> Spare a thought for the poor billionaires who backed Trump — and hate tariffs | Marina Hyde https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/08/poor-billionaires-backed-trump-hate-tariffs-elon-musk
The only thought I spare for those robber baron #assholes is the desire to #BringBackGuillotines. Fuck 'em.
Some scenes from the #AugustaME #HandsOff rally (not my images -- from the Kennebec Journal)
by Hannah Kaufman, Kennebec Journal
AUGUSTA — "By about 2:20 p.m., the protest in Augusta had effectively ended, but for a smaller group, the march continued, with some making their third and fourth laps around the block.
Organizers had intended the march to take place on the sidewalk, but the width of Capitol Street was filled with a throng of protesters shortly before 2 p.m.
"Vivian Myers-Jones, a protester from New Brunswick, Canada, said an organizer estimated 3,000 people were at the protest during its peak.
"Several students from Bates College in Lewiston said they came to Augusta to protest in support of #Palestine. One student, Dylan, said action on the Israel-Hamas war is overdue.
"'We’ve been seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes for years now, and it’s overdue that people are doing something,' he said. 'We’ve been trying to make change, and I think some people are being shocked into action now, which is good to see.'
"Another student, Robert, said it’s important to exercise the right to protest.
'We’re fighting to continue fighting — about Palestine, about everything that’s going on in this country,' he said.
It’s important that we come together now.'"
Original article:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/04/05/live-updates-mainers-rally-throughout-the-state-to-protest-trump-policies/
Archived version:
https://archive.md/k03Q5#selection-2017.0-2018.1
#MaineResists #HandsOff2025 #April5th #BadDOGE #EatElon #FreePalestine #HandsOffOurRights #NoDOGE #FASCISTS #NoTaxBreaksForTheRich #RobberBarons #DeportOligarchs #ImpeachImperialImbeciles
#TaxTheRich, it’s a decent start
Posted by Bluebird | Mar 12, 2025
"As incredible as it may seem, just a handful of #billionaire #Mainers could fund the state for years out of their own pockets and still live out their lives as multimillionaires. So when socialists say tax the rich, we mean more than raising what billionaires pay by 1% or 2%, we mean raising their taxes by 25% or 50% or more to start with. We mean we should take back the wealth they have collected by exploiting all the people who have worked for them, all the land they have stolen, and all the resources they have grabbed all around the world. In the meantime, socialists often support smaller measures whenever we feel like they are a way to raise funds to help our class, raise consciousness, and build organization.
However, increasing taxes on the wealthy isn’t a permanent solution to the persisting problems of #capitalist society. It’s a good start, but it’s not enough.
[...]
"By all means tax [the wealthy] at a rate of 95%, 99%, 100%, 200%! Take back everything they have stolen from us. Truly solving the causes of social inequality cannot happen until the property of the capitalist class has been expropriated, but for the reasons explained above, simply taxing them at any rate will prove ineffective given enough time.
"Moreover, tax increases tend to antagonize capitalists. Sooner or later, as we are seeing very clearly now in Washington, they will transform their economic might into raw political power to claw back even the small social costs that generations of #SocialMovements and trade unions have imposed on them. During such times, as grim as our prospects may seem, it becomes clearer than ever that so long as the capitalists have all the power, even the most progressive public policy can only be temporary.
"How much longer will capitalist industry be allowed to #pollute the planet? How many more times does the economy have to crash? How many more wars will we be forced to fight on the behalf of these #RobberBarons? How many more lives will be ruined by #debts, mass #layoffs, denied insurance claims, and more? Why should we tolerate a system that exploits those whose labor keeps society functioning?"
Read more:
https://pineandroses.org/opinion/www-pineandroses-org/
#MaineDSA #Socialism #CapitalismMustDie
Good review here on #tariffs & their historical role in #industrialization
Trump loves #GildedAge tariffs - A great time for the rich but not for the many https://buff.ly/d6HYiRH
”…the workers whose labor kept the mines and factories producing toiled fourteen to sixteen hours a day in dangerous conditions for little money, with no workmen’s compensation or disability insurance if they were injured. The era has become known as the Gilded Age, dominated by so-called robber barons.”
—Heather Cox Richardson, March 3, 2025
#robberbarons #oligarchy #broligarchy
@tagesschau Die Orange presst die Ukraine aus wie eine Zitrone... #us #robberbarons
"And all without building a single hospital or school like the decent robber barons did..."
(h/t Doug105 and BobSF_94117 at joemygod.com)
@SocraticEthics It is a giant hypocrisy to talk about the good for the US tax payers, while doing everything to screw overbthe US tax payers over and over since #trumps inauguration.
Also, it seems what the #trump government is indifferent about (because of being bold #robberbarons ) is what they set to zero is having any leverage over (once allied) countries including Ukraine. The price tag for this destruction will be paid in the future.
"Call billionaires Robber Barons again.
By the way, does anyone have a trebuchet?"
#JoanMastodon #TTJ
In the early 1870s, extremely wealthy businessmen began to dominate vital industries and exert influence on politicians. They came to be known as the Robber Barons, and their names — Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie — are still familiar in America today. Now, we’re in an era with an income gap not seen since the Gilded Age. @damemagazine compares then and now — rent seeking, financial panic, cronyism, assaults on labor, and state capture.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/02/05/were-living-in-a-new-age-of-robber-barons/
#Oligarchy #RobberBarons #GildedAge #History @histodons #Tech #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Diese Rede von Sacha Baron Cohen von 2019 ist heute aktueller denn je
https://youtu.be/ymaWq5yZIYM&t=182
#Musk #Zuckerberg #Bezos #Murdoch #Döpfner #Hugenberg
#Oligarchs #MediaMoguls #RobberBarons
#NieWiederIstJetzt #NeverIsNow
Making his final public address from the Oval Office, #POTUS #JoeBiden touts his administration's rebuilding of the #UnitedStates #economy from its #AmericanCarnage after the first #Trump presidency, to being the strongest in the world before the onset of #AmericanCarnage2.0 !
He also warned about the looming #oligarchy of modern-day #RobberBarons and the rising #TechIndustrialComplex. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/biden-farewell-address-oligarchy-tech-industrial-complex-1236110254/
@Alpha1Nine
High time Australian govts grew some balls and increased #taxes on the #ExtractiveIndustries by orders of magnitude to return #StateWealth to the tax payers. Other countries have done it successfully so it’s not a political issue. It remains an economic and social issue where, if govts had the gumption, such tax reforms would be a vote winner hands down (in spite of corporate news propaganda and fuming rage from #RobberBarons ).
How is it that our elected officials cannot see this? If they do and still won’t act in ‘our’ interest, it’s time to kick them out of office and exercise an informed and deliberated vote to ensure the next mob of polies does at #Election2025
#auspol #VoteForYourInterest #TaxTheRich #PRRT #Royalties
@Catvalente or they're just everyday #opportunists on #steroids
"In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many.
Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform. …
The collapse of the economy is not a bug of autocracy, but a feature."
#Trump #democracy #autocracy #RuleofLaw #economy #EconomicDisparity #RobberBarons
/9
"When Trump destroys our democracy, he will also destroy our economy.
Autocracy will bring poverty. …
Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked.
And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law."
~ Timothy Snyder
#Trump #democracy #autocracy #RuleofLaw #economy #EconomicDisparity #RobberBarons
/8
"It’s not surprising that Donald Trump thinks the 1890s were a golden age. For people like him — the lazy sons of the New York wealthy — the era had a lot to offer.
But for everyone else, it was an experience that ranged from bad to horrific. Anyone who’s actually studied this era should be terrified of a politician who sees it as a model to be replicated."
#Trump #GildedAge #1890s #McKinley #tariffs #EconomicDisparity #RobberBarons
/7
"America's new Gilded Age"
