.... its not one thing, its a bunch of things, all of them felonious that are linked together.
For example, look at the situation around any resort town. Skiing is the obvious one in the news right now, but hardly the only one. I've written on the Mackinaw City issue before (and while there is indeed skiing in Northern Michigan, there sure isn't right there!)
Ditto for Destin; I lived in that immediate area for 20 years. The various tourist and eatery places were staffed with locals who lived in the area. This got harder and harder over the years as what was reasonably affordable on a working wage got "redeveloped" and turned into much-more glitzy rental apartments and such. By the time I left the younger working age person had no chance, even with a roommate, of being able to reasonably afford an apartment.
So what did they do? They brought in a huge number of J-1 visa holders; I went back not all that long after leaving and the difference over just a year's time was stunning. Places where I had hung out to eat and drink were all full of J-1 visa employees; literally all of the patron-visible people who used to clearly be locals were gone. I have no idea what the back (e.g. kitchen) looked like but it was shocking -- and exactly what happened in Mackinaw City. There, incidentally, I am aware of exactly two places you can go to have a beer and a bite and have the service and others there be local, authentic people.
TWO.
Where do the J-1 visa folks live? Obviously hot-racking in housing conditions no American would put up with but certainly its better than what they had in their original place, right? This depresses wages directly and permanently destroys those jobs for local people unless, of course, your argument is that Americans should accept plantation-style housing as reasonable. If that's your suggestion then may I suggest you shove a hot poker up your own ass.
The fundamental problem with this sort of thing is that a huge part of the reason to travel to and enjoy such places is the original charm of both the place and people and absent the latter the former is as fake and gay as the spambot "engagement" on social media that appears to be a beautiful young woman but is actually an ugly, fat male scammer in Indonesia or Nigeria.
If the "rich" want to do things that are fake and gay catered to by other people who embraced ****ing their own local residents up the ass, displacing them in favor of cheap imported labor, let them. I'm not paying for inauthentic bull**** delivered by a bunch of ****ing scammers who have destroyed what used to be an excellent and authentic experience and then fraudulently peddled their "replacement" to me exactly like they replaced the people who made the experience authentic in the first place!
More-seriously however are places where active conspiracy between parties is used to bone Americans in the ass. I'm speaking of the so-called H-1b visa mess which is absolutely not just limited to H-1bs, although there are plenty of abuses there. This also extends into virtually every single university in the United States which accepts foreign students who pay full price and then conspire together with employers to do "OPT" post-graduation. The F-1 visa is non-resident and does not allow work but that is subject to circumvention as well through what is called "CPT" which was intended for fields such as medical students where a certain amount of practicum is mandatory. It has since been wildly abused including some institutions setting it up from the first day of class effectively having the "student" be employed and thus displacing a US worker.
OPT is even worse because it is an exploitation of foreign students who in fact are after a path to US residency. The intent of allowing someone to come here to study isn't that and yet.... it is. From OPT you can get an H-1b visa which then locks you to that employer and now the abuse train is on the track. Of course there's also plenty of fraud in there too, but that's not the real issue.
The real issue here is that universities are all-in on this but they don't clearly and fairly disclose to Americans that they're taking debt and thus are wildly disadvantaged in the marketplace for jobs compared with the F-1 admissions who then will compete with them via OPT and H-1b employment, a path that inevitably suppresses wages. In other words the universities and employers get together and **** young Americans up the ass.
This, by the way, is supposed to be illegal in that 15 USC Chapter 1 covers any attempt to monopolize or fix prices and labor is a thing that is priced. You're supposed to go to prison for that **** especially when you're doing it and don't disclose up front to every American who applies to your college that you, and every other university, are deliberately screwing said American's job prospects while demanding they pay you.
Incidentally the FERAL Government then adds to this via direct conspiracy with the colleges through the FAFSA, extorting the young adult's parents.
Oh, you say, "but I'm not a white American working in tech so I don't care." That's very nice of you to profess "I don't give a **** who gets ****ed as long as its not me" -- by the way those white Americans are choosing not to have any children because they know their kids will get ****ed so exactly who do you think will wipe your ass when you get older and gray -- or provide the funding for various things when you can't anymore? Yeah, when you get ****ed as an indirect result of your pigheaded bull**** I will laugh at the result.
How about "climate change"? Let's cut the bull****: The earth has been cooling for nearly 500 million years; the "recent" warming cycle -- and yes, its a cycle, began 22,000 years ago in which zero SUVs existed. No "model" has predicted a single thing that has happened with any accuracy; every single alarmist claim has not proved up. The recent screaming about "greater" storm impacts is a lie and there is hard scientific proof of this.
However, every piece of this policy has wildly raised your cost of living and when it comes to wind and solar have destroyed the environment on top of it; you need only look where forests have been and are being clear-cut to put in solar panels and the eyesores of both wind and solar, audiosores and wholesale slaughter of birds caused specifically by windmills, never mind that the materials used to make both are not economically recyclable at all and both forms of energy require wildly more land to host them compared with coal, natural gas and nuclear power. Coal, in addition, can quite-easily have the thorium in it, which is what causes lung cancer from its combustion, separated out and there is 13x as much fission-based energy in said thorium as there is in the coal itself so on the economics using that for nuclear fuel is not only common sense its also makes economic sense. If you like getting ****ed in the ass then I suppose all this "green ****" is fine but that's exactly what it is predicated on a deliberate con job that those running it use to get rich at your expense particularly when they start banning or taxing carbon-based fuels and transportation. Every bit of it is fraud.
Now let's do "Dreamers"; the advocates say they did nothing wrong but their parents did. Ok, let's accept that except that this excludes any person beyond the age of reason when they crossed, which is roughly 13-15 (we can argue exactly where, but it is definitely in that range if not younger.) The first problem is that most want to extend it to 15-17 year olds who crossed illegally. No; they knew damn well they were not coming in legally so yes, they did something wrong and they knew it.
But the larger issue is this: Let's say your father robs a serious of banks (or some other institution.) He manages to get away with it for a while and gives you $500,000 from the robbery. Then he dies.
You do not get to keep the money even though you didn't do anything wrong personally and every single one of the "Dreamers" got a lot from that unlawful act whether it be schooling, medical care or simply the infrastructure they enjoyed here in the United States but had no claim to. This amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars per person and you cannot argue they have a right to keep it -- they clearly do not any more than you get to keep the money if you Dad robs a bank and gives you some or all of it. Those who argue otherwise are thugs who are demanding you pay for someone else's criminal act and indirectly pay those who were beneficiaries of it, specifically the Dreamers. That's theft, yes every "dreamer" who demands this is in fact demanding to be able to steal from every citizen of this nation unless they are offering every single dollar that was spent from public funds on them during their childhood here, along with any and all evasion of legal employment and taxes that should have been paid from same which of course none of them are. They're all lying and thieves, in short, their claims are frauds and thus **** that **** all actual Americans must refuse until and unless all those funds are paid in full by EACH such "dreamer" on an individual basis FIRST.
The basic problem with all of this winds up in collusive practices (which are illegal when they lead to price discrimination, and they do in every case) and that the state and local governments love it because it leads to increased tax collections. The same situation exists with the medical system; it's illegal to discriminate on price in the way it is currently documented every time you get an "Explanation of Benefits" and in addition that statement, which shows a wildly-higher "original price" is an element of extortion as well in that it is a threat to screw you for 5 or even 10x the price unless you buy someone's insurance acceptable to the institution.
That addition flow of money, of course, drives up property values and thus tax revenue both directly (income taxes from people and corporations) and property taxes (more expensive property = more revenue.) That collusive behavior of this sort is per-se felonious doesn't matter to the government, nor do the lies on the H-1b visa applications which are well-documented and each and every one of them is supposed to get the people in the firm who do it and are aware of it years in federal prison.
The only way you will ever see any of this stopped is when FEAR comes back on the table for those who commit these abuses. The university provost doesn't fear being locked up, the employers don't fear being locked up, the doctor and hospital administrator don't fear being locked up and those providing aid, comfort, housing and similar to illegal aliens also don't fear being locked up despite felony criminal federal laws being implicated and thus the abuses continue because our government refuses to prosecute on a blanket basis.
Thus it comes down to one simple question: Will Americans demand those prosecutions, in each and every case occur and thus those people will fear going to prison and if the government continues to refuse then the question becomes whether Americans will impose punishments on those they can identify as plausibly guilty themselves and on government employees with a duty to enforce said laws who refuse because if they do neither then you and your children are not being financially raped, you are having SEX and obviously taking PLEASURE in being screwed blind BECAUSE YOU ARE CONSENTING TO IT.
When you boil it all down facts are that just in medical alone 15% of your cost of living is stolen; that's the difference between what medical care was before all the illegal scams took hold as a percentage of GDP and what it is today. Now add up everything else such as car insurance which is wildly elevated due to illegals driving without it and schemes between car makers and insurance companies to mandate expensive things that raise cost, the various schemes that increase the cost of housing, suppress wages and similar and its entirely reasonable to believe ONE THIRD of every dollar you earn is stolen via these schemes.
By the way if you think you can evade this by, for example, telling the medical system to go blow goats and become your own doctor (which for most things is probably better than what they'll do to you anyway both in cost and results) you're wrong because every single thing you buy has all of this scam in it and while you can evade it personally for many things you can't evade the cost it adds into every other business by having it happen to everyone else, including those who work at or are in the supply chain of those firms.
In other words until and unless you force it to stop, whether peacefully or otherwise, it will continue to expand and eventually render the average American both penniless and homeless in a land where the newly-imported worker literally ****s in the street while others groom your 10 year old daughter as an intended subject of******(just look overseas in a formerly-white majority and peaceful society for an example of THAT.)
So which will it be America?
With two possible (unproved; those accounts might be hijacked) exceptions all of these are sex spambot/deboost causing accounts.
Well, ok, to be more-precise they're either (1) bots or (2) some other artificial thing.
They're all brand new, have a couple hundred accounts they've followed and only a couple of followers (fools) in return. They also have either no content at all of their own or a handful of sexy pictures. Some explicitly say they're in the "massage" or "escort" sort of business and a couple claim to want a "serious" relationship.
Right, you want a "serious relationship" as a (claimed) 25 year old with a 61-year old man.
"Serious", I'm sure, is defined as "you shower me with money and I'll shower you with sex."
Leaving aside the censorship (don't you dare state -- truthfully -- that Elon has laid off people while hiring H-1bs at his companies, never mind everyone else in the tech space doing it -- and don't criticize the other "wrong" people), leave aside Elon's newest exhortation (don't ever talk about corruption; that's negative you know!) or get de-boosted and I'm sure there are also algorithmic games afoot should you go after the funding rounds from big places like Blackrock aimed at his "AI" game -- why that would probably draw an immediate banhammer!
Incidentally the tactic used here is that your association with such "ill repute" will ding your "social credit" score on X and thus your reach even though you take no affirmative action. That is, you don't have to interact with said spambots; their mere listing of you as someone they follow "taints" your account -- or at least it used to (and probably still does.)
Therefore this is an attractive thing for those who don't like what you say (e.g. my clear statements that H-1b perjurers should all go to prison and be asset-stripped to their underwear) to attempt to destroy your "reach" with others.
In other words, suborned and intentionally ignored fraud which of course Elon spends exactly zero of his much-vaunted "AI" capability he wants everyone to "use" (really be "used by" since anything you give it now belongs to it) eradicating. If there was any "intelligent" behind such a programmatic thing identifying and removing all of these would be trivial given that a human can spot them instantly. Therefore its either not intelligent or Elon wants them on the platform and likes what they're doing.
The better question is why would any real company with a real product to sell pay to advertise to sex-bots?
At least neo-Nazis are people and might buy products and services..... right?
Fact: Stealing via whatever means is always easier than innovating and doing honest work.
Thus if you can force a Chevy buyer to pay you as a competing car maker, such as Musk has done via so-called "carbon and mileage credits" you do it because its easier to "lobby" government than to find ways to make your vehicles better, faster and cheaper and thus more-desirable all on their own. Whether the vehicles are actually good is immaterial; even if they are the incremental forced sales are easier to come by than actual sales.
If you can extort someone into buying "health insurance" by presenting to them an "Explanation of Benefits" that shows a non-insured price of $100,000 but the insurance company paid $10,000 for the same thing you can effectively force via said extortion the purchase of your "insurance". Of course this requires your active conspiracy between your firm and the service provider which appears on its face to violate several laws, but its easier and cheaper to do that than it is to actually give useful advice on personal health like, for example, do not eat carbs in size and do not use seed oils at all; if you did that there might not be a need for the health services in the first place.
If you can lie on an H-1b application as an employer that you have had no layoffs in the previous 90 days and will not in the next 90 when in fact you have and then do that saves you a crap-ton of money which goes directly to your bottom line and screws Americans.
And if you can somehow manage to employ an illegal alien even though he has no CDL (which he can't have as he's not here legally) rather than paying a US CDL holder a competitive wage to drive your trucks that is cheaper than paying the competitive wage. Oh, then said person claims he has a bomb when stopped and totally ****s up traffic on a major highway for roughly six hours.
Why does all this crap go on?
Because nobody ever goes to prison for any of it.
Why doesn't the local tavern screw me on my beer purchase? Because if they do I tell others about it and stop going; I can wear a sandwich board on the sidewalk outside the place. There is thus a direct available pushback if they try to screw me and thus the better choice is to offer honest service at a mutually-agreeable price.
In other words the small business remains accountable in the local market where the larger concern never is.
This is why laws criminalizing screwing people and in most cases they're criminal felonies, exist.
Where are the handcuffs and by the way, how many homicidal maniacs do you think this sort of intentional refusal to act by our governments at all levels, local, state and federal, will eventually be generated when the people get tired of this **** or simply are robbed blind to the point of destitution?
and the crimes come in many forms.
Amazon has been accused of many shady acts in the past but I've now caught them on more than one occasion doing something quite sneaky (they didn't get me, however) and just had them try something even more-blatant.
All of this falls into the category of "bait and switch" and is a criminal offense. That is, offering something you have no intention of delivering and then either delivering less or nothing of value for the money collected at all.
This applies to people who are not "Prime" customers, of course.
Yes, I avoid Amazon in many cases but sometimes they have what you want and others don't. For me Prime is a crappy value; it used to be reasonable at about $100 a year but now is about twice that -- and at that price it isn't especially when their "2 day" guarantee isn't actually any good (and it isn't; they meet it a good part of the time but not all the time and if you're going to advertise it then it has to be all the time or to me its worthless.)
There's two parts to this little game of theirs.
The first one is when you order more than $35 you get "slow" delivery included. Ok, fine. So you do that, and then the system comes back with an email saying "Forget anything? For the next 24 hours anything else you order ships at no charge no matter how big or small the order."
This is "free" for them on the shipping side for small stuff because they haven't actually dispatched anything and your card hasn't been charged yet -- they actually sit on the order for the 24 hours, and until they charge it and dispatch it through their fulfilment chain it costs them nothing to add more to it. If you get alerts when your card is charged you'll see this; a "slow" order does not hit the card until the 24 hours expires.
Fine. That's a win-win, right? Well, it would be if Amazon was honest about it but they're not.
Let's say you add some more things to your cart and then don't check out, or abandon it part way through (let's say it says you have 12 hours left before that expires, which you can't see until you start the checkout, you close the app or window) and then come back you'll find the cart is still there but "free shipping" has disappeared. Even if you come back to it 5 minutes later it will quite-reliably happen even though there are hours left before the original 24 hour period would expire.
If you're not paying attention (which is really easy to have happen on the mobile app) you're going to get banged in the ass for the shipping charge even though you were told anything you ordered in the next 24 hours shipped free.
I'm sure that's exactly what they're counting on happening a good percentage of the time.
But the new thing that I just had happen is even worse.
Let's say the first happens. You then add another item and now its more than $35 worth of stuff in your cart which does qualify for a second instance of "slow" shipping (it should be free and combined with the first order, but they already ****ed you out of that.)
But -- you want it faster. There are presented three paid options: Medium speed, basically what Prime would be on a one-off ($6.99), Right now (tomorrow) for $10.99 and of course "resume prime" for $14.99/mo and get it at medium speed.
You choose to pay the $7.00 for the one-off. Why? Because you really want it in 2 days and can't find it locally, that's why.
You click "Place Order" and the system comes back and tells you it will be delivered slow speed but you paid for the shipping upgrade!
They just did this to me and I instantly canceled the entire order -- that's really sneaky **** and in a just society there would be a cop at their office door with an indictment in hand for deliberate and systematic consumer fraud.
Don't tell me this sort of **** is an "error" either folks -- how come errors are never in the customer's favor? Errors are normally distributed -- half the time it screws you, the other half the time it gives you something.
These "errors" are all one direction; they **** you in the ass every single time.
Now yes, individually this was an attempt to screw me out of $7.00 or so but that's not the point. Times how many people per day and how often does Amazon get away with this unnoticed?
This only continues to happen because nobody ever goes to jail and worse, nobody ever has to fork it back up at a penalty rate sufficient to convince them its a bad idea to try it in the future (say, 3x the amount stolen refunded in cash to everyone they did it to over the last five years) even though Amazon knows exactly how many people they've tried this with and gotten away with it too over the last.... how many years?
If we had an Attorney General either in a State or at the Federal level that actually enforced laws then there would be a ****ing perp walk out of the offices in every state of the Union and/or this company would be shut down for systemic, programmed-in consumer fraud.
You want to find a company screwing people with impunity because nobody ever goes to jail from a big company when they do it?
Just grab any stock symbol and the odds are high you found one, whether its peddling worthless drugs, promising "free" add-on shipping to an existing order for 24 hours and then silently removing it and hoping the customer doesn't notice, collecting an upcharge for expedited shipping and then just pocketing the money while not shipping via faster means, laying off American tech workers while soliciting H-1s and said paperwork contains a statement you didn't lay anyone off in the previous or next 90 days -- and by the way it is a FELONY to lie on said paperwork and more.
I'm so ******n tired of this **** and we as a nation should absolutely not tolerate any of it from any firm, ever, PERIOD.
How much of the so-called S&P 500's "profit" is actually stolen via schemes of all sorts rather than earned by honest dealing?
PROBABLY MOST OF IT.
Indeed the only place I believe I can get a fair shake is at the local bar and grill and that's probably only because they would have to look me in the face if they decided to screw me.
"Make America Great Again" eh Mr. tRUMP?
I'll believe you're not one of the ****-headed thieves and in league with all the rest of them when I see some of these mother****ers frog-marched in handcuffs -- and not one second before.