Gates’ connection to the U.S. detention and deportation machine is a company called Signature Aviation. Signature calls itself “the world’s largest network of private aviation terminals,” and it’s a linchpin in the day-to-day machinery of Trump’s immigration enforcement apparatus.
…
The private firm that holds Gates’ and the Gates Foundation Trust’s assets, Cascade Investment, increased its stake in the company to 30% in 2021, when it and two partners bought Signature outright for $4.7 billion. Human rights advocates — plane trackers and activists who keep tabs on deportation flights, as well as the aviation and logistics companies profiting from them — say Gates’ stake in Signature is at odds with his humanitarian work, including the Gates Foundation’s support of a plethora of immigration-focused nonprofits. Without FBOs like Signature, they say, Trump’s mass deportation agenda would be stuck on the ground.
Gates himself has not publicly commented on Signature Aviation’s crucial role in servicing ICE Air flights. Neither the Gates Foundation nor Cascade Asset Management Company, which oversees Cascade Investment, responded to multiple requests for comment.
surprising to whom? i am so bothered by this needing to be news. we are so propagandized very few can see billionaires for what they are. there are no “good ones.”
Propaganda works. Bill Gates’s tax evasion and PR foundation has managed to whitewash his reputation in a lot of circles.
Call me an optimist, but given billionaires’s propensity to buy supposed journalism outlets, I think it’s better to ask “why is this news” than “why isn’t this news”.
I’ve been arguing for many years that being a billionaire is incompatible with being a decent human.
We live in an economy of finite means, and being willing to put an absolutely insane portion of that finite resource into a bank account is exactly tantamount to ensuring poverty exists elsewhere. Anyone willing to horde such an insane amount of money is simply evil.
I think part of why the public doesn’t get more upset about this though is that most people don’t understand how big a billion is. It is a number so large that our feeble little brains really struggle to grasp it, and we in common discourse talk about millionaires and billionaires like it’s just the next logical step.
The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.
The problem is that 2/3 of Americans don’t want to villainize them because they still hold on to some fantasy that they may become one soon. Somehow through bootstraps and luck they might just magically become a billionaire, because they’re fucking stupid.
I’m just working minimum wage and praying inflation will get to the point where it carries me there. If it happened in Zimbabwe, it can happen here!
When the world sells off us treasury bonds and stops trading in the dollar that’s highly likely. But it’ll cost $500,000 for a loaf of bread and minimum wage will still be $7.25.