amazon Fulfillment

by Saibal Dasgupta   Amazon says it is curtailing business operations in China, the world’s biggest retail market, after struggling against better entrenched local players for more than a decade. The company announced recently that as of July 18, it will no longer provide services through its Chinese website, Amazon.cn. The decision means Amazon will stop selling goods from China-based vendors to domestic consumers on the portal. Although it is moving out of the e-retail business in China, Amazon will continue with its cross-border business, bringing foreign brands and goods to China, the company said. “Their demand for high-quality, authentic goods from around the world continues to grow rapidly, and given our global presence, Amazon is well-positioned to serve them,” the company said. The announcement has raised questions about the extremely thin presence of foreign companies in internet-related businesses in China, while Chinese companies like Alibaba create market space for themselves across the world. Amazon’s market share in China has fallen from about 15 percent a decade ago to about 6 percent. Alibaba and another local company, jd.com, account for nearly 75 percent of the Chinese market. Online shopping site eBay earlier moved out of China as it could not make a…

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Amazon Still Gives Southern Poverty Law Center Veto Power Over Charity Program

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by Peter Hasson   The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ongoing crisis hasn’t cost the left-wing nonprofit its privileged status with Amazon, which gives the SPLC broad authority to determine which charities and nonprofits can participate in its AmazonSmile charity program. The SPLC has lost three top figures — including both its president and a co-founder — within the past month, as the organization has struggled to deal with accusations of racism and sexual harassment. The SPLC is known to label pedestrian conservative organizations as “hate groups” but is given broad power over AmazonSmile, a charitable program that allows shoppers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of proceeds from their purchases. AmazonSmile has raised more than $100 million for charitable causes, but participation in the program is dependent on the SPLC’s approval. “Organizations that engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities are not eligible to participate” in the program, Amazon’s website states. “Amazon relies on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which organizations fall into these groups.” The SPLC doesn’t just police AmazonSmile — it participates in the program as well.…

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Gone in a New York Minute: How the Amazon Deal Fell Apart

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In early November, word began to leak that Amazon was serious about choosing New York to build a giant new campus. The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying tech jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building in Amazon orange. Even Governor Andrew Cuomo got in on the action: “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” he joked at the time. Then Amazon made it official: It chose the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens to build a $2.5 billion campus that could house 25,000 workers, in addition to new offices planned for northern Virginia. Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Democrats who have been political adversaries for years, trumpeted the decision as a major coup after edging out more than 230 other proposals. But what they didn’t expect was the protests, the hostile public hearings and the disparaging tweets that would come in the next three months, eventually leading to Amazon’s dramatic Valentine’s Day breakup with New York. Immediately after Amazon’s Nov. 12 announcement, criticism started to pour in. The deal included $1.5 billion in special tax breaks and grants for the…

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Amazon May Bail on New York Headquarters After Locals Rail Against It

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by Tim Pearce   Amazon is reportedly rethinking its promise to build a headquarters in New York City after receiving pushback from local officials and residents, sources told The Washington Post. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, are pushing for the Amazon deal after being instrumental in securing it. Many locals, however, have protested at stores and hearings, and the city’s council has badgered Amazon executives about the company’s position on unions. “The question is whether it’s worth it if the politicians in New York don’t want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming,” one person familiar with the company’s plans told WaPo. Amazon is moving forward with plans to construct another headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, near the nation’s capital. Each project in New York and Virginia is expected to create 25,000 jobs. A smaller project in Nashville, Tennessee, is expected to create 5,000 new jobs. The company is considering other options for the New York location, including relocating thousands of jobs to other areas and withdrawing altogether. Amazon has not yet leased or bought any space in the area, so changing plans now would…

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Congress Members Call for Investigation Into Pentagon’s Handling of Controversial $10 Billion Cloud Contract

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by Andrew Kerr   Two members of the House Appropriations Committee requested an investigation Monday into the Pentagon’s handling of its $10 billion winner-take-all cloud computing contract following widespread criticism that the deal has been rigged from the start to favor Amazon. Amazon Web Services is the only cloud computing platform that meets all the specifications of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program, which stands to be one of the largest stand-alone technology contracts the federal government’s ever awarded at up to $10 billion over 10 years. The Department of Defense is expected to select a winner for the contract in April. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in August that a former senior adviser to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Sally Donnelly, had once consulted for Amazon Web Services through a firm she owned. Donnelly did not recuse herself from involvement in crafting the contract, despite receiving payments from the sale of her Amazon-linked firm, which she sold just prior to entering the Pentagon. “It has come to our attention through media reports that individuals who held, or hold, high ranking positions in the Department have access to the specific contractor,” Reps. Steve Womack of Arkansas and Tom…

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Bernie Sanders’ Misguided ‘Stop BEZOS’ Bill Would Backfire on Workers

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by Amanda Snell and David Kreutzer   No single company gets perhaps as much attention in the news as Amazon. The online retailing giant has surpassed $1 trillion in market value and is now searching for a city to place its second headquarters. Amazon has done enormous good in making Americans’ lives more convenient. But not everyone is a fan. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has introduced a bill targeting Amazon and its founding CEO, Jeff Bezos. Appropriately labeled the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act (Stop BEZOS), this bill is an unabashed attack on Bezos and his immensely successful company. Stop BEZOS is meant to incentivize large companies, like Amazon, to pay a “living wage.” Sanders defines a living wage as $15/hour. This bill would require such companies to pay taxes (dollar for dollar) on the amount of government assistance that its employees collect. The implicit logic of the Stop BEZOS Act is that Amazon pays its employees subsistence wages (just enough to keep them from starving). In this alternate reality, every dollar of government assistance allows Amazon to pay their employees a dollar less. Were this true, the simplest, most effective solution would be to deny any government benefits to the employees…

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Why Amazon Associates Removed Legal Insurrection From Its Program

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Amazon Fulfillment

by Kyle Perisic   Amazon dropped the conservative news and law publication Legal Insurrection from its profit sharing associate program, the publication announced Wednesday. The reason behind why Legal Insurrection was terminated from the associates program raises unanswered questions about Legal Insurrection’s supposed violations of an agreement with Amazon, including Amazon’s abilities to track links in emails and a dubious claim that Legal Insurrection implied Amazon endorsed the publication. Legal Insurrection came to the conclusion, citing a May 5 Daily Caller News Foundation article, that the reason Amazon terminated their contract could possibly be due to a political bias Amazon has against conservatives. “Clearly someone wanted us gone,” wrote Legal Insurrection’s William Jacobson. The Amazon Associates program is an affiliate program that Amazon has in which associates earn a portion of Amazon’s profits from sales that come from the associates’ users. Amazon knows the purchases come from specific associates’ users through the use of special links, according to Amazon’s operating agreement. The program is a common way for content creators on the internet to earn an income. “Legal Insurrection was removed from the Amazon Associates program due to a violation of the terms of the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement,” an Amazon spokesperson stated in…

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Bezos-Owned Washington Post Omits Amazon’s Questionable Workplace Practices

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By Natalia Castro   “Democracy dies in darkness.” This is the motto the Washington Post proudly proclaims as the guiding principle of their publication; unfortunately, if this is true, the Washington Post is an accomplice in the death of democracy. While pretending the defend journalistic integrity, the Post’s recent silence on issues regarding their parent company, Amazon, shed light on the real intentions behind their reporting. Amazon has been under fire for workforce abuse. James Bloodworth, an English writer, went undercover for six months working low wage jobs in the United Kingdom. One of this first jobs, as an Amon warehouse worker, a job he compared to a prison sentence. Bloodworth explained to Business Insider, “I’ve worked in warehouses before, but this was nothing like I had experienced. You don’t have proper breaks — by the time you get to the canteen, you only have 15 or 20 minutes for lunch, in a 10-1/2-hour working day. You don’t have time to eat properly to get a drink.” Alleging unfeasible productivity targets and strict oversight, Bloodworth explained that Amazon workers felt so much pressure to avoid bathroom breaks, they would routinely urinate in plastic bottles to avoid punishment. Bloodworth’s discoveries have only…

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