Tag: Amazon

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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Amazon: The World’s Most Dangerous Crony Capitalist

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by Rick Manning   The bedrock of American commerce – and of the broader capitalist experiment – has always been competition.  If you can build a better mousetrap, invent a longer-lasting light bulb or more efficiently churn out widgets (or in this case, clichés), odds are your endeavor will encounter success. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like or what you believe – what matters is what you can produce. Competition fuels all of the forces that drive our free market – inspiration, innovation, efficiency, accessibility, profitability and prosperity.  It is what cures diseases, crosses continents, crushes despots, cradles civilizations and – just to make sure we aren’t forgetting the point here – creates wealth. Capitalism is the great invention that makes all other inventions possible – which is precisely why it must be protected from crony capitalist companies like Amazon. Amazon is not operating on a level playing field.  Not only that, it is rigging many once-level commercial playing fields in favor of larger retailers – secure in the knowledge that it will get a larger slice of profits if it picks winners and losers based on volume. It is also picking up government subsidies at a bargain basement price.  Since…

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Billionaire CEO Of JD.com, Richard Liu, Arrested In Minnesota For ‘Suspicion of Sexual Misconduct’ – Again

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Richard Liu

by Kyle Perisic   The billionaire CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com was arrested in Minnesota Friday on suspicion of sexual misconduct, and it’s not the first time he’s been involved in such allegations. The company said it was a false allegation after Liu Qiangdong, also known as Richard Liu, was released. He’s worth an estimated $7.9 billion, according to Forbes, making him one of China’s richest men. “During a business trip to the United States, Mr. Liu was questioned by police in Minnesota in relation to an unsubstantiated accusation,” the company said Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The local police quickly determined there was no substance to the claim against Mr. Liu, and he was subsequently able to resume his business activities as originally planned.” Liu has previously been accused of sexual misconduct, according to The WSJ. He reportedly tried to keep his name out of a sexual assault case in Australia, where he has a home in Sydney, in 2015. Beginning in 1998 as an online electronics store, JD.com has become an online retail behemoth — operating similar to Amazon. Walmart is its second largest shareholder, behind Liu, owning 10 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Alphabet’s Google owns about 1…

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