Collusion – The Near Monopolies Control so Much of America’s Private Enterprises

Collusion: Synonyms are conspiracy, complicity, involvement, agreement, knowledge, consent, approval. Which of those words defines the U.S. congressional responsibility for just five major banks controlling most of this nation’s economy?

The United States government is a partner in the near monopoly of private enterprises that permeate our society. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Do you suspect there is price fixing in the price of gasoline in the United States? Here is a list of the major companies in the USA.

USA

76 Stations

BP (Arco)

Chevron

Conoco

Exxon

Mobil

Phillips 66

Shell

Texaco

In your neighborhood the prices are never more than a few cents apart.

How difficult would it be for Chevron, Mobil, Shell, and Arco (the stations in my area) to meet discretely on a golf course and agree on the pricing? The answer is it wouldn’t be too hard.

Few companies have a true monopoly in any market. More common are “virtual monopolies” or “near-monopolies” that exist due to geography or brand recognition. When consumers hear the term monopoly, the first thing that comes to mind is often price-fixing. Unfortunately they are correct. Jello Brand gelatin desert has a near monopoly. Intel processor chips had a near monopoly in PC computers. Bill Gates and his immediate inner circle earned an over the top fee for his Office programs. To this day he is still either the richest man in the world or nearly so.

During the Senate hearing on Comcast’s takeover of Time Warner Cable, Sen. Al Franken said the cable giant has over 100 lobbyists making its case. That is one lobbyist for every senator. Consumers Union says over 264,000 people have sent messages to congress asking that the merger be stopped. Comcast current share of the cable industry is estimated at 30%. Time Warner Cable current share of the cable industry is estimated at 19%.

The Kroger Co. is a major retail food market company that simply keeps growing larger and larger. The company is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is the latest posting on their web site. “We are delighted to welcome Harris Teeter to the Kroger Family of Stores.” That company owns Thumb Stores; Heritage Farms Dairy; HarrisTeeter Supermarkets, Inc. That company has stores in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Maryland and Delaware. With the exception of Maryland and Delaware, Kroger already has Kroger stores in those states. So whether you shop at Harris Teeter or Kroger you are shopping at the same company. Kroger ownership is widespread under a variety of names: Kroger, Dillons, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, QFC, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, Smith’s, and now Harris Teeter. This is not a complete list. Kroger Co. also approached Safeway about buying part of its operations. Kroger’s share of the entire retail food sales is unknown but the company has the largest share of the U.S. market.

Ticketmaster competitors are nowhere to be found. The company seems to have a lock on all sales of tickets for concerts, live theater, and sporting events. As an Example I logged into the Hollywood Bowl/Los Angeles Phil and found the web site’s basic address is Ticketmaster.com. Their fee is 8% to 10% of the price of the tickets. The only option to avoid the fee is a visit to the box office. There is no alternate sales agent. Ticketmaster had a more or less monopolistic position in the ticketing market after the purchase of its main competitors Ticketron and Live Nation.

LensCrafters is owned by Luxottica Group S.p.A. That company is the world’s largest eyewear company, controlling over 80% of the world’s major eyewear brands. Its best known brands are Ray-Ban, Persol and Oakley. This company was featured in a 60 Minutes program. The company owns

Sunglass Hut International
LensCrafters
Pearle Vision
Pearle Opticians
Sears Optical
Target Optical
OPSM
ILORI
Bright Eyes
Budget Eyewear
Cole Vision Care
Optical Shop of Aspen
Surfeyes
Laubman & Pank
ICON
Grand Optics LLC

Eyeglasses that are either plastic or wire frames cost almost as much as a computer.

Everyone is a victim! Our elected government is a partner in this crime!

Genocide in Non-White Countries is OK

The oft-chanted “Never Again” is in fact “Again and Again”

The diplomat who was president of the U.N. Security Council in April 1994 (Former New Zealand ambassador Colin Keating) apologized Wednesday for the council’s refusal to recognize that genocide was taking place in Rwanda and for doing nothing to halt the slaughter of more than one million people. The source for this report is the Associated Press.

Let’s review the history of world concern over genocide starting with Adolph Hitler and his plan to kill every Jew in the world. He successfully killed 6 million Jews and millions of others who did not accede to his views.

PBS posted this commentary on-line. “ Genocide has occurred so often and so uncontested in the last fifty years that an epithet more apt in describing recent events than the oft-chanted “Never Again” is in fact “Again and Again.” The gap between the promise and the practice of the last fifty years is dispiriting indeed. How can this be?”

“In 1948 the member states of the United Nations General Assembly — repulsed and emboldened by the sinister scale and intent of the crimes they had just witnessed — unanimously passed the Genocide Convention. Signatories agreed to suppress and punish perpetrators who slaughtered victims simply because they belonged to an “undesirable” national, ethnic, or religious group.”

What has really happened? With the exception of the United States bombing to stop the killing of Bosnian Muslims, no efforts have been made to stop genocide killing since that 1948 agreement.

Here is a list of the largest mass killing events since WWII. Notice that all of these events occurred in Asia and Africa. Killing in Europe is stopped. Is race an issue? How dare I suggest that it is!

Nigerian Civil War 1 million to 3 million deaths

Cambodian Genocide 1 million to 3 million deaths

Rwandan Genocide 500,000 to 1 million deaths

A message has been sent by the most powerful countries in the world!

When Freedom of Religion Conflicts with American Laws

What will America look like if religious rights trump all other rights?

We now have three private enterprises contending that the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) is prohibiting the exercise of their religion. They are required by the ACA to provide birth control services to their employees and that is contrary to their religious beliefs. The lead challenger in the case is the Hobby Lobby corporation, a chain of 500 arts and crafts stores that has 13,000 employees. The company is privately owned meaning no one can buy shares in the business. Forbes magazine reports “Obama Administration Suffers A Drubbing In Hobby Lobby Arguments.”

The United States constitution first amendment starts with these words, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

The arguments by the Hobby Lobby team and the government are contentious. We won’t know the Supreme Court decision for many months.

My problem is that many laws that have existed for generations could be opposed on religious grounds. Examples are Social Security taxes, welfare programs, when should the USA go to war, etc. In other words does every religious group have the right to decide what it considers acceptable behavior and participation in every passed law? Or to put this another way do religions have he right to nullify laws?

As explained in Wikipedia: Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), is the case in which the United States Supreme Court found that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. The parents’ fundamental right to freedom of religion outweighed the state’s interest in educating its children. The case is often cited as a basis for parents’ right to educate their children outside of traditional private or public schools.

Jews want to keep their neighborhoods in the NYC metropolitan area and upstate New York exclusively for them. Using the Hobby Lobby contention that equal housing laws deny them right to practice their religion as dictated by religious beliefs they too would be allowed to keep their communities segregated.

Many religions permit discrimination against people of other faiths. Consequently refusal to serve gays, blacks, or any other group could be viewed as their religious right.

The consequence of a decision favoring the plaintiffs is that many of our civil laws would be deemed unenforceable. This nation would be no freer of religious tyranny than Muslim countries that place religious (Sharia) law above all other laws.

If the plaintiffs in this case prevail then the United States will cease to exist as a country that treats all people of all races, colors, and creeds equal rights. Religious law will prevail.

This translates to “Goodbye America.”

Income inequality: Nothing New!

The following article was in The Week magazine dated February 7, 2014. Their title was Income inequality: Why does the gap keep widening? Then the article proceeds to tell readers that it hasn’t widened. It’s just great political rhetoric that might help win elections.

Perhaps it’s the strong rhetoric of Pope Francis and President Obama, or the growing sense that the economic recovery is leaving the poor and the middle class behind. But income inequality-an issue that once preoccupied liberal policy wonks and scruffy Occupy Wall Street activists-has suddenly become “part of the mainstream kitchentable debate” in America, said Michael Hiltzik in LATimes.com.

A startling new Gallup poll finds fully two thirds of adults either somewhat or very dissatisfied with the distribution of wealth in this country-and that includes 54 percent of Republicans. The rich just keep getting richer, said Harry Bruinius in CSMonitor.com, and “the public has been taking notice.” Since 2009, 95 percent of U.S. economic gains have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. Wall Street stocks and corporate profits are soaring to all-time highs, yet on Main Street, salaries have been stagnant, and millions can’t find jobs that pay middle-class salaries. Americans who once believed that anyone could climb the ladder with hard work and talent now suspect that the system is “stacked against them.”

The rich may be getting richer, said Nick Gillespie in TheDailyBeast.com, but that doesn’t mean it’s getting harder to join their ranks. A study released last week by Harvard economists shows that a child born into the poorest fifth of U.S. households has the same 7.8 percent chance of climbing the ladder into the richest fifth as he or she did 50 years ago. That figure is “unacceptably low,” but “upward mobility” is still happening. To address income inequality with effective policies, said David Brooks in The New York Times, we have to understand its real roots. The “growing affluence of the rich” isn’t causing the problems of the poor. Those problems are the result of globalization’s impact on “low-skill jobs,” and even more importantly, of social and cultural factors. America’s underclass lives in a world of broken homes, crime-filled communities, dysfunctional schools, and personal chaos. That’s what is keeping people stuck at the bottom, not the growing wealth of the top 1 percent.

Now there’s a convenient rationalization, said Matthew O’Brien in TheAtlantic.com. The reality is that as the rich award themselves with all the gains created by technology and cheap labor, they’ve come to inhabit “a different world.” Their kids grow up with $40,000-a-year preschools, tutors, private lessons, special college prep, and on and on. On this unlevel playing field, how do kids from the bottom 90 percent compete? Those at the top of the social ladder have one overriding goal, said David Horsey in the Los Angeles Times: “to protect what they have and get even more.” That’s why wealthy individuals and corporations flood Washington and state capitols with political contributions. It’s no accident that people who make $20 million on investments pay lower tax rates than struggling plumbers and teachers. Unless the rich suddenly get a conscience, the U.S. will soon be “the world’s biggest banana republic,” with the ruling plutocrats living behind gilded gates.

So what’s the answer? said Mickey Kaus in The Wall Street Journal. Democrats may moan about inequality, but when it comes to policies that might reverse the trends, “they got nothin’, as comedians say.” Raising the minimum wage? Hiking the top tax rates? Please. Small tweaks to the status quo will not “stop the top 10 percent from taking home 50 percent of the nation’s income.” Let’s face it: Everyone may be talking about income inequality, but thus far, it’s a problem without a solution.

Free Trade Brings Creative Destruction

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a brainchild of Barack Obama. Consider this posting I made on February 22, 2014.

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Creative destruction occurs when something new kills something older. A great example of this is personal computers. Free Trade is another example.

NAFTA was President Bill Clinton’s naive plan to increase American trade while helping our neighbors. It has not worked out as promised.

Mexico becoming a driving force in auto production

Honda Fit rolls off the assembly line at a new $800 million factory near Celaya, Mexico

Mexico, with its low labor costs, has been the beneficiary of the free trade agreement. More products have entered the United States from Mexico than ever before. In 2013, according to our census bureau, $226 Million in products were exported and $280 Million were imported. That number is on a path to increase dramatically over the next few years. The reason is that Mexico has become the assembly floor for many products made in other countries. The Los Angeles Times article titled “Mexico becoming a driving force in auto production” tells of the average hourly labor cost in their assembly plants of $8 versus an average hourly rate in the United States of $37. These are the kinds of pay rates that drove American manufacturers to southern states in the USA.

What is the United States doing about this financial advantage? Nothing! Rather, the president of the United States, the Prime Minister of Canada, and the President of Mexico have just had meetings in Mexico at a town named Toluca (home of the Fiat 500 assembly plant), near Mexico City, discussing ways to further the NAFTA agreement.

Barack Obama claims to be concerned about the poorest in our nation and enhancing middle class opportunities. How are more free trade agreements bringing jobs to the non-tech workers that assemble cars, refrigerators, and televisions? They are not. It’s creative destruction at work.