Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: The Hundred Billion Dollar Man

It’s an obscenity, not a mark of distinction or impressive achievement – symbolic of unprecedented wealth inequality in a nation obsessed with super-wealth and profit-making for its privileged class. It comes at the expense of a growing underclass, tens of millions impoverished Americans, disadvantaged ones, their numbers increasing, not diminishing, greater numbers coming if the GOP tax cut scam becomes the law of the land.

Bezos: Master of Amazon and new boss of The Washington Post. What are his flacks doing at the paper? Bezos is the richest of America’s corporate predators, aiming to become more super-rich than already.

It’ll enrich Bezos and other super-rich Americans more than already, gaining more wealth from the pockets of the nation’s low and middle income households – a diabolical scheme supported by Republicans, maybe enough to make it the law of the land, no matter the harm it causes.

Politics in America is money controlled, a system unlike in any other country, amounting to organized bribery [parading as democracy]. In return for large campaign contributions (bribes by any standard), congressional members pass laws benefitting their benefactors, most often at the expense of the general welfare – the defining feature of dirty politics.

Earlier US robber barons were small-time compared to today’s mega-ones – lionized by media scoundrels as heroic figures, profiting at the expense of exploiting workers, paying them poverty wages – or gaining riches by using money to make more of it, contributing nothing to society. Money power in private hands and democracy can’t co-exist. Wall Street crooks transformed America into an unprecedented money-making racket – making it the old-fashioned way by stealing it.

Other corporate predators operate the same way, functioning as legalized crime families, oligopolies and monopolies, eliminating competition, not fostering it. Complicit with corrupt politicians, socialism for the rich, free market capitalism law of the jungle for ordinary people reflects the American way – rewarding predation, punishing the poor and disadvantaged, plutocracy, not democracy.

The Constitution’s general welfare clause (Article I, section 8) applies to the nation’s privileged class alone, no one else.

Bezos and other multi-billionaires earn more in a day than their workers in a year. Last April, as Amazon shares rose sharply, his net worth increased by $6 billion in 20 minutes. A few weeks ago, his wealth increased by $1.5 billion in one day. Last year, he made $19.3 billion – on average around $52 million daily, over $2 million per hour, $36,000 a minute, $600 a second. He has over fourfold the wealth of his alma mater, Princeton University. According to the Land Report, he’s the 25th largest US landowner.

Will he become the world’s first trillionaire in years to come? At age-53, he likely has many years ahead for greater wealth accumulation than already.

In contrast, most Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, one missed one away from hunger, homelessness and despair. Tens of millions of people are food insecure, dependent on food stamps and food pantries to feed themselves and their families. Hunger in America is a national disgrace. So is obscene wealth concentrated in few hands. The nation’s three richest billionaires are wealthier than the bottom half of the population. Bezos tops the list – the richest of America’s corporate predators, aiming to become more super-rich than already.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Brandeis once said:

“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

A Final Comment

Bezos is well-connected. He has CIA ties, recipient of a $600 million agency contract for much more than Amazon Web Services (AWS). As owner of the Washington Post, he serves as its mouthpiece.

He has a disturbing history currying favor with national security officials. WaPo is a virtual CIA house organ, a major conflict of interest destroying its credibility.

AWS’ Secret Region cloud technology lets the CIA and other US intelligence agencies host, analyze and secure their data across all classification levels – from unclassified to top secret.

Bezos is the US intelligence community’s man at Amazon.