Tag: extraction

  • Mamdani Madness

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    So Zohran Mamdani was sworn in on January 1st as New York City’s first Muslim mayor and first democratic socialist mayor, and the outrage machine on both sides has been in full swing. Michael Rapaport, less than a week into Mamdani’s tenure, posted an Instagram announcement that he’s running for mayor in 2029 to save…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 24A: The Environmental Extraction – They Profit Today, We All Pay Forever

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    On August 3, 2015, Alpha Natural Resources filed for bankruptcy. In January 2016, Arch Coal did the same. On April 13, 2016, Peabody Energy — the largest coal company in the country, founded in 1883 selling coal off a cart in Chicago — filed too. Between them, the three had promised to clean up their…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 23: The Efficiency Lie – How Technology Could Make Public Services Better Than Private (And Why They Don’t Want You To Know)

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    At one in the morning on Saturday, March 1, 2025, the federal office whose entire job was making the government work better got an email telling it that it was over. The notices had gone out the day before. The message came from a former Tesla engineer who had just been put in charge of…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 19: The Corporate Tax Dodge

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    One morning in late January, Tesla released its annual report, and up where the shareholders look was the number the company wanted them to see. Almost $5.7 billion of income earned in the United States in 2025. Roughly double what it had earned here the year before. A very good year, told the way a…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 17: The Systemic Theft Of Our Retirement

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    On December 9, 1963, the Studebaker Corporation announced it was closing its main automobile plant in South Bend, Indiana. The company had been building things to ride in since before there were engines to put in them — wagons, in the 1850s — and for the people on the line the pension was not a…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 11: The Military-Industrial Complex: $968 Billion in Wealth Extraction

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    There’s a food pantry on a base near you. There’s a food pantry on most of them. Operation Homefront, the Armed Services YMCA, the local Feeding America affiliate, sometimes the chaplain’s office running a closet out of a side room. The volunteers know which weeks are bad — paydays, PCS moves, deployment gaps that didn’t…