From rob@essential.org Mon, 10 Jan 2000 19:08:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 19:08:06 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] The Nature of the Machine The Nature of the Machine By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Imagine this: you study your entire life to reach the pinnacle of your profession. First, you secure an undergraduate degree in biology from Oregon State University. Then a PhD in developmental biology at Yale University. Then on to Indiana University, where you teach and run a lab on the cutting edge of plant research. And you have tenure. But you wake up one day and realize that by doing the scientific research, you are creating the road map for corporations to come in and apply the science for profit, thus destroying the nature that attracted you to the study of biology in the first place. By this time you have become well known in your field. You are "respected." In 1990, your lab gets the cover story in The Plant Cell, the leading journal of the field. But exactly one month later, you decide to write an editorial for the same publication announcing that such scientific research is unethical and that you will no longer conduct such research, thus effectively ending your scientific career. That, in a nutshell, is the career trajectory of Martha Crouch, a Professor of Biology at Indiana University in Bloomington. As a leading researcher in the field of plant molecular biology, Crouch got in on the ground floor, when corporations were just starting to become interested in biotechnology. In fact, Crouch consulted with a few of the them in the late 1980s, including the giant British multinational Unilever. Then, in 1989, Crouch picked up a copy of the New Scientist magazine and read how Unilever was using her tissue culture research to harvest palm trees in the tropics. Palm trees are grown for the oil in their seeds. The seeds are used for snack foods and industrial lubricants. Unilever wanted to expand its palm oil operations, but the trees were too variable in size to be industrialized. So, Unilever tried to make genetically uniform oil palm trees through tissue culture. "Some of the work that we did on rapeseed tissue culture helped them perfect their techniques so they could make identical copies of the plant and create large plantations of genetically identical palms," Crouch told us recently. Unilever started buying out small farmers in places like Malaysia. Crouch learned that the resulting oil palm boom was responsible for the cutting down of tropical rainforests and the displacement of indigenous peoples. Also, processing factories for palm oil caused severe water pollution. After reading the article, she asked herself: How could the research we did in our lab be applied in this way that damaged nature? That question, combined with her day-to-day feeling of disconnection from nature, stopped her in her tracks. She began to re-examine what she was doing with her life. And that re- examination led to her editorial in Plant Cell announcing that she was quitting research because she thought it could not be done ethically. The editorial drew scores of responses, many of them from scientists who, like Crouch, felt uneasy about the new emerging biotechnology companies and how they were hijacking basic plant cell research. But many others were angry with Crouch. One of her colleagues confronted Crouch and told her she was "more dangerous than Hitler," apparently on the grounds that her views might limit government funding for researchers like him, and that might slow the progress of medical or agricultural discovery. "Therefore millions of people would die that wouldn't have to die if science was progressing at a faster rate," she says. "And I would be responsible for this carnage. " But Crouch had come to a different world view. She came to believe, for example, that the Green Revolution -- the use of mechanized and chemical agriculture -- had resulted in an incredible increase in hunger around the world. Farmers worldwide were better off growing food organically and with appropriate technology -- as they had done for thousands of years. "You are basically treating the agricultural environment as if it was a factory where you are making televisions or VCRs," Crouch said. "If nature is not a machine, if organisms are not machines, then to treat them as if they are, is going to create big problems." Some of her students have quit the study of biology to pursue sustainable agriculture -- one is a logger in Kentucky who uses draft horses -- but most are working for the biotech industry -- one is at Monsanto and is responsible for helping to commercialize genetically engineered corn and soybeans. Crouch herself will quit her tenured position at Indiana University at the end of this semester. After deciding in 1990 to not continue her research, the department prohibited her from teaching science students. For the last ten years, she has been teaching non-science students about the food system. Crouch taught her students that we would be better off if we prevent the food system from being further industrialized. And she urges everyone to reconnect with nature. She's taking the lead, leaving the high-tech university setting and heading back to the local farmers market -- inspecting mushrooms for the City of Bloomington. "Local people all over the world know from experience which mushrooms are poisonous and which are not," she says. "We've lost that ability." Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:51:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:51:54 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] One Big Company One Big Company By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Bring 'em on. A few years ago, even a few weeks ago, we might have opposed the AOL-Time Warner merger. But now we're ready to leave twentieth century thinking behind. We recognize that this merger has "synergies that make some observers drool," as the Wall Street Journal explained. AOL will highlight InStyle magazine? Moviefone will pitch Warner Brother movies? Time Warner will include AOL disks in promotional mailings? That's progress, baby! In the past, we might have echoed the concerns of those who worried that the merger might interfere with open access to high-speed internet connections. AOL has been a leading proponent of open access -- meaning those who control high-speed internet access through cable systems or other means not have the power to discriminate against internet service providers that they do not control or favor. In buying Time Warner, AOL suddenly acquires one of the largest cable systems in the country, and gains a material interest in opposing open access. But that's OK. We're satisfied by AOL's verbal commitment that it will voluntarily permit open access in the cable systems it will control (though Time Warner currently has contractual obligations through 2001 to favor Roadrunner internet service). A few months ago, we might have agreed with media critics like George Gerbner, who say that goliaths like AOL-Time Warner undermine media diversity, that they are so big that their vast size means there will be an array of issues they cannot cover properly because they have a vested interest in the outcome. Now, we say, "C'mon George." AOL Chief Steve Case says he understands and is eager to learn more about the importance of journalistic integrity. Not along ago, we might have sympathized with the views of Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy: "This is the last nail in the coffin for anyone who believed that the internet is the last stronghold of media competition." Now, we tell Bob to get over it. The internet's still a free medium -- hey, AOL-Time Warner isn't stopping us from sending this column around the net. And you want media democracy? Broadband CNN news content will be distributed on AOL Plus! Just a short time ago, we might have noted the consensus that the AOL-Time Warner merger will spur a slew of new media and internet consolidations ("It's what the future is," a chief executive who runs theme parks and a movie studio told the Washington Post. "It sure feels like you need to be bigger -- bigger yet."), and urged that antitrust authorities block the merger to prevent this trigger effect. Now, we say, "More mergers? That means more synergy!" (As the late Walter Adams, one of the leading critics of corporate giantism, said, no merger was ever announced without a ritual incantation of the synergistic gains to be realized.) More mergers is exactly what we need. Microsoft needs a media company to compete. It is already partnered with NBC, so we figure it should buy NBC. GE currently owns NBC -- Microsoft might as well buy General Electric, too. And as long as its on a buying spree, it seems highly inefficient to have two major multinationals based in Seattle. Microsoft should purchase Boeing. And once you have planes, you might as well get cars. We recommend buying GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota and the rest. Meanwhile, it is obvious that, with the oil companies facing a serious political challenge on the global warming issue, they need their own voice. We recommend they purchase Disney-ABC. Of course, that would be after Exxon-Mobil finishes buying BP-Arco and the other oil companies. With oil naturally comes chemicals (DuPont, Dow, etc.) and with chemicals comes pharmaceuticals. They should all gravitate to the Exxon-Mobil-Disney pole. Don't worry about competition, the oil companies still face competition from other energy sources, like the food companies. Speaking of which, with the chicken, beef and pork processors all rapidly consolidating, the grain traders merging, the seed business quickly moving toward monopoly, supermarkets combining and food processors growing larger, it is time to speed the process of creating a single food company. Let's call it Philip Morris -- already the largest food company in the United States. The food/tobacco company probably should consider merging with AOL-Time Warner. Just think of the synergy of ordering all your food through AOL! Among the major U.S. media companies, that leaves Viacom-CBS in need of some strategic partners. The merger with AT&T -- once it has joined with MCI Worldcom-Sprint, and the already combining Baby Bells -- seems obvious: a pairing of leading cable companies to gain efficiency. Then there's Wal-Mart and the other major retailers. They need a major internet presence. Hook them up with the AT&T-Viacom combine, and throw in Yahoo! and Amazon.com for a little bit of internet spice. Sadly, for now we have to leave out perhaps the most synergistically minded industries: finance, including banks, insurance and securities firms. There are endless potential benefits from getting these operations merged with internet firms -- but current law blocks combinations between financial companies and those in the real economy. Maybe Congress can tend to that problem this year. Until then, our major concern will be: can the economy really survive with the inefficieny of four competing companies? Aren't there synergies to be gained from combinations among the four corporate groups? Steve Case, Bill Gates, take us to the future! Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Mon, 31 Jan 2000 17:00:31 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 17:00:31 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Close the Lid Close the Lid By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The Chlorine Chemistry Council (CCC) has reason to be worried about Joe Thornton's new book. CCC's members -- Dow Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, PPG, Vulcan Chemical, among others -- sell chlorine to a customer base that makes everything from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics to pesticides. Thornton is a research fellow at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. His forthcoming book, Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmental Strategy (March 2000, MIT Press), argues that chlorine and the organochlorine chemicals made from it pose a global health and environmental threat. Thornton says that evidence exists linking low-level organochlorine exposure to an increased risk of cancer, infertility, impaired child development, and disrupted immune systems. "The case is not proven, but there's enough evidence to cause real concern," he says. Thornton advocates a broad policy that would require industry to phase-out chlorine-based technologies in favor of cleaner alternatives. He says we must do away with a regulatory system that looks at one chemical at a time, and replace it with a precautionary approach that addresses major classes of chemicals and industrial processes. We spoke with Thornton about his book, and he began the conversation by launching into a chemistry lesson. Chlorine is one of the universe's basic elements. In nature, it exists almost solely in the form of salt -- sodium chloride, the extremely stable ionic form of chlorine that is abundant in the seas and in everyone's salt shaker. The environmental issue is not with salt but with chlorine gas and the chemicals that the chemical industry makes from it. Chlorine gas is produced at very large chemical facilities that take a solution of saltwater and zap it with an incredibly powerful electric current, producing an entirely new substance, chlorine gas, a heavy poisonous gas that was used as a chemical weapon in World War I. Chlorine gas combines rapidly with organic matter and produces a new class of chemicals called organochlorines. Organochlorines are generally foreign to nature, but they are produced by the chemical industry in huge amounts -- millions of tons per year. They tend to be extremely toxic, many of them are very long living in the environment, and they tend to be fat soluble, which means they build up in the tissues of human beings and other organisms. The first uses of chlorine gas were to bleach paper and to disinfect drinking water. Now the main uses are to produce plastics, other industrial chemicals, and pesticides, and also to bleach paper. It is still used for disinfection, but in relatively small amounts. About one percent goes to disinfect drinking water, and about four percent in the United States goes to disinfect sewage. The other 95 percent goes to industrial uses. The biggest one by far is the production of polyvinylchloride (PVC) plastic, which most people know as vinyl. Over 40 percent of the chlorine in the United States goes to make this plastic, which is one of the most environmentally problematic substances in our society because of the huge quantities of toxic chemicals produced during its manufacture, use, and disposal. According to Thornton, anywhere you go on the earth right now, you can find a stew of hundreds of long-lived organochlorines in the air, in the water, in the food chain, in the bodies of people. Even if you go to the high arctic, thousands of miles from any known source of these chemicals, you will find some very high concentrations of PCBs, dioxins, DDT, atrazine and other chlorinated pesticides, and a host of other organochlorines. "This has happened because these chemicals don't break down in the environment, so over a very long periods of time, they are distributed around the globe on currents of wind and water," Thonrton told us. "They also build up through the food chain. The highest levels build up end up in species that are high in the food chain -- species like polar bears, whales, seals, and human beings." Human children receive some of the highest organochlorine doses of all, because breast feeding is an efficient way of transferring organochlorines that have accumulated in the mother's body into the body of the child. These chemicals also cross the placenta. These exposures occur during the most sensitive periods of development. And these are not exposures that people can prevent. "Because the chemicals are absolutely everywhere, there is no way to get away from them," Thornton said "They are in the food chain, they are in the air and the water. It is not a matter of making healthy consumer choices. There is no escape from these chemicals -- all we can do is prevent further pollution." To get these hazardous chemicals off the market, under the current system, the regulatory police must prove that the chemicals are harmful. Thornton says that since there are 11,000 organochlorines on the market, plus thousands more that are formed as accidental byproducts -- many of which haven't been identified -- it would be impossible to effectively test them all. Instead, Thornton says, we should scap the current system and replace it with a system that requires the corporations to prove that the chemicals are safe -- a system that's largely in place to regulate pharmaceuticals, for example. "Chlorine chemistry is a pandora's box, opened less than 100 years ago and still spewing its demons into the environment," Thornton writes. "While governments, cheered on by those who benefit from the open box, tried to chase down each and every tiny demon that escapes, we miss the simplest and most obvious solution -- close the lid." Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:06:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 16:06:20 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Shakedown in Toledo Shakedown in Toledo By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman In the last 20 years, the corporate shakedown game has been elevated to an art form. Corporations have orchestrated race-to-the-bottom bidding wars among states and cities hoping to attract a new factory, or even maintain an existing facility. States and localities shower companies with tax breaks, subsidies, regulatory exemptions, discounted utility rates and other favors -- all at the expense of average taxpayers. One innovative response to the shakedown game is to demand that companies make specific and legally binding commitments -- a certain number of jobs, a certain wage level for its workers -- in exchange for the subsidies they receive. The Washington, D.C.-based Good Jobs First, headed by Greg LeRoy, and the network of grassroots groups with which it works has pioneered this approach. Now a pair of attorneys are set to challenge the very validity of business location tax incentives. On behalf of a number of residential and small business plaintiffs, Toledo attorney Terry Lodge and his co-counsel, Northeastern University Law Professor Peter Enrich, plan to challenge a massive subsidy from Toledo and the state of Ohio to DaimlerChrysler to keep a Jeep plant in the city. Faced with the threat of the existing Jeep plant closing, Toledo put together a $281 million local, state and federal subsidy package to support company plant expansion plans. The package includes a property tax exemption for 10 years, transfer of free land, including site preparation, transfer of environmental liability from DaimlerChrysler to the city and assorted other corporate welfare handouts. In exchange, DaimlerChrysler has committed to expand its Jeep facilities -- but will actually reduce the number of Jeep jobs from the current 5,600 to 4,900 (DaimlerChrysler's public claim) or 4,200 (the level the company specifies it will try to preserve in an unenforceable provision in its agreement with Toledo) or something much lower (a likely result based on United Auto Worker estimates and recent layoffs at the plant). The Toledo deal has also attracted national attention because it requires the displacement of a community near the plant. With the threat of a taking by eminent domain in the background, the City bought out 89 households, and will transfer the community's land to DaimlerChrysler. In its public explanations, Jeep identifies the community's parcel as a potential truck waiting area, but in its map, the area is to be used for landscaping -- a truck waiting area is designated for another parcel of land. The lawsuit challenging the subsidies will be based on two theories. First, small, local businesses assert that the subsidy package denies them equal protection under the law, on the grounds, Lodge says, that "they get no benefit from the corporate largesse, and have no prospect of qualifying [for such subsidies] absent a threat to leave the state" -- not a realistic threat for local businesses. The residents and small businesses contend that they are being asked to subsidize DaimlerChrysler unfairly. The second claim in the lawsuit is on behalf of Michigan residents, where DaimlerChrysler threatened to move its plant if Toledo did not provide them with subsidies. Such subsidies, they argued in an initially filed version of the suit (voluntarily withdrawn but soon to be refiled), are unconstitutional. "The statute and Agreement discriminate in favor of in-state business activity and against out-of-state investment, in violation of the restrictions imposed on discriminatory state and local taxation by the Commerce Clause," the suit contends. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce between states, and the Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause to mean that states cannot impose special taxes or maintain protectionist barriers on goods shipped from other states. Neither the City of Toledo nor DaimlerChrysler responded to requests for comment about the suit. The challenge to the Toledo subsidy seemingly would require a court to rule against the prevailing, tangled Commerce Clause jurisprudence which seems to permit subsidies. But Enrich argues that, as a tax matter, the Supreme Court has not had occasion to rule on business-location tax incentives. Since the Supreme Court has held unconstitutional tax measures that penalize out-of-state firms, it should logically strike down in-state subsidies, he argues in a 1996 Harvard Law Review article. "The Court has repeatedly invalidated state tax provisions if they provide an in-state business or activity with protections or benefits that are not similarly available to its out-of-state competition," he writes. The stakes are high in this innovative case. The Toledo-DaimlerChrysler agreement is a typical, if extreme, business subsidy package, with a locality desperate to attract or retain jobs bidding against all other suitors and itself. If such subsidies are held unconstitutional, corporations' ability to use job blackmail against states and localities will be significantly undermined. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:16:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:16:11 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Marry Me, Kiss Me, Be Mine, Cease and Desist! Marry Me, Kiss Me, Be Mine, Cease and Desist! By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Debbie and Russel Kruger own a small drugstore and soda fountain in Mandan, North Dakota. Debbie also makes candy. She has created three different candy bars, one of which she calls the Lewis & Clark Bar. Debbie Kruger created the Lewis & Clark bar in 1997 to commemorate the upcoming two-hundredth anniversary of the expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark up the Missouri River from St. Louis in 1804. Lewis & Clark spent the winter at Ft. Mandan, a forty miles north of the Kruger's drugstore. Debbie Kruger has manufactured roughly 30,000 Lewis & Clark bars. She has sold about 20,000 of them. In September 1999, the Krugers received a letter from a lawyer in Boston. The lawyer said he represented the New England Confectionery Company (Necco) -- the makers of Necco wafers and those little heart candies that say things like "Marry Me," "Be Mine," and "Kiss Me." Necco, which is owned by UIS, a larger conglomerate, recently bought the company that makes the Clark Bar, and the Boston lawyer claimed that the Lewis & Clark Bar infringes on Necco's rights to the Clark Bar name. "We want to come to some arrangement with you that permits your limited use of the Lewis and Clark Bar, subject to conditions, and provides for the cancellation of your North Dakota trademark registration or its assignment to my client," wrote Thomas Smurzynski, Necco's lawyer. "The arrangement must acknowledge my client's significant concern about protecting its valuable intellectual property assets." The Krugers' position is that the Lewis & Clark bar is a totally different candy bar with a totally distinctive wrapper. There is no infringement, they claim. And they called their Senator, Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), seeking help. Last week, Senator Dorgan took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to argue the case for his constituents. "What happened here is wrong, but it happens all the time," Senator Dorgan said. "It is throwing your weight around, if you are big enough to do it." "My message for Necco is -- pick on somebody your own size," Dorgan said. "I am one of their customers and I say to Necco -- lay off small businesses. Don't hire blind lawyers. If you can't tell the difference between their Clark bar wrapper and the wrapper for the Lewis & Clark bar, then get a new lawyer." Dominic Antonellis, the President of Necco, says that Senator Dorgan has it all wrong. First of all, he says, Necco is independently run, and Necco is not a large company. "There are 380 candy companies in the United States," he said in an interview. "The candy and snack market is a $24 billion market. And five companies -- Hershey, M&M, Nestle, Favorite Brands, and Nabisco -- represent 80 percent of the sale of candies. Of the remaining 375 companies that are left, we are probably in the middle range." Antonellis says that Necco bought the company that makes the Clark bar in June 1999 for $4.1 million. "The Clark name for candy is trademarked," he says. "We wrote them a letter. We wanted them to recognize that we own the Clark trademark. We weren't looking for money. I wanted a conversation with them, to allow them to use the mark, but we would have had an interpretation that they couldn't go nationwide with the Lewis & Clark bar." "I have no problem with them selling their product in their area," he says. If he didn't have a problem with selling in North Dakota, why did he demand that the Krugers turn over the Lewis & Clark Bar trademark to Necco? "There would have been an assignment back to them" to allow the Krugers to market in North Dakota, he says. Antonellis says he was concerned that Senator Dorgan and his staff did not call Necco before taking to the Senate floor. "I believe that is wrong," he says. But Senator Dorgan says he wants to a put a stop to corporate bullying. "How often do you hear members come to the floor of the Senate and worry about the number of lawsuits in this country?" he asked. "They worry about the lawsuits filed by customers against big corporations. What about this use of lawyers by a big company trying to put a small company out of business? What about that kind of corporate bullying? It is time to stop it." Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:54:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:54:28 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Big Tobacco Off the Ropes? Big Tobacco Off the Ropes? By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Think Big Tobacco has been whupped? Think again. Sure, the industry has taken some serious blows in the last few years -- a stream of horrendous publicity, a barrage of lawsuits, major settlements that have lifted the price of cigarettes in the United States. And the industry faces major challenges: more suits, including a massive class action by tobacco victims in Florida and a medical-cost recovery suit by the federal government, a newly aggressive World Health Organization, the near-certainty of new blockbuster revelations as researchers comb through millions of industry documents made public as a result prior suits, well-funded tobacco control campaigns in some states, and much more. But Philip Morris and company aren't throwing in the towel. Now they are beginning to emerge from their defensive posture of recent years. Whether Big Tobacco succeeds will depend in significant part on whether tobacco control groups and their many new allies of various stripes refuse to succumb to Big Tobacco's combined intimidation and charm offensive. Philip Morris has just announced "a new long-term effort" to "open a dialogue with the American people about issues that impact our business," in the words of Ellen Merlo, senior vice president of corporate affairs for Philip Morris USA. The dialogue is to feature of series of newspaper advertisements explaining how reasonable the company is when it comes to advertising and marketing practices, consideration of the rights of non-smokers and other controversial matters. This new dialogue complements the company's high-profile television advertising campaign on the people of Philip Morris and the company's charitable contributions to hurricane relief, anti-hunger and other benificent causes. All of this is a transparent effort at image enhancement. But why should the industry care about its broader image? Three reasons. First, Big Tobacco knows it is going to be facing an endless series of juries in coming years. The companies don't know who will sit on the juries, so any effort to influence the jury prior to trial requires them to influence the entire jury pool -- and that is the entire adult population of the United States. If people look more kindly on the companies as responsible members of the community, the tobacco pushers hope, they will be less prone to hand out big punitive verdicts. Second, the industry is worried about national and state legislation that would meaningfully affect its operations -- through higher taxes, penalties for failing to reduce youth smoking rates, stringent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation. If the tobacco companies can make a plausible case that they are regulating themselves, then they are better positioned to resist new legislation. Finally, and probably most important, Big Tobacco knows that demonization of the industry -- clever and hard-hitting illustrations of how the tobacco companies manipulate, deceive and disregard human life in pursuit of the almighty dollar -- is the most effective anti-smoking message. It is harder for that message to stick if the industry can portray itself as a restrained and caring member of the community. It is fear of vilification that explains the industry's all-out effort to block the airing of two new television advertisements from the American Legacy Foundation (ALF), a national anti-tobacco organization created by money from the tobacco companies' settlement with the states. One of the ads, modeled on successful commercials in Florida, showed kids piling up body bags outside of a tobacco company's building. The other showed lie-detector-equipped teens trying to ask questions of tobacco executives. CBS refused to air the ads, with a CBS spokesperson saying "they crossed the line." This shameful refusal to air the ads, notes Richard Daynard of the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University, contrasts sharply with the networks' willingness to air Big Tobacco's ads. Unfortunately, in the face of network resistance and the tobacco companies' shrill claims that the ads violated the terms of their settlement with the states, the American Legacy Foundation capitulated. Led by board chair and Washington State Attorney General Christine Gregoire, ALF decided to pull the ads. That's a very disturbing precedent, which suggests Philip Morris and friends may succeed in fighting their way off the ropes, even in the U.S. market. (Philip Morris's charm offensive is also underway overseas, where the huge sums of money it can throw at pseudo-tobacco control efforts pose a serious threat to genuine anti-smoking efforts.) By virtue of its enormous funding ($200 million a year), ALF will cast a shadow over all tobacco control efforts in the United States. That's why it is especially critical the Foundation abandon its docile stand, and instead heed the advice of Julia Carol, executive director of the Berkeley, California-based Americans for Nonsmoker Rights. When you take on a sophisticated and ruthless multinational industry, she says, you have to be prepared to withstand bullying tactics. "In those places where agencies stand up to bullying tactics, the tobacco industry backs down," she notes in a letter to Gregoire. "In those that do not, the resulting campaigns have been weakened by self-censorship and are rendered ineffectual." Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Wed, 23 Feb 2000 20:10:46 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 20:10:46 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Corp-focus listserve announcement Friends: We are sending out the following message in an effort to build the circulation of corp-focus. If you think the listserve is useful, interesting or amusing, please forward the announcement message below to friends, colleagues and relevant lists. Thanks. Robert Weissman LISTSERVE ANNOUNCEMENT: FOCUS ON THE CORPORATION Corp-Focus is a moderated listserve which distributes the weekly column "Focus on the Corporation," co-authored by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, and Robert Weissman, editor of Multinational Monitor magazine. To subscribe to Corp-Focus, send an e-mail message to corp-focus-request@lists.essential.org with "subscribe" in the text of the message. Or, you can subscribe from the web at . Focus on the Corporation scrutinizes the multinational corporation -- the most powerful institution of our time. Once a week, it reports and comments critically on corporate actions, plans, abuses and trends. Written with a sharp edge and occasional irreverence, Focus on the Corporation covers: * Globalization and corporate power; * The double standards which excuse corporations for behavior (e.g., causing injury, accepting welfare) widely considered criminal or shameful when done by individuals; * Trends in corporate economic blackmail, political influence and workplace organization; * Industry-wide efforts to escape regulation, silence critics, employ new technologies or consolidate business among a few companies; * Specific, extreme examples of corporate abuses: destruction of communities, trampling of democracy, poisoning of air and water; and * The corporatization of our culture. You can check out back columns, and information about Mokhiber and Weissman's book, Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy, at . To go directly to back columns, go to . Please post this notice on relevant lists, and accept our apologies for cross-posting. From rob@essential.org Mon, 28 Feb 2000 18:05:17 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 18:05:17 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Who Owns America? Who Owns America By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The other day, at our local bookstore, we passed a book. And then doubled back. The book is titled Who Owns America?: A Declaration of Independence. Sounded like it was written by people we should know. But on further investigation, we recognized none of the names on the cover. Who Owns America? was written by 21 "conservative" decentralists. And it was first published in 1936. Re-released this year, with a new introduction by Seton Hall University History Professor Edward S. Shapiro, Who Owns America? (ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware, 1999), is highly critical of large corporate institutions that controlled the political economy in 1930s America. Its publisher believes the book is as relevant today as the day it was published. Edited by Pulitizer Prize winning Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Herbert Agar and southern poet Allen Tate, Who Owns America? puts forth the type of scathing critique that you just can't find in today's political debates. Like today's corporatist conservatives -- George Will, James Glassman and Charles Krauthammer -- the conservatives who wrote Who Owns America? believed that the specter of big government threatened individual freedom and the ideal America. But unlike the corporatists of today, Agar, Tate and their colleagues understood that public authority was the only antidote to the excesses of big corporate power. Agar, Tate and their colleagues argued that to attain the conservative goal of less government, you'd first have to limit the size and power of the large corporate institutions that were roaming the land. Typical of the 1930s conservatives writing in this volume is the pro-decentralist economist Richard Ransom. "The permanent lease on life which corporations possess tends more and more to concentrate within a few hands the ownership and control of general property," wrote Ransom in a chapter titled Corporate and Individual Persons. "The disproportionate distribution of the national wealth is very evidently due in large part to the corporate tendency to mass larger and larger aggregates of ownership which are held together by corporate permanence and corporate inertia. ..." Ransom's solution to the problem of corporate control of the national wealth? Federal chartering of corporations doing interstate business. And what should the states do about excessive corporate power? The states should limit the "profitable business life of the corporations which they charter." And how could the states accomplish this end? "This could perhaps be done by means of heavy selective inheritance taxation on the transfer of corporate shares or assets," Ransom answers. And what would this achieve? "Such a shorter term of corporate life, either accomplished indirectly as suggested here or accomplished by more immediate means, will produce a more direct personal responsibility in corporate managements," Ransom says. Once interstate corporations are federally chartered, Ransom proposes that the personal liability of stockholders should be extended to an amount at least equal to twice the proportionate investment of each stockholder (currently, you can only lose what you put in.) Can you imagine Will or Krauthammer contemplating these thoughts? Lyle Lanier, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, wrote a chapter titled "Big Business in the Property State," in which he observed that "the American people have long recognized the danger to democracy of economic power concentrated in the hands of big corporations." Lawmakers passed the antitrust laws at the turn of the century, "but these laws have been impotent to stem the rising tide of big business organization," Lanier wrote. Industrial capitalism, Lanier wrote, "has followed a course of development which is both self-destructive and dangerous to democratic institutions." Lanier, like his co-authors, finds hope in a Jeffersonian ideal of small business and small farmers. The publication of this volume today makes George Will, James Glassman and their conservative contemporaries look like empty suits compared those who wrote Who Owns America?. Big corporations still roam the land and still threaten a fragile democracy. But there is no Agar on the right to challenge them. Needless to say, we cannot and do not agree with everything written by these 21 self-proclaimed "conservatives" of the 1930s. But we do agree with the conservative sentiment put forth in the book, as summarized by Agar, that corporate concentration and democracy are at odds. "When democracy goes down before monopoly capitalism," Agar writes, "the result has been a greedy tyranny, preserving all the vices of capitalism and extinguishing its virtues." Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:08:46 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 17:08:46 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Al Gore, Corporate Welfare Environmentalist Al Gore, Corporate Welfare Environmentalist By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Gas prices are rising and the threat of global warming looms ever larger. Al Gore, what have you done to wean the United States from its oil dependency? Asked a related question in a recent debate with Bill Bradley ("We sent our armed forces to the Persian Gulf in 1991 to return a country to its owners. Now we see higher gas prices. What will you do to ensure this does not happen again?"), Gore responded: "We have an interest in being less dependent on sources of oil from a region that is, over time, vulnerable to instability. I helped to put in place a program called the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which commits the big three automakers in our country to getting new vehicles into the marketplace that have three times the efficiency of today's vehicles." It was telling that Al "Earth in the Balance" Gore would point to the relatively obscure Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), the epitome of what might be called corporate welfare environmentalism. The Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) is a public-private partnership between seven federal agencies, 20 federal laboratories, and the big three automakers -- General Motors, Ford and what is now Daimler Chrysler. PNGV's main long term goal is to develop a "Supercar," "an environmentally friendly car with up to triple the fuel efficiency of today's midsize cars -- without sacrificing affordability, performance or safety." It is hard to imagine an industry less in need of government support for research than the highly capitalized auto industry. Ford pulled in profits of $5.4 billion in the first three quarters of 1999. GM earned $4.8 billion over the same period. The government is supporting research that the industry could easily do on its own (and, to some extent, is doing apart from the PNGC initiative), and should be mandated to undertake to meet tougher environmental standards. How is it that the competitors in the oligopolistic auto industry are able to undertake a joint research undertaking? The PNGV program gives participants an effective exemption from antitrust laws. Defenders of such collaborative efforts love to invoke the legendary example of the Manhattan Project, but the evidence is overwhelming that innovation -- especially in the commercial sector -- is more likely to result from competition in research and development. Oligopolistic collaboration is prone to all kinds of pitfalls, from bureaucratic sloth to corrupt suppression of research -- as the auto industry's own history makes clear. In the 1960s, the Justice Department filed suit against the automakers for product fixing -- for refusing to introduce air quality enhancing technologies. Among other claims, the Justice Department alleged that the U.S. automakers and their trade association had conspired "to eliminate all competition among themselves in the research, development, manufacture and installation of motor vehicle air pollution control equipment." Now the Clinton-Gore administration has stamped its official imprimatur on the industry's preferred anti-competitive coordination of environmental research. (The administration's happy-talk calls it "pre-competitive.") Maybe today's auto industry is different than the auto industry of the 1960s. Or, maybe not. Above all, the PNGV initiative has served during the Clinton-Gore administration as a smokescreen behind which the automakers hide to protect themselves from more stringent air quality standards. "Cynics think that the PNGV was simply a politically astute 10-year reprieve for the domestic auto industry from threats of higher Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards," writes Earth Day founder Denis Hayes in his new book, The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair. Deployment of existing technologies could dramatically enhance auto fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the automakers -- who have waged a decades-long crusade against mandatory fuel efficiency standards -- choose not to make these technologies widely available. And the PNGV program does not even require the deployment in mass production of the technologies it seeks to develop. The leading innovators in fuel efficiency have been Toyota and Honda, which do not participate in the PNGV program. "By 2004, the PNGV hopes U.S. manufacturers will be able to produce a U.S. vehicle that has roughly the same characteristics as the already-on-the-market Toyota Prius," Hayes notes. "Actually," Hayes writes, "the most likely 2004 PNGV vehicles will be inferior to the Prius in one important regard: they will probably use diesel instead of gasoline engines. ... Sadly and ironically, the cars produced by the decade-long, multiple-billion-dollar PNGV effort may be banned from California -- the nation's largest automobile market -- because they cause too much pollution." No such criticism is voiced by the corporate welfare environmentalists in the Clinton-Gore administration. They are eagerly planning to launch 21st-Century Truck Initiative, a public-private partnership for truck manufacturers modeled on the PNGV. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:06:51 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:06:51 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] The House of Butterflies The House of Butterflies By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Is there a prosecutor in this country with the guts to take on the oil and auto companies? If you are one such prosecuting attorney, and you are reading this, go out and buy the current issue of The Nation magazine. Rip out the 30-page investigative article titled "The Secret History of Lead," by Jamie Lincoln Kitman, drop in your standard indictment form, and then run down to the courthouse and file it. That will be the easy part. The companies will then hire the best white-collar crime law firms in the business and come after you with all of their resources to defeat the indictment. But reckless endangerment is reckless endangerment. And the people need a chance to bring justice to those who perpetrated this atrocity. It will be worth your while. Given the publicity this case will generate, you might even be elected to higher office. (For precedents, see Rudolph Giuiliani, former white- collar crime busting U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, who went on to be mayor of New York, and William Weld, former Assistant Attorney General who went on to become Governor of Massachusetts.) Kitman's article is about how the makers of leaded gasoline -- duPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil), and Ethyl Corporation (which started out as a joint venture between GM and Standard Oil) -- systematically suppressed information about the severe health hazards of their product for decades. These companies knew from mid-1920s that leaded gasoline was a public health menace, yet they went ahead and put lead in gasoline anyway, to prevent engine knocking. This despite the fact that safe anti-knock substitutes were cheaply available. But the companies rejected them because they would be unprofitable. >From the 1920s until 1986, when leaded gas was banned from the market in the United States, lead was spewing from tailpipes of automobiles, where it entered the bloodstream of humans. In children, lead lowers IQs, and increases learning disabilities, hyperactivity and behavioral problems. In adults, elevated lead levels are related to blood pressure increases, cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. Lead expert Dr. Paul Mushak, in a 1988 report to Congress, estimated that 68 million children had toxic exposures to lead from gasoline from 1927 to 1987. A 1985 EPA study estimated that as many as 5,000 Americans were dying annually from lead-related heart disease before the lead phase-out in the United States Lead was identified as a hazard thousands of years ago. It was not as if executives at GM and duPont and Standard Oil and Ethyl didn't know what the hazards were. In fact, those who worked with lead immediately became sick. Kitman estimates that dozens of workers died from lead poisoning. Workers knew that going crazy was an early sign of lead poisoning. Standard Oil's Bayway facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey was known in the 1920s as "the house of butterflies," because, as Kitman told us, in some cases "when you are experiencing acute lead intoxication, you start hallucinating, and believing that you are being attacked by winged insects." Workers going crazy and dying created a public relations nightmare in the 1920s. The papers picked up on it, and citizens began believing that they were being poisoned by the lead coming out of their tailpipes. To save their deadly enterprise, in 1924, the corporations pulled lead off the market and asked the Surgeon General to hold a hearing, which he did in May 1925, to consider what one public health expert called "the single most important question in the field of public health that has ever faced the American public." And the hearing lasts for six hours and forty five minutes. The Surgeon General concluded that the question couldn't be definitively answered and recommended that a committee of experts be set up. The committee was duly set up and reported back some months later that a) leaded gasoline can be manufactured safely, and b) they can't verify that leaded gasoline won't result in injury and they can't prove that it will in the short time they have. So, this placates the public, and lead gets back in gasoline for another forty years. Until the public became concerned about air pollution -- smog -- and the car companies built catalytic converters. Lead had this wonderful way of destroying the catalytic converter -- so one or the other had to go -- and finally, lead met its match. We called the Lead Industries Association to ask about Kitman's article. They refused to respond. Then we called Ethyl Corp. which is still selling tetraethyl lead as a gasoline additive for sale all around the world, except in the United States and Europe. Lloyd Osgood, a spokesperson for the Richmond, Virginia- based Ethyl Corp., was kind enough to read us a statement. She called Kitman's piece "a distorted interpretation of known historic events and documents that have long been in the public record." "The spin is extremely negative and biased and is not justified by the facts," she said. "Ethyl Corp. has always been and continues to be a responsible corporate citizen and the allegations to the contrary in this article are unfounded." But Osgood refused to specify how the article distorted "known historic events." She even refused to answer simple questions like: "Is lead dangerous?" This is pure corporate b.s. For years, the lead industry denied that lead in gasoline was making its way into human bloodstreams. If that's so, why did human blood lead levels drop off dramatically in North America after 1986 when lead was banned from gasoline? Is there a prosecutor in the house? Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 21 Mar 2000 00:44:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 00:44:30 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] IMF on the Ropes IMF on the Ropes By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman There may be no single institution with greater pernicious influence in the world than the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now, for the first time, the Fund faces a real challenge to its existence, at least in its current form. For two decades, the IMF has exerted a stranglehold over developing country economies, denying them the funding they need to make foreign debt payments and avoid default, unless they enact "structural adjustment" policies. Structural adjustment can fairly be described as a virulent strain of Reaganomics or Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. The basic idea of these policies is to open countries' labor markets and natural resource riches to multinationals, shrink the size and role of government, rely on market forces to distribute resources and services and integrate poor countries into the global economy. Key structural adjustment policies include: privatizing government-owned enterprises and government-provided services, slashing government spending, orienting economies to promote exports, lifting trade restrictions, implementing higher interest rates, eliminating subsidies on consumer items such as foods, fuel and medicines and imposing tax increases. Structural adjustment has been successful at its intended effort to diminish the scope of government and integrate developing countries into the global economy. But it has increased suffering in developing countries immeasurably. In most of the world's poorest nations undergoing structural adjustment, poverty has increased, health care systems have collapsed and income inequality has skyrocketed. Developing countries that have done well in recent decades, primarily those in Asia, including China, have succeeded by violating central tenets of structural adjustment: they have maintained a strong government role in the economy, and they have protected certain parts of their economy. Not surprisingly, people in developing countries have protested strongly against IMF policies. Countries throughout the world have witnessed "IMF riots" following IMF-ordered lifting of price subsidies for goods such as bread and gasoline. But because the IMF derives it authority from rich countries, not the poor nations, it has been able to weather these outbursts. In the last two years, however, momentum against the IMF has grown in the rich countries, as well as in the developing world. The IMF's admitted mishandling of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis made the economic contraction in Asian nations much worse. The structural adjustment agenda further slowed the Asian economies that had already plunged into recession. This incompetent performance finally sparked widespread criticism of the Fund in the industrialized countries. Meanwhile, the worldwide Jubilee movement is increasingly winning support for the idea of debt cancellation for the poorest countries. The IMF has deftly tried to turn these weaknesses to strengths. It adroitly used the Asian financial crisis to win $90 billion in new funding from the rich countries. The Fund needed more money, proponents claimed, to keep the crisis economies afloat. And the IMF has sought new monies so it can offer very modest debt relief through its Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (now known as the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, an Orwellian twist) -- in exchange for countries agreeing to years of closely supervised structural adjustment! But these jujitsu tactics may be running out of steam. Political momentum against the IMF ratcheted up in recent weeks, when the Meltzer Commission, a bipartisan advisory commission to the U.S. Congress, released its report. While the members of the commission disagreed on many matters, they agreed on two: First, the IMF (along with the World Bank) should use its existing resources to cancel all debts. Second, the IMF should get out of the business of long-term lending -- the kind of development loans to which structural adjustment conditions are normally attached. The report has shifted the terms of debate over the IMF in the United States and the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, the IMF is only seeking a relatively small amount of new money from the Congress -- and if that money goes through, Congress will lose most of its influence over the monetary agency for several years (until the next funding request). But the shift in policy circles is now being accompanied by a new progressive public protest against the IMF in the United States. On April 16, during the IMF's annual spring meeting, thousands of demonstrators will take to the streets of Washington, D.C. to protest the deadly toll of IMF policies. Infused with the spirit of Seattle that shut down the World Trade Organization meetings, the demonstrators are planning a direct action to shut down the IMF, as well as a massive, permitted rally and march. (For more information on the April 16 actions, see http://www.a16.org) Street demonstrations against the IMF in Washington have the potential to awaken people in the United States to the needless suffering imposed by the Fund on people throughout the world, and to mobilize a critical mass of opponents in the country that exercises a dominant influence at the Fund. The IMF's reign of terror may finally be winding down. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 21 Mar 2000 01:32:23 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 01:32:23 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] correction to IMF on the Ropes In the Mokhiber/Weissman column just sent out, a phrase was inadvertently deleted. The Meltzer Commission recommended full cancellation of debts **owed to these institutions by the poorest countries.** A correct version of the column follows below. Robert Weissman Essential Information | Internet: rob@essential.org There may be no single institution with greater pernicious influence in the world than the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now, for the first time, the Fund faces a real challenge to its existence, at least in its current form. For two decades, the IMF has exerted a stranglehold over developing country economies, denying them the funding they need to make foreign debt payments and avoid default, unless they enact "structural adjustment" policies. Structural adjustment can fairly be described as a virulent strain of Reaganomics or Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. The basic idea of these policies is to open countries' labor markets and natural resource riches to multinationals, shrink the size and role of government, rely on market forces to distribute resources and services and integrate poor countries into the global economy. Key structural adjustment policies include: privatizing government-owned enterprises and government-provided services, slashing government spending, orienting economies to promote exports, lifting trade restrictions, implementing higher interest rates, eliminating subsidies on consumer items such as foods, fuel and medicines and imposing tax increases. Structural adjustment has been successful at its intended effort to diminish the scope of government and integrate developing countries into the global economy. But it has increased suffering in developing countries immeasurably. In most of the world's poorest nations undergoing structural adjustment, poverty has increased, health care systems have collapsed and income inequality has skyrocketed. Developing countries that have done well in recent decades, primarily those in Asia, including China, have succeeded by violating central tenets of structural adjustment: they have maintained a strong government role in the economy, and they have protected certain parts of their economy. Not surprisingly, people in developing countries have protested strongly against IMF policies. Countries throughout the world have witnessed "IMF riots" following IMF-ordered lifting of price subsidies for goods such as bread and gasoline. But because the IMF derives it authority from rich countries, not the poor nations, it has been able to weather these outbursts. In the last two years, however, momentum against the IMF has grown in the rich countries, as well as in the developing world. The IMF's admitted mishandling of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis made the economic contraction in Asian nations much worse. The structural adjustment agenda further slowed the Asian economies that had already plunged into recession. This incompetent performance finally sparked widespread criticism of the Fund in the industrialized countries. Meanwhile, the worldwide Jubilee movement is increasingly winning support for the idea of debt cancellation for the poorest countries. The IMF has deftly tried to turn these weaknesses to strengths. It adroitly used the Asian financial crisis to win $90 billion in new funding from the rich countries. The Fund needed more money, proponents claimed, to keep the crisis economies afloat. And the IMF has sought new monies so it can offer very modest debt relief through its Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (now known as the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, an Orwellian twist) -- in exchange for countries agreeing to years of closely supervised structural adjustment! But these jujitsu tactics may be running out of steam. Political momentum against the IMF ratcheted up in recent weeks, when the Meltzer Commission, a bipartisan advisory commission to the U.S. Congress, released its report. While the members of the commission disagreed on many matters, they agreed on two: First, the IMF (along with the World Bank) should use its existing resources to cancel all debts owed to these institutions by the poorest countries. Second, the IMF should get out of the business of long-term lending -- the kind of development loans to which structural adjustment conditions are normally attached. The report has shifted the terms of debate over the IMF in the United States and the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, the IMF is only seeking a relatively small amount of new money from the Congress -- and if that money goes through, Congress will lose most of its influence over the monetary agency for several years (until the next funding request). But the shift in policy circles is now being accompanied by a new progressive public protest against the IMF in the United States. On April 16, during the IMF's annual spring meeting, thousands of demonstrators will take to the streets of Washington, D.C. to protest the deadly toll of IMF policies. Infused with the spirit of Seattle that shut down the World Trade Organization meetings, the demonstrators are planning a direct action to shut down the IMF, as well as a massive, permitted rally and march. (For more information on the April 16 actions, see http://www.a16.org) Street demonstrations against the IMF in Washington have the potential to awaken people in the United States to the needless suffering imposed by the Fund on people throughout the world, and to mobilize a critical mass of opponents in the country that exercises a dominant influence at the Fund. The IMF's reign of terror may finally be winding down. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Mon, 27 Mar 2000 21:58:27 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 21:58:27 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Is the Market a Ponzi Scheme? Is the Market a Ponzi Scheme? By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The Internet economy, with its fast companies, is poised to replace the old economy, with its slow ones. Forget current profits. Sales are booming, and the profits will come. It's new era economics. The result -- a raging bull market. Geeks with pencils in their shirt pockets become instant millionaires. Spend your days staring in front of a computer and strike it rich. In some areas, millionaires are a dime a dozen. The working poor become invisible. We've become a casino culture. So, is the booming market for real, or is it a naturally occurring Ponzi scheme? Charles Ponzi is the crook from the 1920s who told people he had a business that made money exploiting mispricing in international postage reply coupons. In fact, there was no such market, but he took people's money and promised them a spectacular rate of return on their investments. And he paid off the first round of investors with the money he received from the second round of investors. And he paid off the second round of investors with the money he received the third round -- until the scheme ballooned into a multimillion dollar market. Finally, the bubble burst, leaving the last round of investors holding the bag. Sound familiar? Robert Shiller, A Professor of Economics at Yale University, thinks it could be a good explanation for what's happening in the market now. Except that there is no Charles Ponzi here. And there is no deception -- it just developed naturally. And it's being fed by irrational exuberance, feedback loops, herd behavior, and epidemic madness. It seems that people never learn from previous Ponzi schemes until it is too late. A couple of years ago, in Albania, for example, a gargantuan Ponzi consumed a good fraction of a year's gross national product for Albania. When the Ponzi scheme finally collapsed, there was rioting in the streets, the Army came out, shot some protesters, and the government resigned in disgrace. There was mass chaos. Shiller has written a new book, Irrational Exuberance (Princeton University Press, 2000), in which he looks at the current speculative bubble in the United States through a lens of behavioral economics. It's not just numbers driving the market, he reminds us, it's mass psychology, too. And Shiller is not just another apolitical market naysayer. He makes the point that there is a moral demoralization that occurs when the market bubble inflates to the degree that it has. Instant millionaires abound, but what about hard-working regular folks who toil day-in-and-day-out for a living wage, come home, turn on the tube and hear about the instant millionaires who struck it rich by signing on with this dotcom or that? "When people see others flaunting their wealth, it's painful" he told us recently. "It is so painful to see people devoting their lives to caring professions -- school teachers, police officers, fire fighters -- while someone buys into the market and gets rich. You feel like a sucker. It feels bad. Nobody wants to be a loser. Today, it seems the world is divided into winners and losers. The old feeling of solidarity with your fellow human being is eroded somehow. There was a feeling of labor solidarity. I remember hearing union songs on the radio when I was growing up in Detroit. That era is gone. If you work for your money, if you are unionizing, you are a loser." And it is not as if Shiller himself wrote the book out of sour grapes. As a young professor at Yale in 1982, he invested in stocks, and just got out recently, when, he believes, the market started spinning out of control. Shiller predicts poor market performance over the next five years, with the Dow dipping to 5,000 and perhaps slowly coming back to 10,000 by 2020. "People seem to think that the market has to grow explosively," Shiller said. "You ask someone -- what is the Dow going to be in 2020? And they say -- oh, my God, 200,000. That would be the knee-jerk response. But it represents a misreading of history." Shiller recommends that investors get out of stocks now -- as he has done. He points out that one major problem with Ponzi schemes is that until the end, people are making lots of money. At the end, everyone loses, and things turn ugly. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Wed, 5 Apr 2000 17:58:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 17:58:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] A Dozen Reasons to Come to DC for April 16 A Dozen Reasons to Come to DC for April 16 By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The next citizen showdown against corporate globalization will be on April 16 and 17, when thousands of people come to Washington, D.C. to protest -- through legal demonstrations and/or civil disobedience -- the politics of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. For details on events, see www.a16.org. Here's a dozen reasons why you should join the protests: 1. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs have increased poverty around the world. Structural adjustment -- the standard IMF/World Bank policy package which calls for slashing government spending, privatization, and opening up countries to exploitative foreign investment, among other measures -- has deepened poverty around the world. In the two regions with the most structural adjustment experience, per capita income has stagnated (Latin America) or plummeted (Africa). Structural adjustment has also contributed to rising income and wealth inequality in the developing world. 2. IMF/World Bank "debt relief" for poor and indebted countries is a sham. Many poor countries must devote huge portions of their national budgets to paying back foreign creditors -- often for loans that were made to or for dictators, wasteful military spending or boondoggle projects. The money used to pay back debt subtracts from essential expenditures on health, education, infrastructure and other important needs. The IMF/World Bank plan to relieve poor countries' debt burden will leave most poor countries paying nearly as much as they currently do. And all of the debt relief is conditioned on countries undergoing years of closely monitored structural adjustment. 3. The IMF has helped foster a severe depression in Russia. Russia in the 1990s has witnessed a peacetime economic contraction of unprecedented scale -- with the number of Russians in poverty rising from 2 million to 60 million since the IMF came to post-Communist Russia. The IMF's "shock therapy" -- sudden and intense structural adjustment -- helped bring about this disaster. "In retrospect, it's hard to see what could have been done wrong that wasn't," says Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. 4. The IMF helped create and worsen the Asian financial crisis. The IMF encouraged Asian countries to open their borders to "hot money" -- speculative finance invested in currency, stocks and short-term securities. That was an invitation to trouble. The Asian financial crisis resulted from the hot money brokers' herdlike decision to leave Asian countries en masse. Once the crisis hit, the IMF made things worse by requiring structural adjustment as a condition for IMF loans. The result was a surge in bankruptcies, layoffs and poverty. In Indonesia, poverty rates rose from an official level of 11 percent to 40 to 60 percent, depending on the estimate. At one point, Indonesia's food shortage became so severe that then-President Habibie implored citizens to fast twice a week. Many had no choice. 5. The IMF bails out big banks. The IMF bailouts in Asia, like those in Russia and Mexico, directed money to those countries largely for the purpose of paying off loans to foreign banks. Thanks to the IMF, the banks escaped significant losses for imprudent lending decisions. Citigroup, Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan were among the beneficiaries of the "Korean" bailout. 6. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs devastate the environment. Structural adjustment demands an increase in exports and foreign exchange earnings. As a result, explains Friends of the Earth, "Countries often over-exploit their resources through unsustainable forestry, mining and agricultural practices that generate pollution and environmental destruction." 7. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Here's how Dr. Peter Lurie and collaborators explained the problem in the journal AIDS: The displacement of the rural sector under structural adjustment programs -- as imports undermine local farmers and the shift to large-scale plantations for exports further displaces the rural population -- contributes to migration and urbanization. Many men leave rural villages for work in big cities or in mines, contract HIV/AIDS from casual sex partners or sex workers, and then spread the disease to spouses in their home village. The displacement of children and young women into the cities has led to a sharp increase in commercial sex work and heightened rates of HIV/AIDS. 8. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs harm women. Cuts in budget spending, mandated by structural adjustment programs, leave women to pick up the pieces -- with government services eliminated, women are forced to provide informal social supports for the sick and disabled. The IMF/Bank emphasis on exports has pushed women farmers to switch from growing food for family consumption to crops for exports -- and left them poorer in the process. The high interest rates associated with structural adjustment have made credit less accessible, undermining the viability of small women-owned businesses. 9. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs and Bank project loans have led to deforestation worldwide. The export orientation demanded by structural adjustment policies has led to more forest cutting. And World Bank forest sector loans to countries around the world have done nothing to improve the situation. "Although the [1991 Bank Forest] policy had dual objectives of conservation of tropical moist forests and tree planting to meet the basic needs of the poor, Bank influence on containing rates of deforestation of tropical moist forests has been negligible in the 20 countries with the most threatened tropical moist forests." Who said that? The World Bank's own Operations Evaluation Department, in November 1999! 10. World Bank policies have displaced millions of people around the world. World Bank loans for dams and major infrastructure projects routinely require removal of massive numbers of people from their homes and destruction of their communities. In addition to the emotional hardship of leaving their land, the displaced people almost always find their quality of life diminished after the move. The Bank itself agrees. A 1994 report from the World Bank's Environmental Department found that, "Declines in post relocation incomes are sometimes significant, in certain cases reaching as much as 40 percent for people who were poor even before their displacement." 11. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) provides corporate welfare for environmentally destructive projects. The IFC finances and provides advice for private sector ventures and projects in developing countries in partnership with private investors. Among its private sector partners: ExxonMobil, BP, Coca-Cola, Kimberly-Clark and Marriott. There's no reason for a public development institution, supposedly working to fight poverty, to lend its support to these well-endowed multinationals. Making matters worse, many of the private sector projects supported by the IFC, especially in the oil and gas sector, are environmentally destructive. 12. April 16 is a chance to make history. While massive protests against IMF and World Bank policies are commonplace in the developing world -- from Jordan to Indonesia, Venezuela to Zambia -- the IMF and World Bank are not accountable to populations in those countries. In contrast, there has never been a demonstration of more than a few hundred people to challenge IMF and Bank policy in the United States -- the largest and most influential shareholder in the institutions. That's going to change on April 16. The thousands of people who will attend the April 16 protests will forever change the political context of debates on IMF and the World Bank -- the best hope for billions in the developing world who have been subjected to the IMF and Bank's brutal policies with no recourse. Special bonus reason to come to D.C.: With large puppets, colorful pagaentry, militant protests, Emcee Michael Moore at the legal demonstration on the Ellipse, and lots of great music, the protests will be a fun-filled festival of resistance. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action, one of the sponsors of the April 16 Mobilization for Global Justice. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:26:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:26:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Sixteen Years for a Snickers Bar Sixteen Years for a Snickers Bar By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Last week, a Texas jury recommended that Kenneth Payne, 29, spend 16 years in jail. Payne's crime? Stealing a Snickers bar from a Tyler, Texas grocery store on December 17, 1999. When Smith county Assistant District Attorney Jodi Brown was asked by the Associated Press how she could justify 16 years for the theft of a Snickers bar, Brown replied "It was a king size." A king size Snickers bar it was. Retail price: $1. In Texas, if you steal property worth less than $500, it's a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $500 with no jail time. The case was brought as a felony because Payne was a habitual offender. He had ten previous convictions -- including one for stealing a bag of Oreo cookies -- and had spent seven years in Texas prisons. When he shoved the king sized Snickers bar down his pants he was on parole for felony theft. Still, the guy was a petty thief -- he stole cookies and candy bars. Compare Kenneth Payne's plight to those of a group of white-collar and corporate criminals who also were sentenced this month. Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd. pled guilty for their roles in an international conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition in the vitamin industry -- what the Justice Department calls perhaps the largest criminal antitrust conspiracy in history. The prison terms: four months, three and one-half months, three months and three months. (The four executives were also fined anywhere from $75,000 to $350,000). Also this month, three cruise line employees were sentenced for their role in dumping pollution into the Alaskan Inland Passage from a Holland America cruise ship. The three employees were each sentenced to two years unsupervised probation and fined $10,000. These are not unusual sentences for white-collar criminals. In fact, it is unusual to see a white-collar criminal do time. So, how can it be that Kenneth Payne is doing 16 years for stealing a one dollar Snickers bar while the former executives of some of the world's largest corporations get off with a few months in prison -- after being convicted of a crime that cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars? It's like Richard Pryor said -- in our country -- justice means "just us" -- regular folks -- and not them -- the people who call the shots -- who end up in the slammer. This double standard permeates every aspect of our criminal justice system. The other day, for example, we were listening to National Public Radio, and up popped a debate about whether felons should be allowed to participate in a democracy. On one side of the debate was Mark Mauer of the Sentencing Project. Mauer pointed out that in 46 states, you can't vote if you are in prison. In 16 states, if you were convicted of a felony -- even if you get out of prison -- you are disenfranchised for life. Mauer estimated that 13 percent of adult black men cannot vote as a result of a felony conviction right now. On the NPR show, Roger Clegg, an attorney with the right-leaning and the slightly misnamed Center for Equal Opportunity (Linda Chavez' think tank), made the argument that felons shouldn't be allowed to vote. "If you aren't willing to play by the rules, then you shouldn't have a say in making the rules," Clegg said. "And people who have been convicted of felonies, which are by definition serious crimes, shouldn't be given a role in deciding how the government should be run," Clegg said. After hearing this, we called up Clegg to ask what he thought about banning corporate criminals -- like BASF and Hoffman LaRoche, who had engaged in perhaps the most egregious criminal antitrust conspiracy in history -- from "deciding how the government should be run." (Corporations of course don't vote, but they do give money to elect candidates, they lobby legislators and law enforcement officials, and they mold public opinion through their public relations efforts.) Gone was Clegg's unwavering absolutism. After much humming and hawing, Clegg admitted that "it makes sense to limit the political role of corporations when they have shown that they are not worthy of trust." But he quickly added that "because individuals and corporations are fundamentally different, you can't just apply the rules equally." Clegg questioned whether the First Amendment would allow prosecutors to strip corporations of their "rights" to influence how the government should be run. Clegg, of course, raised no such question when it came to stripping individual felons of such "rights." What about the death penalty? In a new book, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted (Doubleday, 2000), Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck, report that in the 24 years since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court, about 620 individuals have been put to death -- but 87 condemned persons had their convictions vacated by exonerating evidence. Most likely, innocent lives have been taken. All this while really big recidivist corporate criminals like Exxon, Royal Caribbean, Rockwell International, Warner Lambert, Teledyne, and United Technologies -- criminals truly deserving of the corporate death penalty, get away with slap on the wrist fines. Bottom line: big corporations and white-collar criminals are getting away with it, while the political and media elites pull the wool over our eyes. Think of that next time you pick up a Snickers bar. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Wed, 19 Apr 2000 16:56:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 16:56:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] The Meaning of April 16 The Meaning of April 16 By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The April 16 protests in Washington, D.C. against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank made history and marked a new phase in the effort to halt and reverse the processes of corporate globalization. Citizens in developing countries -- from Jordan to Zambia, Indonesia to Venezuela -- have long protested against the policies of the IMF and World Bank. On April 16, for the first time, citizens in the United States came out in large numbers to join the calls for a rollback of IMF and World Bank powers. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets, or joined a permitted demonstration on the Ellipse to denounce structural adjustment policies -- the deregulatory policy package that the Fund and Bank impose on country after country -- for hurting the poor and exacerbating economic inequality. The exact impact of the demonstrations will only be apparent in the years to come, but it is already clear that the protests -- evidence of the deepening citizen movement against corporate globalization -- have had dramatic effect. First, the U.S. public is newly aware of what the IMF and World Bank are, and millions of people in the United States have for the first time learned of how the institutions' policies hurt people in poor countries. In anticipation of the protests, the mainstream media focused some attention on structural adjustment policies, both by conveying the viewpoints of the Mobilization for Global Justice and, in some instances, by actually reporting on the effects of structural adjustment in countries like Haiti or Tanzania. There was probably more U.S. mainstream media coverage of IMF/World Bank/structural adjustment issues in the past two weeks than in the previous 20 years combined. The growing U.S. public concern with IMF and World Bank policy is crucial because while the Fund and Bank are unaccountable to the people in the Third World they are allegedly trying to help, they are responsive to the United States -- the largest shareholder in both institutions and the dominant influence at the IMF in particular. The second noteworthy outcome from the April 16 protests was the role of U.S. organized labor in the permitted demonstration on the Ellipse. The AFL-CIO and a number of major unions, including the Service Employees, the Teamsters, the Steelworkers, the American Federation of Government Employees, the United Electrical workers and UNITE, the textile union, endorsed the demonstration, and many of the unions sent top official to address the rally. Two years ago, the AFL-CIO lent its support to the Clinton administration's request for $18 billion in funding for the IMF, so the newfound willingness to strongly denounce IMF and Bank structural adjustment policies represents an important shift. The AFL-CIO is also beginning to develop a penetrating critique of the notion of export-led development -- one of the core principles of structural adjustment. Instead of joining in a race to the bottom to produce goods using sweatshop labor or lax environmental standards, the AFL-CIO is suggesting, countries should instead concentrate on developing productive capacity to meet local needs. A third historic occurrence was the endorsement by members of the G-77 -- a grouping of most of the world's developing nations -- of the Washington protests and a stinging condemnation of the Fund and Bank's structural adjustment policies. "I, for one, support the demonstrators," said Arthur Mbanefo of Nigeria, spokesperson for the G-77 during its recent three-day summit in Havana. "Many countries have rejected the results of various policy initiatives of the World Bank and IMF," he said, citing privatization, a refusal to cancel debt and a "one-size-fits-all" structural adjustment agenda. "We are very supportive of demonstrations that could forcefully handle those concerns." The DC protests seem to have exerted a "Columbus Effect." Just as the Columbus, Ohio protests against Clinton administration plans to bomb Iraq led Egyptian President Mubarak to comment that surely he could oppose bombing if the people of Columbus did, so the Washington protests against the IMF and World Bank have created more political space for developing countries to speak up on behalf of their own interests. The IMF and World Bank spokespeople acknowledged the protests -- pointing out that it was impossible to ignore them. They emphasized that they are increasingly focusing on poverty and trying to empower the poor. But they refuse to abandon their emphasis on structural adjustment, and in fact are using their very modest debt relief initiative to force poor countries to undergo still more, carefully monitored structural adjustment. Real change at the IMF and World Bank will come not from voluntary "reforms" in their policies, but from external forces -- such as the U.S. Congress or large numbers of developing country governments cooperating closely -- that demand that IMF and Bank powers be curtailed. With the April 16 protests shining light on the policies of the IMF and World Bank, expanding the coalition opposed to structural adjustment and revealing that discontent in the developing world with IMF and Bank policies is increasingly matched by similar outrage in the rich nations, the prospect of a successful drive to shrink the authority and power of the IMF and Bank is greater than at any time in recent history. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action, one of the sponsors of the April 16 Mobilization for Global Justice. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Wed, 17 May 2000 12:26:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 12:26:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Focus on the Corporation listserve update Dear Friends: Sorry we haven't been in touch for a while. Our server went down for a prolonged period, which prevented us from sending Focus on the Corporation columns out to the list. The server is now repaired, and the list now back in order. Shortly following this message, you'll receive our most recent column, on General Electric. Over the next three days, we will send you the columns that we were unable to send out while the server was down, one a day. Afterwards, we'll return to our normal one a week format. It is possible, though unlikely, that there will be some difficulty with the list as we resume things. If you have any troubles, please send a message directly to me. Thanks. Robert Weissman Essential Information | Internet: rob@essential.org From rob@essential.org Wed, 17 May 2000 12:28:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 12:28:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] GE: Every Plant on a Barge GE: Every Plant on a Barge By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman There is probably no more "American" corporation than General Electric -- and no company with more of an anational world outlook than GE. And no company's record better illustrates the glories of corporate globalization for the well-off, and the misery for the many. Founded by the American icon Thomas Edison, GE is now headed by Jack Welch, who has said, "Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge" -- ready to move if any national government tried to impose restraints on the factories' operations, or if workers demanded better wages and working conditions. While Welch's 20-year reign has been a golden era for shareholders -- the company's stock value has risen three time more than the Dow average, leading Forbes magazine to name Welch the "Most Admired CEO of the Century" -- it has been a disaster for employees. GE has slashed its U.S. workforce by almost half since 1986. The numbers are down "because of speed up, downsizing, outsourcing, plant closings, you name it," says Chris Townsend, political director of the United Electrical (UE) workers. GE has globalized its operations by shifting production to low-wage countries. (And even in these countries, the jobs remain precarious: GE recently shuttered a factory in Turkey to move it to lower-wage Hungary -- and it has threatened to close a factory in Hungary and move it to India. Union officials in Malaysia say they fear GE "putting our plant on a barge and moving to Vietnam," according to InterPress Service.) Now GE appears no longer satisfied to close its own plants -- it wants to shut down those of suppliers, too. In a startling memo obtained by Business Week, GE Aircraft Engines (GEAE) -- a hugely profitable division -- told suppliers that they would have to move to Mexico if they hoped to continue their relationship with GE. GEAE has held what it calls "supplier migration" conferences in Cincinnati, near its headquarters, and in Monterrey, where an aerospace industrial park is being built. An internal report on a GEAE meeting with its suppliers says, "GE set the tone early and succinctly: 'Migrate or be out of business; not a matter of if, just when. This is not a seminar to provide you information. We expect you to move and move quickly." These kind of tactics obviously leave GE's workers (not to mention those in supplier plants) in a weak negotiating position. New contract negotiations between GE and its unionized workforce in the United States are set to begin later this month, with GE's collective bargaining agreements expiring at the end of June. In an unusual arrangement that has its origins in the anti-communism that wreaked the labor movement especially following World War II, 14 U.S. unions represent GE workers. Although the unions, including the two unions with national contracts -- the International Union of Electronic workers (IUE) and the progressive UE -- now work relatively well together, the balkanized representation system further weakens labor negotiators. In preparation for this year's negotiations, the GE Coordinated Bargaining Committee, which includes the 14 unions, has undertaken a corporate campaign. They've highlighted egregious GE practices and generated public support and sympathy. In one sign that they do have some power, efforts to publicize GE's use of pension funds as an accounting profit center (because the $50 billion pension pool is overfunded by $25 billion, GE is able to claim investment gains on the pension funds as paper profits) have resulted in GE agreeing to provide expanded pension benefits. GE workers have also taken the first steps to deal with the globalization of the company. In March, the International Metalworkers Federation held a meeting in Washington, D.C. to bring together GE union representatives from 20 countries. While they are certainly a long way from global bargaining with the company -- with some progressive unionists cautioning that global bargaining may not even be desirable -- they did agree to meaningful information exchanges and solidarity activities. Meanwhile, the tiny UE has done more impressive and far-reaching solidarity work than any other U.S. union, maintaining a long-time partnership with the FAT labor federation in Mexico, the organization of authentic Mexican unions. But addressing the problem of runaway GE will require more than international union solidarity, as crucial as it is. A far stronger and aggressive labor movement might be able to stop plant closings and job exports through direct action and collective bargaining, or it might be able to win national legislation or even international trade rules to block GE and other companies from employing a "factory barge" strategy. For now, however, GE appears relatively free to trumpet its American heritage while betraying the U.S. workers who built the company ... and turning its back on its new workers outside of the United States if still greater profits are to be found elsewhere. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Fri, 19 May 2000 10:51:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 10:51:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Amoral Defense Amoral Defense By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman April 24, 2000 We've just come from a press conference held by the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism. The Center called the press conference to announce its opposition to Earth Day. At the press conference, the Center's executive director, Robert Tracinski, asked the question that was on everybody's mind -- why in the heck would anybody be against Earth Day? "People think that environmentalism just means being for clean air and clean water -- and who could possibly be against these things?" Tracinski asked. "In fact, we believe that environmentalists don't really care about clean air and clean water. Their real goal is to destroy technology and to subordinate mankind to nature." "Watch the crowds of environmentalists who will gather on the Mall tomorrow, and notice that they have never met a form of technology they liked," Tracinski said. "Every kind of new technology is attacked, from nuclear power to genetically modified foods. But they also oppose every old, existing technology, from fertilizers and pesticides to the internal combustion engine. And they always place the blame for every problem on one basic target -- the Industrial Revolution." We pointed out to Tracinski that most environmentalists don't want to get rid of all technology -- they just want to get rid of dirty technologies and replace them with cleaner technologies -- electric cars for gasoline powered cars, for example. "If they are for a new technology, let them go out and invent it," Tracinski said. "But they say -- get rid of the old technology first and maybe somewhere in the future we will have some new technology." Not really Bob. The new technology is here and being actively blocked by the old technology industries. Don't you read the papers? The Center, based in Spotsylvania, Virginia, is closely affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute. Rand was the philosopher who laid the intellectual groundwork for Reaganism (Alan Greenspan is a Rand fan) -- no law restraining corporate power is a good law. The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism feels the same way. Its web site (www.moraldefense.org) is dominated by articles denouncing the antitrust laws and the government's case against Microsoft. One article, which is representative of the tone of the others, is titled "The Injustice of Antitrust Laws as Reflected in the High-Tech Lynching of Microsoft." The article is written by Richard Salsman, a senior policy analyst at the Center. Salsman compared the government's case against Microsoft to a KKK lynching of a black man. "Like the black man, the local victim didn't do anything wrong -- on the contrary, he seems to have done everything right," Salsman writes. "Still he is hated. He is despised. He is being lynched. For no other reason. What will you do?" Comparing the lynching of a flesh and blood human being to the government's antitrust case against Microsoft is a bit over the top. So, we wanted to know, who is funding your Center, Bob? Where is this money coming from, anyway? "We really don't feel comfortable giving out our donors -- we don't consider it important," he said. Wait a second Bob. What do you mean you don't consider it important? Is this Microsoft money talking? "I'm not going to answer that question," Tracinski said. "I don't consider it to be important." But then Bob breaks down -- a little. "We have received money from Microsoft, but we aren't going to say how much," Tracinski said. Microsoft's Rick Miller confirmed that the company had donated to the Center, but he too refused to reveal the amount of the contribution. Miller said that Microsoft gives to a wide range of interest groups across the political spectrum and doesn't support everything every one of them says or believes. Gates, for example, is not in favor of dismantling the antitrust laws, as is the Center, although Gates believes the antitrust laws are being misapplied in the case at hand. Still, if implemented, the extremist views of the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism would lead to a society where big corporations would be allowed to roam freely without restraint -- lawless corporations in a lawless land. Tracinski said he didn't understand why we wanted to know whether Microsoft was funding his operation. We want to know exactly what beast we are dealing with here, Bob. Don't be like the Wizard of Oz, yelling at us not to look behind the curtain. A whole pack of Totos is pulling on that curtain and nothing you can do will prevent it from being ripped to shreds. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Sat, 20 May 2000 19:22:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 19:22:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] The Price of Media Merger Mania The Price of Media Merger Mania By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman May 2, 2000 The immediate victims in the raging battle between Time Warner and Disney are the 3.5 million households who on May 1 suddenly lost cable access to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and other ABC programming. Win, lose or draw for Time Warner and Disney -- and a negotiated truce is likely soon -- the entire consuming public will be the long-run losers. Underlying the dispute is the massive consolidation in the media business, which has placed a half dozen megacorporations in control of a wide range of broadcast and cable television networks, movie production, book publishing and radio networks, as well as, increasingly, the cable, satellite, internet and telephone system conduits to deliver media content. The Time Warner-Disney conflict is one example among many of how media concentration empowers corporations while limiting consumer choice and diminishing the diversity of publicized political viewpoints. The flashpoint in the current controversy is Disney's demand that Time Warner Cable Systems include more Disney-owned programming in its cable packages. Disney has asked Time Warner to include the Disney Channel in basic cable package, and to feature two other Disney channels, Toon Disney and the Soap Channel. Disney has also reportedly demanded $300 million from Time Warner for the rights to carry its channels. Refusing to concede to these demands, Time Warner pulled the plug on Disney programming, including the programming aired by seven Disney-owned ABC affiliates. Time Warner's contract to air the Disney shows originally expired at the end of 1999, but had been repeatedly extended a month at a time. Disney offered to extend the deal for another 24 days -- through the "sweeps" period. Time Warner counter-offered to prolong the arrangement for eight months. Neither side would budge before the May 1 deadline. Time Warner complains that Disney is asking too much for its programming. The source of this complaint is Disney's gambit to leverage the power derived from its ownership of the ABC affiliates -- whose programming Time Warner must air to offer a viable product -- to force Time Warner to air other Disney channels, and on terms Time Warner finds onerous. Time Warner has a good point. This structural advantage gives Disney a leg up on independent cable networks, and may undermine viewer choice (to see networks Time Warner won't air in slots given to Disney channels) and increase viewer cost. For its part, Disney says it is fearful that, especially if its merger with AOL is approved, Time Warner will leverage its enormous power to discriminate against networks which it doesn't own. Disney fears that Time Warner -- which owns both conduit (the cable networks) and content providers (including CNN and the WB network) -- will block competitor channels and networks from using emerging interactive technologies to deliver advertisements or enhanced programming. For example, Disney spokespeople say that Time Warner, favoring Time Warner-owned CNN, might block ABC News from access to the two-way communications needed to ask individual viewers if they would like more information on a topic delivered to them. Disney has a good point, too. Time Warner's structural advantage may portend additional income streams for its programming only, to the detriment of competitors -- and, consequently, viewer choice. Much more important than the immediate Disney-Time Warner dispute is what the conflagaration highlights: the ongoing merger mania in the media and telecommunications industries will profoundly shape the face of information dissemination in the coming century. And all signs now point to enhanced influence for the media giants, steady deterioration in programming diversity and increasing news and public affairs homogenization -- at the expense of the cacophonous public debate featuring political perspectives from A to Z (not just of ABC) which should be the foundation of a democratic society. The first step in addressing these problems is a national moratorium on major media mergers (including blocking of the Time Warner-AOL merger). Not only would a moratorium halt dangerous trends in media concentration, it would give the public and politicians time to sort through the democratic damage that has already occurred, and to craft appropriate remedies. We could begin a national debate about far-reaching proposals to enhance our culture and democracy: breaking up the media giants, imposing strict limitations on horizontal and especially vertical integration in the media markets, demanding monetary and in-kind payments from the broadcasters for the public handover of the digital and broadcast spectrum (including creation of an audience network governed by the public and financed by the broadcasters), transferring the entire over-the-air broadcast spectrum to public television outlets, requiring the provision of free television time to electoral candidates and other measures worthy of serious consideration. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Mon, 22 May 2000 19:46:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 19:46:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Against China PNTR Against China PNTR By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Should China be fully immersed into the corporatized global economy? The debate over whether the U.S. Congress should grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly known as permanent most favored nation) status is about many things, but none more important than this basic question. The vote on PNTR is intertwined with a U.S.-China bilateral trade deal that contains tariff concessions and deregulatory measures designed to aid U.S. business, and with China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This should not be a hard question to answer. Opening the economy further to U.S. and other multinational corporations and deregulating the economy further will exacerbate the worst social and economic tendencies in China, while undermining many of the country's important achievements of the past 50 years. As NAFTA proponents argued about Mexico, PNTR proponents can fairly say that China is already open to foreign business. But as with NAFTA, PNTR is about corporate investment as much as the trade in goods. U.S. business wants the certainty that comes from the China trade deal and Chinese membership in the WTO, and the progressive elimination of the many barriers to foreign investment in China. Most of the hardships that large numbers of Chinese people will experience if PNTR is granted and China joins the WTO are not seriously disputed: * Ten million or more peasants will be thrown off the land, as agricultural supports are withdrawn. * Millions of workers will lose their jobs as state enterprises wither in the face of foreign competition, or downsize and speed up operations in an effort stay competitive. * Social service provision will be decimated. Healthcare, education, pensions and other such services have long been provided by employers -- duties that state employers no longer want or can afford in the face of foreign competition. Foreign private corporations are generally not interested in taking on social service provision responsibility. * As a result of these and other factors, there will be a surge in income and wealth inequality, exacerbating dangerous trends already underway. * Foreign tobacco companies will gain greater access to the Chinese market, which almost certainly means there will be a rise in smoking rates among women (traditionally non-smoking in China) and children. Because of the vastness of China's population, even small increases in smoking rates may result in millions of excess tobacco-related deaths. * China will progressively lose the ability to employ the protectionist tools that have enabled it to grow at such rapid rates in recent decades, and to weather the Asian financial crisis with minimal hardship. Corporate proponents of PNTR counter that the economic boom that will follow from PNTR will balance out the harms to workers and farmers -- that these transition costs are an unavoidable cost of modernization. But there is little evidence to support these claims, and even if PNTR hypothetically did spur economic expansion -- a contention we find implausible -- it would still occur amidst worsening economic inequality, a worsening of poverty and shredding of the social safety net. Strangely, despite the cheerleading from Big Business for PNTR and the acknowledged harms (no small thing to shunt aside), some progressives have offered support for PNTR. They contend that it is inappropriate for the United States to treat China differently than other nations, absent a call from Chinese workers and farmers for such differential treatment. But there are almost no independent mass organizations in China, nor even non-governmental organizations. Who exactly do these progressives look to issue such calls? Another strand of progressive criticism of PNTR opposition rejects "protectionism." But it is perfectly appropriate for U.S. unions and others to protect the interests of U.S. workers, especially against the ravages of corporate globalization. PNTR will cost domestic manufacturing jobs and enhance the downward pressure on U.S. wages by making it easier for U.S. manufacturers to produce their goods in Chinese sweatshops. It promises few if any new jobs for workers in the United States. Big U.S. corporate winners from PNTR in the financial and service sectors will create virtually no jobs in the United States as they gain market share in China. And most of the manufacturers who hope to sell goods to the emerging middle class in China intend to make those products in China. PNTR and China's accession to the WTO may be a winning deal for the Fortune 500, but it is a lose-lose proposition for people in both China and the United States. Opposing PNTR is an easy call. The PNTR vote in Congress is neck and neck. You can make a difference by making a call of your own. Call your representative at 1-877-722-7494 (toll free), and urge them to vote "no" on PNTR. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Fri, 26 May 2000 00:23:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 00:23:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] A Tsunami of Corruption Below follows the last of the missing Mokhiber-Weissman columns. One correction on an earlier column. The correct URL for the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism is www.moraldefense.com. Robert Weissman Essential Information | Internet: rob@essential.org A Tsunami of Corruption By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman May 9, 2000 We ran into Charles Kolb the other day. Kolb is the president of the Committee for Economic Development (CED). That's the group of major American corporate executives who want campaign finance reform. They propose banning soft money contributions to national political parties, increasing individual contribution limits to $3,000 per candidate, and implementing a system of partial public funding that matches individual donations of up to $200 on a two-to-one basis. In a report released last year on the subject, the CED said that "a vibrant and well-functioning business system will not remain viable in an environment of real or perceived corruption." Kolb and the corporate executives at CED don't mind big business running roughshod over the political system -- just as long as it isn't overtly corrupt or perceived as corrupt. He made this clear last week, when he conceded that if soft money was banned, corporations would simply shift the cash into their inside-the-beltway Washington lobby operations. And that was fine with him. The companies are sick of being shaken down by every two-bit politician offering to defend this or that corporate interest. And Kolb and his colleagues rightly fear that the growing appearance of corruption will undermine public confidence in the corporate system. Kolb has reason to be worried. A veritable tsunami of corruption is crashing over the countryside. There is first and foremost the endless amount of soft money cash flowing from corporate coffers into federal campaigns and national political parties. Whether or not this cash is buying favors is beside the point -- it appears to be buying favors, and that's what is worrying Kolb. Potentially more dangerous is the real corruption that is exploding at the state and local levels. Washington's culture of corruption has given the green light to the rest of the country. "Go for it!" is the message being sent out from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- and the country is responding. Let's take the tour: In Illinois, Governor George Ryan is fighting for his political life. Federal investigators allege that under Ryan's tenure as Secretary of State, the state issued driver's licenses to truckers and other drivers in exchange for cash payments that went into a political slush fund for Ryan. A number of those drivers ended up in fatal highway accidents. A number of government officials have been indicted, and federal prosecutors are gunning for the Governor. In California, Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush is under fire from consumer groups and the state's largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, for shielding State Farm and two other insurance companies from $3.37 billion in fines in exchange for $10.75 million in contributions to non-profit organizations and to Quackenbush's own political committees. In Oklahoma earlier this month federal officials alleged that Oklahoma's Health Department's deputy commissioner solicited bribes from nursing home owners in exchange for regulatory favors and used at least a portion of the payoffs to gamble on horse races. According to a report in the Daily Oklahoman, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Brent VanMeter at his office after he allegedly picked up payoff money from an Oklahoma nursing home owner. VanMeter was charged with one count of soliciting a bribe. VanMeter's attorney said his client plans to plead not guilty. The Governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, called the health department scandal "an issue of raw, unadulterated corruption." "We need to assure the public that this will not recur, that this is intolerable and that we're going to get to the bottom of it, and that's why I have great faith in the attorney general and the U.S. attorney to do that," Keating said. Keating and CED's Kolb are trying to protect the corporate system -- stamp out obvious forms of corruption and overt appearances, the better to let corporations rule. Corruption is debilitating to any democracy. But a system where giant corporations wield tremendous power over ordinary human citizens is an open invitation to corruption. In addition to criminally prosecuting illegal bribery and outlawing legalized bribery, we must also fundamentally question the nature of the corporate beast. Should a corporation, a public creation, be free to gain unlimited power and wield that power over our democracy? Should corporations be allowed to have free speech rights -- the same as living, breathing human beings? The City Council of the northern California community of Point Arena, California had it right last month when it voted 4-to-one to publicly side with Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black's 1938 opinion in which Black stated, "I do not believe the word 'person' in the 14th Amendment includes corporations." The people of Point Arena were critical of the U.S. Supreme Court -- Justice Black excepted -- for bestowing free speech, lobbying and propaganda rights to corporations. "Corporations enjoy privileges that real people do not. Corporations have become super people," the resolution read. "Corporations have effectively become our governors. Today workers must check their personhood and natural rights at the gate as they enter corporate property. But the corporation remains a person and asserts its power wherever it goes." "There has been no real challenge to corporate power for 100 years," the people of Pt. Arena said. "Revoking corporate personhood is a logical and vital step in the process of controlling our country and community." Now there's a sentiment Kolb and Keating might have a difficult time getting their corporate patrons to support. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Tue, 30 May 2000 17:48:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 17:48:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Stop Corruption Now Stop Corruption Now By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Last Wednesday, we walked down to the MCI Center to catch the "National Tribute to President Clinton." Out in front of the MCI Center, Doris Haddock, Granny D., the grandmom who walked across the country protesting money in politics, was being interviewed by reporters. Granny D and about 12 of her supporters had just been sentenced to a $10 fine for protesting earlier this year under the Capitol Rotunda. The sentencing judge said he felt guilty that he wasn't with the defendants protesting that day, and so he let them off easy. Fresh off that sentencing victory, the troops, led by Granny D, stormed down to the MCI Center, where Clinton and the Democratic National Committee were in the process of raising $26.5 million in one night. This event reeked of corruption, coming as it did at the end of a day when Congress made it easier for American corporations to put down their collective footprint on China -- and in exchange, American corporations funneled big money into the two major parties. (The word went out that the vote had to be taken during the day so Members of Congress and the lobbyists could make it to the MCI Center and across town to a similar Republican fundraiser in time for dinner and the festivities that followed.) Outside on F Street, we chanted and carried signs, but President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Hillary and Tipper, and Terry McAuliffe, of course, were out of sight and out of earshot. So, we needed to get in, and like beggars at a NCAA Final Four tournament game, we found ourselves walking up and down the sidewalk whispering "need two tickets." And we came across a union guy who had a stack, and handed us three. So, three of us walked in to witness an amazing spectacle. There on the ground floor, where people usually play basketball and hockey, were people eating dinner. To get to eat dinner down there, we learned, you would have to raise $50,000 to $500,000 for the Democratic Party. Up above, in the rafters, were the regular folks -- 13,000 regular types who the Dems said paid $50 and $100 a piece. (In reality, the only way they got that many people in to watch Bill and Al and Lenny Kravitz and Robin Williams was to give away the tickets for free. Our ticket says "Price: 0.00" How many of those do you have to sell to raise $26.5 million?) Anyway, a grotesque spectacle it was. And especially sickening was the performance of Terry McAuliffe, the fundraiser who pulled the whole thing off. He went on and on about how the Dems are different from the Republicans. We wear blue jeans, they wear tuxedos. We take the subway, they come in limos. We eat ribs, they eat steak. What a crock. In fact, Terry, you both are marinated in Fortune 500 cash and you both stink for it. So, after Terry made his fake populist case that the Dems are with the people, and the Republicans are not, President Bill was introduced. Then, out of the darkness of the MCI Center, a group of dissenters began chanting -- "Stop Corruption Now, Stop Corruption Now, Stop Corruption Now." A visibly angry Bill, not wanting America to hear the dissenters, shouted to sidekick Terry -- "Turn this (microphone) off, and turn this one on -- if you turn this on, they can hear me instead of them." Then the Great Corrupter defended himself against the dissenters' charge of corruption. "I don't believe it's corruption to take money to pass the Brady bill," he said. "To pass the Family and Medical Leave Bill, so people can take some time off when their family members are ill. To pass the Patient's Bill of Rights. . .I don't think that is corruption. That's good for America." And then he turned to Terry and smirked. As if to say -- teach them wimps to holler during my speech. Those, of course, are not examples of corruption, Bill. It is, most recently, the China bill that reeks of corruption, with Big Business spending big money on both parties and both parties delivering at the other end, despite compelling arguments that granting Permanent Trade Status to China would injure workers and farmers in both countries, while further fattening the pockets of the people eating dinner on the floor of the MCI Center. Which way out of this quagmire? One first step is to organize to open up this year's Presidential Debates to different voices. Al Gore and George Bush walk in unison on many issues dear to corporate America -- as the China vote made clear. Third party candidates not beholden to corporate power must be heard. George Bush and Al Gore fear such an open-ended debate. But the alternative is mass boredom, a further decline in the percentage of Americans who vote, and corrosive drip from a corrupt political machine that threatens the remnants of democratic government. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman From rob@essential.org Thu, 8 Jun 2000 19:33:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 19:33:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman rob@essential.org Subject: [corp-focus] Which Way, CFA? Which Way, CFA? By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The Consumer Federation of America is at a crossroads. Set up in 1968 to advocate in Washington, D.C. for consumer interests, the Federation is being consumed by Washington's corporate culture. Will it seek to reverse course and get back to its consumer roots? Or will it become just another corporate front group? Perhaps the hottest consumer issue of the next few years, genetically engineered (GE) foods, will severely test its resolve. Who's in charge of this issue at Federation? None other than Carol Tucker Foreman, who during the previous decade worked as a lobbyist for Monsanto, making sure that the highly controversial genetically engineered bovine growth hormone made it into our milk supply without labeling. "We see no evidence that Foreman represents anyone other than herself," says Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. "And we resent the fact that the media describes Foreman as a leading spokesperson for American consumers on food safety issues." But President Clinton sees it differently. Last month, the Clinton/Gore administration nominated Foreman to be the U.S. "consumer advocate" to the Biotech Consultative Forum, a group formed at the behest of the biotech industry. The Forum, dominated by experts partial to the industry, will prepare a report for the December 2000 U.S.-European Union summit. John Stauber, managing editor of the Madison, Wisconsin-based PR Watch, says that the problem for the biotech industry is that GE foods were pushed onto the market too fast. The result: a political and economic train wreck internationally. European consumers don't want the technology -- with or without labeling. And to insure that the "no GE foods" virus