I no longer work it, but it was a better time than now.
This is what the Globe's left me:
"Encore, Night Shift to open brew pub; It’s one of several changes being made at the Everett casino as more patrons return" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff, April 5, 2021
Encore Boston Harbor and Night Shift Brewing are preparing to open a brew pub restaurant in the massive casino, a collaboration that involves two of the major players in the reinvention of Everett’s industrial waterfront. The casino said it will welcome patrons at the Night Shift Brewing Kitchen and Tap starting April 15.
The announcement comes as the casino is preparing for what it hopes will be a fuller reopening in coming months, provided that increasing vaccinations are able to reverse a recent trend of rising COVID-19 transmission.
HUH?
The casino closed in March 2020, then reopened in July with strict protocols in place. It has not come close to reaching its state-imposed limit of 40 percent of normal capacity since then, but in a recent interview, Encore Boston Harbor president Brian Gullbrants said the facility is starting to see signs of an increase in visitors, especially among people who have been fully vaccinated.
“Everybody’s talking about the pent-up demand and the roaring ’20s. I think we’re starting to see the beginning of that,” Gullbrants said. “As vaccinations are making people more comfortable, people are starting to come back out.”
OMG!
The times are so different. They didn't have a culture of CVD going forward even though that day's vaccines caused the outbreak as history repeats itself due to endless psychopathic rule by mon$ters.
In addition, the economy hadn't been gutted and hollowed out with lockdown and banker-created debt. The great engine of American manufacturing was in its infancy as the country was still mostly agrarian.
Of course, the ultimate goal now appears to be genocide and that is why the Globe increasingly reads like a Party, 'er, ruling cla$$ rag where most people don't even exist anymore save for the hand-picked slaves that make it through.
The Night Shift collaboration is one of several changes being made at the Everett casino.
Encore is in the process of replacing its signature floral carousel in the main lobby. Though Gullbrants would not say what will replace the installation, he said it would be another botanical installation. The casino has also opened Cheese Meet Wine, a charcuterie bar that has taken the place of Encore’s Oyster Bar. There will be new food trucks on the casino floor, including Lucky Pizza, a sliceria and sub shop that opens next week. Encore also said Michelin-star chef Richard Chen has joined its Red 8 Asian Restaurant.
In a sign of how the pandemic has irrevocably altered the hospitality industry, the casino has also closed its high-end buffet to make room for a sports bar, which it hopes will eventually be a sports betting lounge if Massachusetts lawmakers decide to legalize wagering on athletic events
Gullbrants said the casino is confident that the sports bar will do well in any case, but he acknowledged that the pandemic simplified the decision to do away with the sumptuous buffet.
How much you want to bet I go there?
The idea of implementing measures such as sanitizing tongs after each guest went through the buffet line made such an offering hard to pull off, he said, but the change also highlights an ongoing effort to give the casino a wider price range for dining.
When the $2.6 billion property opened in 2019, some guests complained that there were not enough affordable options amid Encore’s Vegas-style luxury dining offerings — a calling card of parent company Wynn Resorts. While Encore has since swapped in several lower-priced food choices, it has left in place many high-end offerings such as Rare Steakhouse, where a 4-oz. Kobe rib eye steak goes for $230.
Chew on that for a while, 'eh?
Now here is your grub.
Gullbrants said the he hopes the Night Shift addition also creates a more direct tie-in with Encore’s host community.
The effort isn’t Encore’s first local beer tie-in; it previously commissioned a special IPA from Woburn’s Lord Hobo brewery. The project is something of a homecoming for Night Shift, which in its early days operated out of an industrial space on what is now part of the Encore property.
Night Shift has since moved up the road, to a much larger space on Santilli Highway, as it has widened its distribution and expanded its line of products into seltzers and coffees in recent years. The company also has another facility in Chelsea and an experimental brewery and restaurant at Lovejoy Wharf in Boston.
Night Shift cofounder Rob Burns said the increasing number of attractions in Everett validates the confidence that the brewery had when it chose the city as its home, and then decided to expand there.
“It gives me chills,” Burns said. “We believed in the city so much.”
So does this woman, despite all the raci$m, as well as another who says she admires the resilience and continued belief in Boston at a time when cities need believers.
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"Minority Entrepreneurs Struggled to Get Small-Business Relief Loans" by Stacy Cowley New York Times, April 4, 2021
Southern Bancorp is a lender serving the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta, where poverty rates are among the highest in America and decades of redlining shaped neighborhoods with little generational wealth.
When the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses started last April, so many of Southern Bancorp’s customers didn’t qualify for the relief money that the Arkansas bank’s chief executive, Darrin Williams, turned to donors to raise money for $1,000 grants so it wouldn’t have to turn applicants away empty-handed.
The bank made 128 such grants, giving more than 100 of them to businesses run by women or minority owners. One let a nail salon owner buy plexiglass so she could reopen. Another allowed a small cafe to buy safety gear for its staff. A day care used the money for the new sanitizing equipment it needed.
Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program in March 2020 as an emergency stopgap for what lawmakers expected to be a few months of sharp economic disruption, but as the pandemic raged on, the program — which made its first loans one year ago this past week — has turned into the largest small-business support program in American history, sending $734 billion in forgivable loans to struggling companies.
The program helped nearly seven million businesses retain workers, but it has also been plagued by complex, changing rules at every stage of its existence, and one year in, it has become clear that the program’s hasty rollout and design hurt some of the most vulnerable businesses.
OMG!
A New York Times analysis of data from several sources — including the Small Business Administration, which is managing the loan program — and interviews with dozens of small businesses and bankers show that Black- and other minority-owned businesses were disproportionately underserved by the relief effort, often because they lacked the connections to get access to the aid or were rejected because of the program’s rules.
Then President Donald Trump’s administration — especially his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin — put a priority on getting money to needy businesses fast. Just seven days after the law was signed, the earliest applicants received their checks, but the haste meant the rules were mostly written on the fly. Lenders and advocacy groups warned that the relief effort had structural challenges that were likely to inadvertently but disproportionately harm women and minority business owners. Reaching the most vulnerable businesses required determination, they said, and the program gave lenders no incentives to put in that effort.
???????????
I don't remember "lenders" -- i.e. banks -- warning about anything. Their main beef at the time was the low level of interest they were getting for being a bagman and distributing the loot.
The government relied on banks to make the loans, creating an obstacle for borrowers who didn’t have established banking relationships. Some banks favored their larger and wealthier clients, which pushed ordinary customers to the back of the queue. “Mystery shopper” studies found that Black applicants were consistently treated worse than white counterparts.
The program also largely locked out sole proprietors and independent contractors — two of the most popular structures for minority-owned businesses. Those companies weren’t eligible to apply for the program’s first week. When they got access, a rule barring loans to unprofitable solo businesses — a restriction that didn’t apply to larger companies — prevented many from getting help. Most nonbank lenders, including those that specialize in underserved communities, were shut out for weeks while they waited for the Small Business Administration to approve them.
“The focus at the outset was on speed, and it came at the expense of equity,” said Ashley Harrington, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending.
And then, the money was gone!
Because lenders are not required to collect demographic details on their borrowers, data on the Paycheck Protection Program’s racial breakdown has been scarce, but economists have consistently found signs of gaps.
???????????
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that some counties with large numbers of Black-owned businesses — most notably the Bronx, Queens and Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit — had strikingly low concentrations of the relief loans. Majority-white ZIP codes in several metropolitan areas had higher loan coverage than ZIP codes with heavily minority populations, according to a San Francisco Fed analysis, and data from the Small Business Administration shows the relief effort’s tilt. The vast majority of lenders did not report demographic data on the 3.6 million loans they made this year, but of the 996,000 that included information on the borrower’s race, 71 percent of the dollars went to white-owned businesses.
The $tuff is literally coming down from on high.
Pilar Guzman Zavala founded Half Moon Empanadas, a small chain of restaurants, in Florida 12 years ago. She employed 100 people before the pandemic and had established bank accounts and years of detailed business records, but Zavala’s application stalled at the first two lenders she tried, forcing her to spend a month hunting before she finally found a local bank that would process her loan.
She’s grateful for the aid, which helped her hold on to 50 workers, but found the process infuriating. “The financial system doesn’t get to truly small business, Hispanic businesses, women-owned businesses. It just doesn’t,” she said.
It is meant to be that way so you will give up and the looters keep the loot. Most of the trillions ended up in the hands of Wall Street banks who are now sitting on it.
Of the 1,300 Paycheck Protection Program loans that Southern Bancorp made last year, many went to customers who had been turned away by larger banks, Mr. Williams said.
In a recent Federal Reserve survey, nearly 80 percent of small-business owners who are Black or of Asian descent said their companies were in weak financial shape, compared with 54 percent of white business owners, and Black owners face unique challenges. While owners from all other demographics told the Fed that their main problem at the moment was low customer demand, Black respondents cited a different top challenge: access to credit.
When Jenell Ross, who runs an auto dealership in Ohio, sought a Paycheck Protection Program loan, her longtime bank told her to look elsewhere — a message that large banks like Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo delivered to many of their customers in the program’s frenzied early days.
Days later, she obtained a loan from Huntington Bank, a regional lender, but the experience stung. “Historically, access to capital has been the leading concern of women- and minority-owned businesses to survive, and during this pandemic it has been no different,” Ross, who is Black, told a House committee last year.
Last year, the American Business Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group, worked with local nonprofits to create a “community navigator” program that sent outreach workers to Black, minority and rural businesses in Florida, Illinois, South Carolina and Texas. “Our folks literally went door to door and walked people through the process,” said Rebecca Shi, the group’s executive director. “It’s time-consuming.”
They plowed through roadblocks, Whac-a-Mole-style, and language barriers were common and many business owners had never sought a bank loan before while several didn’t have an email address and needed help creating one, while others hadn’t filed taxes.
Shaundell Newsome, a Las Vegas business owner and a co-chair of Small Business for America’s Future, an advocacy group, said improving outcomes for Black business owners would require deliberate, sustained changes throughout the banking industry. “The solution is intentionality,” he said. “What I mean by that is making sure bankers, regulators and policymakers stay intentional on building Black businesses and helping us get access to capital.”
While denying white people, a total reversal.
What am I saying?
We all know banks are altru$tic in the extreme and would never exploit or oppre$$ anyone.
That’s a message Newsome passed on to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen in a recent meeting. Yellen has pledged to increase support for minority-focused lenders and make other changes to alter a financial system that, in her words, still produces outcomes unacceptably similar to those of the days when Jim Crow laws were in effect. Economic crises like the one now gripping the country “hit people of color harder and longer” and intensify economic inequality, Yellen said at that meeting. “I am worried the current crisis will do this again. In fact, I know it will, unless we act.”
That is a ridiculous statement, and it comes from one of the foremost movers of the very policies of inequity which she is charged to fix and which have benefitted her class greatly.
Are you sick of the $hell game, yet?
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Front-page table for one:
"For the hospitality industry, struggling to recover, it’s a moment of reckoning; ‘The idea that we should go back to normal is kind of whack,’ says an advocate" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, April 4, 2021
Continuing to read this is whack, and you got a contract yet?
After a year of forced dormancy, the restaurant industry is scrambling to get ready for an expected boom this summer. That means hiring back some of the thousands of workers who’ve been without jobs or steady hours over the past year because of pandemic closings and restrictions, yet despite a massive labor pool, some restaurants say they are having trouble finding people willing to return to the business. The pandemic, it seems, prompted some to reconsider life in an industry notorious for difficult working conditions.
Thank God the illegals are pouring over the border, 'eh?
All part off the plan to replace and di$po$e$$!
There’s a reckoning in the hospitality industry right now as these workers — and their bosses — contemplate how much of the old normal they’re are willing to return to. The restaurant trade has a reputation for grueling work and long hours, wildly uneven pay for workers, and a sometimes hostile environment, particularly for women, people of color, and undocumented immigrants.
See?
A certain group is no longer part of the conversation.
Some owners are taking steps to improve the life: eliminating tipping to even out pay levels, changing operations to create more opportunities for advancement, even in some cases simplifying menus to make less work for staff. and advocates are seizing on the uncertainty to push for fairer wages and work schedules.
Nor more tips is really a low blow, but then again, the $ociety will soon be ca$hle$$ anyway.
“The idea that we should go back to normal,” said Mikey Knab, national policy director at RAISE High Road Restaurants, an advocacy group, “is kind of whack,” but as ambitious as the goals are, for many more restaurants the challenge of recovering from a huge financial hit doesn’t leave time for such overhauls. Some Boston-area operators are taking small steps: UNO Pizzeria & Grill, for example, is offering larger referral bonuses to attract new hires and a bilingual vaccination concierge for staff.
For my part, I will never eat out again anywhere including drive-through, so no bag alert.
It remains to be seen whether large national employers will take steps to reform the industry; the National Restaurant Association’s move earlier this year to oppose efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 did little to bolster good feelings about the potential for change. Eight states have eliminated the very low minimum wage for tipped workers, so they now are paid at the regular minimum wage, which the Center for American Progress has found has led to lower levels of poverty among tipped workers.
That will make you stop and $tink, er, think for a minute.
“I’d like to be one of those people like that has a stable job with fair payment,” David G. of East Boston said through an interpreter. A former cook, he asked for anonymity because of his immigration status. He lost his job at an Italian restaurant in the North End when the pandemic hit, and since then has taken jobs in construction or demolition to pay his rent.
??????
Constructing and demolishing what on the way to the Great Re$et, etc?
He said he’d be happy to work again in a kitchen if he were offered a weekly salary, but that’s nearly impossible to find right now. Many owners, he said, “don’t care that you have a family, they don’t care that you have rent and you have bills to pay. They don’t care.” So he’s hesitant to return, but some owners do feel that now is the time to act.
I didn't correct the grammar because you never start a sentence with so, ever!
It's Writing 101, but beyond that is the strange attitude regarding employers when the Globe doesn't give me that impression of them at all!
The owners must be white, huh?
For Rachel Miller Munzer, a co-owner of Mamaleh’s, State Park, and Cafe Du Pays restaurants in Cambridge, the prospect of reopening and stepping right back into old habits doesn’t make sense. “We’ve been totally ripped apart,” she said.
Starting anew means more equitable pay for her employees, to no longer differentiate between servers and kitchen staff or subject workers to the whims of customers, when all kinds of factors, including racism, can influence how much they tip. She’s currently using money from a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan to raise the base pay for all staff to $13.50 an hour — the current minimum wage in Massachusetts — and has replaced tipping with a uniform fee.
“It’s scary, because we’re already sort of reinventing and rebuilding,” she said, “but for us it’s like there’s never going to be a good time to force change, and in some ways it’s like ‘What the hell? We have nothing to lose right now.’ Everything is so turned upside down that we just feel like it’s time.”
Not only is that last highlight cryptic as hell, she obviously exercised privilege to get a loan!
While some restaurateurs stayed in touch with furloughed employees during the pandemic, many acknowledged that rebuilding their businesses could mean replacing much of their old staffs. Fears of infection have kept many workers from coming back, and the pool of students who work in hospitality jobs is limited. Extended unemployment benefits further complicate matters; meanwhile, it’s likely that a server or back-room staffer would have to work months before the hours and tips would return to any level of normalcy and ensure they could eke out a living.
“Many restaurants now all are really just scrounging around trying to find help,” said Dan Donato, who owns Fortune Bar in Amesbury. “The business isn’t there for everyone right now, but they’re looking ahead 30 to 60 days and they want to be staffed up and have everybody trained when that business does come back.”
As we all will be soon once inflation makes the printed money worthless (already in the $upply chain) and the planned famine and power outages lead to mass evictions and concentration camp slaughter -- all for the greater good of a better world, of course.
The result is a hiring shortage that many compare to pre-COVID levels, when the industry was so busy with openings that it was impossible to find enough staff. This, despite a state unemployment rate of 7.1 percent as of February. Many of the unemployed came from the leisure and hospitality industry, which a year after the pandemic began had 115,000 fewer jobs.
“A lot of people are not wanting to come back to work. They don’t have faith in the industry anymore,” said Sara Fetbroth, a restaurant consultant who worked as general manager of Oleana in Cambridge before the pandemic. “At the beginning, everyone said this has exposed so many weaknesses, we need to think about how we change things, but I don’t think enough people are doing it.”
The same could be said of all AmeriKa's institutions, particularly my pre$$ here, and its always the $ame old $ong and dance regarding labor shortages amidst massive unemployment -- and likely due to unreasonable and onerous restrictions built on lies!
A subset are trying.....
Not hard enough.
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"Mass. business confidence jumps to prepandemic levels; Experts cite the vaccine rollout and government stimulus efforts as reasons for growing optimism" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, April 5, 2021
The floodgates are opening as people who are even slightly overweight or smoked as few as 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes are now eligible, and once you get your shot you can go get a donut!
Business confidence in Massachusetts soared to prepandemic levels last month as local employers took heart from the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations and economic stimulus efforts at the federal and state levels.
The Associated Industries of Massachusetts Business Confidence index “suggests some robust growth in the economy is underway,” said Sara Johnson, a global economics expert with research firm IHS Markit. “We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”
I'm so sick of the catch-phrase $hit, sorry.
Johnson and other members of AIM’s board of economic advisers point to several reasons for the rebound, including the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines and congressional approval in early March of a $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package, the latest effort by Washington policy makers to accelerate the economy’s recovery.
In general, larger employers tended to be more upbeat about the economic outlook than small businesses in the AIM survey, and those in Eastern Massachusetts were more bullish than those in the western part of the state.
Chris Geehern, an executive vice president at AIM, said the polling shows its members are particularly enthusiastic about the economic outlook for six months from now.
“There really is a sentiment that all we need to do is get people vaccinated, get things under control [with the virus], and by and large the economy has underlying strength,” Geehern said.
See what they are doing?
People unwilling to take their poison will be blamed for permanent lockdowns and economic destruction that has been pre-planned under the cover of the CVD lie.
A year ago, AIM staffers mainly fielded questions from members that focused on financial survival, such as how to secure a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan. Now, Geehern said, the biggest question revolves around when to bring people back to the office.
All those questions have been answered.
The latest estimates available show the state’s unemployment rate fell again, to 7.1 percent, in February, while Massachusetts employers collectively added more than 50,000 jobs in the first two months of the year, but the total number of jobs in the state was still more than 300,000 jobs short of prepandemic levels. Many business leaders recognize the state still has a long way to go to recover those lost jobs. The national economy benefited from an unexpected surge of hiring in March, but the state-by-state numbers are not yet available for that month. One encouraging sign: The Massachusetts Department of Revenue reported on Monday that March tax revenue exceeded state officials’ expectations by nearly 27 percent.
How low was the bar, and we all know the numbers are manipulated ad nau$eam.
Nada Sanders, a supply chain management professor at Northeastern University, said there are still many reasons to be cautious. She noted that AIM’s polling doesn’t reflect the recent supply disruption with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the newest lockdowns in Europe, or the most recent rise of more infectious COVID-19 variants.
“We see this tremendous amount of pent-up consumer demand, and I think a number of businesses are going to do well,” Sanders said. “I would temper it just a little bit given the fact we just don’t know which direction [the pandemic] will take . . . It’s changing in real time.”
The script is set, though, and that requires a nonexistent scary new variant and final lockdowns leading to tyranny and mass genocide.
Overture, curtain, lights:
"Onetime Harborlights concert tent has a new sponsor: Leader Bank; Naming rights to the Seaport venue (formerly Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion) now belong to a fast-growing Arlington lender" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, April 5, 2021
Move over, Rockland Trust. It’s Leader Bank’s turn to have its name in the harbor lights.
The Arlington bank has signed a seven-year naming rights deal to sponsor Live Nation’s Seaport concert venue, which is being dubbed Leader Bank Pavilion as of Monday. Leader made the move after Rockland decided not to renew the contract it inherited when it acquired the waterfront amphitheater’s previous sponsor, Blue Hills Bank.
Leader’s decision to sign a multiyear, multimillion-dollar agreement comes amid uncertainty about when concerts will start up again after live music went on a prolonged hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. TD Garden and Fenway Park in recent weeks resumed admitting sports fans, with severe occupancy limits, but economics and ticketing logistics make it more difficult for major concert venues to reopen with such limited capacities. Many music fans still have tickets to sold-out shows that were put off from 2020.
Leader’s president, Jay Tuli, said he remains confident that live music will return this summer to the pavilion. If local COVID restrictions prevent that from happening, he said, Leader has an option to extend the contract.
“We had some thought going into it that 2021 could be a risk, [but] all signs are showing we will have concerts this year,” Tuli said. “We just don’t know when.”
Tuli said this is the first major naming-rights deal for the bank. He declined to disclose the financial terms with Live Nation. Blue Hills, and subsequently Rockland Trust, paid just over $300,000 a year.....
What'$ in a name?
They are “dedicated to the local community and thrilled to have a partner like Leader Bank whose reputation is synonymous with community as they write the iconic Pavilion’s next chapter.”
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Time to hoist one in celebration:
"Castle Island Brewing to open a taproom in Southie, home to the company’s namesake; Founder Adam Romanow has leased more than 10,000 square feet from National Development on Old Colony Avenue" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, April 6, 2021
Castle Island Brewing founder Adam Romanow ended up opening his brewery in Norwood in 2015 after he was unable to find a viable space in his neighborhood of South Boston, home to the landmark that inspired the company’s name.
Now, nearly six years later, Romanow is finally able to achieve that original dream: Castle Island Brewing is unveiling plans on Tuesday to open a taproom at 10 Old Colony Ave., at the site of the former Cole Hersee plant. An added bonus: Members of his extended family had previously owned and run the South Boston electrical switch plant for years.
“It’s unreal, quite honestly,” Romanow said. “This is something we always wanted, but there’s a difference between wanting something and making it happen.”
Romanow said he had raised equity funding, secured a Small Business Administration loan, and signed a lease with National Development for the Southie property. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Romanow had to think more about survival than expansion. Castle Island was forced to furlough 30 of its 35 employees in March 2020 but was able to bring everyone back in the spring after receiving funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.
More privilege!
The resurgence in the economy, the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, and the loosening of business restrictions have given him confidence to go ahead with the project.
Romanow said he expects to create an additional 35 jobs at the South Boston location and is shooting for a July opening. He also plans to add about 10 jobs at the Norwood brewery, where a sign that hung above the loading docks when he first moved in has become a company mantra: “If you’re not proud of it, don’t ship it.”
Castle Island shipped about 7,700 barrels of beer last year, down from 8,500 in 2019. Still, its 2020 performance was good enough to rank it 10th among Massachusetts craft brewers based on volume, according to the Boston Business Journal. Its biggest seller, by far, remains the Keeper IPA.
The South Boston taproom will feature an “innovation brewery,” a tasting room and event space, a full kitchen, and an outdoor patio. As with the Norwood location, the Southie taproom will feature food from Lombardo’s, the Randolph-based event space and catering service. Castle Island’s lease includes 9,000 square feet indoors and an 1,800-square-foot patio.
Romanow said he’s encouraged by the amenities that National Development has attracted to the former Cole Hersee building as it advances a broader development vision for the once-industrial stretch along Old Colony Avenue. Those tenants include the likes of Rock Spot, a climbing gym, and B/Spoke, the indoor cycling studio. “It’s a really compelling vision for us, what they’re designing for the whole area,” Romanow said.
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Some bar chatter:
"Online retail giant Wayfair has joined a growing list of big corporate names that are contributing to the Black Economic Development Fund, a national initiative to provide investment in Black-led or owned organizations and businesses. Wayfair on Monday said it has committed $30 million to social impact investing, including $20 million for the development fund, which is managed by the Local Initiatives Support Corp. Wayfair said the remaining $10 million will be invested at a later date. Wayfair joins two other local investors in the development fund: Thermo Fisher Scientific ($20 million) and HubSpot ($12.5 million). These commitments are not grants. Wayfair, for example, is making these investments as part of its cash management strategy and expects to recoup this money but wants to extend the capital to underserved communities rather than have it sit in a bank account. So far, Local Initiatives Support Corp. has raised more than $200 million for the fund. Other businesses that have invested with the development fund include Square, Netflix, PayPal, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Aflac, and Costco."
They can also get you a date.
"DraftKings said Monday it has acquired BlueRibbon Software, a Tel Aviv-based company that uses online gaming tools, such as jackpots, to increase customer engagement and retention. The publicly traded Boston sports-betting company plans to integrate BlueRibbon’s jackpot tool with its platform, allowing users to receive personalized promotions and rewards. Paul Liberman, cofounder and president of global technology and product at DraftKings, said the feature will “enable DraftKings to create dynamic incentives for our users as they engage with our products.” The news comes less than a week after the company said it had acquired Vegas Sports Information Network, a broadcasting company focused on sports betting. The financial terms of both deals were not disclosed. BlueRibbon was founded in 2017 by online gambling veterans with “experience working within regulated markets,” according to a press release. DraftKings said it plans to absorb BlueRibbon’s workforce and increase hiring in its Tel Aviv office. DraftKings, founded in 2012, offers sports betting in 14 states, but not Massachusetts."
It's part of the money pipeline between the two.
"Two months after a market phenomenon took shares of GameStop to the moon, the video game retailer said Monday that it will sell up to 3.5 million of its shares. The shares will be sold through an “at-the-market” offering, which lets companies place their stock on the market over a period of time. The GameStop saga has been one of the biggest stories on Wall Street this year. The company had been pummeled as new technology allowed people to download games, rather than buying a physical copy from GameStop or somewhere else. That shift threatened the existence of GameStop and its shares had been more than halved, to $20, by the start of this year. A number of hedge funds, believing the value of GameStop shares would fall further, shorted the company, or bet against its shares. However, a group of smaller investors who communicated largely on Reddit challenged those hedge funds, believing they were wrong or that they could catch them in a “short squeeze.’'
The public got whip$awed and the quietude surrounding it tells me the overlords are in control, as always.
"Ship congestion outside the biggest US gateway for Asian imports remained elevated with the wait to offload containers lengthening to eight days, adding costs and complications for companies trying to stay well-stocked in an accelerating economy. A total of 28 container ships were anchored awaiting entry into the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., as of Sunday, compared with 26 a week earlier though still below a peak of 40 in early February, according to officials who monitor marine traffic in San Pedro Bay. Another 16 are scheduled to arrive over the next three days, with seven of those expected to drop anchor and join the queue."
Another excu$e for the intentional strangling of supply lines, per planned Re$et.
"Tim Cook has been with Apple Inc. for 23 years and served as its chief executive for nearly a decade, but he used a new podcast appearance to suggest that some kind of an eventual change may be on the horizon. “I feel great right now, and the date’s not in sight,” the 60-year-old told The New York Times “Sway” podcast that was released Monday, “but 10 more years is a long time and probably not 10 more years.”
They killed Jobs because he declined to provide a trapdoor for the US government in all its products.
"Billionaire philanthropists John and Laura Arnold have committed to donate 5 percent of their wealth annually as part of an effort to encourage increased, timelier donations to charities. The Arnolds are the first billionaires to sign on to the advocacy organization Global Citizen’s “Give While You Live” campaign, which calls on the world’s billionaires to give at least 5 percent of their wealth every year to a cause. The Arnolds’ pledge Monday came as part of an alliance between Global Citizen and the Arnold-led Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving — a coalition of donors and experts who want Congress to raise giving requirements."
Our benevolent, $elf-$erving overlords.
"The company that owns the Chicago Tribune and other major US newspapers said Monday it would discuss a $679 million bid from hotel mogul Stewart Bainum and Wyoming billionaire Hansjörg Wyss that is higher than the $634 million offer from hedge fund Alden Global. The board’s special committee said in a prepared statement that its decision lets Tribune “engage in discussions and negotiations with, and provide diligence information to Newslight,’' which is Bainum’s and Wyss’s group, but for now it continues to recommend that shareholders choose Alden’s offer. The Newslight offer emerged after pushback from journalists at many of Tribune’s paper against the Alden deal. Alden, one of the country’s largest newspaper publishers, has a reputation for cutting costs and jobs in an industry already hollowed out by newsroom layoffs. Bainum had previously sought to buy the Baltimore Sun as part of the Alden deal, but negotiations stalled."
That's who brings us our new$.
Now wonder it reads like $hit.
"US retailers could shutter tens of thousands of stores even after the pandemic subsides, as shoppers continue to turn toward e-commerce, according to a new report. Roughly one in every 11 stores will close in the next five years, with office-supply, sporting-goods, and clothing retailers among the hardest hit, according to the base case in a UBS analysis Monday. In the most dire scenario, more than twice as many stores — about 150,000 in total — could close over that span. US stores shifted focus to online operations as the COVID-19 pandemic forced physical locations to temporarily close. Even upon reopening, visitors were slow to return and shops rushed to offer such services as curbside pickup and virtual shopping to get consumers buying again. Foot traffic at malls has fallen about 30 percent from more than a year ago, according to real estate data firm Green Street. More than two dozen major retailers filed for bankruptcy last year, including household names J.C. Penney and Lord & Taylor."
That was an AFTERTHOUGHT amongst the clatter of the din -- probably because it doesn't $upport the preconceived, propaganda narrative of the pre$$.
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"Yellen seeks minimum corporate tax rate wordlwide, warns slow pace of vaccinations may hurt economy" by Alan Rappeport New York Times, April 5, 2021
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made the case Monday for a global minimum tax, kicking off the Biden administration’s effort to help raise revenue in the United States and prevent companies from shifting profits overseas to evade taxes.
It's a ca$h grab on the road to global communi$m, and can you say New World Order?!
Yellen, in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, called for global coordination on an international tax rate that would apply to multinational corporations, regardless of where they locate their headquarters. Such a global tax could help prevent the type of “race to the bottom” that has been underway, Yellen said, referring to countries trying to outdo one another by lowering tax rates in order to attract business.
Her remarks came as the White House and Democrats in Congress begin looking for ways to pay for President Biden’s sweeping infrastructure plan to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, water systems, and electric grid.
Meaning destroy America, and when does the buyer's remorse kick in?
Yellen also highlighted her priorities of combating climate change and reducing global poverty, and underscored the importance of the United States helping to lead the world out of the crisis caused by the pandemic. Yellen called on countries not to pull back on fiscal support too soon and warned of growing global imbalances if some countries do withdraw before the crisis is over.
She makes one want to vomit, so excuse me.
The slow pace of vaccinating people around the world is also a concern for Yellen, who lamented that many developing and middle-income countries have been unable to invest in robust rollouts of inoculations, which could hurt the global economy. “The result will likely be a deeper and longer-lasting crisis, with mounting problems of indebtedness, more entrenched poverty and growing inequality,” Yellen said.
In other words, they INTEND to HOLD the GLOBAL ECONOMY HOSTAGE until EVERYONE is VACCINATED with their GENOCIDAL POTIONS!
That is the ONLY WAY THIS MAKES $EN$E!
Corporate tax rates have been falling around the world in recent years. During the Trump administration, the US rate was cut from 35 percent to 21 percent. Biden wants to raise that rate to 28 percent and increase the international minimum tax rate that US companies pay on their foreign profits to 21 percent.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in coordination with the United States, has been working to develop a new international tax architecture that would include a global minimum tax rate for multinational corporations as part of its effort to curtail profit-shifting and tax-base erosion. Yellen said she’s working with her counterparts in the Group of 20 advanced nations on changes to the global tax system that would help prevent businesses from shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions.
Ironically (not!), this article appeared below that one:
"Dozens of America’s biggest businesses again paid no federal income tax" by Christopher Ingraham Washington Post, April 5, 2021
Fifty-five of the nation’s largest corporations paid no federal income tax on more than $40 billion in profits last year, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank.
Another nebulou$ $tink tank pu$hing the agenda.
In fact, they received a combined federal rebate of more than $3 billion, for an effective tax rate of approximately negative 9 percent, according to the study’s authors, Matthew Gardner and Steve Wamhoff.
How do you receive a rebate on something you never paid?
If they did pay, they got it all back and then some while you didn't get the loan or your unemployment claim is held up for fraud.
The outrage is buried at the bottom of page D3, and nothing will come of it, as u$ual.
The findings also underscore the favorable tax environment for big businesses since the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Twenty-six corporations have paid no federal income taxes since 2017, according to the report, including such household names as Nike, FedEx, and Dish Network. Combined, the 26 companies have booked more than $77 billion in profits since 2018, while receiving nearly $5 billion in rebates, for an effective three-year tax rate of negative 6 percent.
’'By all appearances, the companies described in this report appear to be using entirely legal means to reduce their tax bills,’' lead author Matthew Gardner said via e-mail, but that doesn’t mean the companies are ’'blameless,’' he added. ’'Many of the tax provisions these companies are using exist because they themselves have lobbied heavily for their creation.’'
Those provisions include tax breaks for stock options given to chief executives as part of their pay packages, credits for research and experimentation, and write-offs for renewable energy and capital investments. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s dramatic cut to the corporate income tax rate, from 35 to 21 percent, also plays a role in the limited tax liabilities facing many major corporations.
They blame the Trump tax cuts that led to the greatest economy in history when everyone was working, partying and having fun, when this was going on long before he ever showed up.
How DISINGENUOUS!
All to PU$H and AGENDA!
’'We all want to see businesses investing more in the US,’' but there’s little evidence these provisions boost investment or R&D, Gardner said. President Biden has called for a higher corporate tax rate. Speaking to reporters Friday, Biden said that ’'we are asking corporate America to pay their fair share.’'
IN$ANE!
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He's already $haking, 'er, cracking down:
"Amazon illegally fired activist workers, labor board finds" by Karen Weise New York Times, April 5, 2021
SEATTLE — Amazon illegally retaliated against two of its most prominent internal critics when it fired them last year, the National Labor Relations Board has determined.
The employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, had publicly pushed the company to reduce its impact on climate change and address concerns about its warehouse workers.
The agency told Cunningham and Costa that it would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not settle the case, according to correspondence that Cunningham shared with The New York Times.
“It’s a moral victory and really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law,” Cunningham said.
I'm tired of "moral victories" that are actually losses, and I'll bet the AI robots can't come fast enough for Amazon.
The two women were among dozens of Amazon workers who in the past year told the labor board about company retaliations, but in most other cases the workers had complained about pandemic safety.
“We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful,” said Jaci Anderson, an Amazon spokeswoman. “We terminated these employees not for talking publicly about working conditions, safety, or sustainability but, rather, for repeatedly violating internal policies.”
Claims of unfair labor practices at Amazon have been common enough that the labor agency may turn them into a national investigation, the agency told NBC News. The agency typically handles investigations in its regional offices.
It's a $hakedown!
While Amazon’s starting wage of $15 an hour is twice the federal minimum, its labor practices face heightened scrutiny in Washington and elsewhere. The focus has escalated in the past year, as online orders surged during the pandemic and Amazon expanded its US workforce to almost 1 million people. Amazon’s warehouse employees are deemed essential workers and could not work from home.
This week, the national labor board is counting thousands of ballots that will determine whether almost 6,000 workers will form a union at an Amazon warehouse outside Birmingham, Ala., in the largest and most viable labor threat in the company’s history. The union has said the workers face excessive pressure to produce and are intensely monitored by the company to make sure quotas are met.
The results could alter the shape of the labor movement and one of America’s largest private employers.
They are whi$tling pa$t the graveyard.
Costa and Cunningham, who worked as designers at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, began criticizing the company publicly in 2018. They were part of a small group of employees who wanted the company to do more to address its climate impact. The group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, got more than 8,700 colleagues to support its efforts.
What, $10 billion ain't enough?
How about the ads?
Over time, Cunningham and Costa broadened their protests. After Amazon told them that they had violated its external communications policy by speaking publicly about the business, their group organized 400 employees to also speak out, purposely violating the policy to make a point.
They also began raising concerns about safety in Amazon’s warehouses at the start of the pandemic. Amazon fired Costa and Cunningham last April, not long after their group had announced an internal event for warehouse workers to speak to tech employees about their workplace conditions.
They used to be called troublemakers.
Cunningham said that, despite the company’s denial, she believed that she and Costa were prime targets for Amazon because they were the most visible members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.....
Look what was under the mattre$$:
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The state senate is going to bridge the divide:
"Digital divide flagged among ‘immediate needs’ post COVID-19 crisis" by Katie Lannan State House News, April 5, 2021
Addressing gaps in digital access will be among the early focus areas for a new Senate panel tasked with envisioning what Massachusetts might look like on the other side of the COVID-19 crisis.
The Senate’s Special Committee on Reimagining Massachusetts: Post Pandemic Resiliency, chaired by Pittsfield Senator Adam Hinds, plans to hold its first listening session Tuesday afternoon, with testimony covering issues of housing, the digital divide, workforce inequities and topics relating to southeastern Massachusetts.
How to carry forward the Great Re$et on the way to total world tyranny.
There is no need for any of this. It's all a pre-conceived plan based on lies and deceit.
Modeled after working groups like the one Senate President Karen Spilka convened last session to shape the body’s early pandemic response, the new committee is chaired by Hinds and includes the Senate chairs of joint committees on housing, racial equity, education, and labor and workforce development.
Hinds said the committee aims “to be reacting in real time around this unique set of challenges that are coming from a need to build back stronger.” Its work, he said, will include the chairs of key committees “sitting around the table and working together” to tackle structural and socioeconomic factors.
“The big piece that’s shaping my lens through which I’m looking at this is, this has been a catastrophic event and an existential threat to the livelihood and health of millions of Mass. residents, and the impact and the pain has been disproportionately falling on communities of color and low income residents,” Hinds said. “So as a policy developer, it’s hard not to experience this as the result of a massive policy failure.”
One that carries with it a 99.97% survival rate if you believe in the fiction of CVD-19, and if it is such a failure why do the politicians still have jobs?
One of the committee’s starting points will be looking for ways to address vulnerabilities and inequities exposed by the pandemic, he said, and senators will also seek ways to maximize the significant amounts of federal aid Massachusetts is poised to receive and to respond to shifts in the economy, work habits and more.
Rever$e raci$m from those who are most responsible for the tax $ub$idies to corporations, etc.
This is so di$ingenou$ it's $ickening, and Brady was busted for DUI shortly thereafter.
With so much of life still occurring online -- from work to some students’ schooling to health care and social services to booking vaccine appointments -- gaps in internet access remain a key issue.
Hinds said the pandemic has shown that lack of internet access is not just a rural concern, and that many people in cities lack reliable connections as well. He said bridging the gaps that leave some families unable to work, learn or tend to other needs from home falls into the category of “immediate needs.”
At Tuesday’s hearing, Hinds said there will be panelists focusing issues around internet access, including some who will provide a national perspective.
They want everybody hooked up to the control grid known as the Internet.
Evan Horowitz, executive director of the Center for State Policy Analysis and one of the scheduled speakers at Tuesday’s listening session, said the so-called digital divide also lands at the top of his list for action.
“There’s no future that doesn’t involve increased reliance on digital tools in the workplace, in education, for telehealth,” he said. “It’s a question of broadband, it’s a question of materials, it’s a question of skills. I think there’s also a digital workforce training piece that’s probably attached to that in the immediate term.”
Really pu$hing the telehealth, huh?
Looking beyond the immediate moment, Horowitz said there will also be a relatively short-term need to deal with “the trauma of the past year.”
Damage done, too late, a$$hole!
“I think as we open up, that’s going to become more apparent, the degree to which people have been really shaken by this experience,” he said. “I know there are a lot of concerns about the kind of near-term behavioral health implications, particularly in light of the fact that ... frontline medical workers, nurses and doctors, have been overtaxed for a year.”
The rest of us are not mentioned because we are non-e$$ential -- like that puke above -- and if making dance videos in empty corridors is overtaxing then they need more exercise.
This is disgraceful, folks, sorry.
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Almost as disgraceful as this rank hypocri$y:
"Corporations gave more than $50 million to backers of voting restriction, report finds" by BRIAN SLODYSKO The Associated Press, April 5, 2021
WASHINGTON — When executives from Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines spoke out against Georgia’s new voting law as unduly restrictive last week, it seemed to signal a new activism springing from corporate America, but if leaders of the nation's most prominent companies are going to reject lawmakers who support restrictive voting measures, they will have to abruptly reverse course.
State legislators across the country who have pushed for new voting restrictions, and also seized on former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, have reaped more than $50 million in corporate donations in recent years, according to a new report by Public Citizen, a Washington-based government watchdog group.
Telecom giant AT&T was the most prolific, the report found. Other top donors during the same period include Comcast, Philip Morris USA, UnitedHealth Group, Walmart, Verizon, General Motors, and Pfizer.
It's called playing both sides of the fence while controlling the political $y$tem and its puppets.
Did they also pay a negative tax rate?
The money may not have been given with voting laws in mind, but it nonetheless helped cement Republican control in statehouses where many of the prohibitive measures are now moving forward.
Whether companies continue to give to these lawmakers will test how far risk-averse corporate leaders are willing to go in their increasingly forceful criticism of the restrictive efforts, which voting rights groups have excoriated as an attack on democracy.
“It really is corporate America, as a whole, that is funding these politicians,” said Mike Tanglis, one of the authors of the report. “It seems many are trying to hide under a rock and hope that this issue passes.”
More than 120 companies detailed in the report previously said they would rethink their donations to members of Congress who, acting on the same falsehoods as the state lawmakers, objected to the certification of President Biden’s win following the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
You will toe (why wasn't he behind the barrier?) the politically-correct, communi$t line -- or else!
The tension is most evident now in Georgia, where a far-reaching new voting law has drawn an intense national scrutiny, prompting the criticism from Delta and Coca-Cola. On Friday, MLB announced it would no longer host the 2021 All-Star Game in Atlanta, yet it's unclear whether this aggressive new posture will extend to corporate campaign donation practices, and early indicators show there is risk.
Texas played to a nearly full and massless stadium yesterday, but the Globe missed it.
Georgia's Republican-controlled House voted to strip Delta of a tax break worth tens of millions of dollars annually for their criticism of the new law, though the action was rendered moot after the GOP Senate failed to take it up before the legislative session adjourned.
You fight fire with fire!
It is the only thing they under$tand.
Public Citizen analyzed about 245 voting restriction bills proposed before March 1. They culled a list of sponsors and cosponsors, while also analyzing vote roll calls. Then they cross-referenced the data with state-level donation records dating back to 2015, which included money from company political action committees, as well as direct contributions from corporate treasuries.
The Democrats have 700+ bills enshrining fraud, but that is never a pre$$ focus.
What is certain, though, is that withholding corporate donations to state-level candidates, like many companies did at the federal level, would have a far greater impact in statehouses. “A contribution of $5,000 to a US senator who is raising $30 million is a drop in a bucket, but in some of these state races, a few thousand dollars can buy a lot of ad time,” said Tanglis. “If corporate America is going to say that [Trump’s] lie is unacceptable on the federal level, what about on the state level?”
You know, the $ocially-woke $hit was never meant to shutdown the money machine.
Related:
"With an appeal to think big, President Joe Biden is promoting his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan directly to Americans, summoning public support to push past the Republicans lining up against the massive effort they sum up as big taxes, big spending and big government. Republicans in Congress are making the politically brazen bet that it’s more advantageous to oppose the costly American Jobs Plan, saddling the Democrats with ownership of the sweeping proposal and the corporate tax hike Biden says is needed to pay for it. He wants the investments in roads, schools, broadband and clean energy approved by summer. “They know we need it,” Biden said of the Republicans as he returned to Washington on Monday. “Everybody around the world is investing billions and billions of dollars in infrastructure, and we’re going to do it here.” The prospects for a massive infrastructure investment, once a bipartisan source of unity on Capitol Hill, have cracked and groaned under the weight of political polarization. Where Biden sees an urgency in going big, Republicans want a narrow plan that focuses on roads and bridges, and warn that any corporate tax increase would crush economic growth. A core dividing line is Biden’s effort to pay for infrastructure by undoing Donald Trump’s tax break for corporations, a signature achievement of the Trump White House and its partners in Congress. The 2017 GOP tax bill, which all the Republicans voted for, slashed the corporate rate from 35% to 21%. It was supposed to usher in a new era of American investment and job creation, yet growth never came close to the promised levels and the economy fell into a recession because of the pandemic. Biden proposes raising the rate to 28% and instituting a global minimum rate to dissuade companies from relocating in lower-tax havens. The standoff almost ensures a months-long slog as Congress hunkers down to begin drafting legislation and the White House keeps the door open to working across the aisle with Republicans, hoping that continued public attention will drum up support. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declared plainly on Monday that Biden’s plan is “something we’re not going to do.”
The revi$ioni$m regarding the Trump economy is a$tounding, and WRONG AGAIN, Mitch!
"On Monday, Biden received a boost from an unexpected source. The Senate parliamentarian greenlighted a strategy that would allow Democrats in the evenly-split 50-50 chamber to rely on a 51-vote threshold to advance some bills, rather than the typical 60 votes typically needed. The so-called budget reconciliation rules can now be used more often than expected — giving Democrats a fresh new path around the GOP blockade, but a single senator can break ranks to influence the size and shape of the package, and that leaves Biden and congressional Republicans on a collision course, the outcome of which could define the parties and his presidency, but it’s not at all certain the GOP playbook that worked more than a decade ago will produce the same political gains this time. Biden is banking on polling that suggests his infrastructure package is popular among voters of both parties. Touring a water treatment plant Monday in California, Harris said access to clean water was about a broader issue of fairness. With the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, Harris noted that families in Iowa and parts of the Midwest needed federal help to upgrade the wells on their properties, while parts of California needed reliable access to fight wildfires. “We must understand the equities and inequities of distribution and access to clean water, especially clean drinking water,” Harris said....."
Flint has been completely forgotten, and we all know the polls are complete propaganda and lies and it is the migrant crisis that is costing him support.
What IS CERTAIN is REPUBLICANS will NEVER HAVE A MAJORITY EVER AGAIN after the theft of the 2020 vote and the consolidation of power by the Communists, 'er, Democrats.
They are to be literally left behind by the tribe now in power and buried in the pond in Arkansas just as the Globe buried this:
The rumor is he liked fat girls, but once again, a picture is worth a thousand words!
Madame Oprah appears very Maxwell-esque if you ask me.
Time to go to bed, yuck!
