On the same day Jeff Bezos sat in the front row of the inauguration (that Amazon helped finance), his retail giant sent nine letters pressing the Trump administration to let the company block votes on initiatives from its own shareholders. These include proposals to disclose more information about Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers, handling of private medical data, lobbying activities, artificial intelligence–related energy use, and employee pay gaps.

UnitedHealth also called in some favors. A day after Amazon’s move, UnitedHealth asked Donald Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow it to block votes on shareholder proposals requiring the company to 1) audit previous customer denial claims to see if they were inaccurate and 2) disclose “how often prior authorization requirements or denials of coverage lead to delay or abandonment of medical treatment.” UnitedHealth has among the highest claim denial rates in the country.

We reported that during Trump’s first term, his regulators passed rules that made it more difficult for shareholders to force votes on their proposals. The Biden administration pushed back. Now Trump’s SEC chair nominee is Paul Atkins, who has criticized what he calls the “abusive use of the shareholder proposal process.” Because of the timing of Amazon and UnitedHealth’s letters, regulatory decisions about their shareholder resolutions will be made by Trump’s officials — not Joe Biden’s.

Last September, House Republicans passed the Prioritizing Economic Growth Over Woke Policies Act, which aimed to give companies limitless power to exclude shareholder proposals. The legislation also would have limited the SEC’s power to require public companies to report on issues considered unrelated to their financial health.

https://jacobin.com/2025/02/amazon-bezos-unitedhealth-trump-sec/

Labour’s crisis management has pleased nobody. It takes money out of the pockets of its natural supporter base, antagonises those, such as farmers, whom it often comes into conflict with, and fulfils none of the expectations demanded of it from capital. The fact that one poll places them below Reform should surprise none of us.

Labour’s synthesis of work, welfare and health policy constitute an expansion of the state’s coercive capabilities. Starmer’s government offers an image of exactly how ruling classes are seeking to mobilise authoritarian forms of population management to steer demographic transition into productive ends which disempower workers. In a service economy so dominated by William Baumol’s “cost disease”, where productivity increases are marginal because so much of the foundations of the economy are predicated on privatised care and reproduction, whether these moves will be successful is in serious doubt.

The old neoliberal consensus is in jeopardy, weighed down by its own contradictions: the breakdown of the US-led global order, the decimation of living standards across the board, the growing impact and realisation that runaway climate change is here to stay, as well as demographic decline to boot. Britain’s economic model isn’t simply breaking down, the social contract which rode Thatcher, Blair and then Cameron to power is cracking. The proliferation of high housing costs, increased interest rates and demographic ageing shatters the privatised welfare state which underpinned the neoliberal social contract and saw millions borrow credit in order to fund elder and social care, consumption and their children’s futures.

The task of radical politics, aware that the projection of boredom entails a radically regressive shift against the working classes, is not simply to put a spanner in the works of Starmerism. As desirable as this is, socialists also need to develop an organising account of how we construct a radical leftwing majoritarianism which unites homeowners with renters, racialised majorities with racialised minorities, the rustbelt regions with the gentrifying metropoles and private and public sector workers. The election of five independent and four Green MPs, the mass Palestine solidarity movement, and the growth in discussion of developing a serious alternative to Labourism, all need to be capitalised upon. For too long, socialism has been understood as national state ownership and an equitable distribution of society’s resources. Instead, socialists today should build a project which emphasises building power from below and organising feasible political challenges which facilitate the unification of distinct class agents subjected to different experiences of capitalist domination – drawing together the provincial, national and global spheres into a network of global socialist strength. The Faragist right is doing this successfully, recreating insubordinate images of national and bodily sovereignty, masculine uplift and racialised resentment whilst also leaning into popular economic terrain such as supporting water nationalisation and opposing the two-child benefit cap. Our side needs to get up to speed.

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/move-fast-and-fix-things

"For decades, the Guantanamo migrant detention center has been the hallmark of the most inhumane, racist, and brutal U.S. policies against people seeking refuge," said Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center. "The Biden administration could have shut down the facility but tragically renewed and entered into new contracts to keep it up and running."

Drop Site News revealed that the MOC can detain single adults, families, and unaccompanied children. Because the MOC is inside of a military base, migrants awaiting processing are transported in black out vans “with hand restraints and black out goggles to obscure their vision,” according to the documents obtained by Drop Site. Migrants also have limited communication with the outside world, with their few phone calls monitored for “restricted information,” including information about the navy base, the documents showed.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/trump-guantanamo-immigration-cuba-detention

Su spinta della maggioranza è ripartito l’iter per la modifica della Legge 185/90 che disciplina l’autorizzazione e l’esportazione di materiale d’armamento dal nostro Paese. La proposta governativa svuota la norma, indebolendo la trasparenza e il controllo di cittadini e Parlamento sull’export. La lobby delle armi festeggia ma l’intervento rischia di minare la sicurezza interna ed estera. Le proposte della Rete italiana pace e disarmo per un testo innovativo e ambizioso

https://altreconomia.it/basta-favori-ai-mercanti-di-armi-la-mobilitazione-per-salvare-la-legge-185-90/

La disuguaglianza di reddito nell'Unione Europea è diminuita tra il 2007 e il 2019, principalmente grazie alla convergenza dei redditi nei paesi dell'Est europeo, ma le differenze tra i sistemi di welfare nazionali sono rimaste significative. La riduzione della disuguaglianza si è concentrata soprattutto nei divari tra i redditi medi di mercato tra i paesi, mentre i trasferimenti redistributivi attraverso i sistemi di welfare nazionali non hanno avuto un impatto positivo, e anzi, sono stati meno efficaci nel 2019 rispetto al 2007. Questo miglioramento nella distribuzione dei redditi è stato facilitato dalla crescita economica dei paesi dell'Est, che ha ridotto il gap con i paesi più sviluppati.

Tuttavia, le disuguaglianze restano marcate tra i vari paesi dell'UE, con i paesi mediterranei come Spagna e Italia che si trovano ancora in una posizione svantaggiata. La Commissione Europea dovrà affrontare la questione di armonizzare i sistemi fiscali e di welfare per ridurre ulteriormente le disuguaglianze all'interno dell'Unione. Nonostante i progressi, c'è ancora molto lavoro da fare per creare una maggiore uniformità nelle politiche fiscali e redistributive.

https://lavoce.info/archives/107010/uneuropa-piu-uguale-almeno-nei-redditi/