Who Rules America? TV - Betting on Zero 2016 - Panorama TV - Trial by Media TV - Enron TV - Independent online - The Treason Trilogy 2011 - Citizen Koch 2013 - The Crime of the Century TV - Dan Snow TV - WeWork: How to Lose $30b in Two Weeks TV - The Decade the Rich Won TV -
Years earlier an auto executive turned defense secretary Charles Wilson said, What’s good for General Motors is good for America. He saw no distinction between an elected government and an unelected corporation. Who Rules America? III, 1987
22 July 2014: Bill Ackman, CEO Pershing Square Capital Management: ‘This will be the most important presentation that I have made in my career … You’re going to learn why Herbalife is going to collapse … This is the largest fraud.’ Betting on Zero, Netflix 2016
This is about Bill Ackman’s business model; this is about blatant market manipulation. ibid. CEO Herbalife
An organisation is deemed to be a pyramid scheme if the participants obtain their monetary benefits primarily from recruitment rather than the sale of goods and services to consumers. ibid. Peter Vander Nat, senior economist Federal Trade Commission
For two years hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman has been managing a massive short position in Herbalife, betting the company will fail. ibid.
You pay $55/100 to get a starter kit. ibid. Ackman
This is an ingenious fraud. ibid.
Amazon has propelled Jeff Bezos from bookseller to Tech Titan. He’s now the richest man on the planet. Former high-level Amazon insiders reveal how he did it. It’s about knowing us, the customer, in minute detail. As Amazon extends ever deeper into our lives, what does its spectacular rise mean for us? Panorama: Amazon: What They Know About Us, BBC 2020
Not only is she [Alexa] listening to us, humans are too. ibid.
Amazon has the technology to know a lot about us. ibid.
Earlier this morning in Birmingham Alabama an indictment was unsealed charging Richard Schrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, with fraud, money laundering and other offences. Trial by Media s1e4: King Richard, prosecutor, Netflix 2020
… Has gone from CEO to religious talk show host with his wife by his side … ibid. news
It was just this mindset of we have to hit the numbers. ibid. insider
Months after the conclusion of the Healthsouth trial, Richard Scrushy was indicted for bribing the former government of Alabama, Don Spiegelman. ibid. caption
How one of Britain’s biggest companies broke the law to sell cigarettes. We reveal how British American Tobacco paid bribes to sabotage its rivals. And secured access to police files and security cameras. And we expose the corrupt deal to pay off a notorious dictator. Panorama: Dirty Secretes of the Cigarette Business, BBC 2021
In South Africa’s rural heartland one company dominates tobacco production. 90% of the crop is bought by British American Tobacco ... The company has been operating here for more than 100 years. ibid.
It claims to be an ethical company. But this isn’t the first time we’ve investigated BAT. Six years ago we exposed how it used bribery to undermine Anti-Smoking legislation in South Africa. ibid.
Jeff Bezos’ resignation is a distraction – there is a bigger Amazon story we need to talk about: The Founder of Amazon stepped down yesterday, shortly before the United States Federal Trade Commission announced that it was fining his company $61.7m:
When a magician performs a trick, audiences rarely look where they need to. Sleight of hand and charming patter is used to divert our attention away from what is actually happening. Misdirection comes in many forms. Yesterday, it involved one of the richest men in the world. Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon, stepped down from his CEO position, shortly before the United States Federal Trade Commission announced that it was fining Amazon $61.7m, so the shopping giant could settle charges that it withheld delivery drivers’ tips paid by customers.
Jeff Bezos accumulated more than $215m a day in 2019. As you are reading this article, his wealth has likely increased nearly four times the amount of the fine his company was issued for withholding payments from its employees.
The full announcement from the FTC is astounding. It states that Amazon regularly advertised that drivers participating in the Flex program would be paid between $18 and $25 per hour, and that drivers would receive all of their tips. That is not what happened.
Instead, the FTC alleges that Amazon put its workers on a lower rate and used customer tips to make up the difference. Amazon allegedly took steps to mislead drivers about this, made the change, and then lied about it.
‘Rather than passing along 100 per cent of customers’ tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself,’ said Daniel Kaufman, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The FTC also alleges that Amazon only stopped its behaviour, which happened over a two and a half year period, when it became aware of the regulator’s investigation. The Independent online article Adam Smith 3 February 2021
The moment that defined the chaos of the 21st century: a financial atomic bomb exploded in the heart of the world’s banking system, sucking up the lifeblood of the global economy. The Treason Trilogy I: Casino Capitalism, Terror and Doom, 2011
Banks too big to go bust held nations to ransom. Trillions of dollars cascaded into bankers’ vaults. ibid.
Sub-prime mortgages blighted whole neighbourhoods, boarded up houses were vandalised, driving down the value of next-door properties. ibid.
The way we abuse each other in the scramble to monopolise the riches of Earth. ibid.
But we won’t be able to reform the laws if we allow corporations to compromise the democratic process by buying the privileges that put their profits above the interests of everyone else. ibid.
The world is out of control: a legacy of the West’s dirty secret. ibid.
Lives are shattered when people speculate in property. ibid.
And that charge of treason can be levelled against many governments in the twenty-first century. ibid.
In an act of sacrilege Henry [VIII] incubated a new kind of greed which knew no limits and which eventually infected the rest of the world … Henry invented a new kind of statecraft based on greed. The Treason Trilogy II: The Crucible of Terror
Their leaders are worshippers in the Temple of Doom. The Treason Trilogy III: The Temple of Doom
‘I was shocked at the arrogance of the court; I was shocked at the fact that they thought corporations were people. Citizen Koch, Bob Edgar, 2013
Money also pours into state and local elections after 22 states lift their corporate spending bans. ibid.
Since 2000 more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone or Oxycontin would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.
Blinn was taking the equivalent of 200 hits of heroin a day. He kept the prescription bottle for 20 years because he felt something was not right. ibid.
A nationwide criminal conspiracy that included Fraud, Pills Mills, doctors trading drugs for sex, false statements to Congress, and attempts to target key officials of the Bush administration … The FDA was used to falsely and fraudulently market Oxycontin. ibid.
None of them would spend a day in prison. ibid.
Lifetree Pain Clinic prescription: 60 x Amitriptyline 50mg; 30 x Celexa 40mg; 224 x Oxycodone 30mg; 112 Percocet 10/325mg; 60 x Requip 1mg; 60 x Xanax 1mg; 60 x Zanaflex 4mg. ibid.